Bittorrent

By Justin Nahin

What is it?

• Bittorrent is a file sharing program built to help individual share files or programs.

• It is owned by the company, Bittorrent.

• It is a program that has been involved in multiple court cases and lawsuits.

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Why was this Chosen?

• I’ve used the program in the past and have some knowledge of it.

• I’ve been curious of this programs origins.

• This program is considered to be illegal by some.

• Is this program the cause or is it the people behind it?

The Company• The company was made in

2004 by Bram Cohen and Ashwin Navin.

• The company is located at San Francisco, Califonia 612 Howard St. It is located in the USA where anyone can visit.

• The company produced the program in an effort to allow users to send files and information over long distance and in easy to access locations.

How does it work?

• The program works by having one person who has to program or file hosted to have others download off their file, called seeding.

• Many people obtain the program or file by getting pieces and parts of it, called leaching.

• A how to obtain and use the program summary can be located, here.Clickable link

What is it used for?

• The program is used by some companies to transfer large business files.

• This program can allow faster downloading of some free programs or files.

• The main one which is a legal issue is piracy, downloading copyrighted music or movies

Conflict• Copyright laws have been the

main concern of the program.• Many movie industries have gone

after individuals who downloaded or hosted download of the movie illegally.

• Some establish writers have written concern with what free products could do to society such as Andrew Keen’s, “The Cult of the Amateur.”

• The program is claimed to be the reason for people to be able to download illegally

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Court Cases• TorrentSpy a common search

site for bittorent was brought down during a case in 2007 for destroying evidence.

• Chan Nai-ming a man in Hong Kong was placed on trial for sharing the movie, “Daredevil” in April 2005.

• HBO distributed a cease and desist order towards Bittorrent providers in 2007.

Outside of the USA

• As mentioned before China has cracked down on file sharing.

• Finland had many administrators and moderators of a Bittorrent website arrested for running the website

• The Pirate Bay an anti-copyright group originated in Sweden were raided by Swedish police.

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Is this Hate Justified?

• The program has been used multiple times for the use of Piracy.

• Many lawsuits have occurred from it’s usage.

• The program was originated to help send large files over long distances, Bittorrent inc. does not condone such actions.

• It’s dependent on the what the user uses it for.

Good it is used for

• This program has been used by many businesses to send large files to it’s employees.

• The program is fast for sending large files across the internet by having the program obtain pieces from many sources.

• It helps many people obtain files or programs that are difficult to obtain.

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Economic Pros

• This program has helped create jobs within the Bittorrent company.

• The company is a million dollar corperation.

• This program when distributing legally stimulates the with legal file sharing.

Summary

• The program was created to help send large files.

• It has been the main focus of many court cases and criminal investigations on copyright infringement.

• The program is still used for good purposes despite the bad rap the program has gotten.

More to Look At• Many other programs have begun to

create programs similar to Bittorrent such as Akamai and Edgecast, yet are rather unknown to many.

• New court cases have shown up such as the AFACT vs IInet.

• Pirate Bay has closed off their own torrent tracker to allow users to download illegally more secretly and with less relying on other websites.

• Pirate Bay’s method of closing off the tracker may lead to an unknown future for Bittorrent being used for Piracy