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Site Map Technology Thursday November 4, 3:01 AM LIVEWIRE - File-sharing network thrives beneath the radar By Adam Pasick LONDON (Reuters) - A file-sharing program called BitTorrent has become a behemoth, devouring more than a third of the Internet's bandwidth, and H ollywood's copyright cops are taking notice. For those who know where to look, there's a wealth of content, both legal -- such as hip-hop from the Beastie Boys and video game promos -- and i llicit, including a wide range of TV shows, computer games and movies. Average users are taking advantage of the software's ability to cheaply s pread files around the Internet. For example, when comedian Jon Stewart made an incendiary appearance on CNN's political talk show "Crossfire," thousands used BitTorrent to share the much-discussed video segment. Even as lawsuits from music companies have driven people away from peer-t o-peer programs like KaZaa, BitTorrent has thus far avoided the ire of g roups such as the Motion Picture Association of America. But as BitTorre nt's popularity grows, the service could become a target for copyright l awsuits. According to British Web analysis firm CacheLogic, BitTorrent accounts fo r an astounding 35 percent of all the traffic on the Internet -- more th an all other peer-to-peer programs combined -- and dwarfs mainstream tra ffic like Web pages. "I don't think Hollywood is willing to let it slide, but whether they're able to (stop it) is another matter," Bram Cohen, the programmer who cre ated BitTorrent, told Reuters. John Malcolm, director of worldwide anti-piracy operations for the MPAA, said that his group is well aware of the vast amounts of copyrighted mat erial being traded via BitTorrent. "It's a very efficient delivery system for large files, and it's being us ed and abused by a hell of a lot of people," he told Reuters. "We're stu dying our options, as we do with all new technologies which are abused b y people to engage in theft." com, can be used to distribute legitimate content and to enable copyright infringeme nt on a massive scale. Let's say you want to download a copy of this week's episode of "Desperat e Housewives." Rather than downloading the actual digital file that cont ains the show, instead you would download a small file called a "torrent " onto your computer. When you open that file on your computer, BitTorrent searches for other u sers that have downloaded the same "torrent." BitTorrent's "file-swarming" software breaks the original digital file in to fragments, then those fragments are shared between all of the users t hat have downloaded the "torrent." Then the software stitches together t hose fragments into a single file that a users can view on their PC. org) offer up tho usands of different torrents without storing the shows themselves. Suprnova is a treasure trove of movies, television shows, and pirated gam es and software. Funded by advertising, it is run by a teen-age programm er who goes only by the name Sloncek, who did not respond to an e-mailed interview request. Enabling users to share copyrighted material illicitly may put Suprnova a nd its users on shaky legal ground. "They're doing something flagrantly illegal, but getting away with it bec ause they're offshore," said Cohen. He is not eager to get into a battle about how his creation is used. But Cohen has warned that BitTorrent is ill-suited to illegal activities, a view echoed by John Malcolm of MPAA. "People who use these systems and think they're anonymous are mistaken," Malcolm said. Asked if he thought sites like Suprnova were illegal, he s aid: "That's still an issue we're studying, that reasonable minds can di sagree on," he said. GOING LEGIT Meanwhile, BitTorrent is rapidly emerging as the preferred means of distr ibuting large amounts of legitimate content such as versions of the free computer operating system Linux, and these benign uses may give it some legal protection. "Almost any software that makes it easy to swap copyrighted files is ripe for a crackdown BitTorrent's turn at bat will definitely happen," said Harvard University associate law professor Jonathan Zittrain. "At least under US law, it's a bit more difficult to find the makers liable as l ong as the software is capable of being used for innocent uses, which I think (BitTorrent) surely is." com/), which includes a wide selection of electronic music. It also has the Wired Magazine Creative C ommons CD, which has songs from artists like the Beastie Boys who agreed to release some of their songs under a more permissive copyright that a llows free distribution and remixing. com) offers open-source software and fr eeware, music from artists whose labels don't belong to the Recording In dustry Association of America trade group, and programs from public tele vision stations like PBS or the BBC. org) is for devotees of "trade-friendly" bands like Phish and the Dead, who encourage fans to share live recordings, us ually in the form of large files that have been minimally compressed to maintain sound quality.
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