If you haven’t heard, BitTorrent is the new Napster, with the advantage of actually scaling bandwidth for popular downloads automatically (that’s the non-technical explination). The downside is that it’s not anonymous and you are only allowed to download what you are willing to upload. The upside is that it’s fast and easy to use for those familiar with P2P. And to make it even better, now BitTorrent is available in a clever, bite-sized download from BannedMusic. They’ve come up with a system that effectively installs a 3mb version of BitTorrent, and then automatically searches and downloads a particular piece of software (or file). The effect is that visitors to your website get a seemless file download through a distributed network without bothering with searching. More bandwidth, less hassle, less cost. Good resource. Of course BannedMusic and others use this system for linking to music files that may or may not be copyrighted, and it is still an open question whether this sort of linking represents a violation of the DMCA — or if it is whether the DMCA is constitutional. Of course even linking to banned music might be a violation of DMCA, and even mentioning DMCA in the same sentence as BitTorrent could also be, especially if I mention the EFF as well…I should shut up know before I get into trouble.
Hardware Beyond the Hype