Editorial: Can Legal Torrent Sites Serve as Innovators for Media Discovery?
By Karla Robinson
November 30, 2012
November 30, 2012
- In 2001, Bram Cohen authored the BitTorrent spec as a way to speed up peer-to-peer sharing by downloading large files, like full-length movies, in multiple packets from various sources. Since then, BitTorrent has become strongly associated with The Pirate Bay and illegal practices.
- “But legit players in the file-sharing biz quietly use BitTorrent for its network efficiency, while introducing new distribution and revenue opportunities for creators, and offering new media discovery sites for consumers,” writes Engadget.
- Cohen made BitTorrent a legitimate, copyright-filtering service in 2005. Now the site is trying out a revenue model, which “hint[s] at an emerging media distribution and discovery future for the file-sharing protocol,” explains the post.
- In the music industry, BitTorrent could become the fourth consumption tool, following a la carte, music subscriptions and streaming services.
- “When basic access to galactic music libraries is free, and recommendations come from peers rather than from institutional power brokers, the door is wide open for peer-to-peer platforms to take an important role in marketing, distributing and delivering music,” the post suggests. “Same goes for film, as the pro-am moving picture landscape is re-drawn by Roku, Vimeo and many other disruptors.”
- By some estimates, the BitTorrent platform transmits as much as half of all Internet traffic.
- Even with continued pirating, BitTorrent’s “neutral malleability can be a great competitive advantage to the most resourceful creators, and a delight for the most inquisitive consumers. Both sides should advance the legal torrent movement by adopting the platform for distribution and discovery.”
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