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Bit Torrents
OK. I confess. I am ignorant about this one.
Motts commented on my latest A Ghost Is Born post with a link to the Wilco tour opener. They were called Bit Torrents. I downloaded it and got a file but I can't figure out how to play it.
The Jason Calacanis talked about working in his virtual office in Bryant Park with his headphones on listening to Howard Stern Bit Torrents.
I hate being ignorant. WTF are Bit Torrents?
May 28, 2004 in Venture Capital and Technology | Permalink
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BT is a P2P system that integrates with the web rather better than the others. See for instance suprnova.org
Posted by: Olivier Travers | May 28, 2004 7:48:29 AM
http://www.google.com/search?q=bit+torrent&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
I suppose the VC herd you run in hasn't run across this "phenonmenon" at the Yale Club, yet. ;) Good luck.
Posted by: bevonovo | May 28, 2004 9:04:29 AM
Sorry Fred, I should have been a little more explicit first time around.
I'd call BitTorrent a way of creating ad-hoc per-file (or per-directory) P2P networks. As a "seeder" you dump some... let's say... audio files... in a folder on your machine, create a small (<100k) "torrent file" which you distribute to your pals, then you and the "leechers" run the bittorrent app and pass PARTS of the files in said folder back and forth until everybody has the whole thing. BT's built-in hashing handles all this automagically so you just start it up and it runs, all the while simultaneously downloading pieces you don't have and uploading pieces you do have to needy folks in the network.
As a VC who goes to JazzFest, you should be ALL OVER THIS. Download BitTorrent (open source of course, causing religious wars about what is the "best" client but meaning it is available on all platforms and is free) and then take a scan through sharingthegroove.org -- Radiohead, Jimi Hendrix, Green Day, Iggy Pop, Yes, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Thin Lizzy, Steve Miller Band, Beatles, King Crimson, Frank Sinatra, Bob Dylan, Norah Jones, Rage Against The Machine, REM, Tito Puente, Ryan Adams, Bon Jovi, Dave Matthews Band, Built to Spill, Harry Chapin, Little Feat, KISS... and that's just on the first page right now!
Wide variety of jazz as well as other stuff can pop up from time to time, including a show from the Ben Kweller / Death Cab For Cutie tour last month you'd mentioned.
http://www.bitconjurer.org/BitTorrent/ for the author's main page.
Cheers.
-Motts
Posted by: Motts McGregor | May 28, 2004 9:44:04 AM
I should also point out that, being "ad-hoc" P2P networks the range of available torrents is constantly in flux.
http://bt.etree.org/?search=kweller&cat=0
...will show you the Ben Kweller shows that are being seeded right now on etree (another good audio BT community), but if you don't jump on it you will miss them all.
It is common courtesy to share back to the network by leaving your client running for a while after you complete downloading, so other folks have a chance to "leech" off you as you did in turn.
-Motts
Posted by: Motts McGregor | May 28, 2004 9:47:53 AM
And of course all those audio/video files are copyright free and not illegally downloaded for free?
As I anticipate that there might be some stealing going on, why should a VC be interested in such a system?
Posted by: Suspicious | May 28, 2004 11:37:14 AM
Revolutionary protocol takes pain out of sharing large files
http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/05/21/21FEinnov3_1.html?s=feature
Posted by: b | May 28, 2004 11:40:44 AM
Since people download software illegally I guess VC's should just avoid the whole software industry too?
I'd be hard pressed to name something that can't be downloaded as a Torrent, legal or illegal. I've seen TV episodes online within 60 minutes of the original airtime. Just thing about the possibilites for revolutionizng how we consume media of all types if we can ever figure out how to make all this work legally.
Posted by: Chris | May 28, 2004 11:49:45 AM
Here's a helpful link. - http://www.monduna.com/bt/faq.html#BASIC_1
Posted by: Peter Semmelhack | May 28, 2004 12:19:06 PM
I think everyone added the basics to Bit Torrent before I had a chance to get here (power of blogs).
One thing I can tell you is that in order to get good performance from BT you need to open certain ports on your firewall. So, try it and if you don't get above 10k download then open up the ports:
http://p2p.weblogsinc.com/entry/0401842428674831/
Posted by: Jason Calacanis | May 28, 2004 1:38:07 PM
Fred:
See also Ernie Miller's enthusiastic posts on what he calls broadcatching (Bit Torrent + RSS = TiVo over the Internet).
RSS is being used as a transport mechanism to get videos and commercials to ESPN.com users. But that's wasteful of bandwidth, for it send out each piece to each user (like homerunning cables in a network).
Add in Bit Torrent and you have a much more efficient peer-to-peer distribution, reducing bandwidth costs (which will matter more to citizen media creators than to big old ESPN).
Bit Torrent has many uses.
Posted by: Jeff Jarvis | May 28, 2004 5:30:11 PM
Fred:
See also Ernie Miller's enthusiastic posts on what he calls broadcatching (Bit Torrent + RSS = TiVo over the Internet).
RSS is being used as a transport mechanism to get videos and commercials to ESPN.com users. But that's wasteful of bandwidth, for it send out each piece to each user (like homerunning cables in a network).
Add in Bit Torrent and you have a much more efficient peer-to-peer distribution, reducing bandwidth costs (which will matter more to citizen media creators than to big old ESPN).
Bit Torrent has many uses.
Posted by: Jeff Jarvis | May 28, 2004 5:30:27 PM
Damn. Sorry for the double-up.
Posted by: Jeff Jarvis | May 28, 2004 5:31:21 PM
One of the qualities of BitTorrent is that it has (apparently) been explicitly architected with legitimate file distribution in mind. Where other services rely on semi-anonymous searching and downloading[1], BitTorrent requires a web site to host the torrent file[2] and most of the trackers display obvious information. The emphasis of the user experience is on downloading a known quantity rather than searching for something questionable.
Mind you, this hasn't stopped plenty of sites from hosting materials they don't own the copyrights to, but Red Hat didn't use Napster to distribute their latest OS either.
[1[ yes, it's not really at all anonymous, but the UIs generally make it look that way to the naive user
[2] yes, torrent files can be distributed in a number of other ways including mailing them around, but a web site listing is the primary vehicle these days
Posted by: Faisal N. Jawdat | May 28, 2004 10:24:55 PM
http://www.sharingthegroove.org/msgboard/showthread.php?s=&threadid=69152
Posted by: Motts McGregor | Jun 4, 2004 7:24:01 AM
Bit Torrents are amazing if your not
using a bit torrent client.Then your missin it all.Bit torrent is a way to share files
on the web via p2p.
www.torrentreactor.com
There are several different clients.
Azureus is the best d-load @ source forge.
Email me for more info
XxEmaadxx
Posted by: Emaad | Dec 21, 2004 3:45:29 AM
Just another tip for getting the best outta BT, set your upload rate to about 5KB BELOW you top upload bandwidth. eg my bandwidth is 1024Kb (128KB) download and 128Kb (16KB) upload. make sure your total upload bandwidth is not completley clogged with uploads. the nature of TCP/IP is such that a confirmation packet is sent back after downloading if it cant send this packet back because your bandwidth is used, it will attempt to download the section again. sry for the very late reply on this...
Posted by: *#10#JaMeS#01#* | Jan 11, 2005 4:39:54 AM
adult porn torrents, from xxx web sites..
Posted by: gate | Mar 22, 2005 1:53:01 AM
Shring the Groove no longer exists. Do a search for Dime a Dozen.
Posted by: Hammie | Jun 4, 2005 11:27:51 AM
Howdy. This BT stuff is intriquing, but is terribly mysterious..like the Calculus...or translating Russian. You have an elementary explanation that doesn't require a doctorate in Physics?
Also, the names of programs are less than helpful...in understanding what they are for. Thanks.
It appears that one is maybe downloading from several sources at one time..which makes for a much more efficient process. Is this anything like the truth? Egads!!
----Doc
This idea of..of something like guerrilla sharing of programs I find very appealing..and it "IS ABOUT TIME, DAMN IT!" Among other things, some of us..are poor these days..and we're more into "sharing" an trading, than ONLY the "BOTTOM LINE" B.S.
A little bit anarchistic, but sometimes that is "just what the doctor's ordered."
Posted by: Doc | Sep 14, 2005 6:37:11 PM
I use Azureus as client too and it's doing the job just fine !
Bit Torrent rule!
Posted by: luddy | Mar 4, 2006 5:15:16 AM
