Wired interview with BitTorrent creator Bram Cohen:"You get so tired of having your work die," he says. "I just wanted to make something that people would actually use." With over 40 million downloads of his program, I think he has done it. I know I've posted a lot of links about BT, so maybe it has gotten a bit boring, but this program is *really* important.
Can the "industr(ies)" destroy it?
Yes and no. They have been pretty effective lately at closing down tracker sites. These are regular websites that list the .torrent files you need to start a download (although the download itself comes from your peers, not from the tracker site.) They (MPAA mostly) have even closed the big ones in Europe. But that sort of thing will be a cat and mouse game where all the industry can hope for is to make it a little bit more difficult.
But the power of BitTorrent isn't just about trading copyrighted material, although no doubt that will always be the most popular use. The real power is that BitTorrent allows any small player to produce content that can be mass distributed. This was always part of the utopian vision of the internet, but no matter how low bandwidth costs have sunk, it still costs *a lot* of money to distribute something the old fashion way (where every client pulls a full copy off your server.) But with BitTorrent, distribution is now basically zero for popular content.
And just to be extra clear: BitTorrent is not that great of a way to pirate material over the internet, if by "great" you mean something that hides your identity from copyright holders who might want to sue you. BitTorrent does nothing to hide your IP address. Kazaa (and limewire, gnutella, etc...) don't do much, but at least if you are just leaching (and not serving the files yourself,) you are very safe. With BitTorrent you are by definition serving the file to others if you are downloading it. My guess (there haven't been any cases yet I know of,) is that this is a much worse legal position to be in.
The other side of the legal thing is what I have been predicting will happen to the internet: the breaking apart into private communities. We've experienced some of that here on this site. Some things are better done with a bit of privacy. BitTorrent doesn't role the privacy into their protocol, but private tracker websites are springing up all over. You join the site and then you can trade files using BitTorrent with other members. Various FOAF schemes try to keep only friendly people joining the sites. I think this will be the way the "industries" lose the battle.
Looks like supernova.org (one of the big tracker sites that shut down under pressure) is coming back with a new program: Exeem. Apparently this distributes the work of the tracker sites out to all the clients, taking away the single point of failure (much the same way that the old napster gave way to the completely decentralized kazaa.)
More detailed look at eXeem.
Well the details are a bit muddy. But this slashdot story makes it seem like eXeem is going to be a proprietary, locked in, adware driven network. That's not what people are waiting for. Still, this is all a side story to the success that is BitTorrent.
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- jim 12-29-2004 9:39 pm
Can the "industr(ies)" destroy it?
- tom moody 12-29-2004 10:10 pm
Yes and no. They have been pretty effective lately at closing down tracker sites. These are regular websites that list the .torrent files you need to start a download (although the download itself comes from your peers, not from the tracker site.) They (MPAA mostly) have even closed the big ones in Europe. But that sort of thing will be a cat and mouse game where all the industry can hope for is to make it a little bit more difficult.
But the power of BitTorrent isn't just about trading copyrighted material, although no doubt that will always be the most popular use. The real power is that BitTorrent allows any small player to produce content that can be mass distributed. This was always part of the utopian vision of the internet, but no matter how low bandwidth costs have sunk, it still costs *a lot* of money to distribute something the old fashion way (where every client pulls a full copy off your server.) But with BitTorrent, distribution is now basically zero for popular content.
And just to be extra clear: BitTorrent is not that great of a way to pirate material over the internet, if by "great" you mean something that hides your identity from copyright holders who might want to sue you. BitTorrent does nothing to hide your IP address. Kazaa (and limewire, gnutella, etc...) don't do much, but at least if you are just leaching (and not serving the files yourself,) you are very safe. With BitTorrent you are by definition serving the file to others if you are downloading it. My guess (there haven't been any cases yet I know of,) is that this is a much worse legal position to be in.
The other side of the legal thing is what I have been predicting will happen to the internet: the breaking apart into private communities. We've experienced some of that here on this site. Some things are better done with a bit of privacy. BitTorrent doesn't role the privacy into their protocol, but private tracker websites are springing up all over. You join the site and then you can trade files using BitTorrent with other members. Various FOAF schemes try to keep only friendly people joining the sites. I think this will be the way the "industries" lose the battle.
- jim 12-29-2004 10:27 pm
Looks like supernova.org (one of the big tracker sites that shut down under pressure) is coming back with a new program: Exeem. Apparently this distributes the work of the tracker sites out to all the clients, taking away the single point of failure (much the same way that the old napster gave way to the completely decentralized kazaa.)
- jim 12-30-2004 8:17 pm
More detailed look at eXeem.
- jim 12-30-2004 8:25 pm
Well the details are a bit muddy. But this slashdot story makes it seem like eXeem is going to be a proprietary, locked in, adware driven network. That's not what people are waiting for. Still, this is all a side story to the success that is BitTorrent.
- jim 12-31-2004 6:17 pm