The fall of Napster (see Part I of this series) has left a vacuum in the world of file sharing – and as the saying goes, the Internet abhors vacuum… Various File Sharing programs such as Gnutella, Kazaa and others quickly filled the void.
In this episode, we’ll describe Grokster’s legal battle against the Record Companies, the sinister poisoning of file sharing networks by OverPeer – and the rise of BitTorrent.
Guest in this episode: Brett Bendistis, from The Citizen’s Guide to the Supreme Court Podcast!
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Credits
Penske File (demo mix) by Steely Chan
Darkness by xclntr
Sinister Pt. 2 by ¡SplastiC
I just finished listening to this episode (after listening in the past to the Hebrew version), and it seems to me that the BitTorrent analysis was missing an important part – Open Source.
The BitTorrent is an open protocol and has many open source implementations (http://www.bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0003.html). Unlike Napster – that developed the entire software stack themselves and kept it a secret , or FastTrack apps like Grokster that purchased a license to a proprietary protocol – where closing the company basically shuts down the network, even with the “server less” FastTracak, BitTorrent was always a protocol with multiple compatible applications. The media companies know that shutting down Bittorrent Inc will do nothing to stop the usage of BitTorrent for piracy, so its just a waste of time and money.