James Delahunty
14 Dec 2004 17:41
The Motion Pictures Association of America is to launch a legal attack on BitTorrent users who abuse the technology developed by Bram Cohen in 2001, to share illegal copies of movies. BitTorrent was developed to make a quicker way of spreading large files around a network. It breaks files up into little segments and users who are downloading the file are also uploading it to other users. This takes an enormous amount of pressure off a source server. A server known as a tracker keeps track of details among filesharers to help them get more sources for their file and keeps track of the amount of the file each user has.
Since BitTorrent appeared in 2001, more and more sites have popped up that allow users to share pirated files. Instead of operating like a P2P network, users download a .torrent file which contains details on the tracker and file information. The MPAA is very late in its action against BitTorrent trading. Files that are currently being shared tend to share very quickly; this has attracted millions of users to torrent sites. However, since BitTorrent sites don’t actually offer files, just torrent files, the legality of these sites is unknown.
Source:
The Register