The Commercial Future of Torrrents

acrid_k writes "Yahoo is covering a story from SiliconValley.com entitled BitTorrent moving uptown. From adding Ask Jeeves content in search results to investigating use of torrents for sharing bandwidth for paid downloads, the future is looking both more restrictive and more commercial. You have to wonder about a crucial part of the equation: why would internet users share their bandwidth to benefit media companies?" From the article: "BitTorrent already has struck deals with video game publishers to distribute games with its technology. Cohen's bid to commercialize BitTorrent is a measure of how far the entertainment industry has come since the late 1990s, when Napster introduced millions of people to the power of peer-to-peer technology for downloading songs -- and mobilized scores of lawyers to shut it down."

Article wrong

[afay]

From the article:

It helps that Cohen never cast himself as an anarchist who bragged that his technology would vanquish the old entertainment industry. He has gone out of his way to castigate those who use BitTorrent for piracy.

Or not...

From his homepage [archive.org]:

I build systems to disseminate information, commit digital piracy, synthesize drugs, maintain untrusted contacts, purchase anonymously, and secure machines and homes.

Re:I support it totally!

[Kanon]

WoW still uses BT. It just uses a custom client that's very, very shit.