So I’m reading digg today and I came across this story posted from the MSNBC Newsweek site about BitTorrent. I’ve got to say I was thoroughly disappointed and I had to try really hard to refrain from punching myself in the face. The article is a short interview with BitTorrent’s creator Bram Cohen.

Now this interview could have been a great opportunity to get some fresh information on Bram’s new company, the $8.75 million he received in venture capital, and what great things we can expect to see from him. However, instead of writing a meaningful article Steven Levy just relied on buzz words like “piracy”, “illegal copying”, and “Napster” to trick people into reading another story about things people already know.

Here is the article. You should probably scan through this first:
No, It’s Not the New Napster
BitTorrent’s creator says he’s building a business, not a pirate network.

Oh I’m not done… read on.

Before I start…
Before I go on I’ll give those of you who may not be in on the BitTorrent loop a little rundown of what it is. Everyone is familiar with Napster right? Napster was a program that was intended to be used to share music files on the internet. I stress the word program. Some more examples of programs are Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla FireFox, and MSN Messenger. All of the programs I just listed can be used to send and receive files over the internet.

BitTorrent is not a program, it is a protocol. There is a major difference between the two and here it is. A protocol is a language that a program can use to communicate across a network (i.e. the internet). Therefore, there is no single application called BitTorrent that must be used to send files across the internet. In fact, there are several, maybe hundreds of programs that use the BitTorrent protocol (or language) to talk to other programs over the internet.

So what is so great about BitTorrent? It was written and optimized specifically with the idea of transferring very large files as quickly as possible. In fact it was originally written to help in transferring Linux Distribution CD’s which could be 700MB+ depending on how many CD’s.

For more information on BitTorrent, read How BitTorrent Works at howstuffworks.com. It does a much better job of explaining it in much better detail than I did.

Now back to my rant…
There is so much wrong with this article I don’t even know where to start. So I guess top down seems logical. First I’ll do the title.

No, It’s Not the New Napster
BitTorrent’s creator says he’s building a business, not a pirate network.

Cohen had no intent to crate a pirate network, nor is he promoting that now. His initial intent was to help websites publish large files without having to bare the entire traffic load. Through Bram’s protocol, users can download large files from the web server and from each other at the same time making the download much quicker and relieving stress on the web server.

This whole title is just screaming READ ME with all of the buzz words like “New Napster”, “BitTorrent”, and “pirate network”. It leads me to believe the author spent more time on the title than his research and interview combined.

The idiocy continues into the body of the story…

If that’s right, the program that the 30-year-old New York native (now living in the Bay Area) wrote in 2001 is now responsible for one in three bits moving on the Net. BitTorrent, which cleverly exploits peer-to-peer technology to move big files speedily (especially media like music and video), is both a scary reality (piracy!) and enticing possibility (efficiency!) for Hollywood. Forty-five million people have used it, many for illegal copying. But for whatever reason, Cohen has so far been spared the fate of Napster and Grokster, and has yet to be sued by record labels or movie studios.

Ok, to simplify things I’ll take this in point form

“the program”
As discussed above BitTorrent is not a program, it’s a protocol. To be fair though, Bram did develop a program when he first released the protocol to showcase it. That program is still being updated and kept current, however it is probably the least popular program to utilize the BitTorrent protocol.

“(especially media like music and video), is both a scary reality (piracy!)”
People looking to pirate media such as albums, complete artist discographies, full length movies in DVD format, and many other large copyright files have flocked to BitTorrent because of its efficiency. This does not mean it was not happening before BitTorrent. FTP servers, Usenet, News groups, and many other methods of transferring files have been around for years. And BitTorrent isn’t only used for copyright material. Many independant sites like Revision3 use BitTorrent to distribute their video and audio casts.

“Cohen has so far been spared the fate of Napster and Grokster, and has yet to be sued by record labels or movie studios.”
This one is simple. If the author had done any research prior to his interview he would know the difference between Napster/Grokster and BitTorrent and realize that Bram is not liable for how people use his protocol. It would be like the author doing an interview with the founders of TCP/IP and asking “Nonetheless, lots of copyrighted files are on TCP/IP. Why haven’t you been sued?”

Steven Levy goes on to embarrass himself some more in the interview portion of his article.

Considering what happened to Napster, were you nervous releasing it on the Net?
No. I’ve made a very-general-purpose tool that can be used for anything. Napster was designed like a covert application for copyright infringement. BitTorrent is for publishing things which you own.

Again Levy tries to relate Napster and BitTorrent in this question. I think Bram did a great job at explaining the difference.

Nonetheless, lots of copyrighted files are on BitTorrent. Why haven’t you been sued?
If there’s widespread copyright infringement, you really want to go after the ringleader. And we’re not being the ringleader for that. The Web types that are doing piracy are the ringleaders for that.

You would think that after Bram’s response to the last question this question would be redundant. Somehow, Levy still doesn’t seem to get it. Bram keeps his cool still.

Speaking of pirates, in Hong Kong someone who used BitTorrent to upload movies was just given a jail sentence. Your reaction?
Well, it’s hardly surprising. Copyright infringement is illegal. I make a tool. It’s a very powerful and general-purpose tool, but it is a lot like a car. Its primary function is a very, very utilitarian one. Cars kill people, you know, a lot more than guns do, but we still love our cars.

At this point I think Bram was fantasizing about running Levy over with his car.

Is there anything worth reading in this article?
After going pretty much as far as he could go with the piracy questions he finally moves on to a topic worth talking about, Bram’s new company and the future of BitTorrent in commercial distribution of movies, tv, and music. He asks two questions, “What was it like meeting with the MPAA head Dan Glickman?” and “What’s the BitTorrent business plan?”. Bram responds with informative answers and I suggest you read the whole article, but I’m still disappointed in the lack of planning for the interview that Levy did.