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BitTorrent Clarifies Stance on Crackdown
February 8, 2006
Two days ago, it was reported on News.com that BitTorrent would soon begin a crackdown campaign against the misuse of the company name. The torrent of concern that followed suggested BitTorrent would take the enforcement of its trademark to an extreme measure, possibly threatening the very terminology this community has grown to know.BitTorrent began its existence much like any other file-sharing community. The work of developer Bram Cohen, BitTorrent came into existence in September of 2003. During this time, the undisputed leader in the file-sharing world was the FastTrack network. Spearheaded by Kazaa Media Desktop, FastTrack had a combined total population of over 4.5 million individuals. This number was on the decline however. Victim of the RIAA’s lawsuit campaign, false files, corrupt data and third party software, many FastTrack expatriates began venturing to alternative resources.
Although a meager community by existing standards, BitTorrent slowly began to gather steam. It brought about novel concepts never seen before. Unlike other existing networks and communities, BitTorrent wasn’t exactly a P2P network; it was a protocol. While the term “P2P” is a generalized colloquialism that can in theory be applied liberally, BitTorrent was not a searchable network that queried indexed files. Rather, it depended on centralized trackers which stored “torrent” files. Along with other information, a torrent contains the IP addresses of individuals who have the file requested. In addition, BitTorrent strengthened the concept of “swarming.” For example, say an individual has a 4.5 gigabyte file, and 10 individuals wish to obtain this file. The 4.5 gigabyte file is broken up into small pieces and each of the 10 individuals receives a small chunk of this file. From there, the 10 individuals swarm the needed pieces to each other, reducing the need for a dedicated, high speed server.
The innovative and community oriented nature of BitTorrent turned into great success by 2004. Large trackers became well established, such as Elite Torrents, LokiTorrents, Phoenix Torrents, and Youceff Torrents; while SuprNova became the indexing standard. A cycle of enforcement actions would cleanse these trackers, only to see a new breed take their place. By 2005, BitTorrent would become the unquestioned leader in the file-sharing community, surpassing every existing P2P network in bandwidth consumption and in all likelihood, population. Because of its highly distributed nature, calculating its exact population is difficult.
Realizing the potential and indeed existing financial success of BitTorrent, Bram Cohen turned his philosophy into a legitimate business by May 2005. Always emphasizing BitTorrent was never intended for piracy, BitTorrent further distanced itself from P2P and unauthorized file-sharing by announcing its cooperative efforts with the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) in November.
“BitTorrent is an extremely efficient publishing tool and search engine that allows creators and rights holders to make their content available on the Internet securely,” said Cohen. “BitTorrent, Inc. discourages the use of its technology for distributing films without a license to do so. As such, we are pleased to work with the film industry to remove unauthorized content from BitTorrent.com’s search engine.”
Understandably, many members of this community reacted with suspicion when BitTorrent announced a crackdown on the misuse of its trademark, as the announcement was largely perceived as incomplete and vague.
"We're sensitive to people calling their software BitTorrent to achieve a certain level of popularity in order to distribute spyware and adware," company President Ashwin Navin said.
What exactly did this mean? Is Azureus, BitComet and µTorrent in violation of BitTorrent’s trademark rights? What was the extent of this crackdown? Slyck.com contacted BitTorrent, who explained the scope and intentions of their intended enforcement.
“The overall goal is to ensure that the BitTorrent protocol is as widely compatible, consistent, and reliable as HTTP is for other web content and to make the BitTorrent trademark a validating stamp in which software implementing the protocol is safe to use for the end user,” Bram Cohen told Slyck.com.
Bram also explained that existing clients, such as the ones mentioned above, in all likelihood were not in violation of his company’s trademark. Rather, their intentions are to thwart companies distributing clients containing spyware and/or adware. These companies then turn profit from the BitTorrent name at the expense of the end user.
“We would like to work with BitTorrent developers (both future and existing) to verify their implementations to ensure that they are BitTorrent compliant,” Bram explained. “It is our intention to help developers to advise them of actions they can take if their implementations are outside the range of best practices. In fact, the most popular clients are already mostly conformant. The real concern here is spyware companies such as Day Networks who has tried to register our trademark in Europe.”
Bram Cohen continued “We want to protect and keep users informed about bad implementations. We are mindful of companies disguising their software as BitTorrent to distribute spyware and adware.”
The first known client to receive its official blessing from BitTorrent, the latest Opera test release, appears to alleviate any concern this protocol will become restrictive in nature. Like any other random BitTorrent client, Opera can participate freely on ThePirateBay or MiniNova and download any torrent. BitTorrent isn’t interested in becoming copyright police; however they are interested in prohibiting companies from profiting in their name.
“BitTorrent is an extremely efficient publishing tool and search engine that allows creators and rights holders to make their content available on the Internet securely,” said Cohen. “BitTorrent, Inc. discourages the use of its technology for distributing films without a license to do so. As such, we are pleased to work with the film industry to remove unauthorized content from BitTorrent.com’s search engine.”
Understandably, many members of this community reacted with suspicion when BitTorrent announced a crackdown on the misuse of its trademark, as the announcement was largely perceived as incomplete and vague.
"We're sensitive to people calling their software BitTorrent to achieve a certain level of popularity in order to distribute spyware and adware," company President Ashwin Navin said.
What exactly did this mean? Is Azureus, BitComet and µTorrent in violation of BitTorrent’s trademark rights? What was the extent of this crackdown? Slyck.com contacted BitTorrent, who explained the scope and intentions of their intended enforcement.
“The overall goal is to ensure that the BitTorrent protocol is as widely compatible, consistent, and reliable as HTTP is for other web content and to make the BitTorrent trademark a validating stamp in which software implementing the protocol is safe to use for the end user,” Bram Cohen told Slyck.com.
Bram also explained that existing clients, such as the ones mentioned above, in all likelihood were not in violation of his company’s trademark. Rather, their intentions are to thwart companies distributing clients containing spyware and/or adware. These companies then turn profit from the BitTorrent name at the expense of the end user.
“We would like to work with BitTorrent developers (both future and existing) to verify their implementations to ensure that they are BitTorrent compliant,” Bram explained. “It is our intention to help developers to advise them of actions they can take if their implementations are outside the range of best practices. In fact, the most popular clients are already mostly conformant. The real concern here is spyware companies such as Day Networks who has tried to register our trademark in Europe.”
Bram Cohen continued “We want to protect and keep users informed about bad implementations. We are mindful of companies disguising their software as BitTorrent to distribute spyware and adware.”
The first known client to receive its official blessing from BitTorrent, the latest Opera test release, appears to alleviate any concern this protocol will become restrictive in nature. Like any other random BitTorrent client, Opera can participate freely on ThePirateBay or MiniNova and download any torrent. BitTorrent isn’t interested in becoming copyright police; however they are interested in prohibiting companies from profiting in their name.
This story is filed in these Slyck News categories
BitTorrent :: BitTorrent Inc.
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