Wired Interviews Bram Cohen, Creator of BitTorrent 383
ZP-Blight writes "Wired has posted an in-depth five page interview with Bram Cohen, the creator of the popular Peer-2-Peer software, BitTorrent."
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"No matter where you go, there you are..." -- Buckaroo Banzai
Cohen didn't invent multi-source downloading (Score:5, Interesting)
Personally I think BitTorrent's core advantage over other file sharing technologies is also its core architectural weakness, namely its centralised nature. This allows an editorial filter on content made available through BitTorrent, yet also makes a juicy legal target. Until recently BitTorrent's obscurity has protected it, but clearly this is no-longer the case.
(Disclaimer: I am working on some free software [dijjer.org] that is competitive with BitTorrent)
The best thing about bit torrent (Score:3, Interesting)
I know somebody who knows somebody... (Score:1, Interesting)
One of my coworkers floats in the same circles as this guy. Apparently he's the type of person people try not to talk to at parties but who gets invited anyway for absolutely inscrutible reasons.
Why isn't BitTorrent defeatable? (Score:4, Interesting)
I haven't looked at the source, but given the broad description of the protocol I'm assuming each "chunk" has a GUID along with the payload. Obviously, this allows for swarming and reduced download/upload bottlenecks, but doesn't it also allow for easy corruption of the data stream?
For example, when the RIAA tried to defeat Napster by brute force, namely setting up drone/honeypot PCs with libraries of corrupted files, the method failed miserably. I would guess that by its nature, knowing what IP you were downloading an entire file from, it wouldn't be too hard to filter out known RIAA servers.
But, with BitTorrent handling the gathering of chunks from the swarm from multiple IPs, doesn't that greatly increase the likelihood of success for a similar attack?
For example, shouldn't the MPAA be able to download the source code and modify encoding so that if (Random() % 1000) a chunk flips some of the bits in the payload? Wouldn't installing this code on a farm of drones eventually "corrupt" the datastreams on BitTorrent?
Or are their safeguards in place for this kind of attack?
Money (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Azureus client is the best (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:WJR 760 (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why isn't BitTorrent defeatable? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yup - each 'GUID' for a Bittorrent block is an SHA1 cryptographic hash. If you find a way of generating collisions for those, many computer scientists and mathematicians would love to know.
From the FAQ [bittorrent.com]:
I gather that if a client was pumping out corrupt blocks, or if they were corrupted at some point during transmission, they'd simply get dropped and re-requested. No idea if there's anything to permanently ignore a client that's pumping out nothing but junk, though - but on a busy tracker, it would get drowned out by all the others. Anyone know?
Incidentally, is anyone else worried by the way the article concentrated on the distribution of television shows, almost to the exclusion of everything else? I've used Bittorrent quite a bit, but only ever for completely legal purposes [filerush.com] - plus, I've always thought of it being a rubbish way of distributing dubious stuff, what with IP addresses of everyone downloading available straight from the tracker to whoever might be investigating...
Re:WJR 760 (Score:5, Interesting)
So that fact that a bunch of linux distro's being released as .torrent links means nothing, eh? Just because some people are using BitTorrent to violate copyrights does not mean it has no legitimate use. I can get a shiny new (legal) .iso image in far less time over torrent then I can over an http download, in almost every case.
BitTorrent is a tool. Nothing more. It is the person who misuses it, not the tool, that's the problem.
Griping about the RIAA / MPAA would have been completely innappropriate. Besides - if you don't like the RIAA / MPAA, quit sending them your money. You don't *have* to see movies you know... after all, as amazing as the LOTR movies are, I enjoyed the books even more. You also don't have to buy CD's - support your favorite artists by seeing them in concert. But when asked about a legitimate software tool like torrent, discussing the RIAA / MPAA would have been a tangent and seen as a dodge.
Re:Cohen didn't invent multi-source downloading (Score:2, Interesting)
Personally I think BitTorrent's core advantage over other file sharing technologies is also its core architectural weakness, namely its centralised nature.
It's real innovation is the tit-for-tat file sharing. With only multi-source downloading, no-one has an incentive to upload (it uses bandwidth, they risk getting cause supposedly). With tit-for-tat however, you have to upload in order to download at a reasonable speed.
Also, in a slightly related topic, tit-for-tat (ie bittorrent) is generally more successful than always-defect (ie kazaa etc) in the iterated prisoners dilema.
Repeat After Me... (Score:3, Interesting)
BitTorrent IP Anonymizer (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:WJR 760 (Score:3, Interesting)
[Bittorrent is a] protocol that makes the internet slightly more efficient, and not much more.
More efficient? He's obviously never been on the same network as someone using it... "Hey, are you downloading something through BitTorrent again? My ping times just jumped from 100ms to five seconds." "Yeah, sorry."
(And yes, I know you can have it rate limit. The option to do so is really well hidden in the "official" version (namely, edit the registry under Windows to add parameters to the default ".torrent" file action) - this is part of the reason I use Azureus [sourceforge.net] for my BitTorrent needs, because it's much easier to rate limit to make sure other people can use the network. And, no, rate limiting through the actual network isn't a solution I can actually use.)
Re:WJR 760 (Score:3, Interesting)
Though I've personally found its download rate swamps my office network even.
Netflix/Blockbuster? (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder if each STB will have BitTorrent on it and DRM files will be shared out as they are requested by customers - the only download the consumer would have to make from the distributors central server would be the DRM authorisation key?
This could be the key to legal movie download services
Yes, definately... (Score:3, Interesting)
It isn't a matter of 'he's not trying to communicate effectively', it's that he CAN'T - at least not easily. Believe me, it's heartbreaking to see a child locked in his own world unable to communicate with others or even unaware WHY he should. It's even worse when you're an adult and no one around you can understand why you can't answer questions directly.
Re:Bram is cool (Score:5, Interesting)
It's great, but it needs improvement.
BTW, how long do you think it will be before bittorrent-style downloads become standard in web browsers and web servers?
It seems that such a feature would make it a lot easier to run a file server on limited bandwidth.
Also, while I like the concept of the file finding mechanism not being part of the file exchange mechanism itself, as in BitTorrent, we really need a decentralized way to locate and moderate files - some sort of distributed web of trust, perhaps. Of course, those sorts of things are always a pain to try to catch hacked clients, so I'm not surprised that we haven't seen any good ones.
Oh, and last on my distant-future wishlist: A financial-incentive packet bartering priority boost. I.e., anyone can download, but if you contribute money to the authors of the content you're downloading (this would require a centralized server, no way around it), you get a faster download rate. The more you contribute, the faster your downloads go; your donation distribution could be handled automatically.
Re:Bram is cool (Score:2, Interesting)
I think a better approach would be to include the Torrent information in the HTTP reponse headers. The browser would then see those headers (hopefully using HEAD), and can choose to download via the torrent, rather than HTTP. This would also allow old browsers to just ignore the header, and go on as if they didnt exist.
Re:Money (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know if this interview was before that time, or that the donations are just an extra source of income and it was conviently left out that he's also employed by Valve, giving him a steady income.
A p2pnet.net interview with Bram Cohen [p2pnet.net], where he explicitly says he's working on steam [steampowered.com].
"NYTimes.com are reporting [nytimes.com] (blood of firstborn required) that BitTorrent creator Bram Cohen has been hired by Valve Software to work on their Steam content distribution system:
We've been experimenting with BitTorrent with limited success in our files section - it seems the vast majority of users still prefer regular downloads to BitTorrent downloads, and of those few that do use BitTorrent, a limited number actually leave it running to continue to seed the download for other users (that is, upload data to the other peers).
Such a system built into something like Steam, for example - which you have to keep running as long as you keep playing - would probably have significant benefits, as there would be a vast number of users that would have little (or perhaps even no?) control over their system uploading data while they're playing games. It will be interesting to see how Valve and Bram choose to implement such a system.