Torrential Reign
Bram Cohen’s Bit Torrent software made it a cinch to pirate films on the Internet. So why is Hollywood on his side?

an article by Daniel Roth on Fortune.com

My first introduction to this technology was through the trading of live music from bands such as Phish, String Cheese Incident, Grateful Dead, etc. It made the whole process of trading/collecting live shows much easier, as I now didn’t need to build a collection to start trading with (the whole concept of B&P was nice, but it took a lot longer to get started), I didn’t need to spend time trying to login to a bunch of different FTP sites and hope I caught a free spot, and it allowed me to grab anything and everything I had the bandwidth and disk space for.

As the media has learned about this new method of file sharing, usually through news pieces about the latest Hollywood movie making it onto the Internet, it’s been interesting to watch Bit Torrent portrayed in the same light as Grokster, Lime Wire, Napster, etc. For me, it’s a simple choice of speed, spy-ware and community, and Bit Torrent satisfies these requirements.

I like the speed of downloads with Bit Torrent. I can typically download a few gigs, in a few hours, of a newly uploaded show. Links that have been listed longer can take a little longer. It’s all about the number of people who are sharing that same file.

I like the community. If there is an older link out there and I want it, if not enough people are currently working on it, a simple post to a few forums and I’ve suddenly got a few more people to share with. When I was using Lime Wire, if the IP address with the rare track decided to bounce, I’d be out of luck in finding them again and I’d either be left with an incomplete file or a fruitless wait for more. Not so with Bit Torrent.

I see the commercial uses for such a technology; imagine downloading your new OS and burning it to a CD/DVD, rather then buying CD’s in a store and bringing them home to install. Companies could lower their costs, which would hopefully translate into lower prices, since there wouldn’t be a need for printing/packaging costs. I can see the future distribution of Hollywood movies, both to the movie houses (they could download the film a few hours before initial release, rather then wait for a shipment to arrive) and the consumer (allow the purchase of the movie the same day it is released theatrically). Any distribution of large files would benefit from using Bit Torrent.

bittorrent

tags: bittorrent, internet, music, technology