Why Hollywood Loves BitTorrent
A Fortune article by Danial Roth, via CNN/Money, reports that:
There is no reason why Bram Cohen, the brains behind BitTorrent software, should still be in business.
Others have come before him offering technology that made music and media free: first there was Napster's Shawn Fanning, then the European duo behind Kazaa. Those self-styled Robin Hoods quickly found themselves shut down or forced to stay just one step ahead of entertainment industry lawyers.
The 30-year-old Cohen's invention BitTorrent is the next generation. It makes it simple to download massive, bandwidth intensive files (everything from the Lord of the Rings trilogy to the latest episode of Desperate Housewives in high def to a file containing 400 Amazing Spider-Man comic books). BitTorrent is so popular that it now accounts for at least 20% of the entire volume of the Internet. And it's attracted over 45 million users. For high schoolers and college students, using BitTorrent is as natural as wielding a cell phone.
And yet talk to Hollywood and the establishment that should be crushing him seems in awe instead: "He's obviously a very brilliant guy," says Dan Glickman, president of Motion Picture Association of America, which leads the charge in cracking down on film piracy. The BitTorrent guys, says, Glickman, "have some revolutionary ideas and interesting concepts and we have been talking with them."
posted by Fergie @ 10/19/2005 07:18:00 AM
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