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I remember a few years back when I was using Grokster, Kazza, and other crappy p2p, but then I switched to Bit torrent and never looked back.


BitTorrent moving uptown

By Dawn C. Chmielewski, Mercury News Tue Aug 2, 9:04 AM ET

Bram Cohen arrives in San Francisco's Mission District, his hair disheveled, his face stubbled with a day's growth of beard and his black BitTorrent T-shirt proclaiming him for what he is -- the poster boy for a popular and disruptive Internet file-swapping technology.

Time was, guys like this would be found hunched over a computer keyboard in a distant Baltic republic, working anonymously for some offshore corporation.

But now that the Supreme Court has clarified the do's and don'ts of file-sharing, the creator of BitTorrent -- which allows video and other large files to be quickly downloaded -- has no reason to hide. Indeed, Cohen, 29, recently relocated from Seattle to San Francisco, and he and his chief operating officer are making the rounds on Sand Hill Road looking for venture capital for their new company, BitTorrent. They've forged a partnership with paid-search provider Ask Jeeves, and recently the duo flew to Burbank for high-level talks with the Motion Picture Association of America.

BitTorrent already has struck deals with video game publishers to distribute games with its technology.

Cohen's bid to commercialize BitTorrent is a measure of how far the entertainment industry has come since the late 1990s, when
Napster introduced millions of people to the power of peer-to-peer technology for downloading songs -- and mobilized scores of lawyers to shut it down.

The recording industry continues its legal campaign to crush the once-wildly popular Australian-based Kazaa file-sharing service. But the studios are now moving to embrace BitTorrent technology -- which gracefully and cheaply distributes giant files -- even as they sue those who use it to trade bootlegged movies, TV shows or video games.

``We have no aversion to peer-to-peer technology. For us, it is in some respects kind of a promising delivery method,'' said Darcy Antonellis, senior vice president of worldwide anti-piracy for Warner Bros. Studios. ``We obviously have issues with its illegal uses, but to the extent that the use of the technology can be legitimized, we're all for it.''

It helps that Cohen never cast himself as an anarchist who bragged that his technology would vanquish the old entertainment industry. He has gone out of his way to castigate those who use BitTorrent for piracy.

The trick, of course, is converting the 40 million or so people Cohen says have downloaded BitTorrent's free software into paying customers.

Over a lunch of veggie burritos and nachos, Cohen and BitTorrent's 28-year-old chief operating officer, Ashwin Navin, talk about their plans for turning a garage operation dependent on donations and T-shirt sales into a Hollywood player.

Any examination of BitTorrent's potential needs to start with an understanding of how it differs from other file-swapping technologies. BitTorrent breaks giant files into tiny bits and spreads the distribution load among dozens or hundreds of computer users. It's built on the notion of cooperative distribution -- to get pieces of the file you lack, you must offer up chunks in exchange.

This approach turns typical online distribution on its head: the more popular the file, the faster the download times. The inverse is also true: It took 72 hours to download Bram Cohen's September 2003 lecture at Stanford University.

BitTorrent dramatically improves the economics of the Internet as a broadcast medium.

With distribution costs removed, budding filmmakers like Ben Buie of HighlyDef Productions in Altanta can suddenly afford to release ``On Our Way Up,'' a full-length docudrama, based on the lives of three brothers, shot in high-definition video. Buie uses Prodigem, a Mountain View start-up, to manage the delivery and collect payment.

``We actually thought about hosting it ourselves, and the bandwidth costs would have been enormous,'' said Buie. ``With BitTorrent, download is distributed over several users. There was really no cost of entry.''

The power and efficiency of BitTorrent lured Navin, the embodiment of a high-energy ``biz dev'' guy, away from search giant Yahoo, where he worked in corporate development figuring out digital distribution strategies.

``BitTorrent solved a lot of issues that I think an aggregator like Yahoo or download.com faces,'' said Navin, who joined the newly incorporated company in October. ``Do we host? Does the publisher host? If we host, how much do we charge? BitTorrent makes that whole question irrelevant.''

Navin and Cohen, the computer networking savant, share a vision of BitTorrent evolving into a true distribution platform that not only delivers video, but also helps people discover interesting content online. Eventually, they hope to collect a fee for connecting its audience to commercial content.

The first step along this path came in May, when BitTorrent introduced a search feature to help people find specific ``torrent'' files they're seeking. Search unlocked a fresh source of revenue for BitTorrent: sponsored links provided through a partnership with Ask Jeeves in Oakland.

BitTorrent's search engine also points to obviously pirated content, such as copies of the new Steven Spielberg blockbuster ``War of the Worlds,'' available with Danish subtitles from a Swedish site called thepiratebay.org.

When asked how he would respond to BitTorrent's use as a tool for piracy, Cohen said he would follow the same rules that apply to other search engines. The studios would provide notice of the infringing work, and he would remove links to the stolen content, rendering it inaccessible.

The challenge for BitTorrent or any other existing file-sharing technology is whether pirated content can co-exist alongside paid movies or television shows.

From the perspective of the Motion Picture Association of America, the solution is obvious: BitTorrent should use filtering technologies to block the exchange of pirated works.

``There is a whole new market that's being developed with filtering tools, ways of allowing these technologies to develop while preventing copyright infringement,'' said Dean Garfield, the MPAA's legal affairs director. ``We're hopeful that Bram will be a partner in moving BitTorrent in that direction.''

Negotiations between the MPAA and BitTorrent are continuing, talks that Cohen characterizing as `friendly.'' BitTorrent is also in discussions with two studios he declined to identify.

In the past, negotiations have failed because of the entertainment industry's reluctance to put a pirate in business, said Hilary Rosen, the former head of the
Recording Industry Association of America. Peer-to-peer companies, meanwhile, have been reluctant to go dark or filter out copyrighted works, for fear of losing their loyal users, she said.

The recent Supreme Court decision in the
Grokster case has changed the tenor of discussions. It made clear that tech companies that tout their file-sharing technology as a tool for piracy, or provide technical support to aid in the theft, are legally liable.

A number of established file-swapping services ``are coming to the table, either with the MPAA or with individual studios, to talk about ways they might alter their mode of operations,'' said one senior media attorney involved in the discussions.

Cohen said the Grokster ruling freed entertainment companies to seriously consider the file-swapping technology, once the scourge of Hollywood.

``They've been worried about using our technology,'' said Cohen. ``It's been made clear now that piracy is bad, not the technology is bad.''

As negotiations progress, BitTorrent is focused on content that might not otherwise be available for download because the bandwidth costs would prohibitive. Linspire, a San Diego software developer, uses BitTorrent to distribute its
Linux-based software, including its recently released Linspire Five-0 operating system. BitTorrent saves Linspire about $20,000 a month, a company spokeswoman said.

BitTorrent also has reached agreements with game publishers to distribute about 1,000 licensed titles in the coming weeks, including such recognizable games as ``Tomb Raider 3'' and ``World of Warcraft,'' said Navin.

Blizzard Entertainment uses an enhanced version of BitTorrent to distribute software updates to the 1 million World of Warcraft players who inhabit its online virtual world. Allowing players to download from one another speeds the process significantly and saves money. ``Those who want to download directly from us can still do so, but the process is considerably slower,'' said a spokeswoman.

``This tool is designed to solve a very real problem,'' said Navin. ``What we hope is the folks it was designed for will embrace it as quickly as possible.''

Contact Dawn C. Chmielewski at dchmielewski@mercury news.com or (800) 643-1902