EU Invests $22 Million in Next-Generation BitTorrent Client
Written by Ernesto on February 20, 2008A few weeks ago we reported that the EU Greens launched a pro-filesharing campaign named “I Wouldn’t Steal”. In a continued effort to support the development of P2P technology, the European Union has now invested $22 million in the development of an open-source BitTorrent client.
The team behind the social BitTorrent client Tribler is responsible for the core P2P technology for the project, dubbed P2P-Next. The project received $22 million (15 million Euro) from the European Union and another $6 million (4 million Euro) is brought in by some of the partners.
One of the biggest names taking part is the BBC, who will use the new BitTorrent client to stream TV programs. Other partners in the P2P-Next project are the European Broadcasting Union, Lancaster University, Markenfilm, Pioneer Digital Design Centre Limited and VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. The main goal is to develop an open source, BitTorrent-compatible client that supports live streaming.
Approximately 50% of the people who use BitTorrent at any given point in time download TV shows. The current project will help broadcasters to find better ways to reach this online audience, and offer high quality on-demand television.
“This cooperation with both the British and German public broadcasters indicates that P2P is here to stay. We welcome the decision of the European Union to award this proposal around P2P. This means that Europe can expand it’s roughly two year lead in this important area,” Tribler’s Johan Pouwelse told TorrentFreak.
“Tribler serves as a testing ground for several world-first innovations. It serves as a living lab for P2P research. Key to our endeavor is an academically pure architecture: no central servers exist in Tribler in combination with being backwards compatible with BitTorrent,” Pouwelse added.
As part of the project, the Tribler team, together with Harvard researchers, implemented the “Nobel prize winning” mechanism design theory into their BitTorrent client. The ultimate goal is to encourage people to share as much as possible without imposing share ratio sanctions, and to let users moderate the available content.
BitTorrent sites are watching the P2P-Next project closely, and some might even be interested in experimenting with the new technology. We asked Johan Pouwelse if he sees possibilities to collaborate with BitTorrent sites, and he said: “We are creating tools for traditional broadcasters and also new entrants to the distribution market.”
I guess we should take that as a yes.
Previously: Most Popular DVDrips on BitTorrent (wk7)
Next: Norwegian Police Deal Massive Blow to MPAA Lawyer
102 Responses (Add yours or TrackBack)
Pages: « 1 2 3 [4] 5 » Show All
agreed
*confused*
How the hell can streaming work, if most viewers are on asymetric broadband ?
Say the (hdvideo) file has a bitrate of 1200kb/s … Standard up atm here in germany is 0,5 - 1 mbit so anywhere between 120 - 240 users needed to saturate ONE viewer … (who will close the file/prog after he watched it)
[quote comment="295121"]I take it because there is government spending involved that this “new” client will have monitoring capabilities and drm facilities?
I highly doubt that a new BT client would be created (with public money no less) without the guarantee that it can’t be used for copyright infringement, it if it is then at least they’re going to know about it.
There’s no way a huge step like this would be taken altruistically.[/quote]
I’m sorry but the MPAA and/or the U.S government aren’t involved in this process.
Expect the Riaa/Mpaa dogs to start suing the EU the moment someone uploads ‘their’ stuff on the next-gen BT.
@h33t.com
I completely agree with your theory that seeding motivation comes from a sense of belonging to the community. I also think that a concern for ratios and the problem of high levels of hit and running particularly on public sites is a temporary phenomenon, because as digital sharing becomes more ingrained within society and our culture, as well as improvements in broadband technology and bandwidth, staying on a torrent and seeding will simply become a social norm.
Hit and running will become a thing of the past and seeding a torrent will become much akin to holding a door open for someone in the real world, i.e. it will become instinctual. But in the mean time the building blocks are needed to enforce this attitude in the first place, namely community orientated trackers, especially public ones such as h33t.
That’s my theory, at least.
*Hit and running and also ratios will become a thing of the past
In other news, serbia burns the EU flag.
We are very excited to announce that the Global job search engine has been released!
perfectsea.comis the first website that includes all jobs related to a lot of countries that speak English.
There are over 8 countries and/or areas jobs on PerfectSea.com. It searches over thousands job sites and provide millions jobs to our customers.
We use total automatic Robot technology to collect tons information from website, do analysis. So perfectsea.com provides the unique job search environment to our customers, let
them have a place to search all jobs in the world. This is one site solution.
Let people just come to one website and search the job, whatever where the job is, what kind of job the user wants.
Job seeker can get great benefits from it. People don’t need to go to different website for looking for job. This is one stop solution.
Perfectsea.com will change the way people looking for the job
Sounds nice, but i sense a trap, this has FBI monitoring and drm finger prints over it. nice concept though.
The fact that Britain pays 1 million pounds an hour into the ESF (European social Fund) is dispicable, The fact that your then going to use that money not on education not on health care and not on poverty but a new bit torrent client that can stream videos… what the fuck is wrong with you, we have streaming websites youtube/google and we have bittorrent clients, so this is 100% pointless i would never touch anything from you scum fucks, give us all back our sovrignty and FUCK OFF AND DIE YOU SCUM FUCKS
15 references to this post
Pages: « 1 2 3 [4] 5 » Show All
Add your response