Bram Cohen: I really enjoy making products which I personally want to use, and like to empower people to do things they couldn’t do without BitTorrent’s efficiency and reliability. I also enjoy working with my team. We’ve recruited a really talented group of engineers from the P2P community and the tech industry, as well as some of the best business people in Silicon Valley. Together, we’re taking BitTorrent to new heights while still remaining true to our original goal of delivering content to the masses.

TorrentFreak: How do you see the future of BitTorrent Inc, what will its core business be?

Bram Cohen: We have two core businesses. We have a content delivery service to power websites which have downloadable and streaming objects on them, and we also have an entertainment destination at BitTorrent.com which will allow consumers to both publish and download high-quality digital content. Professional publishers have licensed over 5,000 downloadable video, music and game files, some of which will be free, and some for rent or purchase. We expect our network to be very prominent and an extension of our well-known brand.

TorrentFreak: Are there still “puzzles” that need to be solved to improve the BitTorrent protocol?

Bram Cohen: I had lunch with Vint Cerf at Google last week, and we discussed this at length. BitTorrent is a mature protocol at this point, but there are still a number of interesting things to work on. For example, improving tit for tat, making seeding optimizations for enterprise use, and trying to figure out if there’s any good use for error correcting codes. Regarding that last one, it turns out that there are, but most of the academic work has been barking up the wrong tree. We also have a great testing environment built, so we can test the impact of protocol extensions on real, live swarms, which is critical when making enhancements that benefit the BitTorrent community at large.

TorrentFreak: More and more ISPs have started to throttle BitTorrent traffic. How do you feel about this, especially related to the upcoming BitTorrent video store?

Bram Cohen: ISPs have historically thought that all P2P traffic is illegal, which most definitely is not the case today. Identifying traffic as BitTorrent versus http is a very poor proxy for determining legal versus illegal. Even more so as content creators have begun using our self-publishing service to distribute their own work and major studios have signed up because they recognize the enormous potential of BitTorrent as a sales channel.

Legal traffic is growing within the P2P ecosystem and piracy also travels with HTTP and FTP in high volumes. ISPs have to invest in making their networks better and faster rather than stifling applications which consumers use and love. That’s just bad marketing and customer service, especially given the competition which exists in the broadband industry and consumer focus on network neutrality. For instance, in Japan and Korea, consumers currently enjoy true all-you-can eat symmetric fiber-to-the-home at 100 mbps. That’s a great environment for P2P development to make the Web a truly powerful medium for on-demand media, with broadcast economics. Of course, it also leads to the question: Why is the United States two generations behind?

TorrentFreak: What would you advise BitTorrent users to do, when they find out that their ISP is throttling BitTorrent traffic?

Bram Cohen: Switch. Competition is the best thing for the consumer. If you’ve got a couple of options, try the alternatives. If you have no alternatives or both alternatives suck, call customer service. And call them a lot. It turns out that angry customers are more expensive to ISPs than providing unadulterated access to popular applications and websites.

TorrentFreak: The mainline client now supports encryption, but there are no settings to control this (correct me if I’m wrong). Does this mean that the client encrypts all transfers?

Bram Cohen: No. The mainline client accepts incoming encrypted connections, but makes unencrypted outgoing connections by default. We added support for that primarily for our users in unfriendly ISP environments. As I’ve said before, protocol encryption is at best a temporary hack around ISP rate limiting, until identification techniques are put in place which use transfer patterns rather than packet inspection to identify traffic. There are better approaches to evade traffic shaping, although we’re still trying to work productively with ISPs, who own the network after all. But if we can’t find a way to work together to provide a better experience for BitTorrent users, then the arms race will begin.

TorrentFreak: You said before that you’re not a big fan of encryption. What would you suggest as an alternative?

Bram Cohen: I say just leave things in the clear, and try to use caching technology to improve the ISP network. Or better yet, ISPs should lay more fiber and build bigger pipes.

The so-called ‘encryption’ of BitTorrent traffic isn’t really encryption, it’s obfuscation. It provides no anonymity whatsoever, and only temporarily evades traffic shaping. There are better approaches to obfuscation, and I’ve got a great team of engineers who are quite eager to fight that battle, but I’m hoping that everything can be resolved amicably without getting into a serious arms race.

TorrentFreak: What was the main reason behind the acquisition of uTorrent?

Bram Cohen: uTorrent has both an impressively clean codebase and large user community, although we were already working on our own C++ implementation. Moving forward, you’ll see announcements related to BitTorrent being embedded on silicon and on non-PC hardware thanks to the new C codebase we have (based on uTorrent and our protocol extensions).

TorrentFreak: Are their plans to remove any of the present features uTorrent has?

Bram Cohen: No, uTorrent users are quite happy with it, and we wish to keep things that way. In fact, be on the lookout for a Mac and Unix port, which we have the resources to do thanks to the size of our engineering team.

TorrentFreak: What will happen to the mainline client in the future?

Bram Cohen: Our mainline extensions and uTorrent’s will converge. However, we are still committed to offering an open source BitTorrent reference implementation.

TorrentFreak: Will the uTorrent client be integrated into the BitTorrent Video Store?

Bram Cohen: We’re going to launch our entertainment network with support for whichever BitTorrent client the user wishes to install.

TorrentFreak: Can you give us any details on the pricing of the products in the BitTorrent Video Store, and the quality of the video files?

Bram Cohen: We haven’t announced any firm pricing yet. The video quality will be the best possible with the available codecs. In addition to being a “store,” our site will be a destination for publishing and discovering digital entertainment, and will have plenty of free files in addition to the pay ones.

TorrentFreak: You said before that some of the content from the video store will be “protected” by Windows DRM. What is your personal view on DRM, do you see other, more user friendly alternatives?

Bram Cohen: Right now most of our content partners are insisting on DRM for the content we’re making available. It’s causing an awful lot of headaches, but we’re trying to minimize the impact on user experience and support.

TorrentFreak: Over the past year we’ve heard quite a lot of rumors about the arrangement between BitTorrent and the MPAA. Can you tell a little more about the nature of this agreement?

Bram Cohen: We support keeping copyright infringing material off of our site, and have deals with most of the MPAA member companies to make their content available through our entertainment network. The MPAA is actually a lot less of a hive mind than many people think. We’ve had to negotiate individually with each member company regarding business deals. We don’t currently have any investment from any of them.

TorrentFreak: Several other BitTorrent sites like mininova.org and torrentspy.com have the exact same policy, and remove infringing material whenever they are asked to. Though, they are often seen as the bad guys. The MPAA even sued torrentspy and isohunt, and refuses to start a dialogue, while they index the same torrents and bittorrent.com does. What’s your opinion about this?

Bram Cohen: It’s easy to make the mistake that thinking the exact letter of the law is all that matters in such situations. I have no legal opinion of what mininova and torrentspy are doing, since I’m not familiar with the exact details. But being antagonistic will result in predictable outcomes, regardless of how well defended one thinks one is legally.

TorrentFreak: Due to the arrangement with the MPAA most people might think that most of the content they search for on bittorrent.com is legal. However bittorrent.com does index a lot of copyrighted work. Don’t you think this might confuse some of the users of the site?

Bram Cohen: We’re cooperating to get copyrighted work out of our search index, and when our new site launches, much more emphasis will be placed on the self-published and licensed content within our own index, instead of the general Web search.

TorrentFreak: In March the MPAA urged the Swedish government to take down the site because it is linking to infringing material. bittorrent.com indexes the torrents from thepiratebay.org , a site that is often referred to as “Pirate Heaven”. Has the MPAA ever asked BitTorrent Inc to stop indexing The Pirate Bay?

Bram Cohen: The focus of takedown notices has primarily been on particular pieces of content, not so much where they came from.

TorrentFreak: Is there a future for BitTorrent in the development of streaming online content. For example, would it be possible for video streaming sites like YouTube to use (a modified version of) BitTorrent?

Bram Cohen: Yes, we’ve developed a streaming version of BitTorrent. Stay tuned for more details around the middle of this year.

TorrentFreak: BitTorrent is slowly starting to replace the video recorder, especially among younger people. Popular episodes of TV shows like LOST are downloaded (illegally) more than 500,000 times in just one week over BitTorrent. These figures clearly show the potential that BitTorrent has, and it’s an indication that TV as we know it is about to change. Do you think BitTorrent Inc can play a role in the future of TV? And what kind of product or business model do you think could compete with these pirated shows?

Bram Cohen: Our new site will launch with thousands of movies and TV shows, so yes, we clearly have a role in the future of video. As far as competing with the piracy experience, the better consumer experience we provide, the less people will feel the need to rely on piracy. To do that, we’ll be providing an extensive and valuable catalog of content at a good price. In the future, we’ll expand into free, ad-supported content as an integral part of our site. We’re also going to give independent publishers a platform to distribute, promote, and ultimately sell their own content as part of that experience.

TorrentFreak: If you look back at the past 5 years, what is the thing you’re most proud of?

Bram Cohen: Looking back at the past 5 years, I can still say that I’m proud of getting BitTorrent to work in the first place. When I first started working on it, nobody knew whether it was possible to overcome all the logistical problems of handling a flash crowd. It was challenging, but not only did I get it to work at all, but got it to work extremely efficiently. More recently, I’m proud of being part of the team that has worked hard to convince content publishers and enterprise businesses that unlike other p2p architectures, BitTorrent is a legitimate and incredibly powerful tool for content delivery.

TorrentFreak: Thanks for taking the time to answer these questions!

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

p2pnet: Hi, Bram. I know you must be up to your ears in alligators and I really appreciate you taking the time out to answer these questions, particularly since I realise some of them are a little on the thorny side.

p2pnet: Did you ever think BitTorrent would take off in quite the way it has?

Cohen: I’ve run out of answers to give to that question. Yes? No? Maybe?

p2pnet: When was the very first time you actually saw what was to become BitTorrent as a workable application?

Cohen: It first had the current user interface in early 2002. It first transferred files with the current protocol format and not for testing in late 2002.

p2pnet: If you could travel back in time, is there anything you’d change about the BT technology?

Cohen: A few little things, for example some protocol extensions which we’re about to unveil which are the way things should really have been done to begin with, but in terms of what the pieces are and how they interact, I think I did it right.

p2pnet: How does it feel to realize that not perhaps, but definitely, your children will read about you in the history books as someone whose invention quite literally changed the face of the Net and world comunications?

Cohen: My children seem happy with me just as daddy.

p2pnet: What achievement, or achievements, are you most proud of?

Cohen: I’d say getting BitTorrent to be such a compelling tool that publishers started using it, despite massive political pressure not to. The Linux distro torrents were quite amusing until the Linux distros got sick of being humiliated and started doing them themselves.

p2pnet: What kind of computer equipment do you use?

Cohen: Currently, an IBM laptop running Ubuntu. It’s okay, but playing video files is quite busted.

p2pnet: What’s you favourite piece of software?

Cohen: That’s rather like asking what one’s favorite type of weld is. People use software to get stuff done, not for the sake of playing with software. The exception is games, but I haven’t had much time for game playing lately.

p2pnet: What’s your personal favourite piece of code?

Cohen: You mean of my own? I generally want to rewrite everything after it’s been around for a while, so it’s hard for me to get too excited about any one thing. The merge code I wrote recently is rather nice though, since it’s simple enough that people can experiment with it and try out variations, while historically merging has been so difficult that it’s almost unapproachable.

p2pnet: You use Ubuntu. So what do you like about it?

Cohen: Uh … it’s less likely to get hacked than windows?

p2pnet: Would you recommend Ubuntu to anyone (or everyone : ) ?

Cohen: Not until it plays all video properly out of the box and has a good working UI for selecting wireless networks. Both of those work poorly on windows too though.

p2pnet: If not, what would you recommend?

Cohen: Flint tools rarely have such problems.

p2pnet: What kind of music do you listen to, and where do you get it?

Cohen: I haven’t had much time for music lately. In my early 20′s I bought close to 1000 CDs, which are quite eclectic in style, but I did used to listen to a lot of industrial music.

p2pnet: What’s your favourite, and least favourite, movie?

Cohen: Someone asked me what my favorite movie was a few years ago, and I said Blade Runner, and she said Everybody says Blade Runner, and asked for a different movie, so I guess the right answer is Amadeus. As for least favorite, that’s hard to say, so many things are unwatchably bad.

p2pnet: What was the very first computer you ever had and where did it come from? And what did you use it for?

Cohen: A Timex Sinclair in 1980. I used to write little programs in basic to make it crash, for example by poking into random parts of memory or doing an infinite recursion.

p2pnet: How old were you?

Cohen: Five.

p2pnet: Can you remember the first program you ever wrote? And how old were you then as well?

Cohen: The first substantive program I even wrote was when I was 12, and it played connect 4, written in Promal on my Commodore 64. I wrote a simple board evaluation algorithm and alpha-beta pruning. It could stomp me quite thoroughly.

p2pnet: Putting BT to one side, which do you think is the most significant commercial p2p application out there at the moment?

Cohen: In terms of a commercial entity publishing their own content, there isn’t a significant competitor to BitTorrent protocol, nor is there a need for one. That problem has been solved.

Ap2pnet: And on the indie p2p side, what impresses you the most?

Cohen: There’s been some interesting work on DHTs.

p2pnet: What would you think about replacing BitTorrent trackers with virtual trackers in a DHT network?

Cohen: A tracker is both more reliable and lets you get statistics about distribution. The reasons to not use one are for (massive) scaling and reliability, which are rarely ever a problem. We do have a DHT protocol though, and it works quite well.

p2pnet: You’re the co-founder of CodeCon. Are you still involved?

Cohen: Yes, I still run the program committee and emcee parts of it.

p2pnet: If you could get the people who run BearShare, Blubster, eDonkey, LimeWire, Morpheus and Warez (in alphabetical order ; ) around a table, what would you say to them with respect to their ongoing troubles with the major labels and movies studios?

Cohen: Uh, stop running warez networks?

p2pnet: And if you could do the same with the Big Four record labels, Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG, and the Big Six studios, Time Warner, Viacom, Fox, Sony, NBC Universal and Disney, what would you say to them with respect to their apparent impasse with the p2p application developers?

Cohen: We’re already talking to all of those entities, and they’re being quite reasonable.

p2pnet: Do you think the current corporate wholesale pricing structure of, so I’m told, 60 to 85 cents for each digital file is reasonable?

Cohen: There are a lot of things which can be a ‘digital file’. We’re going to see considerable evolution of pricing models over time.

p2pnet: As a father, what do you think of the RIAA’s practice of naming children in p2p file sharing subpoenas?

Cohen: I’m not sure what you’re referring to, and of course am not involved in suing anybody.

p2pnet: Do you think people who share copyrighted files are criminals and thieves, as the RIAA and MPAA say they are?

Cohen: It certainly is illegal.

p2pnet: You’ve been very quiet about your brother’s departure from your company? Are you able to say what happened to make him leave?

Cohen: No.

p2pnet: Ashwin Navin is BitTorrent president. How, where and when, did you meet him?

Cohen: We had a friend in common, and met in 2004.

p2pnet: Whose idea was it for BitTorrent to move into the corporate world?

Cohen: I’d wanted to set up a commercial venture for a while.

p2pnet: Before you actually became involved with the entertainment industry, were you ever seriously threatened with court action?

Cohen: Nope.

p2pnet: Did you start the dialogue with the MPAA?

Cohen: They called me first.

p2pnet: If you were approached by the association rather than the other way around, who initially contacted you?

Cohen: Dean Garfield.

p2pnet: How much time have you actually spent with Dan Glickman?

Cohen: I’ve met him in person several times.

p2pnet: Do you and he still talk to each other?

Cohen: I don’t personally talk to him regularly, but people from BitTorrent talk to people from the MPAA on a routine basis.

p2pnet: What kind of discussions are you currently having with the RIAA?

Cohen: Take down processes and future online sales.

p2pnet: Do you believe a time will eventually come when a genuine accord will be reached between the major movie and music companies and their customers?

Cohen: Not sure what you mean. They’re quite happy with their paying customers.

p2pnet: What would you say to someone who’s contemplating launching a music/movie download site?

Cohen: Get licenses.

p2pnet: What would you say will be the three most significant developments for p2p between now and 2010?

Cohen: It’s hard to say what will happen in networking generally, but clearly everything will be dominated by bandwidth price plummeting and throughput going through the roof.

p2pnet: Do you have any new, personal projects in mind, and if you do, what are they?

Cohen: I’ve been working on a new generation of Codeville’s merge algorithms lately, and they’re going to be available for several other version control systems.

p2pnet: What does the future hold for BitTorrent?

Cohen: We’ve got our Allegro release of the client with tons of performance enhancements you can’t find anywhere else coming out, and are going to start making video available on the web site.

p2pnet: Finally, I’ve asked a lot of questions, but I’d also really appreciate it if you’d use this to express any thoughts or comment on topics which haven’t been covered here.

Cohen: We’re expanding BitTorrent.org to be a common meeting ground for all client developers, so there’s a coherent place where discussions of protocol development take place. A bunch of new documentation is going up there soon, and we’re getting other client developers involved.

p2pnet: Cheers! And thanks. And all the best …

P2Pnet

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Dr Michael Geist has become a power in Canada and much further afield when it comes to matters centering on Net issues in particular, and free speech and the freedom of the Net in general.

Born and raised in Toronto and the proud father of “three great kids” (7, 5, and 2), he’s the University of Ottawa’s Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law, a position he’s held since 2003. Before going to U of O seven years ago, he was at a long list of law schools including Columbia Law School in New York, Dalhouse Law School in Halifax, Canada, Cambridge University in England, and Kobe University in Japan, where he was doing graduate work and some teaching.

His editorial output is prolific. He produces numerous professional publications and writes for Canada’s Toronto Star and Ottawa Citizen, and England’s BBC, and p2pnet is proud to regularly run his columns. He’s also on the director and advisory boards of several internet and IT law organizations including the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, the dot-ca administrative agency, the Canadian IT Law Association, and Watchfire.

The former chair of a global Internet jurisdiction project for the American Bar Association and International Chamber of Commerce, Geist is regularly quoted in the national and international media on internet law issues and has appeared before government committees on e-commerce policy.

Obviously, with a work-load such as that and three lively children, he doesn’t have much in the way of free time but when he does, he’s a big sports fan who, although he’s an Ottawa Senators season ticket holder, is also a “a die-hard Toronto Maple Leafs hockey fan”. And when he gets the chance, he takes in “a fair amount of music” on his iPod, “in addition to a growing list of podcasts.”

One of his favourite bands is Green Day, and he’s also a Springsteen fan.

“I really like Pandora for listening to new stuff,” he says. “I buy music on Apple iTunes and also download occasional stuff. Frankly, most of my P2P downloading tends to be torrents of video files of recent lectures or other video content.”

BitTorrent is his application of choice for downloads.

Do you think Canada will ever be in the same situation as the US where even young children will become CRIA (Canadian Recording Industry Association of America) victims? – we asked him in the Q&A below.

“I hope not,” he says.

p2pnet: You’ve become a virtual spokesman for copyright common sense not only in Canada, but in other parts of the world. Is this something you deliberately set out to achieve?

Geist: No, not at all. My focus has traditionally been on Internet issues and I’m very active on privacy, spam, Internet governance issues. The growing attention to copyright merely reflects its critical importance to the Internet and to creativity and culture more generally.

p2pnet: Does the role sit well with you?

Geist: I think there are a lot of people who do great work in this area. I’m fortunate to have some platforms to speak out and educate – such as a regular newspaper column and my blog. These are issues that have not gained significant awareness in the past and I’m happy to help change that.

p2pnet: How much real influence do you think the entertainment and software industries have over decisions made in Ottawa and elsewhere?

Geist: Enormous influence – they’re clearly one of, if not the single most successful lobbying concern worldwide as their influence extends internationally, nationally, and even at the local levels. In Ottawa, I think that policy makers are genuinely interested in hearing all perspectives. Once their work turns into a bill, however, we’ll see the power of the lobby come to the fore.

p2pnet: Do you think they have undue influence? If so, should it be curbed, and can it be?

Geist: They certainly have far more resources than any other stakeholder group. I think it is essential that other stakeholders – particularly those who represent the public interest – receive active support so that their views are heard.

In the US, there are many groups (EFF, CDT, Public Knowledge, ACLU, EPIC, IP Justice, etc) that work in the area.

We don’t have nearly that kind of support in Canada as I think CIPPIC, the public interest technology law clinic that I helped establish at the University of Ottawa, is one of the only similar groups in Canada.

p2pnet: Is it acceptable for elected politicians to accept benefits from the entertainment and software industries, and to so obviously (and actively) represent their interests against those of their constituents?

Geist: No. That issue sat at the heart of my very public fight with former MP Sarmite Bulte. These are tough issues and I think it is critical that the process be both fair and seen to be fair. When you have MPs in decision making positions, they shouldn’t be seen to be aligning themselves with any single stakeholder group. It was for that reason that I proposed the copyright pledge. It didn’t say that politicians couldn’t take money from lobby groups – only that they couldn’t take the cash and then directly influence policy by sitting as Minister, Parliamentary Secretary, or on the relevant House of Commons committee.

p2pnet: Have you ever been approached to work with, or for, any of the entertainment or software companies?

Geist: I talk with many groups and companies all the time. While we may disagree on certain issues, the complexity of copyright is such that your opponent on one issue, may be your ally on another.

p2pnet: Are you able to sit down and have a reasoned, and reasonable, discussion on copyright and other related issues with the people who make the corporate decisions?

Geist: I am. There are some people who don’t want to talk, but they’re in the minority.

p2pnet: Is it acceptable for the purely commercial labels, studios and software houses to so easily use, and be an integral part of, police and other agency raids and enforcement operations the industries themselves usually initiate?

Geist: I think true commercial piracy – the sort where commercial operations churn out infringing software or DVDs for sale and profit – is obviously wrong and the law should be used to stop such activities.

p2pnet: Is copyright ‘crime’ a crime at all?

Geist: I think it’s fair to say that the commercial piracy described above is a crime. I don’t think that the non-commercial copying that we see on P2P networks falls into that category, however.

p2pnet: Would you agree that if the software and entertainment companies were to use p2p technologies for handling and distribution, a reduction both in counterfeiting and duplicating and in costs associated with physical product would follow?

Geist: I think P2P represents a tremendous commercial opportunity for those groups. I think it has the potential to reduce distribution costs. I’m not sure that it would have an impact on commercial counterfeiting.

p2pnet: Should the cartels be allowed to have a definite presence in schools and universities via their so-called ‘educational’ programs?

Geist: I think it’s up to the schools to ensure that their students gain a balanced perspective on these issues. Educators wouldn’t tolerate commercial messaging in other areas and shouldn’t here either.

It’s essential that educators take that role seriously by educating their students on the full range of copyright issues including their user rights to use works without prior permission.

p2pnet: Do you believe people who share files with each other online are ‘thieves’ and ‘criminals’ as the CRIA, et al, claim?

Geist: No.

p2pnet: Is file sharing really “devastating” (to quote the CRIA claim) the music industry and its various elements ?

Geist: I don’t believe so. I’m sure it has some impact, but it’s hard to know precisely what that impact is as there’s some evidence that the impact is positive, not negative.

Regardless, the decline in sales that the major labels have experienced in recent years is almost certainly about a host of issues that have little to do with P2P, including more consumer entertainment choices, pricing, changes in the retail distribution of music, the decline of radio, and the releases being brought to market.

p2pnet: Do you think the wholesale price of between 60 and 80 cents for a single Big Four digital file is fair?

Geist: I don’t know. In an open market, the market would set the price. Obviously people like NY Attorney General Eliot Spitzer are skeptical that the market is truly functioning appropriately without unlawful and anti-competitive interference.

p2pnet: Does a download equal a lost sale?

Geist: No. I don’t think anybody would argue that it does. Even the Copyright Board of Canada has valued a downloaded song as a lesser value that the CD version for purposes of the private copying levy.

p2pnet: Are file sharers and counterfeiters equally and jointly responsible for entertainmment and software industry downturns, as the CRIA and other trade-cum-PR units suggest repeatedly?

Geist: I don’t think file sharers and counterfeiters should be equated – there is a significant difference between the two.

As for industry downturns, I’m not sure that those industries are making those claims. For example, the video game software industry is enjoying enormous growth, while the movie industry is experiencing terrific revenues from DVD sales and other new licensing opportunities.

p2pnet: Should parents he held responsible under the law for something their children may, or may not, have done?

Geist: Well, certainly not for something their children didn’t do.

The better question is whether we should hold anyone liable to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages for P2P activity. I think not – statutory damages provisions should be amended to address this misuse of the law.

p2pnet: Do you agree that blogs and bloggers are replacing the traditional media as disseminators of news and information?

Geist: I’m not sure they’re replacing traditional media, but they are obviously having an enormous impact on the dissemination of news, opinion, and information. I think blogs often provide more timely, more informed analysis that you will find in the mainstream media and thus either replace or complement MSM coverage.

I also think that we’re seeing a growing convergence between the two – newspapers are starting to look a lot like blogs – take the redesign of the Globe and Mail as an example.

p2pnet: Do you think they’re having, or will have, an influence on what the labels, studios and software makers do?

Geist: I think bloggers are having an influence on all aspects of society, including public policy and corporate decision making.

p2pnet: Do you think Canada will ever be in the same situation as the US where even young children will become CRIA victims?

Geist: I hope not.

I’m hopeful that Canada can develop a model that benefits all stakeholders and does not resort to damaging litigation that serves no one’s best interests.

p2pnet

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Today p2pnet’s Alex H did an exclusive Q&A with with uTorrent’s Ludvig Strigeus:

Alex H: Last time we spoke you guys had just released uTorrent 1.1.4. Now you’ve just released uTorrent 1.5. How far has uTorrent come with the 1.5 release? What’s new?

Ludde: uTorrent 1.5 is a significant release that’s a big milesone for us. The new major changes in 1.5 are support for Protocol Encryption (i.e. Message stream encryption) and Peer Exchange (a feature that lets peers interchange peers with each other, and reduces the need for a working tracker, it makes BitTorrent more distributed). A lot of work has also been spent on optimizing the downloading speeds, uTorrent should now download much more efficiently than before.

In combination with this, a new algorithm for optimized disk accesses has been implemented. Previous versions would hit the disk much more often, while the new automatic disk cache tries to minimize this.

The time between releases, a whopping 2 months, is the longest time ever in uTorrent’s history. This shows that 1.5 is really a big change compared to 1.4 (The number of changes is well over a hundred), and we’ve worked to perfecting it down to the smallest detail.

Other notable things that have been added since 1.1.4 (when you last interviewed us) include:

* RSS Reader: Allows uTorrent to automatically fetch releases (such as TV-shows) as soon as they are released. This helps uTorrent to become a better content-on-demand platform, since it will automatically help users download the content they need. A nice RSS tutorial can be found on the webpage for the users that are unsure about how RSS works.

* Unicode support: The same executable can be used both in Unicode mode (windows 2000 or later) or in ANSI compability mode (windows ME or earlier). This is a quite unique feature for native Win32 programs. Unicode is a relatively new universal way of representing characters inside the computer, which means that uTorrent is compatible with foreign torrents (such as those with chinese filenames), while still being able to run properly on old platforms. Support for old platforms like Windows 95 is an important goal for us, not because the user base is there, but it shows that we care about how the application performs for all users.

* Mainline-DHT: This was added in uTorrent 1.2. It means Distributed Hash Table, and is a nice technology that really minimizes the dependency on the tracker. DHT allows uTorrent to receive peers through a distributed network of peers, so the tracker is not needed.

We’ve come a long way since 1.1.4, now uTorrent is really one of the serious contenders in the BitTorrent scene. We concentrate on adding mainstream features that are easy to use, and benefit the majority of the user base, and thus uTorrent is geared towards both normal users and “expert” users that know the inns and outs of their computer.

Alex H: Who makes up the uTorrent team now?

Ludde: The uTorrent team consists of:

* Ludvig Strigeus (ludde) – Sole uTorrent Developer
* And some of the most notable members of the uTorrent community:
* Giancarlo Martínez (Firon) – Support technician and my right hand.
* Timothy Su (Ignorantcow) – Website designer
* Maciej Trebacz (mav) – In charge of translations
* Carsten Niebuhr (Directrix) – Working on the upcoming webinterface
* Ludovic Arnaud (Ashe) – Working with website efficiency/admin frontend

Then there are a bunch of other people hanging around in the IRC channels/Forums helping people and helping me.

Alex H: uTorrent worked with Azureus to develop the Message Stream Encryption specs. What does it do and how does it do it?

Ludde: It is basically an encrypted wrapper around the BitTorrent traffic. This makes it a lot harder for Internet Service Providers to block or throttle the BitTorrent traffic, as they can’t determine as easily if the traffic really is BitTorrent. Blocking is obviously of interest to them, since it has been estimated that at least 30% of all Internet traffic is BitTorrent.

All data packets are encrypted with a key generated at run time, so there is no way for a 3rd party to observe what kind of files that are being transmitted by just analysing the packet stream. However, characteristics of the BitTorrent protocol, such as packet sizes, or the fact that a client connects to a large number of peers, can still be used to infer that BitTorrent activity is going on, so the encryption is not a universal solution.

Alex H: Can the PHE specifications work with other protocols, or is it a BitTorrent-only thing?

Ludde: It was designed to be as general as possible, and to not be dependent on BitTorrent, so it can (in theory) be used to encrypt other protocols. Just like SSL can be used to encrypt other things than HTTP.

Alex H: What was it like collaborating with rival developers? Was it just “Team uTorrent” and “Team Azureus”, or were there other individuals involved too?

Ludde: We are not really “rival developers” even though we work on “competing” clients. I have a healthy relationship with the Azureus team and we’re cooperating openly. My goal is not to destroy Azureus. I want to provide a lightweight alternative to Azureus for the people that believe that Azureus’s requirements in terms of CPU/Memory are too high.

Alex H: Last week Slyck.com published a story that revealed a deal between a company called PeerFactor and Ludvig Strigeus, uTorrent’s developer. How does uTorrent fit into this? Is Ludde working for the “dark side”? Have you sold out as some people are claiming?

Ludde: I can’t believe how much this deal has been blown up. The whole hysteria started with the Slyck.com article saying that uTorrent is cooperating with RetSpan and working with Anti-P2P organizations. Later the article was updated because that statement was factually incorrect. Yet I believe a large number of users still have doubts about uTorrent’s legitimacy.

The deal as such is not even about uTorrent. I will provide the company (PeerFactor, a startup company started in late 2005), with a small DLL-file that can be used for one thing only – Downloading files from BitTorrent network. The deal is not between uTorrent and PeerFactor, and it does not affect uTorrent. I’m just using some of my expertise to help them develop an application that webmasters can use to publish big content on their websites. I don’t even give out any source code.

I can’t show you our agreement, but uTorrent is not even mentioned in our deal. There are no mentions of any Anti-P2P ideas, and PeerFactor owns NO rights to the BitTorrent code. The deal is just between me (Ludvig Strigeus) as a developer and PeerFactor. It’s not related to uTorrent at all. The license has no malicious intent towards P2P users, and it does not affect uTorrent in any way. The contract explicitly states that they can only use it for the designated purpose, and not for anything else such as monitoring P2P users.

Alex H: Who was at the meeting with PeerFactor?

Ludde: I have not even met anyone in person, I havn’t even talked to them on the phone! All our communication has been on e-mails and IRC. This is not a big contract. It’s just a small side project to try to get some payment for the effort involved in writing a BitTorrent protocol stack.

Alex H: What does this .dll file do exactly?

Ludde: The DLL file component that I have exports a few basic functionalities such as

* Start downloading a torrent
* Stop it
* Pause
* Remove it
* Determine how many % was downloaded.

It contains no functionality whatsoever for retreiving IP-addresses of peers.

The DLL file wasn’t written specifically for PeerFactor. It’s a generic download DLL with a small size/footprint that I have developed as a separate project. I just made some minor adjustments so it would meet PeerFactor’s requirements.

Alex H: Do you know, or can you speculate on what PeerFactor plans to do with the .dll?

Ludde: The goal is to use unused bandwidth of Internet users to distribute big files, like trial games, free trial music and trailers. It is not related to fake files.

Alex H: How is the deal structured? Is it a straight sale or a lease? Is there some kind of royalty payment to Ludde?

Ludde: It’s a 6-month lease. PeerFactor will evaluate if the DLL fits with their requirements. No source is involved, and all ownership to the code belongs to me. I have not been paid anything, but if the service turns out to work, I will get some form of payment. I don’t have an employment contract with PeerFactor. I do not work for them, and they do not have control over any decisions I make related to uTorrent.

Alex H: PeerFactor has ties to French anti-P2P company RetSpan. Is there still a relationship there?

Ludde: No, the person I’ve been in contact with has assured me that there is no relationship at all between PeerFactor and RetSpan. I trust him, and if it turns out that there is a connection, I will not work with them.

Alex H: The uTorrent website was put on a block list a few days ago. How did it happen? Is there anything on the uTorrent website that is a security risk for users?

Ludde: These blocklists are created by a bunch of over-paranoid people (Bluetack). The software PeerGuardian has temporarily handed over list creation to Bluetack, and Bluetack prefers to be better safe than sorry. Their decision was based on incorrect facts, and it will take some time before the block gets removed.

Alex H: There is a certain level of mistrust directed at closed source applications like uTorrent. Why is the uTorrent source code not available? Will uTorrent ever be open source?

Ludde: There are no plans to make uTorrent open source. If uTorrent becomes open source, it will result in hacked clients, or companies modifying the code and creating malware clients. If uTorrent is closed source, I can make sure that the quality of uTorrent stays high and that it doesn’t become a bloated client. Further, it makes sure that the source code is not used by dubious companies or for dubious purposes.

Alex H: Is there anything in the uTorrent source code that would be considered a security risk to users, such as a “phone home” component or something that builds up a profile of the user?

Ludde: Not at all, uTorrent has an optional feature (enabled by default) that sends a unique random ID number when checking for new updates. This is used solely for the purpose of computing how many users that are actively using uTorrent. Azureus does the same thing, so it’s nothing special really. A lot of internet-enabled programs do this without even telling the user. With uTorrent you have the option to turn it off if it’s of concern to you.

Alex H: uTorrent is free, but donations are accepted. What other kinds of work have you done to make ends meet? Is there anyone you would refuse to work for?

Ludde: Working with an Anti-P2P company is certainly not a good idea, considering my interests in making the best BitTorrent client. I would not do that. Apart from that, I don’t know. I will have to evaluate any possible offers and see if they match with what I think is fair and makes sense.

Alex H: I asked a similar question to this in our previous interview: How do you see BitTorrent developing over say, the next three years?

Ludde: This is a very hard question to answer. I definitely believe P2P is here to stay. I think ISPs will get a bigger role and start developing solutions to help P2P instead of working against it, for example cache mechanisms. I like the new law in France that legalizes P2P, and I hope that more countries will follow.

I think we’ll start seeing BitTorrent more in embedded devices, such as set-top boxes. More services will be developed around BitTorrent to distribute legal content, and subscription based services such as high quality movies-on-demand instead of renting DVDs in the rental store.

Alex H: Thanks for your time, and good luck for the future.

Ludde: Thanks.

P2Pnet

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.