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Wired Interviews Bram Cohen, Creator of BitTorrent

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the bit-o'-honey dept.

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."

3 of 383 comments (clear)

  1. Re:WJR 760 by stupidfoo · · Score: 0, Troll

    Why is that such a bad question?
    His software is used primarily for illegal deeds.

    What he should have done is focus on what causes people to do so (greed/being cheap, a horrible media distribution system, overpriced merchandise, etc).

    And then also discuss how bittorrent is so unique and how the MPAA and RIAA could use it to help distribute content legally (or something).

  2. Re:Cohen didn't invent multi-source downloading by Sanity · · Score: 0, Troll
    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.
    There is certainly nothing illegal about BitTorrent itself, but there is something illegal about what the vast majority of its users do with it.

    If trading copyrighted material is no-longer possible, I am not sure that BitTorrent will retain its current popularity for long.

  3. Re:WJR 760 by Second_Derivative · · Score: 0, Troll

    Yeah, take someone's hard work and pass it around, then tell them to go fuck themselves when they demand compensation for it. You sure showed them, go Sweden!

    Guy does work which you benefit from (ie entertaining you), guy expects reward for benefitting you, you decide to be a freeloader instead. This whole "make a copy and the original person still has a copy" red herring is utter bull shit, if a device existed for copying matter, I build tables for a living and some dickhead clones 1000 tables from my work shop, a bunch of people now have tables and I DON'T HAVE ANY FOOD ON MY PLATE.

    Jesus christ have any of you actually WORKED for a living as opposed to just sitting around on daddy's internet connection and moaning about how corporate fascism sucks all day? This specious hippy argument was tired in the 60s for crying out loud.

    Music and video doesn't necessarily have to be expensive either, just as long as it isn't the very latest and greatest. Prices for stuff not currently on the charts seems quite reasonable, although albums are admittedly stuffed with junk filler most of the time. I think Apple's iTunes music store is the way to go here, minus the usual My Way Or The Highway attitude towards client platforms and file formats (this is why despite all this raving fanboying I don't use Apple either. Despite their remarkable ability to make people spout Apple promotional literature everywhere for free and convince everyone that hey we're the cool pro-consumer underdog here, they're just like everyone's favourite software megacorp down where the short hairs grow)

    Having said that, while DRM is a nice idea in theory, in practice if it were really implemented in earnest, we'd experience a price gouging in fucking technicolour compared to what we have now. Can you say "pay-per-play"?

    Bleh, enough bile for now.