File-sharing network thrives beneath the radar

[R.A. Hettinga]

<http://in.tech.yahoo.com/041103/137/2ho4i.html>

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 Thursday November 4, 3:01 AM

LIVEWIRE - File-sharing network thrives beneath the radar

 By Adam Pasick

 LONDON (Reuters) - A file-sharing program called BitTorrent has become a
behemoth, devouring more than a third of the Internet's bandwidth, and
Hollywood's copyright cops are taking notice.

 For those who know where to look, there's a wealth of content, both legal
-- such as hip-hop from the Beastie Boys and video game promos -- and
illicit, including a wide range of TV shows, computer games and movies.

 Average users are taking advantage of the software's ability to cheaply
spread files around the Internet. For example, when comedian Jon Stewart
made an incendiary appearance on CNN's political talk show "Crossfire,"
thousands used BitTorrent to share the much-discussed video segment.

 Even as lawsuits from music companies have driven people away from
peer-to-peer programs like KaZaa, BitTorrent has thus far avoided the ire
of groups such as the Motion Picture Association of America. But as
BitTorrent's popularity grows, the service could become a target for
copyright lawsuits.

 According to British Web analysis firm CacheLogic, BitTorrent accounts for
an astounding 35 percent of all the traffic on the Internet -- more than
all other peer-to-peer programs combined -- and dwarfs mainstream traffic
like Web pages.

 "I don't think Hollywood is willing to let it slide, but whether they're
able to (stop it) is another matter," Bram Cohen, the programmer who
created BitTorrent, told Reuters.

 John Malcolm, director of worldwide anti-piracy operations for the MPAA,
said that his group is well aware of the vast amounts of copyrighted
material being traded via BitTorrent.

 "It's a very efficient delivery system for large files, and it's being
used and abused by a hell of a lot of people," he told Reuters. "We're
studying our options, as we do with all new technologies which are abused
by people to engage in theft."

 FOR GOOD OR EVIL

 BitTorrent, which is available for free on http://bittorrent.com, can be
used to distribute legitimate content and to enable copyright infringement
on a massive scale. The key is to understand how the software works.

 Let's say you want to download a copy of this week's episode of "Desperate
Housewives." Rather than downloading the actual digital file that contains
the show, instead you would download a small file called a "torrent" onto
your computer.

 When you open that file on your computer, BitTorrent searches for other
users that have downloaded the same "torrent."

 BitTorrent's "file-swarming" software breaks the original digital file
into fragments, then those fragments are shared between all of the users
that have downloaded the "torrent." Then the software stitches together
those fragments into a single file that a users can view on their PC.

 Sites like Slovenia-based Suprnova (http://www.suprnova.org) offer up
thousands of different torrents without storing the shows themselves.

 Suprnova is a treasure trove of movies, television shows, and pirated
games and software. Funded by advertising, it is run by a teen-age
programmer who goes only by the name Sloncek, who did not respond to an
e-mailed interview request.

 Enabling users to share copyrighted material illicitly may put Suprnova
and its users on shaky legal ground.

 "They're doing something flagrantly illegal, but getting away with it
because they're offshore," said Cohen. He is not eager to get into a battle
about how his creation is used. "To me, it's all bits," he said.

 But Cohen has warned that BitTorrent is ill-suited to illegal activities,
a view echoed by John Malcolm of MPAA.

 "People who use these systems and think they're anonymous are mistaken,"
Malcolm said. Asked if he thought sites like Suprnova were illegal, he
said: "That's still an issue we're studying, that reasonable minds can
disagree on," he said.

 GOING LEGIT

 Meanwhile, BitTorrent is rapidly emerging as the preferred means of
distributing large amounts of legitimate content such as versions of the
free computer operating system Linux, and these benign uses may give it
some legal protection.

 "Almost any software that makes it easy to swap copyrighted files is ripe
for a crackdown BitTorrent's turn at bat will definitely happen," said
Harvard University associate law professor Jonathan Zittrain. "At least
under U.S. law, it's a bit more difficult to find the makers liable as long
as the software is capable of being used for innocent uses, which I think
(BitTorrent) surely is."

 Among the best legitimate sites for movies and music:

 -- Legal Torrents (http://www.legaltorrents.com/), which includes a wide
selection of electronic music. It also has the Wired Magazine Creative
Commons CD, which has songs from artists like the Beastie Boys who agreed
to release some of their songs under a more permissive copyright that
allows free distribution and remixing.

 -- Torrentocracy (http://torrentocracy.com/torrents/) has videos of the
U.S. presidential debates and other political materials.

 -- File Soup (http://www.filesoup.com) offers open-source software and
freeware, music from artists whose labels don't belong to the Recording
Industry Association of America trade group, and programs from public
television stations like PBS or the BBC.

 -- Etree (http://bt.etree.org) is for devotees of "trade-friendly" bands
like Phish and the Dead, who encourage fans to share live recordings,
usually in the form of large files that have been minimally compressed to
maintain sound quality.

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-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'