This Bit of Torrent Is a Big Deal By Jeremy Wagstaff Wall Street Journal
October 7, 2005 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB112864921380962445.html?mod=technology_main_promo_left One of the biggest revolutions taking place on the Internet has, strangely, caused barely a ripple. It's called BitTorrent. If you've ever heard of BitTorrent it's probably alongside a word like "evil." After all, isn't BitTorrent the Internet protocol of choice for online video, music and software pirates swapping their illegal wares? Well, yes. That's true. But it's only part of the story. BitTorrent, in fact, is the thin end of a big wedge that will pry open the way television, movies and lesser things such as software find their way into your home. This makes trying to close down BitTorrent a little like banning photocopiers because people can copy books on them. Getting upset about BitTorrent ignores the No. 1 rule about new technologies: Don't shoot the medium. LOOSE CONNECTIONS Defining a Revolution with Google So what is this thing called BitTorrent? BitTorrent is a standard devised by a young American named Bram Cohen as a way to move large files around the Internet efficiently -- for free. Your average Web page or email is only a few kilobytes. Even an MP3 file is about three megabytes, which takes only a minute or two to download, even on a crummy connection. But what about bigger files? Imagine you have a 100-megabyte file -- a short home movie, say -- you want to make available to 100 of your acquaintances. You could email it to them, clogging up their inboxes and losing their friendship forever. You could post it to a Web site, and then send them a link so they can each download it, one by one. This is obviously better than email, but it still means that 100 people have to download the file from your Web site. It may not crash the computer hosting your Web site, but it'll slow it down, especially if all those 100 people want to try to download it at the same time. It's a bit like inviting them all to come around and simultaneously use your ice machine. They may get their ice, but they aren't going to be happy to have to wait. Thoughtful Sharing Now imagine you break up that 100-megabyte file and let people download different bits of it to their computer, then share bits with each other until everyone has the whole file. Dude A, say, downloads the first bit, Dude B the second, Dude C the third, and so forth, and then Dude B can grab the first bit off Dude A and the third bit off Dude C, etc., until everyone is sharing what they have with anyone who hasn't. It's a bit like in the ice machine analogy, the ice is split up and dumped off at different houses, so anyone can pick up what is needed and share it with others until everyone gets ice. In short, everyone becomes both a customer and a distributor. This is what is called a peer-to-peer (or P2P) approach -- the peers are sharing the files with other people, as well as the workload of moving them around the Internet. This is what BitTorrent does -- amazingly efficiently. It divides up the task of moving files around. This means not everyone needs to download the file from one place in one go, taking the pressure and expense off the guy trying to distribute the file. And it means everyone gets the file much faster, because they are spreading the job over dozens of computers. This is the BitTorrent protocol -- a standard that makes this kind of transfer possible. And this isn't a pipe dream. Since Mr. Cohen wrote a piece of software (also called BitTorrent and also free) to use this standard in 2002, it has been hugely popular. Depending on who you talk to, it accounts for around half of Internet traffic at any one time. Going Straight Of course, not everyone likes this. This is a big load for the Internet to bear. And most of the traffic isn't exactly legitimate. Big files are usually video files, which take up a lot of space. And many of them are TV programs or pirated movies. BitTorrent is good at moving these files around, which is why movie moguls don't like it. But this doesn't stop it being a powerful medium, which is why BitTorrent is also now a company and seeking to be a legitimate concern. "The challenge for them is how to shrug off the perception that it's a tool for piracy and instead be regarded as a legitimate and acceptable distribution technique," says Andrew Parker, founder and chief technology officer of United Kingdom-based CacheLogic Ltd., which provides tools to ease the load on Internet service providers coping with all the extra traffic BitTorrent creates. The company seems to be convincing the industry of its viability: Last week BitTorrent Inc. landed $8.75 million in venture capital financing. So why might this all change our world? Simply put, suddenly anyone can be a broadcaster. No longer do you need a network to get your product out. Just compress your show into a computer file, add the BitTorrent protocol, and put it on the Net. Users just click on a link and download it to watch when they want. Ashwin Navin, chief operating officer of BitTorrent Inc., says he's already persuaded media companies to sign up. He sees BitTorrent spawning lots of new TV programs as small and big producers alike make use of its low-cost distribution channel. "This tool empowers the creative folks, especially those that don't want to pitch their idea for years before they get their big break." Indeed, things already are moving in this direction. The British Broadcasting Corp. in August announced plans for MyBBCPlayer, a system that uses a similar P2P protocol and that would let viewers legally download some BBC TV programs. Mark Pesce, a lecturer in interactive media at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School, has no doubt it's going to change not just the way TV is distributed, but how TV programming is made. "BitTorrent is here to stay," he told a conference of filmmakers in Montreal last month, "and what it does changes everything about everything in the creative industries." Sounds like a revolution to me. ================================ George Antunes, Political Science Dept University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204 Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927 antunes at uh dot edu -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.344 / Virus Database: 267.11.9/118 - Release Date: 10/3/2005 Reply with a "Thank you" if you liked this post. _______________________________________________ MEDIANEWS mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
