Bram Cohen on BitTorrent's Future
Ace programmer Bram Cohen denies he is leaving BitTorrent — and says he's busier than ever positioning the company to totally own online video downloads. — In an exclusive e-mail interview, Cohen responds to the rumors that he is stepping down …
Context & Ripple Effects
Bram Cohen is publicly swatting down speculation that he is stepping back from BitTorrent, telling Wired by e-mail that he is busier than ever — and framing his work around a single goal: making BitTorrent the dominant channel for online video downloads. That matters because BitTorrent had already become the defining file-sharing protocol of 2005, when it hit record growth, even as its name stayed attached to piracy problems like the botnet installs documented late that year.
First-order effects
- The departure rumors die down for now, and Cohen remains the public face and technical lead of a company whose stated strategy is owning legitimate video download distribution rather than defending its file-sharing reputation.
- BitTorrent's roadmap tilts toward commercial video delivery, putting it in direct competition with the same-day news that rival client maker Azureus launched Zudeo, an HD video finding-and-sharing service that Wired framed as trumping YouTube on quality.
Second-order effects
- Azureus's Zudeo push forces the emerging legal-P2P-video market into a two-horse race between the protocol's original author and its best-known independent client developer, with studios and distributors watching which platform proves content can move over peer-to-peer pipes legitimately.
- A credible Cohen-led pivot gives rights holders a reason to treat BitTorrent as a distribution technology to license rather than purely a piracy threat to litigate against.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, P2P file-sharing firms structurally split into two camps — pirate-adjacent networks and licensed delivery platforms — and the winners of the latter will be whoever convinces media owners that decentralized transport protects their catalog instead of cannibalizing it.
The trend: Peer-to-peer file-sharing companies are repositioning from piracy-associated utilities into licensed online video delivery platforms, with founders' credibility as the deciding asset.