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BitTorrent May Prove Too Good to Quash

gollum123 writes "There is an article on washignton post on bittorrent where the author discusses why BitTorrent is here to stay. According to the author it is being increasingly used to distribute software and entertainment legally. It also mentions that in BitTorrent, unlike many other file-sharing programs, legitimate use doesn't amount to a token minority. It's central to this program's existence. It concludes by saying that the MPAA may be able to drive BitTorrent movie downloads into what Green called "the dark corners of the Internet," but this program isn't going to go away. It might, however, be just what movie studios and record labels need to market and distribute their own content efficiently on the Web."

13 of 484 comments (clear)

  1. Yeah, We figured that one out... by ShadowBlasko · · Score: 5, Informative

    Over at Empornium...

    150k member max, and still beating them away with a stick!

    No leechers rocks!

    Just as long as admins remember to lose those logs... I just *hate* hardware failures...

    dont you?

    --
    There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order- Ed Howdershelt Via Tass
    1. Re:Yeah, We figured that one out... by Slack3r78 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Most home connections are asynchronous and have a far higher download rate than upload rate. Leeching is when someone finishes a download, and doesn't seed back at least as much as they took.

  2. Not a brilliant article... by tabkey12 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    as it doesn't mention the plethora of brilliant '3rd party' clients like Azureusand BitTornado which have been offering a variety of these features for a very long time.

  3. Speed by giginger · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I've noticed a distinct speed decrease in torrents lately. Surely the only person who's had a decrease in torrent speed when they upgrade to 2meg. Seriously though, I don't know if my ISP is catching on to torrent use but I've gone from 100k+ to 20/30 average.... Not good.

  4. Gee Wiz by jester22c · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...You think a protocol that contributes a third of all internet traffic is being found useful? Hmmm... yeah I think so.

  5. Of course they aren't, it's different! by garcia · · Score: 5, Insightful

    But the Washington-based lobby hasn't sued BitTorrent's developer, Bram Cohen of Bellevue, Wash., nor has it gone after individual BitTorrent users.

    How could they go after him? The software is open-source and its intentions are nothing less than noble. If Cohen was looking to *directly* make money on BitTorrent he wouldn't have released the source to it.

    As far as going after individual users... They rarely did anyway. BitTorrent isn't as easy as Kazaa for finding "mass sharers". Most people are maxing their upstream on a single torrent instead of offering up their entire personal library in one place. That is why they are going after the sites linking to the trackers.

    Independent musicians can also use BitTorrent to provide free samples. The Web site of the South by Southwest music festival (2005.sxsw.com/
    geekout/sxsw4pod/) uses BitTorrent to offer a 2.6-gigabyte compilation of songs by artists playing at this Austin event. (In an unplanned demonstration of how BitTorrent doesn't always function at top speed, that torrent was more of a glacier Tuesday night, with too few users to serve up bits of the file.)


    And the author of this article just proved how posting links to torrents on a highly trafficked site will get him his music faster. ;-)

    The MPAA may be able to drive BitTorrent movie downloads into what Green called "the dark corners of the Internet," but this program isn't going to go away. It might, however, be just what movie studios and record labels need to market and distribute their own content efficiently on the Web.

    And what? Put all those popcorn salesmen and ticket rippers out of their after-school jobs? Nope, at least not for now.

  6. Suggestion: Legit use for BT by CdBee · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's increasingly likely that in the years to come it will be possible to rent videos by having a set-top box coupled to a DSL or Cable broadband pipe, which downloads DRM-enabled video files from a central server.

    What better way to save bandwidth - the single killer cost when each film might sum a gigabyte - than by having the box download the film using a restricted version of bittorrent, and use a proportion of the available upstream bandwidth on the local connection to supply other people renting the same film? As the file's encrypted piracy wouldn't be a concern as the key to play it would only be issued by the central server, over an encrypted channel.

    This would have the effect - exactly opposite to a DVD-rental shop - that popular videos would be available more quickly than rarely demanded ones. The system has the same priorities as the company behind it.

    --
    I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
    1. Re:Suggestion: Legit use for BT by Vitriol+Angst · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The networks are going to move to H.264 very quickly. It compresses HD (High Definition) into about the same bandwidth as current "Standard" definition channels now. That may leave some excess capacity, because I think that there will be a lot of SD content for a long time to come.

      I think it is more expedient to adapt "burst mode" video transfer (faster than real time data download) that would cover a huge selection of content, so that 90% of what customers want to see can be downloaded on existing cable and satellite networks in a day. I think the BitTorrent model will be a good idea and a stepping stone. It will have to exist in the margins with the "hard to get" video on demand like NetFlicks.

      I think they should jump the gun and build an iTunes like experience for video downloads. If they don't immediately (in the next 6 months) get a customer base, then they will never take off.

      Look for Apple to jump into the fray as well. It would be easier for them to create a filesharing network on Akamai then it would be for BitTorrent to build an iTunes and micropayment system.

      At CBIT, various companies will be demoing multi-channel, high-demand H.264 video compression hardware. I expect anyone delivering video will make the fastest transition in history to the new format because it essentially gives them 4x the bandwidth they currently have. Whether customers really have to have HD to see Hollywood squares isn't really the issue. It will be culturally embarassing for a broadcast to NOT be HD in about a year. It was kind of the same thing with companies having web sites during the '90s.

      Plus, really High Quality TV might distract the population from drought destroyed crops and an oil shortage this summer. Expect to see more nudity on TV, since this also worked in the USSR. No, I'm not kidding. Nobody believed Cassandra either. ;-)

      --
      >>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
  7. Rubbish! by aug24 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If Debian and others are putting their ISOs out on BT and I and others are relying on them, then it's hardly 'token'.

    BT is becoming the distribution method of choice for plenty of legitimate stuff. Sure there's vastly more illegal stuff, but the legal stuff is definitely not 'token'.

    Justin.

    --
    You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
  8. I call bullshit by Deep+Fried+Geekboy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I don't think 'token minority' means what you think it means.

    Legitimate users may be a minority -- maybe even a tiny minority -- but they are not a 'token minority' by any means, in the sense of only there for symbolic purposes to legitimize the non-legitimate use.

    I use BitTorrent *all the time* legitimately. Whether it's for some student movie or a big whopping disc image (like X-Plane). I might be in the minority but my uses are not token.

    --

    I'm not wrong. You haven't thought about it hard enough.

  9. Use ports your ISP won't expect by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    You might want to forward and use a set of 10 consecutive ports starting from an arbitrary number between 50000 and 60000. Some ISPs use packet shaping or throttling on the standard ports. A number of Other people I know have noticed a marked increase after following this advice.

  10. Re:BitTorrent is flawed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Actually this is not at all how it works, BitTorrent downloads chunks of the file in any order. The 90% you reffer to isn't the first 90% of the file it's just 90% of the file, the reason this happens is the seeder may disconnect before giving out a complete copy of the file and the sum of the stuff the connected peers have is only 90% of the file.

    Who the hell modded you up?

  11. Random First / Rarest First by Daverd · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://sailes.co.uk/sy22/bittorrent.htm

    What you said is completely false. BitTorrent uses either Random First, i.e. selects a random chunk to download, or Rarest First, i.e. downloads the chunk that the fewest clients have. It definitely does NOT go linearly from beginning to end of file. If it stalls around 90%, this is only because there are some chunks which are much more rare than others.