BitTorrent, the Sleeper Killer-App
BitTorrent has turned the digital distribution world upside down. This space was controlled by the likes of real networks and Microsoft media servers alongside lots of hosting infrastructure. That’s what you traditionally needed to send lots of video, either on demand or real-time broadcasts over the Internet.
Based on P2P ideas, BitTorrent provides more than just a network, it solves the problem of distribution on a single-file level, allowing existing P2P networks and other applications to build upon the core functionality - what some call “file swarming”.
This certainly should be ranked as a disruptive technology. The killer-app aspect of it will be evident only in hindsight as we see this technology seeping into end user products. Everyone has their own printing-press capability not only for text (blogs) but now for audio (podcasting) and soon to be for video (broadcatching).
What is BitTorrent?
BitTorrent is a free speech tool.
BitTorrent gives you the same freedom to publish previously enjoyed by only a select few with special equipment and lots of money. (”Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one” — journalist A.J. Liebling.)
The BitTorrent site’s introduction does a very good job of explaining the technology, I urge you to read it in it’s entirety.
January 10th, 2006 at 8:54 pm
[…] Lessig has posted a video of a recent talk to his site that is currently being distributed via Bittorrent. Since some of you may not have a bt client, I decided to redistribute it via video.google.com which allows you to stream it, I will post that link here when it becomes available. He covers the details of his arguments for Google, and as usual, pro innovation. The industry is simply never going to create a market for the out of print books, and we may loose vital historical and cultural information should these out of print books go to waste. […]