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BitTorrent's Creator Bram Cohen Interviewed
Delta-9 writes "The New York Times
has this interview (free reg. req.) with Bram Cohen, the author/creator of the widely popular BitTorrent p2p application." Talks a bit about BitTorrent, its implications, but also a lot about Bram himself. Interesting piece.
Registration is for wussies! Go Google...
NY Times
He's made distribution of media and data much more cost effective.
BitTorrent is a nice creative alternative solution to what has generally been a Napster knockoff syndrome among P2P services.
Slashdot also had an inteview with Bram Cohen back in June.
Mike
It's worth quoting from the article that he has been hired by Valve (upcoming Half Life 2) to use his expertise for their Steam content distributing system.
Please make a "no uploading" option button on BitTorrent, because I am a leech, signed the Kazaa masses.
Bittorrent is like the Athlon 64, other p2p apps are like a pentium 133.
Somebody needs to create a torrent of this interview in case it gets Slashdotted.
The Human Cow - bringing you scrumtrelescence since 1995
Then what did he think it was going to be used for? The popularity of Napster should have taught him that this was going to happen. Anything that can allow someone to get something for free that they normally would have to pay for, will be used for that purpose. Maybe he didn't intend for this to happen...but the best of intentions oft go awry. I find it hard to believe though that someone smart enough to code Bit Torrent is naive enough to not realize how it would be utilized.
Now I've seen it all.
The school I go to has already ended the party, limiting the crap out of BT connections, so my speeds dropped from 500-600k/sec to 3-4k/sec for each torrent. What's the speed something has to drop to so that driving to where the server is, burning a cd, and driving home is faster than the download itself?
Any other schools out there get a similar clampdown?
SecondPageMedia - Wha
The article is very thin on the legitimate uses of BitTorrent. Just last night, I wanted to download the Unreal Tournament 2004 demo... and despite the fact there were literally hundreds of mirrors, I couldn't connect to many of them, and those I could connect to were utterly hosed. So, I looked for a torrent for the file, and a few minutes later, I was done downloading it.
Yes, you can use BitTorrent to steal stuff. But, all of the p2p programs are basically a mix of the roles of ftp and irc. BitTorrent is slightly different - it's a mix of p2p and the web, making a quick and easy means to find whatever you want. A great amount of content is completely legit, and BitTorrent is a dream come true for those times that everybody wants a certain file. I didn't expect NYT to focus on the good aspects of the program, but they didn't even mention how amazingly useful it actually is.
-agent oranje.
- Legal Torrents - net label mp3 releases
Enjoy.Request your free CD of my piano music.
as well he shouldn't berate people for their usage of his software. neither should you.
and what's this bit about the MPAA having BitTorrent on their radar screen??? give me a break! try the piracy and other infringement sources because the authors do not promote it, regardless of what they know is happening with their software.
Big files, probably. If he wanted it to be used chiefly for big illegal files, he wouldn't have made the system require a centralized tracker that can be shut down and it would've had at least some semblance of anonimity.
As it stands, BitTorrent is no better at distributing copyright infringing content than HTTP is when it comes to evading the copyright holder.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
that's a coincidence, not irony... blurp...
I believe (RTFA, please) that he wanted a good way to leverage unused bandwidth for large file distribution.
/. effect work for you, essentially.
Linux ISO's are a good example, and are probably the first place that I saw bittorrent used right here on slashdot. Make the
they immediately start uploading that piece to other users
Hmm, that would be "immediately start sending that piece to other users". "upload/download" are terms reserved for an asymmetric situation. How can the NYT get this wrong?
--
As I sit here, getting packages at a mightily slow 8 k/sec via Fedora's Red Hat Network, I wonder why this must be.
Why don't tools like yum, up2date, and apt incorporate BitTorrent concepts to download packages and files?
If there was an option when installing Fedora or Debian to "share XX Mbytes at YY kbps" I'd be perfectly happy to donate 50 MB of disk space and 5-10 Kbps of bandwidth to the cause. That's be anough to reliably provide a few packages for redistribution.
Multiply that by the number of Linux installs, and you have a lightning-quick package delivery system.
Imagine apt-get or up2date ALWAYS able to saturate your broadband connection when doing an update!
Why is nobody doing this? Security isn't an issue, since BT uses SHA1. Source isn't an issue since BT is open source. Isn't the RHN stuff already written in PYTHON?!?!?
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
I think a problem in BT is the lack of compiled clients for linux. Phyton is big and an interpred code can eat a lot of cpu time specially when handlig several connections at a time. I've seen a c++ client for linux but it isn't developed anymore.
Another problem is bandwidth limitation not included in the software, you can use an external program like trickle (heavy) or the kernel, but that way it doesn't share bandwidth equally between users, it shares very bad indeed.
Other is that eventually I want to share my bandwidth but don't want to download the whole file (don't have time/space). I may use some trick (download a part of it and after that limit my download rate) but I don't think that's the best solution.
There's a difference between not intending something and not forseeing something. It's entirely possible he knew what people would do with it but still wasn't aiming for that market.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
The devil's in the details. I'm sure he knew very early on that BitTorrent would be used for illegal file trading, but by saying that he didn't intend for it to be used that way is a clever way of distancing himself from any potential lawsuits.
Plus, he mentions in the article that there is no claim of anonymity at all and that he's entirely surprised that websites that offer torrents for copyrighted files continue to be online.
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
I gues IHBT but let us play pretend. I just made this ummm fork and its made of plastic .... and stainless steel. Here you can use it to help you get food into your mouth. It's other non-intended use might be get food into a container or perhaps even to stab our /. troll's eyes. Maybe I didn't intend for this to happen...but the best of intentions oft go awry. I find it hard to believe though that someone smart enough to eat with a fork m is naive enough to not realize how it would be utilized.
The article makes an interesting point that I'm sure a number of /. users are aware of that bittorrent is not anonymous at all. Many less technically savy users made that mistake when using Napster and Kazaa and got screwed by the RIAA. Now while you're uploading and downloading you have no control over who sees your IP but I'm curious to know if trackers hold on to this information after you disconnect, or if sites like suprnova.org keep track of who downloads what torrent. Does anyone have some insight into this?
Pretty widgets? What pretty widgets?
Why anyone would peg their bandwidth for 2 days to grab a flick when you can rent it and burn a copy is beyond me.
Bittorrent shines for grabbing stuff, sure, but I think most people just collect crap, then burn it to disk or throw it on a HD and equate that with penis size.
So, Movie Industry, I really can't see this costing you zillions, or hundreds of thousands for that matter.
The people who want to will go to the theater, buy it on DVD, or rent it. The ones who don't, won't.
Again, if you're going to hunt people down, go after the pressing plants making thousands of copies AND SELLING THEM!
I highly doubt there are more than a few dirty whores who are selling copies of stuff they download. You know who you are. You suck.
How perfect... I had just stumbled across this article which mentions BitTorrent and has some interesting insight on legally circumventing the RIAA.
It revolutianed the way Fansubs are swapped No more waiting in endless que lines in IRC and dealing with the annoying ops and no more waiting for some kind soul to post it to usenet. Also made it alot easyer to remove once something got liscened just yank it from your tracker and boom the torrent is dead.
"Last May, 29 percent of adult Internet users in the United States reported that they had engaged in file sharing; that figure dropped to 14 percent in a survey conducted in November and December."
So did 15 percent of people get their file sharing virginity back?
The evil genius of the whole BitTorrent idea is the lack of anonymity. Like the article points out, it's perfect for Linux distros and anime fansubs. But if you think nobody can know what you're sharing or who you are, you're a fool.
I use the Mac OS X version, so I don't get to see this, but a friend showed me his Windows version and you could not only see who was connected, but what their bandwidth use was too. Apparently some people know how to become super-leeches. They'll appear, and everybody else's download speed suddenly goes to zero while they suck up the whole file. Then they go away. That this is even visible to a regular client should be thought-provoking.
It took me months to find it (because nobody bothered to document it!), but fortunately I found the bandwidth limiter in the OS X version. (Click on that widget on the right side of the window title bar.) Now I can seed files without completely hosing my DSL connection.
The thing I think I like most about BitTorrent compared to other "forced sharing" models like Napster is that you get to choose what you want to share. You go to a tracker and see "hey there's no seeds on that one show I like", then share the file at 5K. That way even the leeches have to wait. Animesuki.com even has a "seeds needed" page for anything that's worse than about 10 or 15 to zero.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
Story text follows:
File Sharing's New Face
By SETH SCHIESEL
Published: February 12, 2004
EATTLE
AFTER working for a parade of doomed dot-com startups, a young programmer named Bram Cohen finally got tired of failure.
"I decided I finally wanted to work on a project that people would actually use, would actually work and would actually be fun," he recalled.
Three years later, Mr. Cohen, 28, has emerged as the face of the next wave of Internet file sharing. If Napster started the first generation of file-sharing, and services like Kazaa represented the second, then the system developed by Mr. Cohen, known as BitTorrent, may well be leading the third. Firm numbers are difficult to come by, but it appears that the BitTorrent software has been downloaded more than 10 million times.
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And just as earlier forms of file-sharing seem to be waning in popularity under legal pressure from the music industry, new technologies like BitTorrent are making it easier than ever to share and distribute the huge files used for video. One site alone,
suprnova.org, routinely offers hundreds of television programs, recent movies and copyrighted software programs. The movie industry, among others, has taken notice.
What Mr. Cohen has created, however, seems beyond his control. And when he was developing the system, he said, widespread copyright infringement was not what he had in mind.
Rather, he was intrigued by a problem familiar to many Internet users and felt acutely by friends who were trading music online legally: the excruciating wait while files were being downloaded.
"Obviously their problem was not enough bandwidth to meet demand," Mr. Cohen said in an interview at a Mexican restaurant near his home in Seattle. "It seemed pretty clear to me that there is a lot of bandwidth out there, but it's not being used properly. There's all of this upload capacity that people aren't using."
That was the essential insight behind BitTorrent. Under older file-sharing systems like Napster and Kazaa, only a small subset of users actually share files with the world. Most users simply download, or leech, in cyberspace parlance.
BitTorrent, however, uses what could be called a Golden Rule principle: the faster you upload, the faster you are allowed to download. BitTorrent cuts up files into many little pieces, and as soon as a user has a piece, they immediately start uploading that piece to other users. So almost all of the people who are sharing a given file are simultaneously uploading and downloading pieces of the same file (unless their downloading is complete).
The practical implication is that the BitTorrent system makes it easy to distribute very large files to large numbers of people while placing minimal bandwidth requirements on the original "seeder." That is because everyone who wants the file is sharing with one another, rather than downloading from a central source. A separate file-sharing network known as eDonkey uses a similar system.
For Mr. Cohen, BitTorrent was always about exercising his brain rather than trying to fatten his wallet. Unlike many other file-sharing programs, BitTorrent is both free and open-source, which means that those with enough technical know-how can incorporate Mr. Cohen's code into their own programs.
While writing the software, "I lived on savings for a while and then I lived off credit cards, you know, using those zero percent introductory rates to use one credit card to pay off the previous card," Mr. Cohen said.
The first usable version of BitTorrent appeared in October 2002, but the system needed a lot of fine-tuning. Luckily for Mr. Cohen, he was living in the Bay Area at the time and his project had attracted the attention of John Gilmore, the free-software entrepreneur, who had also been one of the first employees at Sun Microsystems. Mr. Gilmore ended up helping Mr. Cohen with some of
Even trackers are not doing anything illegal, as they are just collecting lists of people downloading the same file and provide this list to anyone who is interested (there's no illegal content there either).
The only illegal content comes from the users themselves, and its chopped in thousands of pieces, making them hard to identify.
But then a funny thing happened. I found a tracker for trading live shows from various bands in flac/shn format. Since then, my usage of blank CDs has increased dramatically. So I've decided to share the money and donated to Bram and the tracker.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
I'm probably going to be -1 trolled into oblivion, but why don't all the people complaining about the NYT simply register and forget about it?? ;-)
I did that at least three years ago, and with cookies I only ever have to worry about it *once* each time I change browser. And if you are opposed on principle on giving personal info, just put false one.
The whole thing takes about as long as getting the Google link, and you only have to do it once. And I thought geeks were supposed to be efficient
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One big problem with BitTorrent is the opposite of normal client/server file sharing: if a file isn't popular, it downloads slower.
Why not extend the concept to a set of files? Who says that the file you download also has to be the file you upload? If a site is offering a set of torrents, maybe while a client is downloading the most popular file of the moment they can be serving portions of less popular files. (9 to 1, popular to unpopular maybe, if another client is uploading them, that is...) Sure, that would take some bandwidth from the popular files, but they have enough to spare.
For example, I just recently downloaded the Mandrake 9.2.1 power pack ISOs for club members. Download time sucked! If that torrent could share bandwith with the public Mandrake 9.2 ISOs, that'd be keen.
Bittorrent kindof sucks for me because I have DSL which has a limited upload capacity and a large download capacity. I'd like it a lot more if I had a different kind of broadband connection. The "how could he have not forseen" argument is ridiculous. Anything powerful can be used for legal or illegal means. Do you not think http and ftp have been used to infringe copyright? If you're going to criticize for that, let's go ahead and talk about what evil inventions the ink pen and printing press were. The interesting thing to me about the illegal uses of Bittorrent are how those prosecutions will be handled. Imagine a world in which every time you bought drugs, you had to sell some of them to someone else. Then the issue becomes: were you buying with intent? When you "download" (for that's what it will be to the layman regardless of technicality) with Bittorrent, are you intentionally redistributing or is the redistribution an unintended consequence of the lesser crime of simply partaking of the copyright protected work? Authority figures and courtrooms both tend to focus their efforts on the "sellers" rather than the "users." What do you do when every user is also a seller? I get the point that this isn't really anonymous, but neither was Kazaa. It's more a matter of civil disobedience. Speeding is illegal but I've been on many a highway in which you couldn't spot a soul driving under the limit. Most of them... most of the time don't get tickets. "Everybody's doing it," may not be a legal or moral defense, but it's much easier to hide in a crowd.
I think most people would agree it's not a good idea to use a bittorrent file that wasn't from a trusted source.
He has stolen my right to distribute my work on my terms.
It's not possible to 'steal' a right. You violate rights, you don't steal them. Even if the government said "you don't have that right anymore", it's still not stolen.
My novel is still there, but I have lost something
No, you haven't. You still have that right, even if some people are violating it. You also have the legal right to go after them in a court of law. They haven't 'stolen' that either.
Please put this "it's not stealing, it's infringement" argument to rest
Yes, let's. You should start by taking your troll elsewhere.
1. What role do you think peer-to-peer encryption will play in the p2p sharing networks of the future?
2. Did you know that you have the same first name as Bram Stoker, the author of "Dracula"?
3. To what degree do you think having "identity verification" (that is, verification of the nodes on a p2p network) is valuable in building reliable networks?
4. Isn't Dracula cool?
5. Who do you think would win in a fight - Dracula or Wolfman?
Here is a great link for for BT have all 8 ports open up and your download/upload rate will sky rocket.
This worked for me a month ago
The More Knowledge you have the Luckier you Get- J.R. Ewing
There is a fusion of Kazaa and Bittorrent...its called Shareaza, and its free.
if you limit your upload rate, other peers will lower their upload rate to you.
What if I care more about the reliability of my residential cable Internet connection than about download rate? It seems that if I sustain more than about 20 KBytes/s for too long, Comcast interrupts my connection for a few minutes.
Python compiles to bytecode the first time it's run, so your Python bittorrent client is going to be just as fast as the Java equivalent (assuming similarly efficient processes).
> Please put this "it's not stealing, it's infringement" argument to rest, folks. It's used as a particularly moronic crutch by some avid P2P fileswappers
I haven't used filesharing in a few years, but I still believe this is true... because it is. Most rational people will admit that it is "wrong" either legally or morally, but it is still not theft. Just saying "It REALLY IS stealing" over & over may convince you, but not to the people who actually think about what words mean.
> after a post that offers bittorrent to download isos, we interview its creater.
As another said, that's coincidence. Irony would be if his whole life he touted the thing as the best, safest system ever created.. and then he is killed by it.
Dunno how that could happen, but it would be quite interesting.
Nah, they are just concerned in letting NYT save the $ for HD space.
Versus those of us who provided false info, but used an easy to remember login and password (i.e. for not often visited forums and such).
At a certain point, idealogy is just another word for idiocy. Stalin had lots of idealogy too.
At first, when I found BT, I was thrilled (once I figured the damn thing out). But now, I'm noticing that more and more trackers are bogging down, so even with hundreds of "leechers" and several "seeds", speeds can hover anywhere from 1-5KBps. That, and frequent tracker errors point out that trackers are apparently very resource intensive and can get bogged down quickly. Does anybody know if BT trackers are due to be improved any time soon? Many, many, many links on suprnova.org, point to trackers that are already swamped or dead, making BT not much better (or worse) than straight FTP.
"...don't read the damn articles."
Preaching to the choir. This is Slashdot, remember?
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
I love it, and it works great for the OSS community.
Personally when I've finished a download, I leave my machine on for a few hours or overnight just to give back plenty o' bandwidth.
BTW I prefer Azureus over Bram's client.
PS If you get a BSOD using BT in Windows, it could be your network card. I had to get new drivers. Search for 'Bittorrent blue screen' on google.
So Kazza [and the clones] are all about being marginally legal by hiding in a "private companies" VPN & TOS...bittorrent is a way to make a better FTP type protocol--along with the responsibilites that come with it.
More specifically, leeching is only possible when there is an excess of upload bandwidth. When the total upload suply of all clients connected to a tracker for a specific file exceeds the total download demand, the client does not do tit-for-tat.
In other words, you can only leech when it doesn't hurt.
--Pat / zippy@cs.brandeis.edu
I think many people here are taking an exceptionally negative view of what BitTorrent is. You're not all from the RIAA, are you? ;-> ("We're from the RIAA. We're here to help")
There's many valid reasons why a lot of users might want to download big files simultaneously. Linux ISOs, Windows service packs, software distribution in general are just three that come to mind straight away. I'm sure Mandrake, RedHat, Knopper, SuSE, and even MS would be very glad they can (potentially) reduce their bandwidth costs by making a BitTorrent download available.
As far as the potential of being used for "bad things" goes - well, I don't exactly put Bram Cohen in the same class as Smith & Wesson, or even the manufacturers of plastic forks. It's obvious to me that illegal download sites using BitTorrent were going to spring up, and equally obvious that both these sites and their users would be easily trackable via their IP addresses at the very least.
I'm gonna have a quiet chuckle to myself if/when people using these sites start getting prosecured, since they obviously didn't think through the ramifications before they started using the service - I'd call it a Darwinian selection process in action.
I'm a bit fan of computer games. So I download a game demo or so a week. Modern games are big, and so are their demos. Sucking down a 500MB demo from various download mirrors sucks. Because of the huge bandwidth costs to serve the files the various mirrors force me to sign in, view ads, wait in queues, use Windows only spyware filled download programs (I often download in Linux in the background while doing Real World). Software publishers themselves generally don't release the demos themselves (because of the cost), they offload it onto one of these icky download sites. This entire process sucks.
Then came BitTorrent. If I can find a good source all is well. The software works great under Linux, it's open source, no spyware, and if the file is popular instead of waiting in line the download actually goes faster. BitTorrent is just about the only thing I do that saturates my cable modem bandwidth. Pulling down a huge demo in less than an hour is great. No longer do I fire off a download, then let my computer work on it for the rest of the night.
Now if software publishers would realize the joy of BitTorrent and release the torrents themselves everything would be better.
As a way to illegally share content BitTorrent isn't so good. But as a way to acquire legal but big content there is nothing like it.
It's damn good software. It was worth a donation to Bram.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
Why to people keep zipping large lossy compressed data?
I can think of a couple:
As usually, the slashdot crowd forgets about existence of a superior alternative. Mozilla vs. Opera, BitTorrent vs. ED2K, people here are so entrenched in their sympathies as to abandon the last shreds of objectivity.
eDonkey network, together with Overnet are technically every bit as good as BT is. Add to that some things done and thought out significantly better, add to that a thriving open-source development community with several different clients, with many people activily working on the code, and you will see a solution which is hands down better than BT.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
And people who make guns know some of them will be used for bank raids, murders and the like.
BitTorrent is a very good tool. Its a pretty dumb way to throw pirate stuff around as the tracker knows everyone who is involved.
BitTorrent is used extensively for distribution of new game demos and game/movie trailers. It is perfect for anything that has high first day demand. It is no more suited to illegal file trading than ftp, http or any other protocol.
They mention Suprnova in the article but not Filerush or any of the other hundreds of sites offering torrents of legally shared content. I mean torrents of media are posted all the time on /. after hosting servers buckle under the strain.
Why do people always jump on the infringing uses of software and try and make out like that is the whole story.
by your logic... anything intangible like ideas cannot be stolen.. only copied. yet the phrase "stealing ideas" is generally accepted when one person takes (copy) an idea from another. If you look up the definition of the word steal in dictionary.com..
steal ( P ) Pronunciation Key (stl)
v. stole, (stl) stolen, (stln) stealing, steals
v. tr.
To take (the property of another) without right or permission.
To get or effect surreptitiously or artfully: steal a kiss; stole the ball from an opponent.
To move, carry, or place surreptitiously.
To draw attention unexpectedly in (an entertainment), especially by being the outstanding performer: The magician's assistant stole the show with her comic antics.
Baseball. To advance safely to (another base) during the delivery of a pitch, without the aid of a base hit, walk, passed ball, or wild pitch.
there is nothing that says explictly about loss of possession being a requirement for stealing to take place... While i do agree with your logic given your definition of the word steal.. but what i'm not sure about is whether your defintion of the word is really the generally accepted definition. languages are defined by the people who use them. if there are enough ppl who interpret the word steal w/o the association of loss of possession being a requirement then copying a book might as well be the same as stealing one... just my 2 cents.