BitTorrent Search: A Bit Dodgy, a Bit Cool

Bram Cohen, the beekeeper of Internet swarms, directs his attention to widening the avenue of BitTorrent, his own revolutionary P2P protocol into an expressway of mass-transited file sharing. Within the next two weeks, Cohen plans to release a BitTorrent based search engine, cavorting with former Yahoo! strategist Ashwin Navin. While Cohen dotes on his software with dewy-eyed, white-gloved purity, expounding on the virtues of free speech, easy publishing, and the ability to quickly and efficiently download large files, the e-secticide wielding entertainment industry, especially the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America, finds itself swatting at the swarms of pirates eating away at its profits. They attempt to take out the pirates, nest by nest, but the impending BitTorrent search engine will make it that much more difficult to find them by utilizing a new feature that eliminates the need for torrent trackers. Locating trackers, or readily marked centralized files, were the key method for anti-piracy efforts. The decentralized, trackerless search engine may prove to be the conditions for a swarming piracy infestation on the net. The new search engine will make it ridiculously easy to find anything you want for free. The original BitTorrent software, developed by Cohen in college dropout genius fashion "on a laptop in [his] living room using off-the-shelf-tools," now accounts for 35% of all Internet traffic. Before its birth into the World Wide Web, large video and audio files were time consuming and difficult chores. What made BitTorrent an incredible innovation was the elegance of design that played off a file's popularity. BitTorrent uses a division of labor technique, breaking up large files into pieces and then splitting the download between users. More people trying to download a specific file meant more people to divide the bulk of it, causing a faster download of large popular files than obscure smaller files. And hence, the "swarming" metaphor. The BitTorrent search engine will have the added power of advertising, using a model provided by AskJeeves. Though Cohen has always insisted his efforts were not-for-profit endeavors based upon giving penniless artists the opportunity to publish their wares without a reliance on market-driven publishing entities, it would seem that the level of revenue a search engine such as this will generate was all too enticing. It's potentially a