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In the heady world of file sharing, the geeks shall inherit the earth(The Birmingham Post Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)The internet has always had the ability to catapult unheard of programmers into international fame, and it's good to know it hasn't lost it. The latest nerd to achieve "ubergeek" status, and reserve his place in the annals of internet history, is Bram Cohen. Those more familiar with the seedy underbelly of the internet will already be acquainted with his work. He is the inventor of BitTorrent, the movie pirate's best friend. BitTorrent is a P2P file sharing parallel distribution protocol. For the purposes of this article, it's not important that you know what that is. The important thing is it makes the distribution of very large movie files very fast - and more importantly it works. According to some ISPs almost a third of the internet's bandwidth is being consumed by BitTorrent streams. It seems the net has moved on from sharing music to sharing films. Many ISPs are so inundated with BitTorrent traffic they have banned it from their networks, compromising their net neutrality principles - they really don't want the job of net censors. In a network neutral world, every piece of internet data is treated equally. Whether you're downloading porn, buying music or reading a blog, the internet shouldn't care. It's all just data and it should all be treated the same. You may think this is an easy get-out for the IPSs but it is really their only tenable position. Luckily for them the US government is about to make network neutrality an explicit legal requirement in the States, so they're off the hook. So what are the movie makers going to do to protect their multi-billion dollar industry? Well, Warner Brothers has gone straight to the top man. It has enlisted Bram Cohen's help. Seems that Bram, unlike other internet luminaries, wants to make a bit of cash from his invention. He has been developing BitTorrent 2, which is currently being trialed in the UK with NTL. The idea is that special boxes, which cache BitTorrent data, will be placed at strategic parts of the internet. Subscribers can access them to get movies delivered at super fast speed. As this is against the principle of net neutrality, Bram is getting some stick for allegedly selling out. However, his pragmatic view is that it will move a significant amount of traffic off the main ISP pipes and stop them from blocking his protocol quite so readily. Whether the surfing masses will take to downloading legal movies rather than pirated ones, for a small fee, is yet to be seen. However, if our experience of the mp3 revolution is anything to go by, they will. The internet has shaken the way record companies look at their distribution models. Now the film industry will need to do the same. Chris is managing director of internet consultancy WAA WebXpress and can be contacted [email protected]. This and other unedited articles can be found at webxpress.com. |