OVER THE EDGE October 24 - November 7, 2007 UNBC Goes Back to Hic h School MirrcHen. Granr, PHoro Epiror Students from § Mackenzie Sec- ondary school were down on 5 the 16th to take a tour of our fine campus and sit in with some of the profs and campus support staff. Bitlorrent Announces Legitimate Service JEREMY JOHNSON Sarr WRITER - BitTorrent is often defined as a popular P2P protocol that is used to get pirated content. It’s not entirely true, given that the technology is quite frequently used as a means for pub- lishers like vidcasters and podcasters to distribute free content throughout the internet without having to burn through any- where between hundreds to hundreds of thousands of dollars in bandwidth fees. Whether it is being used as a legitimate source of content or a source of unauthorized content, BitTor- rent Inc. is interested in shedding its pirate reputation by going legitimate with a newly announced service called DNA (De- livery Network Accelerator). “The Internet has become an essential source of entertain- ment for everything from music, games to TV shows, and even high-definition movies. Given the rapidly growing BitTorrent network, we already have the broadcast infrastructure in place that effectively multiplies the scale of the existing Internet to handle the next wave of content distribution,” said Ashwin Navin, president and co-founder of BitTorrent, Inc. “Imple- menting BitTorrent DNA on top of legacy infrastructure has the profound impact of allowing our customers to deliver a better user experience, higher quality video, faster software downloads, all with the security and reliability of a managed service.” “Internet TV started with short videos on websites, but the next step is to move seamlessly from contextual video into full-screen, full-length programming,” said Jeremy Allaire, Brightcove chairman and chief executive officer. “BitTorrent DNA addresses fundamental technology challenges associat- ed with high-quality media delivery online, and by integrating it into a new offering in our Internet TV service, we can give our content publishers the option to easily deliver full-screen, broadcast-quality streaming video to their viewers.” While DNA may be new, going legitimate isn’t. Almost exactly one year ago, BitTorrent inked deals with 20th Cen- tury Fox, G4, Kadokawa Pictures USA, Lionsgate, MTV Networks (including COMEDY CENTRAL, Logo, MTV: Music Television, MTV2, Nickelodeon, Nicktoons Network, SpikeTV, The N, TV Land and VH1), Palm Pictures, Para- mount Pictures and Starz Media. Unfortunately, selling con- tent with DRM (Digital Rights Management) proved to be lit- tle more than a novelty at best for many file-sharers, many of whom flocked to alternative clients such as Azureus, BitLord, BitComet and uTorrent. The alternative clients’ existence is all thanks to.the open source nature of the mainline client and the protocol itself. Thus, no reverse engineering or hacking is required to actually make an alternative client, just good knowledge of computer programming — specifically Python. With the two sides of BitTorrent now more prominent than ever, one may wonder how this came to be. Did BitTorrents designer see money and flee to it? Unlikely. Since BitTorrent Inc. is based in the US, one only has to look at the situation within the United States itself to get a better picture. The most infamous and oldest case was the Napster case where a 1999 lawsuit led to its demise in 2001. In 2005, Grok- ster, as a result of the famous MGM vs Grokster case, was also shut down. Also in 2005, the eDonkey2000 client (not the network which still exists and is connectable via eMule) was forced offline. In the same cease and desist order, and in the same year, WinMX creator FrontCode Technologies shut down the official WinMX server. Patches and hacks have since kept the client and network alive. In 2006, BearShare was also shut down due to a settlement. Note: Kazaa was a case in Australia, not the US. The only large client left operat- . ing within the US other than BitTorrent is LimeWire who have been under tremendous pressure including congress trying to hold the creators liable for sensitive data leaks over the Gnu- tella network. They have also been on the receiving end of a cease and desist order, but many argue that the clients exist- ence today is mainly thanks to the source being opened up and released online. Added to that, Streamcast, the company behind Morpheus, also experienced a major blow with the decision by a US Dis- trict court to issue a permanent injunction on their operations (meaning, a court has ordered the client to be permanently taken offline). : With all this legal pressure, causing the US file-sharing cli- ent development scene to be decimated, it is little wonder why BitTorrent Inc. has been so friendly to the copyright industry in the first place. It’s not really because they wanted to, what some might refer to as, “selling out”, it’s because the alterna- tive is to be faced with legal issues with multiple cases worth of precedent. In other words, it’s more likely that they have little choice in the matter. While the copyright industry has forced BitTorrent Inc. to be on their side, it might prove interesting to see where they will take the client next. It is true that the commercial success of BitTorrent thus far has proven to be limited in the eyes of the consumer, but whether or not this latest move will prove effective — especially to the hardened file-sharer — it’! only be a matter of time before the answer is perfectly clear.