Slashdot Mirror
Wired Interviews Bram Cohen, Creator of BitTorrent
ZP-Blight writes "Wired has posted an in-depth five page interview with Bram Cohen, the creator of the popular Peer-2-Peer software, BitTorrent."
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
A local radio station WJR 760 in Detroit interviewed him earlier this week. It was apparent that he needed to hire someone with a little better speaking skills - especially when he knows he'll be ambushed at nearly every opportunity.
I couldn't believe my ears when the talk show host asked him: "Does it bother you that people use your product for negative purposes, sort of like the scientists who developed the formulas used in the atomic bombs that killed hundreds of thousands?"
My jaw hit the floor when his reply was "Well, this isn't exactly an atom bomb...." That's why the lawyers are winning right now. It's not because they're smarter. It's because they are SO good at twisting things around, and us geeks can't speak in public worth a damn.
He also wouldn't admit that bit-torrent is a revolutionary way of transfering data, he kept downplaying his program. Come on man! You're not a programmer right now. You're a salesman and a human resource department. Act like it!
Not a 5 page article. An article on the web does not have pages, since the web does not have pages (you scroll down), What we do have is an article split in 5 sections to allow for more ads, more branding, more clicks.
Wired Marketing droid to potential advertisers: We got 5 million clicks yesterday--grumble under breath: one million people clicked 5 times-- and displayed 25 million ads --grumble under breath: 5 ads per click, times 5 sections.
"Piter, too, is dead."
Simple. Don't break the law, and you won't become a "juicy legal target". There's nothing illegal about BitTorrent, but it is illegal to violate copyright with it, so don't do that.
He's smart, he's understated, he keeps doing new logical puzzlement stuff, and he's made a simple application spread worldwide without marketing through word of mouth, and simply because it does what it's meant to well. That's true innovation.
But I have to say, Sailor Moon Bram really freaks me.
I like bittorrent, but my problem is that I can't easily search for what I want in torrent form.
Please, I hope I am wrong, but it seems that one is forced to go to "seedy" (I mean, really seedy, as in icky) websites to get the links.
The big media would love to take him down personally for creating bit torrent, and the only thing stopping them is that Bit Torrent is just legitimate enough to be a hard case to sell. Enough users use it legally, that they couldn't argue it's primarily for piracy. But what if that were to change?
Bit Torrent is just a tool, it cannot do anything illegal by itself. The user must choose to do something illegal with it. Going after Cohen is no different than going after a gun maker for gun crime. The exact same arguments used against gun makers could be used against Cohen. He's not screening his users, is he? Neither are the gun makers. In both cases, some of their users are committing crimes. Different types of crimes, but either way, a legitimate tool is used for an illegitimate purpose.
In the long run, the only way to win against the forces opposed to individual liberties is to link our causes. This is the IP equivalent of what the NRA faces with guns, so it only makes sense for both camps to realize we are fighting the same ideology just in two different manifestations.
Allies, even allies that don't really understand your cause as well as you do, are important. Many of the gun owners' postings I have read on right wing boards frequently have derisive attitudes toward the **AA now and see them as the computer equivalent of "gun grabbers." It's a fitting analogy because the **AA want to be the "computer grabbers." Mandatory DRM is akin to mandatory trigger locks because either way, some bureaucrat is telling you how you must maintain and use your property.
To protect our rights we must continue to assert individual responsibility as the solution and push for solutions that go after perpetrators of crime, not their tools. That is the only way we can not only cut down on crime, but also protect people like Cohen from amoral, mercenary attorneys like those behind the **AA
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
that's not what it was DESIGNED to do.
Hell, the INTERNET is primarily used to steal stuff, if you want to break it down by percentage.
Should the Internet be illegal? No.
So why do you care about what bittorrent is used for now? Play up the POSITIVE aspects, not the negative ones. Christ on crutches.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
All important browsers are open source now. But i still have to see an annoucement that BT is now incorporated into browser X as a protocol.
heck, you could probaly do it with one library and some implementation details in the browsers, as most are written in C or C++.
Just a protocol just like http:// ie bt:// that delivers the content to the browser for display.
Maybe this will solve the slashdot effect.
(oh wait no, it won't. most slashdot readers betray their geekness and still use IE, the browser that has not seen maintance sine 2000. This will maybe get them over the line; free porn directly in your browser)
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you