Can P2P Replace Direct Download for Content Distribution?

While peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing is a powerful and cost-effective content distribution model, most paid-for digital-content providers (CPs) rely on direct download to deliver their content. CPs such as Apple iTunes that command a large base of paying users are hesitant to use a P2P model that could easily degrade their user base into yet another free file-sharing community. We present TP2, a system that makes P2P file sharing a viable delivery mechanism for paid digital content by providing the same security properties as the currently used direct-download model. TP2 introduces the novel notion of trusted auditors (TAs) – P2P peers that are controlled by the system operator. TAs monitor the behavior of other peers and help detect and prevent formation of illegal file-sharing clusters among the CP’s user base. TAs both complement and exploit the strong authentication and authorization mechanisms that are used in TP2 to control access to content. It is important to note that TP2 does not attempt to solve the out-of-band file-sharing or DRM problems, which also exist in the direct-download systems currently in use. We analyze TP2 by modeling it as a novel game between misbehaving users who try to form unauthorized file-sharing clusters and TAs who curb the growth of such clusters. Our analysis shows that a small fraction of TAs is sufficient to protect the P2P system against unauthorized file sharing. In a system with as many as 60% of misbehaving users, even a small fraction of TAs can detect 99% of unauthorized cluster formation. We developed a simple economic model to show that even with such a large fraction of malicious nodes, TP2 can improve CP’s profits (which could translate to user savings) by 62 to 122%, even while assuming conservative estimates of content and bandwidth costs. We implemented TP2 as a layer on top of BitTorrent and demonstrated experimentally using PlanetLab that our system provides trusted P2P file sharing with negligible performance overhead.