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Bram Cohen to Release BitTorrent Search Engine
AI Playground writes "Within two weeks, a BitTorrent search engine will be available at BitTorrent.com. From the Wired News article: 'Bram Cohen and a small cadre of developers and entrepreneurs are in the final stage of launching an advertising-supported search engine dedicated to cataloging and indexing the thousands of movies, music tracks, software programs and other files for download over Cohen's popular BitTorrent protocol.'"
This is not sufficient. I totally agree, release a search engine!
-Palal
suprnova.org anyone????
all legal stuff i presume?
...BigTarget, sorry I meant BitTarget.
... should give them enough time.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Looks like I'm going to die.... oh well.
How long until the records of those advertisers get subpoena'ed by the xxRA?
Doesn't Bram Cohen see this coming?
Here come the lawyers.
Bram Cohen found beaten to a bloody pulp.
The mysterious letters 'RIAA' An 'MPAA' were found branded on his still quivering bottom.
In two weeks we'll have an updated article on Slashdot informing us that the MPAA have shutdown a new BitTorrent search engine. This sounds like Napster all over again except with legal precedents in place it'll happen much quicker.
The only reason he hasn't been sued yet is because BitTorrent is a protocol. Now that this guy has a search engine going, he has painted a huge target on his head. Only a matter of time now...
At a reporter's request, Navin ran "The Interpreter" through the search engine, and the top result was an illicit copy of the Nicole Kidman film -- still in theaters -- offered on The Pirate Bay
way to open yourself up to legal liabilities
As nice as this might be, to be able to simply search various torrents, I have a feeling that this will not do anything to enhance Bittorrent's image with the media. If anything, they will use it as a tool to show that people "pirate" tons of stuff over BT. (As mentioned in the article - when the "reporter" requests a search done for The Interpeter.)
It's a good idea, and probably going to be a nice piece of software... but right now is probably about the worst time you can release something like this.
There is always a frontier where there is an open and willing mind
"...dedicated to cataloging and indexing the thousands of movies, music tracks, software programs and other files for download..."
Wow, way to troll, Wired "News".
Second: Torrentsearch.us
this site already indexes torrents and even has an option to search multiple torrent sites @ once. (beware the enormous java ad)
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
www.isohunt.com already indexes an assload of sites and is ad-supported. It is my primary site of this sort.
Also, isnt it kind of stupid for bram to release something like this? Kind of really makes the bittorrent look even more like it is used mostly for illegal things. Not like it matters, just a tool, etc. But the MPAA might take notice and use it for more propaganda fuel.
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
Right now I use ISOhunt and Bitoogle.
Any other good ones out there?
if the RIAA & the MPAA would be interested in buy ad space?
GETPKG - Package Management for Slackware
What's brought down the other Bittorrent torrent providing sites is the lawsuits challenging their legality - will Mr. Cohen be filtering out such movies/music/books/etc which violate someone's intellectual property (such as "Star Wars"), or does he have some legal angle that will make him immune?
IANAL (which for years I thought means "I am ANAL", but that's neither here nor there), but Usenet folks can get away with downloading since downloading copyrighted material is not technically illegal - but uploading, or, probably more accurately, distributing copyrighted material without the consent of the intellectual property owner is. So Usenet folks can download Episode III (though why they would is beyond my ken) without fear of lawsuits, but Bittorrent folks, from the second they activate the torrent and upload a packet to someone else, can be considered a distributer under the eyes of the law.
Which is why web sites such as Suprnova.org are now out of business - MPAA came a callin' with their trucks full o' lawyers claiming that giving people access and hosting torrent files is itself a violation of copyright distribution. I guess if Mr. Cohen doesn't host the files himself but merely links to where the files may be found, he could wiggle through that legal loophole.
Either way, good luck - I see a lot of good use for Bittorrent as a method of distributing large files for the masses such as Podcasts or the eventual Video Podcasts that are now popping up, perhaps even as a way to protect against slashdotting (just build bittorrent into web servers and form "unions" to spread the bandwidth or something like this), but I'm not so confident that such as business venture will work out without some legal challenges (whether appropriate or merely standard M/R/IAA "death by lawsuit" tactics).
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
Seriously, the implications for copyright infringers could be huge, no more security through obscurity. All the lawyers have to do is a quick search and instantly have IP's for every infringement currently in use...
Great news for the legitimates however!
So is this going to search the distributed DB or just a bunch of different trackers? I should hope its not the first since that would give the RIAA/MPAA/etc a door into finding "illegal" file swappers.
I like things how they are, ask you friends, or try torrentsearch.us...
Is the author of that article the same Kevin Poulsen as the Pac-Bell phreaker in the Watchman book?
Has anybody tried/implemented distributing .torrents (not the payload, the .torrent file itself) over Usenet? It seems that with trackerless torrents, Usenet would be the perfect distribution medium for the torrents themselves, just as decentralized as BitTorrent itelf... TorreNTSP so to speak...
I don't know how it will be justified yet, but it seems like this is exactly what needs to be done to get the lawsuit ball rolling.
I am Leviathant and I approve this message.
Can someone explain how this will differ from sites such as suprnova (etc)?
This should provide a good show to watch. I'm all in favor of Bram Cohen winning but he will definately face some fierce resistance and he knows. I'm sure they've had meetings about how they're gonna beat this. From TFA
This creates something that BitTorrent has until now lacked, which is a centralized node to target....But Navin isn't worried -- because the new search engine indexes every torrent it can find without human intervention, the company can't be held liable for results that happen to point to infringing content, he says. Lemley says that's probably right, at least as a matter of law: The Digital Millennium Copyright Act provides safe harbor for "information location tools" if administrators promptly remove links to infringing content upon notice by the copyright holder."
Also doe anyone have any technical details on how this works. I mean how do you index a torrent automatically. i.e. If I start a torrent how will the search enginer know?
You can wait two weeks for them to link it on the homepage or you can search now at search.bittorrent.com
rorr
If you know what torrent you are looking for, and the torrent is legally redistributable, you should probably also know where to download the torrent file from. Although one might say that a torrent search engine has legal uses, that argument is somewhat specious, IMO.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The MPAA has maneuvered to get some torrent sites pulled offline, almost all of the sites are places where users publish content to the site manually.(PUSH) A search engine pulling content from existing locations (PULL) is a completely different type of system.
I predict.
I would have expected the MPAA to be one of the most frequent users of a bittorrent search service.
James P. Barrett
I wonder if they are going to make it super easy for the FBI, and just let them type in "Illegal Downloads". The only saving grace is that the list will be so long it will probably freeze up the FBIs network.
A search engine is a decent idea, but if you can't find your files already, you aren't doing something right. I'm not sure BitTorrent is the kind of thing that should be catering to the dumb computer user. Part of the reason it hasn't been locked down totally is because the masses haven't figured it out. Make it as easy to use as Napster, and it will be shutdown as fast as possible.
/. ++
From the article...The MPAA slammed BitTorrent last week for accelerating the spread of a pirated copy of Revenge of the Sith -- a leaked studio workprint of the third Star Wars prequel debuted online even as fans queued up for Thursday's theatrical release. The organization had no immediate comment on the upcoming search service Friday.
I don't think anybody feels sorry for the MPAA. The fact that they had the balls to use "Sith" as an example was both moronic and ironic. I mean, Sith went on to have the 2nd most profitable opening EVER. How do they have the balls to keep making these claims that bittorrent is hurting them?
if said engine displayed the torrents with the highest amount of seeds that it was tracking... i have a feeling they wouldn't all be linux iso images but you'd be more likely to have the mpaa interested if joe sixpack can get the new starwars movie without too much difficulty, and with loads of help from the creator of the protocol...
if this is a quick cash grab on brams part i hope he's considered how quickly legal fees can kill even the most profitable business...
Get your torrents...
Won't this also make it easier for MPAA/RIAA to write custom programs to hunt down torrents and trackers ? Make it easier to send their armies of lawyers behind those pillagers and rapists on the high seas?
Or instead they could invest in good stories, believable plots, decent actors, cheaper popcorn, to attract people in cinemas.
Who am I kidding.
I just saw XXX-2 and my brain is still recuperating.
This guy either has some really large juevos or he's incredibly dim. This seems like a very poor idea at times like these when the MPAA and RIAA are going after every torrent site that exists.
Or maybe I don't understand enough legal mumbo-jumbo to point that out...
You're nothing; like me.
RIAA and MPAA jointly going apeshit in 5 ... 4 ... 3 ... 2 ...
I was just thinking the same thing. How is this any different from what Napster did?
Top 10 Reasons To Procrastinate
10.
That was last week.
As contradictory to the "Cause" as this may seem, doesn't anyone see that Bram is probably doing this because the RIAA/MPAA and other major industries are blaming his project, a project that produces a protocol, for the rampant copyright infringement on the Internet?
The irony here in recent news is that the RIAA/MPAA are directly blaming BitTorrent for the Star Wars EP3 leak, but its been repeatedly shown that the leaked copy came from inside, and was released before the movie hit the public.
...and somehow BitTorrent is to blame?
Are we blaming Boeing for the 9/11 tragedy too? Or blaming Kabar for making high-quality blades, because someone killed with one?
This is ridiculous, and I personally applaud Bram's efforts here to absolutely saturate the mainstream media and dark corners of the Internet with as much media as possible, using his legitimate tool. I personally don't care for any of the copyrighted dreck on television or the radio these days, but others might.
Also, whenever you can, please keep correcting people who regard this as "piracy", "stealing" or "theft". It is nothing of the sort. It is "copyright infringement", plain and simple. If I "steal" your bicycle, I have deprived you of something you previously owned, which I now posess. Making digitally-perfect copies of a work is not "stealing" or "theft", though it is very much illegal in most countries.
You can't steal profits that weren't already earned. You can't steal "projected" profits. Keep up the pressure on these companies who continue to misunderstand the terms they're spewing in public. There's a certain Heinekin commercial that is grossly misrepresenting the nature of copyright infringement.
I corrected a Wall Street Journal reporter for a front-page article in the Marketplace section of the dead-tree version for promoting the "sharing of music" by burning copies of music and handing it out.
He wrote a story that included how some woman (which he named), was bored with the looping music playing in her resort in the Caribbean islands and decided to use her laptop, complete with burner, to burn several CDs of her favorite music to give to the resort to play instead. He was promoting the "advance of technology" for "enabling" people to do these things. This is disgusting.
THIS is where we need to start directing our angst... at the mainstream media misrepresenting these technologies.
will the search engine be open source???
if the source is released under an open source license it would make it nearly impossible for a "gold standard" bittorrent search engine to emerge...
getting the community to help with the development would spread out not only the work, but the blame if it ever comes down to litigation...
Get your torrents...
Aside from being something else for google to buy...
It will make it a lot easier to find interesting, out of print, public domain, music files.
according to the wired article, the search engine will allow "RIAA and friends" to target the uploaders directly and sue them.
So the search engine will actually become a benefit for the RIAA. Which I'm perfectly OK with, since Cohen never intended BT to be a pirate tool.
Will this notorious copyright never stop his illegal activities?
Enough is enough I say! I instist on legal steps taken against this thief immediately.
Certainly a uuencoded signature block at worst.
I've noticed quite a few posts already mentioning napster and that the RIAA would shut this down, but based on what law?
Why would they need a law? All they have to do is sue them. You can sue anybody for anything.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
...anyone can build a web site based searching system that searches through the distributed DB and builds a cache for faster searching?!
/me starts painting a big target on his forhead.
Shouldn't be too hard,
Jan
Jan
No one here will probably ever read this as I'm posting as AC, but this BitTorrent stuff is making me feel on edge these days..
Anyhow, I checked out the new BitTorrent search and the results pages are identical to the ones returned by TowerSeek. Here's a test you can do to see the similarities:
Searching search.bittorrent.com for "doctor"
Searching www.towerseek.org for "doctor"
Did the 'official' site just scrape TowerSeek's database? TowerSeek has been around for a while now so it's definately a possibility.
Originally, Bram Cohen intended BitTorrent to be used for personal/commercial content distribution by the content creators, or when permitted by copyright, such as Linux distributions. All of those are legal uses. For anexample of personal content distribution, consider when a person creates their own videos or songs, and wants to give some of it away for free online, but doesn't have the bandwidth to serve a full copy to each downloader. The decentralization, and especially the addition of a search engine, seem to benefit illegal movie/music/software sharing more than legitimate content/software distribution. Moral judgment aside, does this mean Bram changed his mind, or just that he wants to expand the possible uses of BitTorrent regardless of what they are?
Signature.
The storage industry is going to have a second coming. I just placed an order for 2 more 300GB drives for my home media server. :)
'Be always mindful, even when ditch-digging.' --D. T. Suzuki
Napster got into trouble primarily because it provided transfer medium plus directory service. BitTorrent was probably in the clear for just having the transfer medium, but Bram's name on a directory service is probably a mistake.
Then again, Napster got sold for umpteen millions and is now a pay service... maybe what Bram is doing is good in the long run for him but not for bitTorrent as we know it.
This seems like a very bad idea. Isn't it exactly this sort of thing that got sites like Suprnova shut down? I mean, they weren't hosting a single copyrighted product, but they got killed anyway. Then again, perhaps Bram is looking for a big legal fight.
Such a thing, I think, will only serve to showcase how BT is used only for piracy. The MPAA will be able to say, "Look at all these copyrighted works they're distributing!", while good uses of BT, like Blizzard's BT distribution system, will be overlooked as a legitimate use of the technology. It seems that this will only serve to (further) de-legitimize BT in the eyes of the public, when in fact it's a godsend of technology. We should be promoting its legal uses and trying to minimize the perception of BT as solely a tool for piracy.
You have two choices when it comes to torrents. Either disown the sharing of copyrighted material "Piracy is Bad. We don't support piracy at all. Torrents can be used for GOOD!".
Or, you can try to legitimize "piracy" itself. Ie. Make the downloading of copyright material, so widespread, and so common, that the content providers have NO CHOICE but change their business models. Essentially force a revolution.
I'd guess, thats what Mr. Cohen is up to. The MPAA and RIAA aren't going to be convinced that Torrenting is "good" or "just a protocol". So rather than try in vain, he's gonna play by their rules, open the gates wide open, and legitimize piracy.
Remember, content providers are not gonna change by choice, they are not going to do the right thing because we ask nicely. The only way they will smarten up is if they are given no choice "change, or die".
So the plan isn't to deny piracy. It's to embrace it, make it so big it's unstoppable, to induce a paradigm shift in the industry. To bring on the revolution.
Heck, it might even work.
Aggies
I also firmly believe adding search capability to BitTorrent itself is a mistake. Let third parties handle it if they want it that badly.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
While you can just access it already by going here you can, in the meantime, use Bitoogle it has been around for quite some time now. It is okay I suppose, personally I just prefer Torrentspy. It has a much larger contribution and a large userbase.
- Teja
Actually.....
You would'nt have to distribute the torrent file. A one liner with a Magnet URI address of a torrent swarm managed by the distributed hash schemes networks now in use would be all you would need in the Usenet post.
In fact, I'm rather surprised since the latest version of Azureus supports it (and it's easy to find out what the URI address is of the torrent you are part of..there is an option to copy it to your clipboard in Azureus) that I have'nt seen Magnet URI addresses on websites on web sites to hosting torrent files. It would definitely cut back on the bandwidth a site would have manage.
By listing only the illegal things that appear on the P2P networks, you help perpetuate the notion that they are inherently bad, and become a willing stooge for the MPAA and its lackeys. It wasn't germane to your post, anymore than mentioning
advertising-supported piracy. Sounds sweet. Don't get me wrong; I'm not saying that P2P is in itself bad or anything. I'm not saying that P2P *is* piracy. What I'm saying, though, is that probably 90% of all users will be searching for pirated stuff (software, movies...). And if the searching is advertising-supported, it all becomes extremely rotten - that's what it seems to me.
In extreme scenarii, we could even envision people looking for a pirated Photoshop version while looking at an Adobe advertisement banner. Pretty funky if you ask me. ;-)
There have been torrent search engines around for a while. What makes this one any different?
Topic
I assume that the people who will be most interested in this sort of technology, will belong to the MPAA/RIAA/whatever. 1. Search for movies you have copyright for 2. Download as evidence (to prove it's the file you're after) 3. Contact your favourite lawyer, pass all found IP addresses to him/her 4. sue & profit! Whether or not BitTorrent is used mostly for legal or illegal stuff, in the end it will create a not so calm but steady flow of negative comments in the media. I fear that in the end BitTorrent will not be seen as a positive thing.
http://jcsnippets.atspace.com/ - a collection of Java & C# snippets
Inducing infringment
I hacked together a quick firefox plugin and posted it on mycroft. You can download it from http://mycroft.mozdev.org/download.html. Search for bittorrent and click on the icon to install.
assert(expired(knowledge));
You may be right, but wouldn't those protections also apply to the suprnova.org-type sites? And they were shut down. Some were apparently shut down by mere threats, just because they couldn't afford to defend themselves even if they would have won. My worry is that Bram will not be able to withstand the onslaught of lawsuits that he'll be required to defend to seek the protections you mention.
With that said, I have to wonder if this centralized search will make it easier for the various copyright organizations to hunt down people distributing infringing content? Maybe the content owners/rights organizations will welcome this because they can cherry-pick offenders? If so, maybe Bram and BitTorrent continue to revolutionize Internet file distribution (and thus Content), while people reduce the use of BitTorrent for infringing uses. Is that a possible scenario?
Some of you already have those cute little shirts on that say disco sucks, right? That's not all that sucks.-Frank Zappa
I'd make a comment as to what this search engine would primarily be used for, but the owners of /. recently reset my 50 karma to -1 because of similar comments.
So, I'm scared, but we all know what it'll be used for, nudge nudge, wink wink.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
So this search engine will simply make it easier for the RIAA/MPAA to track and send more unsubstantiated/threatening/idiot letters and suits.
Sooner or later someone less lazy than me will graft tit-for-tat bandwidth allocation onto Gnutella, or decentralized peer discovery onto BitTorrent, and trackers will be a thing of the past.
No central point of failure. Cannot be shut down by the evil thugs (RIAA, MPAA, Promusicae, ...). Check it out here!
Anyone remeber n4p.com? It didn't take long for the MPAA to take it down.
I hope Bram makes a lot of money from that advertising, because he's about to incur tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees. The RIAA, MPAA, BSA, and their international counterparts have spent two years searching for an excuse to sue him into a financial hole he'll never get out of, and he's about to hand it over to them in a gift wrapped box.
Even if by some crazy stroke of luck he actually manages to get free legal counsel, fight back, and win the suits, it will take him years and numerous court appearances to do so. At this point I'm seriously wonder if he's brave, crazy, or just plain stupid. I'm hoping that it's bravado with some kind of intellectual backing, because I've thought highly of him right up until today...
doesn't bram work for the game software company valve?
Ever since the RIAA/MPAA started going after BitTorrent, they've gone after the trackers, not Bram Cohen. Why? Because Bram simply wrote code that lets a person pass around any information.
The differences between him and Grokster are that Grokster is a company, and Grokster has a search engine.
It appears that is about to change: BitTorrent will have a search engine, and a staff (which could be interpreted as a company) to run it. It'll be likely that we'll soon see Mr. Cohen in court.
On a side note, Bram Cohen in an interview expressed disinterest in downloading copyrighted material with BT. Why? Because the entertainment industry would love to make an example out of him.
If you're reading this, stop it.
wins!
Q: Who's there?
A: The Feds.
1st RULE: You do not talk about TORRENT CLUB.
2nd RULE: You DO NOT talk about TORRENT CLUB.
3rd RULE: If some tracker says "unreachable", goes offline, or cannot scrape, the torrent is over.
4th RULE: Many seeders to a torrent.
5th RULE: Many torrents at a time.
6th RULE: Shirts and Shoes optional.
7th RULE: Torrents will go on as long as they can.
8th RULE: If this is your first night at TORRENT CLUB, you HAVE to download.
...can his new "decentralized" BitTorrent be trusted? Can we be sure there are no backdoors for exposing downloaders' info? Well, BitTorrent wasn't really meant to be anonymous--just a way of effectively utilizing bandwidth, so I can't say any of this should be a surprise.
The judges aren't going to care about the technical details of what program transfers what to where and how many levels of indirection there are. The judge is just going to be shown that the defendant is operating a web site where users click on the name of a movie copyrighted by the plaintiff and it downloads to the user's computer. Any other details will be irrelevant.
Sorry, but that's just the way it will be.
My other first post is car post.
I'm not so sure this is a smart move on Cohen's part.
It'd be lovely to have another search engine for torrents, but I think the only thing keeping the *AA's from suing him like they did the owners of Kazaa is that he doesn't control any network that has shows/music or information on how to get shows/music.... He just created a protocol that a lot of pirates like to use.
I'm afraid that his search engine will end up either crippled to not display certain results or forcibly removed from the net just like most of the tracker sites.
If I recall correctly, for a very long time Brahm Cohen resisted the idea of decentralizing the trackers and adding search capabilities into BT. If I recall some of the issues presented were that distributed tracking and searching capabilities would eat up bandwidth, and that they didn't make sense for the legitimate uses that Cohen originally envisioned. What's changed his mind?
I wonder what the effects of this will be, trackerless and search engine.
Will it spread like fire?
What is/will be next?
Something to consider is where the company creating this is based, as well as the people creating it. If they are not within the USA or one of the other countries that follow USA's lead, they may be very able to tell the RIAA/MPAA etc what they can do. Especially since, as some-one pointed out, they are approximately 3 steps away from any pirated content. In any country that isn't the USA (or one of its sycophants) this should be clear enough to a judge. As long as it gets to a judge, and isn't taken down by strong-arm tactics out of court.
If this helps create a situation where unlawful content drops into the noise in comparison with all of the lawful content, BT will be seen less and less as a tool for pirates, and it will be more obvious the value that (practically all of us here know) it provides.
I would say that if everyone just decided to start posting torrent links everywhere -- especially now that it can be done trackerless -- this is exactly what will happen.
So, my recommendation: post appropriate, well classified, well keyworded torrent links, and download only legal content, so that any of the usual poisoning attacks will fail.
Then googlypoos will buy Bram's biz?
Not Free SF Reader
Can someone tell me technically, how thw search engine makes it easier for the RIAA to pin point the uploader correctly ?
whats the method?
Why does yahoo do this