OneSwarm: Privacy Preserving Peer to Peer Data Sharing

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The University of Washington may be proud of helping to create another BitTorrent application, named OneSwarm. Unlike other applications, this one promises its users to guard their confidential information, enabling people to share files anonymously. The application works with a web browser and available for three operating systems: Windows, Linux, and Mac.

As you might remember, in the past the pro-copyright outfits somehow managed to make the headlines and make fools of themselves at the same time by accusing a printer located at the University of Washington of copyright violation. The IP address accused by the RIAA and the MPAA of copyright infringement appeared to belong to a harmless unconscious device which couldn’t be used for downloading any copyrighted content.

The research conducted by the University of Washington proved that collecting evidence on BitTorrent downloaders can sometimes lead to deadlock. The OneSwarm project was developed by the same team as the research in question. In fact, the application was developed with help of PhD students Michael Piatek and Tomas Isdal.

The success of the application is determined by its ability to transfer information through multiple intermediaries. The developers of the software explained that almost every online user is a content producer, but currently the community has only one model of sharing information by signing over the rights to the content work to a site and hoping that the latter will respect the privacy of the creator. That’s why privacy is very important on P2P networks.

Michael Piatek admitted that OneSwarm was just an attempt to provide an alternative to the Internet users, because he believes that sharing private information is a vital service in free societies.

Currently the source of the application can be obtained from GitHub, with binaries and the source code available for three operating systems: Windows, Linux, and Mac. A team from TorrentFreak already tested the client and admitted it had reached quite reasonable download speeds, which was confirmed in one of the academic papers released by the developers. During the performance test, it was found out that OneSwarm proved to be better than such alternatives as Freenet and BitTorrent over Tor. Nevertheless, the developers remind us that the transfers performed in a “public” mode are still unsafe.

Thanks to TorrentFreak for providing the source of the article