Microsoft Reinvents Bittorrent

Anon E. Muss writes "Microsoft has a new Secure Content Downloader tool that sounds an awful lot like a Bittorrent clone. It's described as a 'peer-assisted technology' where '[e]ach client downloads content by exchanging parts of the file they're interested in with other clients, in addition to downloading parts from the server.' Right now MSCD is just a time-limited preview, intended to support downloads of select Microsoft beta releases (e.g. Visual Studio 2008). If this test goes well, Microsoft will probably start using MSCD for all their large downloads. How do you feel about subsidizing Microsoft's bandwidth costs?"

Comments

Re:Flamebait much?

[eonlabs]

Bittorrent did not come up with p2p. They did come up with swarming. The idea is if everyone downloads once and sends once, the net cost to the main server is 1 upload. Granted, it doesn't work to the theoretical limit, but it's pretty damn good at conserving bandwidth.

If bittorrent is patented... which it doesn't appear it ever can be, then this would be a problem. If Microsoft claims they invented it, that's pretty major BS, but that's it. If this stays visible as a variant of p2p file sharing, then it will hold some ground for the rest of the industry. Maybe the best thing to do is to use this to point out that p2p has solid legal uses and value.