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BitTorrent Gains Corporate Support
BitWarrior writes "Recently today it was revealed that Blizzard, the creator of many legendary games such as the Diablo, Starcraft and Warcraft franchises, will be using BitTorrent to distribute their Beta release of their latest game, World of Warcraft. BitTorrent is becoming a hit among companies required to distribute large quantities of data to their customers. Valve also jumped on the BitTorrent bandwagon last month(NYTimes, first born required, blah blah), hiring its creator, Bram Cohen. The one downside to Blizzards move is that BitTorrent has been added to many Universities black lists of clients to allow through their networks. Will the recent acceptance by such reputable companies open the possibility to Universities that not all P2P distribution is inherently bad?"
I think p2p is here to stay, and there are still features that need to be put in place univerally before it's mature, and all the various p2p flavors are comparable. Acceptance by corporations will only speed the spread.
The various bits are there scattered across different p2p networks. IMNSHO, all p2p networks/clients ought to have:
-Swarming (as defined/used in BitTorrent)
-Privacy/anonymity (perhaps as much as in Freenet)
-Good searching (Kazaa, Napster, those types. With room for improvement all around)
-Open-source clients with no ads/spyware
-Decentralized/self-organizing networks (no central point of failure, or at least minimal)
-Browser/web server hooks to autoswarm web content (there ought to be bittorrent:// links)
All these features should someday be pushed into numerous language libraries, so that they become ubiquitous.
No.
Many universities (my own alma mater being an exception) tend not particularly progressive in any area but instruction. IT departments at universities often have very limited staff and budget, and block P2P services as much due to the hassle or threat of lawsuits as to cut down on bandwidth (the nerve of people to actually use the network connection!)
--Pat / zippy@cs.brandeis.edu
Bit Torrent's a lifesaver for companies that need help in distributing their content. Game downloads are a perfect example, as game publishers release huge files that everybody wants at the same moment. In order to have bandwidth that can burst up to that kind of speed, the costs would be huge. Bit Torrent is a way for fans who were lucky enough to get their copies first to help out the company by lending their most of their upstream bandwidth, which generally goes unused for the day to the company.
But universities still fell a bit awkward about this. See, in the university's opinion, a student's dormroom bandwidth isn't really their property, it's an educational tool. So, even though the copyright concern is waived off on this kind of P2P sharing, they've still got a problem with it.
When it comes down to it, a student's dormroom Internet conection leads to the big fat Internet pipe that is being paid for by the school, and in the case of a state school that's mostly government money. Every school has a rarely enforced clause in their terms of service for their Internet access that says its intended for educational use. There's defintely a clause that says that commercial use is strictly prohibited. Students can't run a a for-profit web hosting service out of their doomroom computers for example.
So, actually, the commerical embrace of Bit Torrent is going to clear up one complaint universities have about P2P, but it's going to drive them straight into another. Now, instead of hurting a company's copyrights, it's going to be used to help a for-profit company avoid costs. That's another thing that gives universities that "maybe we should block this..." feeling.
But torrents do inherently suck lots of bandwidth and that is expensive. Hence why they (and P2P) will continue to be blacklisted even if it is legitimate usage.
We actually shape the traffic and give it maybe 5 mbps which pretty much blocks it as you can't upload at all really so you cant download the file you want. When we werent shaping it people were able to download blazingly fast off bittorrent files but this also took up an immense amount of bandwidth.
"...you can't flood sites, steal music, or copy DVDs without repercussion"
Funny, but I seem to recall some torrents being placed here to lessen the load on some Slashdotted sites, so people could view the videos, docs, etc from those buried sites - without adding to the source's pain.
As an attorney, perhaps you should read up on the benefits before opening your yap. Perhaps this will make sense: There are other uses for it than just piracy, just as there's more use for electricity than executing murderers.
When the day comes that the RIAA / MPAA try to kill off BitTorrent legally, all these valid commercial examples of use will provide a good counterargument.
... you get the idea.
Yeah, a gun can be used to kill, but it is the user of the gun to blame for the crime. If a gun is allowed to be owned by law (a device designed to kill!), then a mere device to enable efficient publish/subscribe file distribution
Ergo...if we would enable/promote p2p, it would rapidly increase our costs to supply Internet to our public.
Unfortunate, really, but when you have to pay for something, sometimes it changes how you look at it.
Universities aren't going to change their firewall policies because some of their students are unable to download game betas. Blizzard is a reputable company, yes, but their product is not something that university administrators care about.
If instead legal business and/or education software was being distributed through BitTorrent, then you would soon see a reversal of firewall policy.
Bit Torrent is of course going to produce a fragmented file on any FAT-based file system. The only way to not get a fragmented file is to write all of your data in sequence at that same time, and even then you have to hope that the free space you're writting to doesn't run into a used block.
Think of it this way... since Bit Torrent doesn't get the parts of file in sequence, even on a blank disk where there's nothing to get in the way, the client is still going to write the data to the disk in the order it was recieved, not the order it's supposed to be read back. By definition, you're going to get a fragmented file since it's going to be out of proper sequence. ScanDisk will have some work to do when you're done downloading, always.
I can't see why any college administrators would care much about fragmentation on a user's HD however unless their support desk is getting calls about that kind of non-network issue...
There's a big difference: Kazaa was designed for illegal uses (despite whatever thin veneer of legitimacy they may try to cover it with) and BitTorrent was designed for legal uses. This difference is evident in the different architectures of the two systems.
You're right that educating the public will take time, but it is worth it.
The thing about BitTorrent compared to traditional "one-way" downloads is that BT likes to suck up as much available network bandwidth as it can.
Just about 30 or so users on a T3 network using BT could bring it to dial-up speeds.
actually, the correct anwser is YES! obviously.
If bittorrent is used in a high percentage for legal uses then of COURSE no one would block it.
Thats just like saying they would block all FTP transfers as that can be used to pirate.
If 99% of the use of an ftp client was to dl warez then ftp use would be blocked...
This is just like bit torrent.
I'd be very surprised if BT itself were to blame. That you're using BT to create vey large files regularlly, then proceeding to unpack them and delete them probably is the source. Myself, I use BitTorrent to download demos of games. When I install the demo the game will typically create a few hundred files. Then I play the demo, then delete the demo (hundreds of files and the big honking zip). That's a recipe for fragmentation. Given that BitTorrent makes it so easy to download, try, and delete things I expect your usage pattern changed in a way that promoted fragmentation.
Anyway, the official client stubs out the entire file when you start downloading. That's just about the optimal thing it can do to minimize fragmentation.
Personally I just try to avoid using file systems that fragment badly. It is the 21st century.
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While what you're saying is probably true, in many Otaku's defense I'd like to point out that most anime bit torrents out there are for fansub releases for series that are unlicensed in North America. These fansubbing groups obtain original Japanese versions of programs, write English subtitles themselves and release it to the community often with a message requesting that distribution be ceased when the title becomes licensed. This allows many anime fans around the world to appreciate and experience these shows almost as soon as they come out in Japan, as licensing can take quite some time. Furthermore, there are still many series that have never recieved licenses for any English format, and may never, and programs like Bit Torrent are may be the only way for the English speaking anime fan to enjoy a series without spending many years learning Japanese.
While many young people do indeed use Bit Torrent for piracy, I don't think it's fair to generalize that a lack of morality for intellectual property rights is at heart. But many of the arguments have already been presented by people far more eloquent than I am. My point is merely that Peer-To-Peer services like Bit Torrent have plenty of potential for good, and I think it's a great thing that Blizzard is demonstrating how it can be used legally and effectively. Peer to Peer file trading has been incorrectly stigmatized before it has been completely understood, it seems. Let's not forget the birth of the videocassette (and I know this has been mentioned countless times before). People still do use it for piracy, but I think the benefits that we've gotten out of it far outweigh the few bad seeds.
Universities are a different matter in this regard. But I doubt if they could sustain the whole system and make P2P work this way.
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Its good to see that someone sees the legal side of file-sharing comunities. Im getting fed up by people who say things like "Direct Connect/Kazaa/many other things is illegal!". No.... it depends on what you use it for. This may open people's eyes, and make them see the posibilities of filesharing networks. In my opinion, using it for distributing demos and such is a great way to take advantages of such technologies.
No, I disagree strongly.
Companies are not out modifying BitTorrent. They have no reason to favor MIT over GPL.
The reason BitTorrent is a big deal is:
* It doesn't necessarily easily expose you to tons of pirated content. With Kazaa, pirated copies of Blizzard's games are only a search away.
* It doesn't have spyware/adware/whatnot.
* It integrates nicely with websites. You click, program works.
* Because the interface is from a website, which is effectively a trusted source of information, one doesn't have to worry about having someone search for "World of Warcraft Demo" and finding a hacked bogus copy.
May we never see th
What I'd like to know is will the recent acceptance by such reputable companies open the possibility that all companies will use our bandwidth to distribute their final product for them? Why should I have to offset the bandwidth costs of these companies just to play their game? I would expect some kind of incentive, for example giving me the option to download the game directly from their servers or download via BT and they slash a few dollars off the price. If the download is free, great, I won't complain. But with talk about Valve hiring the creator of BT (likely for Steam integration), it seems that BT is being steered towards capitalist purposes. I see little benefit for us, the consumers, to download via BT as opposed to the company's servers unless there is some compensation.
The genie was out of the bottle a few thousand years ago when people started the very concept of "entertainment" by sharing stories from group to group. That was entertainment. Transfering an idea (i.e. story) from person to person. And it was as free as can be. But over the years, inflation really took a toll on free. Now, that same story will cost you $20 in a book store or $10 in a movie theater for 85 minutes or $15 for 60 minutes of music which for many in this world takes them 2-3 hours to make.
:P
I'm rambling and I don't really have a point so don't bring up my flawed thinking because I'm tired and in Vegas.
I just wasted your mod points! HA!
Forgive my anonymous posting, but I wish to speak my mind. The first hand experience I have with this presently is that those making the decisions have two and only two factors on their mind.
Legal damages/responsibilities/eccetera from users on their networks violating copyright. There's a bit of a catch 22 in terms of policing this, ironically. Basically it's let it all through and say, "Sorry, we aren't a *publisher* and therefore lack editorial whatever." or shut it down completely because one illegal download through a filter puts indemnity (?) on their heads. So, which has fewer headaches.. practically no net, or uncensored net?
Cost of bandwidth. Don't even bother being reasonable here. We have had a throttling system here, preventing the "long distance phonebill of doom". You go over your reasonable amount? No net for the week. Nonetheless, the disabling of network resources (er, the installation of a firewall) was touted as a fantastic way to reduce network traffic (and thus costs, in an increasingly underfunded arena).
Apparently noone has thought to the point of just whiting out all the text in the libriray, because it may save them from lawsuits...
The short of it is that universities are/will become useless as connectivity providers for their students, and one can only hope to be refunded the cost to acquire alternative service from an external provider.
Yes, this is all a bit off topic, but I've just recently been denied my beloved Bittorrent, so hopefully I'll get a little mod slack.
I don't think universities care if its legit use or not, they care about strain on their network. And since I was living in a dorm when Napster first became popular, I can attest that P2P is a *huge* strain on a campus network.
as all applications using BitTorrent must bundle a Python runtime.
Gee, let's think about this for a second.
1. All new versions of the MacOS have the python interpreter included
2. Many, if not most, modern Linux distributions install python by default
Who does that leave? Windows users. Sure, that's a whopping 90% ++ share of the market, but think about it: installing python on just a fraction of those machines mitgates, in some small way, the vendor-language lock-in that MS has been hammering in for years.
Next, let's consider how you (or anyone else) would write an app like BitTorrent. You start your project, outline your goals, and realize:
1. You'd rather spend time coding new features and advanced capabilities than dealing with memory allocation and type-casting
2. Your application is primarily IO bound, meaning that processor utilization is almost a non-issue
3. Requiring some users to download an additional megabyte or two isn't that big of a deal
Given all of those reasons, I choose solutions like Python in every case possible.
Thanks for playing, tho.
... Universities really *need* to download World of Warcraft...
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
What somebody needs to to is make the tracker/client smart enough to give a preference to clients on the local subnet. For environments like college campuses this would be a major win.
Another possibility would be to have some sort of transparent BT proxy for the network, again the same sorts of bennefits could be achieved (as well as allowing for some sort of whitelist/blacklisting of 'inappropriate' torrents).
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None, but... You live in the dorms and you pay for your internet access. It's not a military camp, students would like to have fun every once in awhile. Espically since they pay for their access.
However, I'm slightly uncomfortable with the fact that commercial software companies now seem to have this expectation that the general public will be used to distribute demos of their software - the very same people that have to pay for their Internet access and bandwidth - yet it's the games companies that reap the profits of that distribution method themselves.
I will certainly start getting very annoyed if contention rates get higher on my own ISP to the point where my connection slows down - it'll be interesting to see what happens when the Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 demos get released.
Perhaps I'd feel more comfortable with this if I actually felt that the games companies were acting more with the interests of the general public rather than simply filling the company coffers. Unfortunately, as things stand today, games are overpriced, the majority of PC games are very poor quality but sell because of pretty boxes and advertising and it's now the accepted norm for a PC user to download endless patches and updates to games because they are released far too early and have not been fully tested.
I therefore see no reason why I personally should do the games companies any favours - particularly bearing in mind that as a primarily Linux user, they do no favours for me.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
On the surface, if you don't pay for your bandwidth as you use it, Bittorrent seems like a great idea. In reality, though, its merely a way for the software companies to quit having to pay for all the bandwidth to serve the files that they insist on having centralized control over.
Now -- not only can they maintain positive control over the distribution (guaranteeing advertising as people come to their sites to get the demos) but also can get the people downloading to help foot the bill for the bandwidth. Again, great if you don't pay for the bandwidth -- but pretty damned sucky if you're a college who has to pay for all the bandwidth your customers use.
"Exclusive" demos and restrictive distribution are the causes of this. If any enthusiast site that wanted to could pick up the binary for a new demo and serve it from their server, we wouldn't have this problem in the first place.
Let the old shareware model return -- like back in the days where every BBS around had Commander Keen and Wolf3d demos available for download.
Don't screw the end user.
"I can attest that P2P is a *huge* strain on a campus network. "
;) then why not charge those students extra. It would be win-win, university gets money to pay for bandwidth and student gets more data.
I wonder why Universities dont turn this from a problem into an advantage by charging students for high bandwidth access.
If a student wants to put strain on the network for 'projects'
True. It is unfair to users with high DL/UL value. But it is still a very good idea distributing files with great demand this way. I doubt you would reach even 20 - 30 kBps when downloading a newly released counterstrike update or new Mozilla Firefox beta from hammered servers. With BT, lots of people downloading the torrent would enhance the probability you get the sought after file in shortest possible time, given that you can download the .torrent in first place.
.exe, when a less than 100 kB .torrent would be enough? The speed when downloading that .exe file was so slow, much of the idea with BT downloads is gone allready.
.torrent file for us who know how to use a bittorrent client.
I tried Blizzards downloader a minute ago. Sad to say you have to download a separate Bittorrent application with an embedded torrent file for each large file you want to download. This is crazy. Why should I have to download a +3MB
At least they could have a separate
Ceterum censeo Microsoftem esse delendam
Heh, i think it's sort of funny that you complain about BT being used for 'capitalist purposes' whilst also complaining that you shouldn't have to spare your bandwidth without compensation. I guess it's inherently bad if large businesses practise capitalism, but it's peachy if The Little Guy(TM) does.
:/
Of course, it's not so humourous if you weren't trying to make a Marxist-like distinction by using the word 'capitalist'.
Everyone keep in mind that this is the same Blizzard that shut down bnetd and freecraft, and now they're just trying to use your bandwidth to pay for thier beta release.
Avoid these morons and stop giving them money until they drop the suits and make resitution over the projects they tried to destroy.
"Will the recent acceptance by such reputable companies open the possibility to Universities that not all P2P distribution is inherently bad?"
I'm sad to say that I think not. If these major players want "WhassaMatta U" to support Bit Torrent, then they will have to fork over some cash. In the form of donations to some school program of course. I think the recent string of college lawsuits concering P2P networks has stymied something that has truely revolutionized the web. The one always spoils it for the rest of us. Perhaps more strict guidelines regarding P2P is the solution, but I think that banning them altogether is the wrong choice. I mean there is still FTP to trade music.
RIAA be damned, for they are tearing down the web.
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