Last week, Wil Wheaton shared a great post on his blog concerning the legal uses of bittorrent, and why ISPs shouldn’t block bittorrent traffic. For those not familiar with bittorrent, it’s a way that internet users can download and share files with each other. When someone downloads a file via bittorrent, the data that comprises that file is pulled from various other users that are also downloading that file, or that have opted to “seed” the file. Often times bittorrent is used to pirate media, but as Wil points out, bittorrent can be used for many things other than that.
It’s not completely clear in Wil’s post where he stands on the issue of piracy itself, as the focus of the post is the legal uses rather than the illegal, but I’m one that is against piracy and still use bittorrent. There are tons of legal torrents out there, and it would be a shame to cripple such a useful content delivery platform. Also, there is one thing Wil Wheaton doesn’t mention that I think is very worth considering: If bittorrent traffic is blocked, do people think it will really have an affect on piracy? I sincerly doubt that it would, at least in the long term. If you close one avenue of content delivery for media pirates, they’ll eventually find another.
Wil does mention that the entertainment industry is following “a business model that desperately needs to change.” Perhaps it’s time for the industry to start utilizing torrents? They could definitely cut costs by using customer bandwidth to deliver media. For an industry that thrives on the creativity of the content they sell, you’d think they could get more creative than just blocking bittorrent!
You can check out Wil’s post at http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup/2012/05/an-example-of-the-usefulness-of-bittorrent-for-entirely-legal-purposes.html.
Jason,
Great post on Bittorrent! I know I have hesitated to use it because of the illegal uses of it but it is just a tool. We don’t ban cars because some people drink and drive and I think it is similar.
For sure. If we banned/blocked everything that could be used to break the law, we wouldn’t have much going on.