

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."
Lisp Users: Due to the holiday next Monday, there will be no garbage collection.
HUGE!! (Score:5, Funny)
Bram is cool (Score:5, Insightful)
But I have to say, Sailor Moon Bram [bitconjurer.org] really freaks me.
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:4, Funny)
"'I'm very, very good at writing protocols. I've accomplished more working on my own than I ever did as part of a team.' While we're having lunch, his wife, Jenna, tells me about the time they were watching Amadeus, where Mozart writes his music so rapidly and perfectly it appears to have been dictated by God. Cohen decided he was kind of like that. Like Mozart? Bram and Jenna nod."
Re:Bram is cool (Score:3, Funny)
Article Text (Bittorrent style) (Score:5, Funny)
Here's the article text, Bittorent style: ...von Lohmann, a lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, because Linux...
C'mon, start serving you leeches! That's all I got!
WJR 760 (Score:5, Insightful)
I couldn't believe my ears when the talk show host asked him: "Does it bother you that people use your product for negative purposes, sort of like the scientists who developed the formulas used in the atomic bombs that killed hundreds of thousands?"
My jaw hit the floor when his reply was "Well, this isn't exactly an atom bomb...." That's why the lawyers are winning right now. It's not because they're smarter. It's because they are SO good at twisting things around, and us geeks can't speak in public worth a damn.
He also wouldn't admit that bit-torrent is a revolutionary way of transfering data, he kept downplaying his program. Come on man! You're not a programmer right now. You're a salesman and a human resource department. Act like it!
Re:WJR 760 (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree with you with being more articulate though. I think the standard answer should be to deflect responsibility, just like a politican!
Probably something along the lines of:
"It is the responsibility of the individual to decide what he/she wants to do with it. I'm only responsible for discovering new things."
Or maybe even a bit extreme:
"Someone can stab someone else to death with a pen. Does that mean pens should've never been invented?" (Or insert something equally trivial..)
Merit alone, sadly, isn't enough anymore..
Re:WJR 760 (Score:5, Insightful)
(Cohen) What can I do? Even now, there are evil bittorrent people who have used my software to burn villages to the ground, teach schoolchildren to write with their left hands, sodomize livestock and advocate american usage of the metric system! It makes my skin crawl to hear how it ressurrected Jeffrey Dahmer and caused him to go on a zombie rampage, eviscerating screaming women and devouring innocent children! Stop zombie Dahmer, think of the children! What will we do when the terrorists twist my innocent application into a weapon of mass destruction, simply because Congress couldn't stop the partisan bickering long enough? Bittorrent doesn't even prevent AIDS, let alone cure it!
(Radio host) But, you say this can be used by terrorists, and you still created it? What?
(Cohen) What, does that sound a little ridiculous to you?
(Radio Host) I dunno, can it be used...
(Cohen, interrupting) Because it sounds more than a little ridiculous for you to compare Bittorent to nuclear weapons. C'mon, tell us straight. The RIAA didn't put you up to this, but you've been one of their lapdogs so long, they don't have to explicitly tell you to do this sort of character assassination.
(Radio Host) Now wait a minute...
(Cohen) No, you wait a minute. Bittorrent doesn't do anything the internet itself doesn't do. Except that if ever the RIAA was so insane to suggest the internet be made illegal, even the most bought senator would laugh. Bittorrent is just a networking protocol, something your mouth-breathing bosses couldn't describe in layman's terms if their lives depended on it. A protocol that makes the internet slightly more efficient, and not much more. It's clever, I like it, and so do quite a few other people. What do you say to that? (stomps out of the booth).
Re:WJR 760 (Score:5, Funny)
If the interviewer doesn't respond Bram should just start talking slower and slower and then finally disconnect.
Maybe that's what happened.
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 ".to
Re:WJR 760 (Score:3, Interesting)
Though I've personally found its download rate swamps my office network even.
Re:WJR 760 (Score:2, Insightful)
Take a look at his LiveJournal [livejournal.com], for example. Well nigh every other post is an ego-wank of a calibre to make even DJB [cr.yp.to] shake his head in shame. Bram's right and everyone else in the world is a moron.
Some years ago, I was on a mailing list with him. During a discussion on building crypto-using apps, a few posters were arguing in favor of making sure apps used parameterizable encryption a/o hashing algorithms -- so when, say, a weakness is discovered in MD5 (hmm ... sound [slashdot.org]
Re:WJR 760 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:WJR 760 (Score:2)
Re:WJR 760 (Score:5, Interesting)
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:WJR 760 (Score:5, Insightful)
AS people (AS=Asperger's Syndrome) tend to be superhuman geniouses in a few narrow areas while ADD/ADHD people tend to be theoretical almost-geniously experts in a wide range of subjects.
Our (me and my fellow ADDers) problem is that we are so easily bored and when we see the finish closing in we already finished the project in our head (the only thing left is to actually implement it) and the mental energy runs out and we have to move on to something else so we don't get a deep depression. Repetitive work (such as implementing on the computer the stuff you already implemented in your head) causes depressions..
The reason ADDers are overrepresentated among subcultures are that our way of thinking and making conclusions differ quite a lot from non-ADDers. For example we skip the little details called norms, principles, culture, traditions, etc and go straight to the root matter of the current subject. That's why a lot of us don't feel that we fit in and search alternative lifestyles that fit our minds better...
People with ADD and AS can be the biggest resource for a company that they can possibly get. You just have to rethink and adjust the internal politics a little. A single interested ADDer can do 10 persons work in short time. You just have to make sure that someone else take over when it gets repetitive and move the ADDer to another project that he/she shows interested in. And put the byrocrazy to a minimum, nothing can kill motivation more...
Oh, did I mention that we tend to make long LISP-like rants with deeply nested paranthesis?
Re:WJR 760 (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:WJR 760 (Score:2)
Except perhaps swedish lawyers? Funniest quote from the article:
The Pirate Bay is a BitTorrent tracking site in Sweden with 150,000 users a day. In the fall, it posted a torrent for Shrek 2. Dreamworks sent a cease-and-desist letter demanding the site remove it. One of the site's pseudonymous owners, Anakata, replied: "As
Re:WJR 760 (Score:2)
Re:WJR 760 (Score:2)
And that's where you're wrong. He's not a salesman or a human resource department. That's why he was able to innovate in a substantive way.
True, this means somebody else will profit much more from his innovations than he will. That's how things normally go. But the paypal donations are supporting his family, and his goal is to retire and make 3d puzzles. That's what he likes to do, and I
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:WJR 760 (Score:3, Insightful)
Where did I say that?
Just because some people are using BitTorrent to violate copyrights does not mean it has no legitimate use.
You know what primarily means? You might want to check your dictionary. Or here, I'll help you.
Primarily
[adv] for the most part; "he is mainly interested in butterflies"
Hence, the primary use for bittorrent is currently pirating. Yes, there are other uses, but they're not as popu
Re:WJR 760 (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree, I think that would be out of scope. I think it would have been far more effective to list the legal uses and focus on the positive. It's possible to violate copyright with a lot of different items - cameras, CD Burners, pencil and paper, a photocopier, a scanner, etc. But - that's not exactly "newsworthy", is it?
Also, is there any way to list metrics of exactly what people are downloading via BitTorrent? If there isn't, it's only an opinion that BitTorrent is used primarily for copyright violations. I could argue that the legal uses are numerous, and I can think of a number of sites like this one [distrowatch.com] that have numerous, legal Torrent links, and looking at the traffic stats, Distrowatch gets a lot of hits.
Re:WJR 760 (Score:2)
"Guns don't kill people, people with guns kill people."
I say this is eerily appropriate, as they try to take away the guns/bittorrent.
Re:WJR 760 (Score:3, Insightful)
A knife can also be used to rob, kill, maim, and hurt other people.
The reason I think the gun analogy is not as effective is because there are too many people with the shortsighted mentality that guns are "bad" and that the world would somehow be safer if all the guns were destroyed... like you couldn
Re:WJR 760 (Score:2)
that's odd, because I have *never* use bit-torrent for downloading anything that came anywhere near to being illegal : 3dmark, freebsd live cds, cygwin disks etc.etc.
Re:WJR 760 (Score:3, Insightful)
Come on. Seriously now. Why must we all be so blind to this? Bittorrent has a plethora of legal and worthwhile uses. The problem is that the majority of users out there aren't using it for that. Arguments of "I don't use it illegally! I download linux with it!" are pointless.
Re:WJR 760 (Score:3, Insightful)
Arguments of "I don't use it illegally! I download linux with it!" are pointless.
Are they? Yet that is exactly type of argument that legitimized home VCRs
Re:WJR 760 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:WJR 760 (Score:2)
I just like people to be honest in their discussions and not try to pretend that something isn't a problem.
Re:WJR 760 (Score:4, Insightful)
Granted, now all the copynazis will jump on me, for "making a comparison that is ludicrous". But I'm not, just illustrating the far extreme end of this spectrum.
Is it right for an IP cartel like the RIAA to lock up all music forever? I mean, even if this falls into the public domain some day, there is nothing to say that they have to release the keys to decode them. But that's just music, nothing art-worthy in a traded Britney Spears mp3, same with movies...
What about books? We're safe for what, the next 30 years, until the big public libraries digitize to save money on storage. Even if they only do so with public domain works, at some point, the publishing industry will want to cash in too, and provide only ebooks. How will that go down?
Us frogs, I fear they're boiling us slowly. And you people sit around arguing that even if it is getting a little warmer, it's not hot at all.
Re:WJR 760 (Score:3, Informative)
So, there are plenty of laws in place, that let them use my money. Was it not just a few months ago, where we read how the DOJ would even prosecute civil claims on their behalf?
Re:WJR 760 (Score:3, Insightful)
Anything can be used for evil: p
Re:WJR 760 (Score:2)
The point is... (Score:4, Insightful)
Hell, the INTERNET is primarily used to steal stuff, if you want to break it down by percentage.
Should the Internet be illegal? No.
So why do you care about what bittorrent is used for now? Play up the POSITIVE aspects, not the negative ones. Christ on crutches.
Re:WJR 760 (Score:5, Funny)
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)
Re:Cohen didn't invent multi-source downloading (Score:5, Insightful)
Common carriers aren't liable (Score:2)
Now, to the extent that BitTorrent's architecture lends itself to centralized control of content, as asserted by the original poster, Cohen has indeed opened up the owner/op
Re:Cohen didn't invent multi-source downloading (Score:2)
Just about everything is copyrighted by default, at least in the US (registered copyrights are a different matter). Open Source code is nearly all copyrighted as well - how else could you enforce the GPL? Even the most liberal licenses such as BSD usually require the inclusion of original copyright notices when the works in question are distributed.
What I'm getting at is th
Re:Cohen didn't invent multi-source downloading (Score:2)
Could some smart person explain (Score:2)
Speed Bittorrent v. Kazaa (Score:2)
Not only that, it exists in Kazaa which was mentioned as the "slower technology" in the same article. Yet, in reality, Bittorrent really seems to be faster from what I hear. What is the actual explanation?
Re:Speed Bittorrent v. Kazaa (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Speed Bittorrent v. Kazaa (Score:3, Informative)
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
Re:Cohen didn't invent multi-source downloading (Score:2)
I have never been convinced by that. Uploading only benefits you while you are downloading, yet BitTorrent relies significantly on uploaders who have finised downloading, for which there is no tit-for-tat incentive.
Not how the algorithm works. (Score:3, Insightful)
Unless the files are very large and take hours to complete, a tracker group will be upload heavy amongst the finished group, and download heavy amongst the un
Repeat After Me... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Cohen didn't invent multi-source downloading (Score:2)
Re:Cohen didn't invent multi-source downloading (Score:2)
Re:Cohen didn't invent multi-source downloading (Score:2)
And correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the reference implementation in python?
Article describes eDonkey2000 (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Article describes eDonkey2000 (Score:5, Informative)
He [Cohen] sketched out a protocol: To download that copy of Meet the Fokkers...
Yeah, I'm sure that's what he was thinking when he created the protocol...
a user's computer sniffs around for others online who have pieces of the movie
No, trackers keep track of who is downloading or seeding the file, there is no sniffing around. Infact, there is no search capability that I am aware of...
The more files you're willing to share, the faster any individual torrent downloads
Are you kidding me? No... the more people downloading/seeding an individual torrent, the faster it downloads. More files have nothing to do with anything.
Re:Article describes eDonkey2000 (Score:2)
The more files you're willing to share, the faster any individual torrent downloads
I think maybe he was confusing "more files" with "more uploads". As in, the more your computer is uploading your portion of the file to others, the faster your download will be. This is indeed true - bittorrent does this 'tit-for-tat' so that if you rate-limit the upload to only 1k for example, your download will suffer.
Re:Article describes eDonkey2000 (Score:2)
mirrored here: (Score:4, Funny)
Wired is getting slow.
Wired
Cohen
Wired
Cohen
Wired
Cohen
Wired
Cohen
Not a 5 page article (Score:4, Insightful)
Wired Marketing droid to potential advertisers: We got 5 million clicks yesterday--grumble under breath: one million people clicked 5 times-- and displayed 25 million ads --grumble under breath: 5 ads per click, times 5 sections.
Re:Not a 5 page article (Score:5, Informative)
The best thing about bit torrent (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The best thing about bit torrent (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The best thing about bit torrent (Score:2)
Stream should have looked into torrents for HL2. Would have REALLY lessened their load. And with the DRM methods used, wouldn't have caused any piracy problems.
Re:The best thing about bit torrent (Score:2)
3.9 beta version download delays are uncool (Score:2, Insightful)
Other than that.. great product! I downloaded megs of tsunami videos from http://www.waveofdestruction.org/ [waveofdestruction.org] as they we
Re:3.9 beta version download delays are uncool (Score:2)
Link (Score:5, Funny)
"Movie studios hate it. File-swappers love it. Bram Cohen's blazing-fast P2P software has turned the Internet into a universal TiVo. For free video-on-demand, just click here."
Unfortunately someone forgot to add the link
Azureus client is the best (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Azureus client is the best (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Azureus client is the best (Score:3, Informative)
ps, who modded my previous post a troll for extolling the virtues of a damn good torrent client?
Re:Azureus client is the best (Score:2)
Oh, it's a Chinese project but the website is multilingual http://www.lanspirit.com/ [lanspirit.com]
Lost in the Jungle (Score:4, Funny)
Wouldn't mind playing with some Amazons myself.
10 Years?! (Score:5, Funny)
"In our research with consumers, content-on-demand is the killer app. They like the idea of paying only for what they watch." The trick, he figures, is to work out a solution before the audience for illegal downloading becomes truly huge. He figures the networks have 10 years.
Sounds like a very liberal estimate. I'd say that illegal downloading has already become pretty "huge". If it wasn't, what are the MPAA/RIAA getting so worked up about, and why are all these TV executives commenting on it in the first place?
Later in the article they discuss the takedown notice Dreamworks sent to ThePirateBay.org concerning Shrek 2, for those of you who havn't already, and are interested to read the letter (and the hilarious response), check it out here:
Dreamworks Takedown Notice & Response [thepiratebay.org]
The Life of (Score:3, Funny)
"He's not the messiah, he's a very naughty boy!"
Ho hum. Long day.
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?
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:Why isn't BitTorrent defeatable? (Score:4, Informative)
The interesting part is that the protocol (or trackers) don't have to deal with those kind of decisions. The clients can each behave however they want, but you are rewarded for playing nice with better connectivity. Badly behaved clients end up with no peers willing to send them data.
There is nothing gained by writing a BT client that is an asshole to it's peers and nothing stopping you from trying. It will simply be ignored by the other peers that aren't assholes.
Re:Why isn't BitTorrent defeatable? (Score:2)
BitTornado [bittornado.com] has a feature for kicking/banning peers who constantly upload junk to you.
If you're using Bram's official BT client, and there's a peer that's uploading junk, your download won't get corrupted, it'll just waste your bandwidth.
Money (Score:3, Interesting)
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 s
bittorrent weakness (Score:5, Insightful)
I like bittorrent, but my problem is that I can't easily search for what I want in torrent form.
Please, I hope I am wrong, but it seems that one is forced to go to "seedy" (I mean, really seedy, as in icky) websites to get the links.
Re:bittorrent weakness (Score:5, Informative)
Re:bittorrent weakness (Score:2)
A related cause (Score:5, Insightful)
Bit Torrent is just a tool, it cannot do anything illegal by itself. The user must choose to do something illegal with it. Going after Cohen is no different than going after a gun maker for gun crime. The exact same arguments used against gun makers could be used against Cohen. He's not screening his users, is he? Neither are the gun makers. In both cases, some of their users are committing crimes. Different types of crimes, but either way, a legitimate tool is used for an illegitimate purpose.
In the long run, the only way to win against the forces opposed to individual liberties is to link our causes. This is the IP equivalent of what the NRA faces with guns, so it only makes sense for both camps to realize we are fighting the same ideology just in two different manifestations.
Allies, even allies that don't really understand your cause as well as you do, are important. Many of the gun owners' postings I have read on right wing boards frequently have derisive attitudes toward the **AA now and see them as the computer equivalent of "gun grabbers." It's a fitting analogy because the **AA want to be the "computer grabbers." Mandatory DRM is akin to mandatory trigger locks because either way, some bureaucrat is telling you how you must maintain and use your property.
To protect our rights we must continue to assert individual responsibility as the solution and push for solutions that go after perpetrators of crime, not their tools. That is the only way we can not only cut down on crime, but also protect people like Cohen from amoral, mercenary attorneys like those behind the **AA
piratebay /.'d (Score:2, Funny)
Article author either misleading or misinformed (Score:4, Informative)
That's all fine and dandy, but the author makes it sound like this gets around the limitation of one's own pipe to the Internet. If you're on a modem, there's no way you are going to cut down a 500MB download from hours to a few minutes, yet the article has a paragraph that implies that an hours-long Kazaa download is cut down to a few minutes with BitTorrent.
Obviously, if the limiting factor is the source pipe, then more sources equals faster download at the destination. This kind of writing bugs me since it doesn't mention such obvious limitations -- it all sounds "miraculous" (or "marketish"?).
1 page version (Score:4, Informative)
MPAA plans cohens retirement (Score:5, Funny)
(MPAA exec on intercom to his secretary): "mrs Jones find me a 3D prototype manufacturer".
[delay]
(secretary):"I found four of them, but Jesus, they're $5million each!!!"
(exec): "buy four and ship them to that fucker Cohen by the end of the day - and my names not Jesus it's God"
High School Memories (Score:5, Informative)
Found a picture of the Math team back in 1993 [mojo-working.com]. Bram's the guy with the bushy hair in the back row near the center next to the tall asian guy and another guy with a hat. He was the co-captain of the team that year, if I remember correctly. I think he ended up in the State University of New York at Buffalo. That always bothered me for some reason. He definitely was smart enough to make it into a better school. Why did he choose to go to Buffalo?
Quote of the Millenium (so far) (Score:5, Funny)
BitTorrent IP Anonymizer (Score:2, Interesting)
MPAA continues to amaze (Score:2, Funny)
"We consider it a regrettable but necessary step," says John Malcolm of the MPAA. "We saw the devastating effect that peer-to-peer piracy had on the record industry."
I literally had to wipe the spittle off my monitor after reading that.
(For those uninformed: There is no evidence that the recording industry profits are down due to file sharing.)
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
why isn't BT incorporated into browsers yet? (Score:3, Insightful)
heck, you could probaly do it with one library and some implementation details in the browsers, as most are written in C or C++.
Just a protocol just like http:// ie bt:// that delivers the content to the browser for display.
Maybe this will solve the slashdot effect.
(oh wait no, it won't. most slashdot readers betray their geekness and still use IE, the browser that has not seen maintance sine 2000. This will maybe get them over the line; free porn directly in your browser)
Re:Hey...wait a second.... (Score:2)
Re:Hey...wait a second.... (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, the previous Wired article was not an interview with him. It was an editorial on the "Dark Pyramid" of the pirating underground. There was no interview with Cohen in it if I remember.
I can't seem to get to this new one just now (thank you
Re:Old News (Score:2)
Furthermore, mods, what is so damn insightful about it?
Re:Old News (Score:2)
Re:Old News (Score:2, Insightful)