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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.
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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.
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.
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
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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.
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!
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.
"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.
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"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
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.