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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
...BigTarget, sorry I meant BitTarget.
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...
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".
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
Actually, I imagine they'll give him an award for making hunting down movies and music much easier.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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.
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.
Does anyone else wonder what's going on in Bram's head right now? I thought they were trying to legitimize Bit Torrent as a perfectly legal tool for bandwidth sharing....but with the decentralized version and now this it's starting to look more and more just like another File Sharing system, and as the parent said, expect the **AA to have a field day with this...
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
For example, if I want to download the latest slackware distro via BitTorrent, I grab the torrent file from slackware.com, and can go knock myself out.
The same applies for any other torrent files... just download them from the source. If the thing is truly freely redistributable, finding that source should be fairly simple... probably can even be done with google if one is genuinely unsure.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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...
A lot of people said this sort of thing when DeCSS hit. To sum up:
Cat's out of the bag, and
You can't have your cake and eat it too.
That is
There's nothing anyone can do about it anymore. He's not fooling anyone. Dude obviously needs to eat, and he's making a sponsored search engine. All I can say is "kaching".
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.
Isn't it a little perverse that the penalty for making a copy of a physical object is much greater than the penalty for stealing it outright?
SuprNova and other tracker sites host torrent files that moderators or users upload and post. Presumably, this project would work like a search engine crawler. A series of robots would comb the internet for sites hosting torrent files and create a site with such indices. When a user enters a search, the program searches the index for sites or nodes that have such files, and locate the file, then pull up the indexed metadata for the user. If the user wants to connect to download said file, the program locates the torrent, parses the data, and attempts to join in the download.
If this type of program is illegal, then surely search programs deployed by Copernic or Lexis-Nexis are in the same boat.
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
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. ;-)
the site probably won't host a single torrent or run a tracker for sharing copyrighted stuff. just an index. you can find torrents via google and the **AA doesn't sue them.
just my 0.02 EUR.
I think what's going through his head is:
"They wanna call me a thief, I'll *show* them a thief."
Honestly, they're going to demonize Bittorrent no matter what he does. They control the mainstream media, remember? For instance, take the Star Wars 3 piracy -- every single article I read on that very prominantly mentioned Bittorrent, often several times.
It doesn't matter that Bittorrent itself is legit, they don't want us even thinking about ways we could possibly subvert their hold on entertainment.
As for the trackerless system, I think that's a natural evolution of the Bittorrent protocol. The one last, major pain in the ass with Bittorrent is having a tracker die on you -- and trackers DO use up a lot of bandwidth, especailly popular ones. Removing or supplimenting the Tracker with it's own torrent of peers is just common sense.
The fact that it makes it even harder to shut down sites like lokitorrent is a happy accident.
More recently sites like Suprnova and BTefnet, who provide no copyrighted content but do provide information on where to get it in the form of trackers, have been subject to successful legal action.
No, they've been subjected to legal blackmail, i.e.,"shut down the site or we'll sue you for $XXX,000." There has not yet even been a lawsuit of copyright infringement against an individual in the US. (IANAL, but at least with respect to "modern" copyright infringement, i.e. sharing via P2P, I believe I am correct.) And until someone significantly rich is threatened with a lawsuit, we probably won't see one.
Maybe you call this "successful legal action." I call it bullying. Give me your milk money or I'll beat you up.
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