XP SP2 Torrent Shows Legal P2P's Promise

Downhill Battle writes "With Congress debating new legislation that would ban p2p networks (along with other innovations and beloved products), we thought it was important to demonstrate the huge potential of p2p software to benefit the public. So now at SP2torrent.com you can get Windows XP SP2 via BitTorrent." Update: 08/09 21:10 GMT by S : As commenters note, you can also get XP SP2 from Microsoft's site, but it's explained: "DO NOT CLICK DOWNLOAD IF YOU ARE UPDATING JUST ONE COMPUTER: A smaller, more appropriate download will be available soon on Windows Update."

Comments

A Good First Step

[wackysootroom]

That's great and all, but lawmakers won't listen until MS or is using Bittorrent themselves to distribute updates.

My prediction is that MS will do the "embrace and extend" thing with bittorrent once they catch on to it.

I just downloaded SP2 from MS...

[DerProfi]

..and got sustained rates of over 250KB/sec. My P2P Bitborrent download (started at the same time) is still going and chugging along at a whopping 20KB/sec. I think I'll stick with Microsoft's servers.

Re:Unless MS Officially Seeded the Torrent...

[stratjakt]

Infinitely useful? Marginally practical is a better term, I think.

MS has more bandwidth than jesus, and you'll download the patch much faster from them than from some torrent.

I've yet to see any torrent download max out my downstream on this T1 at work. They have no problem maxing out my upstream of course - I wind up sending at 150 and recieving at 20 or so. I've tried big torrents too, new linux releases, spiderman and matrix trailers, etc..

Which makes me wonder how well the bittorrent thing would/will be recieved by the general public. Why should our upstream bandwidth - which we pay for - be used to redistribute MSFT's shit? I don't see them mirroring our ftp distro site. I don't see them telling the Comcast rep to reactivate my account after it was suspended for bandwidth abuse. Fuck that, they already gouged me for 200 bucks for XP Pro, they can damn well foot the bandwidth bill for any patch I need to keep it working.

I mean, would you let (random big corporation) Johnson and Johnson store products in your living room, and deliver them using your car and your gas? Even if you got a 15% discount on shampoo?