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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.
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
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...
This sounds like Napster all over again except with legal precedents in place it'll happen much quicker.
Nonsense. With Napster the problem was that it was a device for exchanging illegal content. The judge found that the small amount of legal content was nothing more than an excuse to allow for illegal wares.
In the case of BitTorrent, it has a LOT of uses that are perfectly legal. That is what this search engine is targetting. Want the entire Mozilla source tarball? BitTorrent it. Trying to get the latest 180MB release of Privateer Remake? BitTorrent it. OpenOffice, Mozilla, FreeBSD, Linux, America's Army, Doom III demo, Star Wars Fan Films, Star Trek New Missions videos, the list just goes on and on. BitTorrent is a response to the ever growing size of these files more than a method of distributing illegal wares. It just happens to work well for the illegal stuff as well.
The result is that a judge will no more condemn it than he would condemn the entire Internet.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
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."
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?
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.
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
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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