I think that there’s a certain amount of tact that can be exercised with it, and in this case, it’s appropriate to do so… It may only be a minor annoyance, but it’s also pointless, and it will only get worse as more and more people embrace torrents for legitimate distribution.įiled Under: bittorrent, linux, wil wheaton Seems like that runs directly counter to Google’s mission. Google prides itself of directing people to the best possible information, but when their users start searching for the latest version of Ubuntu or the new Counting Crows album, they won’t see autocomplete suggestions for this perfectly legal (and potentially superior) means of obtaining what they want. It’s a simple example, but an effective one: P2P sharing is simply better sometimes. In case you can’t see, the torrent is going about six times faster than a direct download, needing less than 10 minutes as compared to nearly 45. Efforts to explain that this is not necessarily true are often met with hands clamped tightly over ears, accompanied by “I CAN’T HEAR YOU LA LA LA.”Īs an example of the usefulness of bittorrent for entirely legal purposes, I present the following comparitive images: One of the things that drives me crazy is the belief in Hollywood that bittorrent exists solely for stealing things. Geek icon Wil Wheaton puts a bullet in this notion with a recent post on his blog, clearly demonstrating why he turned to BitTorrent for a copy of Ubuntu: Linux distros are a commonly cited example, since they are always available by (perfectly legal) torrent, but this is often brushed off as if it’s an excuse and torrents are not really necessary for this. BitTorrent is simply a good protocol for sharing large files with large groups-they are perfect for films, video games, music and of course software. Of course, that’s not really the point: you don’t look at the ratio of infringing use to legal use, but rather at the legal use by itself-if it’s substantial and meaningful, then you have to go after the infringing users, not the technology as a whole. Defenders of this kind of filtering don’t take such a forward-thinking stance, and their typical response in the torrent debate is to assert that the majority of BitTorrent traffic is likely infringing. Google endorsed this last year when they started dropping it from their search autocomplete results, and as Mike pointed out at the time, just imagine they had done the same with “mp3” a few years ago when that was supposedly synonymous with piracy. One of the many, many examples is the way the anti-piracy crowd treats “torrent” as a dirty word. The conflation of tools and technologies with the ways people use them is a big problem in the copyright debate. Wed, May 16th 2012 05:06am - Leigh Beadon
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