Bittorrent Creator A Digital Pirate?

Alex_Ionescu writes "According to an article in Wired, the old webpage of Bram Cohen contained a manifesto stating that his goal for creating software was to 'Commit Digital Piracy'. Cohen argues that the quote is taken out of context and represents a parody. He argues having written it in 1999, 2 years before even coming up with Bittorrent. You can find the archived copy of his site at archive.org. From the article: "Cohen has never publicly encouraged piracy, and he has consistently maintained that he wrote BitTorrent as a legitimate file-distribution tool. That would seem to make him and his budding company, BitTorrent, safe under the Grokster ruling. But legal experts worry the newly discovered manifesto extolling 'digital piracy' could put him on less certain legal ground."

Comments

Re:Hey, look at me, I'm Wired!

[ArsonSmith]

Hmm, To continue on teh GWB theme I think it would be a little closer to:

"Some call you the elete, I call you my base." -- paraphrased George W. Bush

While he was making a joke it was still based in reality.

To joke about making software to promote piracy, then making software that promotes piracy, but saying otherwise, is kinda questionable.

Re:Expect an escalation in the war...

[kz45]

The biggest problem for resorting to civil disobedience against the current "intellectual property" regime is that the general public may not even understand the importance of the protest (you have to gain some amount of public support or sympathy to achieve any meaningful goals).

I think it's mostly because it's not that important. In the 60's, it was about people dying over in vietnam, copyright infringement laws only effect the people that are infringing on someone else's copyright.

Sharing copyrighted material on the Internet doesn't show anyone that the copyright laws are too harsh. It would be similar to boycotting the sale of nikes (because of sweatshops), but having all of the people involved wear them to the demonstration, it's hypocritical, and in many ways..doesn't make sense (from a boycotting point of view).

It really seems to me like an excuse for getting music, movies, and software...for free. If you don't want to abide by a license that a movie or song is released under, don't download it.

It's the same with the GPL. If a company doesn't wish to abide by this license, they shouldn't use it in their commerical application.

when are people going to realize that This is just as wrong as this

Re:We are held to different standards?

[nickstance]

Sweet Sombie Jesus man! Here we are 26 minutes after posting the article and someone is already comparing America with the Nazis! That's got to be some sort of land speed record.
PS, why is it that all one must do to get modded "Insightful" is bash the US and then say something to the effect of Go on, mod me a troll, but you know... its really true.
Ok maybe I'm ranting a bit but its time to get some perspective on things The man said "I'm going to create some software that will make it easier to commit a crime" he then made some software that made it easier to commit a crime. I know that it was years ago but you have to admit, it doesn't help his position that created the software for legal file-sharing only...
Oh yeah, go ahead and mod me down as a troll or something... (let's see if it works for me...)

Re:Your problem, not America's

[ccmay]

Look here, you braying jackass. As long as these people are not shot dead in the street or pushed out of helicopters over the ocean, I'll laugh in the face of you or anyone else who tells me free speech is under attack.

I'm not aware of any other nation, anywhere, any time, that has been so forgiving of such vicious sedition. We are so magnanimous and tolerant in our strength that we allow filthy little termites like these to teach in our colleges, when in practically any other time and place in human history the vermin would be lucky to continue to draw breath. Got it?

-ccm