Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from How
Speaker 1: Stuff Work stof Haylor and Welcome to tex Stuff. I'm
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland and I'm and today we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about torrence and how they work. And we actually Chris
Speaker 1: and I did an episode about torrance well well well
Speaker 1: into the past, but it was worth updating and talking
Speaker 1: about because we're gonna be talking about some other torrent
Speaker 1: related stuff in the near future. So we wanted to
Speaker 1: kind of lay the groundwork and explain what exactly is
Speaker 1: torrenting and how does that that technology actually work and
Speaker 1: and why is there so much controversy around it. But
Speaker 1: to start off, we kind of need to talk about
Speaker 1: just how you would typically get a file, right, how
Speaker 1: how files are transferred period at all? Under so the
Speaker 1: normal process, yeah, by either by by any of the
Speaker 1: protocols that you would use over the internet, be the
Speaker 1: FTP or HTTP that's file Transfer protocol or hypertext Transfer
Speaker 1: protocol excellent acronyms. So traditionally, your your computer, which in
Speaker 1: this scenario we call the client, is going to contact
Speaker 1: a a host computer a server in order to to say, hey,
Speaker 1: I want that thing exactly. Yeah, whether that thing is
Speaker 1: a web page. So if your web browser can be
Speaker 1: a client. Yeah, that thing could be a web page.
Speaker 1: That thing could be a music file, it could be
Speaker 1: a movie file, it could be uh an email. It
Speaker 1: all depends on the people content, right that that you
Speaker 1: want to get. Um. The server would then send the
Speaker 1: file to your computer according to whichever protocol you are using, right,
Speaker 1: And it's using the basic set of rules that we
Speaker 1: all know from the Internet, the idea of everything's in packets.
Speaker 1: Those packets travel through different routes and then they get
Speaker 1: reassembled on your computer. But yeah, it's essentially a one
Speaker 1: to one relationship, right, I'm asking the server to send
Speaker 1: me something, the server send something to the client. Done, done,
Speaker 1: and you know, and the speed with which this can
Speaker 1: happen depends on the amount of traffic on the server
Speaker 1: the size of the file. Yeah. So let's let's boil
Speaker 1: this down to an analogy. Alright, So, Lauren, you are
Speaker 1: a server, I am, yes, So now you have entered
Speaker 1: into the uh the service industry. You are a server
Speaker 1: in a coffee shop. Okay, you serve terrible at that job.
Speaker 1: But let's let's imagine Lauren, that this is a reality
Speaker 1: where you're not terrible at your job, you're actually pretty good.
Speaker 1: You can serve up to three people simultaneously, so amazing,
Speaker 1: but only three people and uh, and the amount of
Speaker 1: time it takes you to produce the order for the
Speaker 1: customer depends upon what they ordered, like what size of it,
Speaker 1: and how complicated is the drink. Obviously these things will
Speaker 1: factor into how long it takes you to prepare it.
Speaker 1: But you can still handle up to three. But then
Speaker 1: there's a rush, right like, uh, I don't know, there's
Speaker 1: some hipster band is in town and everyone needs their coffee,
Speaker 1: so they all rushed the coffee shop at the same time.
Speaker 1: And now you've got twenty people asking you to make
Speaker 1: very complicated drinks, but you can only serve three at
Speaker 1: a time, and these drinks are getting progressively more complicated
Speaker 1: and larger. Things start to slow down, so that person
Speaker 1: who's you know, seventeen people back, feels like they're waiting
Speaker 1: forever to get a coffee, and they're thinking, what's the
Speaker 1: big deal. It should only take It's just a coffee,
Speaker 1: You should just take two minutes. I should be in
Speaker 1: and out in two minutes, and instead I've been sitting
Speaker 1: here for fifteen minutes. And the lines barely moved. That's
Speaker 1: the same thing we experience with this traditional approach. If
Speaker 1: you're talking about a single server hosting a lot of files,
Speaker 1: a lot of clients contacting the server for the files,
Speaker 1: and those files are big, it just means that things
Speaker 1: can get bottlenecked and slow down. So there were some
Speaker 1: different approaches to trying to figure out how to make
Speaker 1: this uh more streamlined and put. One way is to
Speaker 1: just increase broadband speed. Right, So, essentially, if you're talking
Speaker 1: about the Internet being a series of tubes, that's it.
Speaker 1: It's a bigger, bigger, longer tubes. Yeah, bigger tubes and
Speaker 1: more tubes. Yeah, those are your two choices, right. You
Speaker 1: make them bigger so that you can shove more stuff
Speaker 1: through the tubes, or you make a lot more of
Speaker 1: them so that there are new ways for it to
Speaker 1: pass through. But you're still kind of ball necked by
Speaker 1: the the server itself and how quickly it can respond
Speaker 1: to requests. Sure, so if this approach is really slow,
Speaker 1: then one alternative is to distribute a file across a
Speaker 1: network so that you have lots of different options when
Speaker 1: you need to get that file. Right. So, in this instance,
Speaker 1: instead of saying that Lauren is the only person who
Speaker 1: can serve coffee within a twenty mile radius. And that's
Speaker 1: why we're all kind of uh, you know, up the
Speaker 1: creek when we walk into the coffee shop and we
Speaker 1: see there's fifteen people ahead of Instead, we have a
Speaker 1: coffee shop on every corner and across the street from
Speaker 1: each other, and next door to one another. Their coffee
Speaker 1: shops everywhere. So really I just have to walk into
Speaker 1: any coffee shop and I really just stand in the
Speaker 1: middle of the street and show coffee and someone will
Speaker 1: bring one. So that's that's kind of the idea of
Speaker 1: the peer to peer network. In this sense, you have
Speaker 1: some form of software that allows you to connect to
Speaker 1: a distributed network where when you participate in this network,
Speaker 1: you're essentially giving permission to access part of your hard drive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you just set aside a little folder on your hard
Speaker 1: drive that is okay for this program to access, and
Speaker 1: then everyone else who is running the same program also
Speaker 1: has folders set up. Hopefully they have stuff in them, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Because one thing you could do is you can set
Speaker 1: up this folder and then immediately move stuff out of
Speaker 1: the folder, and then you're leaching. That's the term, right right.
Speaker 1: It's it's considered a faux pause in sharing circles just
Speaker 1: because you're you're not putting anything back out into the community. Right.
Speaker 1: So with peer to peer, let's say you've got this
Speaker 1: folder that's designated as a shared folder, and when you're
Speaker 1: connected to the software, anyone who's also connected the software,
Speaker 1: when they're searching for a specific file, it your file.
Speaker 1: If you happen to have that file within your folder,
Speaker 1: you come up as an option to connect to download
Speaker 1: from your computer. Now, the problem with peer to peer,
Speaker 1: it solves one issue, right. The one issue is that
Speaker 1: if you go with the clients server uh model, then
Speaker 1: you are limited by the server. Like if the server
Speaker 1: is the only machine out there that has an existing
Speaker 1: version of this file, then that's the one destination you
Speaker 1: can go to, and you are stuck with whatever problems
Speaker 1: that might have. In peer to peer, you're adding more tubes,
Speaker 1: but you're not making them any bigger. Right, So in
Speaker 1: other words, like I could you know, if we're going
Speaker 1: back to our coffee shop, example, and we have these
Speaker 1: coffee shops everywhere, I can walk to the coffee shop
Speaker 1: that's closest to me, but there's no guarantee that that
Speaker 1: coffee shop won't have the world's slowest server, or you know,
Speaker 1: like that someone who's just they they are very meticulous
Speaker 1: about the way they make their coffee, or there might
Speaker 1: be two or three people in front of me at
Speaker 1: that coffee shop and I have to wait for them. Anyway,
Speaker 1: it gives me more options. It does not necessarily mean
Speaker 1: it will be faster, and the really good software will
Speaker 1: identify the person with the best connection who has that
Speaker 1: file exactly yes, So that way it gives you the
Speaker 1: best chance of having a smooth transfer. And it's also
Speaker 1: good to note that this creates more stability when you're
Speaker 1: trying to get a file. So the other big issue
Speaker 1: with the old clients server approach is that if that
Speaker 1: server suffers a problem, if it goes down for some reason,
Speaker 1: power outage or whatever, then you're stuck. You know, you
Speaker 1: don't you do not get that file. And if you
Speaker 1: were trying to download a big file and it was
Speaker 1: maybe seventy of the way done and the power goes out,
Speaker 1: there's a chance that file could get corrupted in the
Speaker 1: process and then you have to start all over again, right,
Speaker 1: which was a real bummer when peer to peer was
Speaker 1: was really big back in the early two thousand's, like
Speaker 1: late nineties, um, because you know, it was about that
Speaker 1: modems that could that could handle broader band than fourteen
Speaker 1: four speeds became available for consumer purchase. And after that,
Speaker 1: you know, when when people started getting connected to the
Speaker 1: ethernet was really when Peter Pierre happened. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: you you were able to you know, one of the
Speaker 1: downsides is that traditionally, with most Internet service providers, your
Speaker 1: upload speed is a fraction of what your download speed is. Right.
Speaker 1: The reason for that is that ages ago, when companies
Speaker 1: began to offer Internet service, they looked at the broadband
Speaker 1: that they had available, like the bandwidth they had available
Speaker 1: to the size of the tubes. Essentially, they're saying, all right,
Speaker 1: here's here's what we are capable of delivering to our customers.
Speaker 1: How are we going to determine how much is down
Speaker 1: link versus uplink? And then they said, well, you know,
Speaker 1: probably people aren't sending stuff up to the Internet that frequently.
Speaker 1: They're mostly trying to consume stuff pull stuff down. This
Speaker 1: was before we were uploading millions of years worth of
Speaker 1: YouTube videos every second. Yeah, this was this was back
Speaker 1: when that was not even a consideration. So the idea
Speaker 1: was that, well, you know, we can just make it
Speaker 1: fraction upload speeds will be a fraction of download because
Speaker 1: you there's nothing as frustrating really as sitting down. Well
Speaker 1: this is probably that's that's exaggerating, but it's very frustrating
Speaker 1: to sit down and try and get at some sort
Speaker 1: of content online and then just see either a buffering
Speaker 1: thing or a loading screen and it just goes on forever.
Speaker 1: If you're talking about the old old days of the Internet,
Speaker 1: there's nothing like trying to look at a picture of
Speaker 1: something and watch it slowly load pixel line by pixel line,
Speaker 1: and you're just thinking, I have no idea what I'm
Speaker 1: looking at. I won't know for another forty five minutes.
Speaker 1: I would I would like the record to state that
Speaker 1: I just used I just gestured at Jonathan to help
Speaker 1: you guys understand what he was talking about and exactly
Speaker 1: how ineffective that was. That was a great visual representation
Speaker 1: on an audio podcast. Yeah, so you know that this
Speaker 1: approach meant that we suddenly had all these other options,
Speaker 1: this peer to peer approach, and this is the way
Speaker 1: a lot of those file sharing services back in the
Speaker 1: day worked because lime Wire, Napster, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: They well, yeah, it's all about let's find people who
Speaker 1: have the stuff you want and connect this create a
Speaker 1: connection directly to them. Yeah, so it almost becomes like
Speaker 1: a direct phone line in a way, where the connection
Speaker 1: is between the host computer and your computer, so you
Speaker 1: can get the file and then of course once you
Speaker 1: have the file, your computer can become a potential host computer.
Speaker 1: So now an improvement on that was bit torrents approach, right,
Speaker 1: and I think it will be really interesting to get
Speaker 1: into the intricacies of how bit torrent works. But before
Speaker 1: we do that, let's take a quick break. Let's get
Speaker 1: back to the show. Alright, we're back, and Lauren, you
Speaker 1: alluded to bit torrent. Now, this was a totally different
Speaker 1: approach in the sense that it was someone coming up
Speaker 1: with the idea of how can we make these download
Speaker 1: speeds faster, not just more reliable so that I have
Speaker 1: more options, but how can I get the stuff I
Speaker 1: want faster, particularly if it's a really large file, you know,
Speaker 1: and if you're if you're like Jonathan said earlier, if
Speaker 1: your internet connection is maybe not the best and something
Speaker 1: cuts out somewhere that you won't lose all of the
Speaker 1: progress on downloading a file you had already made. So
Speaker 1: this was the idea of a programmer named Bram Cohen. Now,
Speaker 1: Bram Cohen had worked for several dot com startups that
Speaker 1: never really took off, and they just kind of failed
Speaker 1: over and over, and he really wanted to work on
Speaker 1: something that worked. That was a big ambition of his
Speaker 1: understandable And in two thousand one he was also getting
Speaker 1: really irritated by these problems we're talking about the slow
Speaker 1: download speed of large files. He liked the idea of
Speaker 1: the peer to peer network, but he didn't care for
Speaker 1: the execution. So in two thousand one he begins work
Speaker 1: on a new protocol. Now we've used the word protocol
Speaker 1: several times in this podcast, just to remind you. A
Speaker 1: protocol really is just a set of rules. It's kind
Speaker 1: of a kind of a seven instructions for a computer
Speaker 1: to follow. So he designed a protocol that he called BitTorrent. Now,
Speaker 1: this was an attempt to solve that connection problem um
Speaker 1: and the speed problem at the same time. So you know,
Speaker 1: peer to peer adjusted the connection. He wanted to do
Speaker 1: speed as well, So how do you do that? Well,
Speaker 1: his approach was to create this protocol that would allow
Speaker 1: files to be distributed in pieces, and as you receive
Speaker 1: a piece, you are also able to upload that piece
Speaker 1: even before your file finishes downloading. So I might have
Speaker 1: a file that's at twenty seven percent as it's slowly downloading,
Speaker 1: that is completely available for other people on the network
Speaker 1: who are also trying to get that file. You could
Speaker 1: also get pieces of these files from multiple sources, so
Speaker 1: as long as everyone had the same file, then you
Speaker 1: could get, you know, a piece here and a piece there.
Speaker 1: So imagine that everyone has at least some part of
Speaker 1: a five piece puzzle, and one person down the street
Speaker 1: is giving you pieces uh one through twenty seven, and
Speaker 1: someone on another side of the street is giving you
Speaker 1: pieces forty three through fifteen, and you're just getting You're
Speaker 1: getting the whole puzzle, but you're getting them from different
Speaker 1: locations all at the same time. It's like it's like
Speaker 1: if everyone in that in that coffee house street has
Speaker 1: a cup of coffee and you just kind of run
Speaker 1: down and they all pour a little bit into your cup. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's similar to that, except except with less like gross
Speaker 1: spittle contamination. And also there's a pretty design at the top.
Speaker 1: I don't know how they managed that while you running
Speaker 1: down the street like a crazy person, but you know
Speaker 1: they're talented, that's all. So he was thinking like this
Speaker 1: would be the way of solving this problem of slow
Speaker 1: download speeds. Now, he did not necessarily go about testing
Speaker 1: this in a very scientific, scientific PC way. Did you
Speaker 1: see how he tested Okay, folks, here's how he tested it.
Speaker 1: He collected a batch of freely available pornographic material and
Speaker 1: then invited beta testers to see about getting hold of
Speaker 1: this stuff using the bit torrent protocol. Stay classy, Cohen,
Speaker 1: But now he figured that this was kind of a
Speaker 1: sure fire away. And because it was freely available stuff,
Speaker 1: it wasn't like it wasn't copyright. I didn't have to
Speaker 1: worry about running into problems with torrent systems have having
Speaker 1: fact run into lots of copyright issues. We'll talk about
Speaker 1: that towards the end of the show. You know, that's
Speaker 1: that's a that's a totally different discussion. But yeah, he
Speaker 1: he wanted to try and test it out, and apparently
Speaker 1: that wasn't considered a terribly auspicious beginning. But he eventually
Speaker 1: did launch a working version of bit torrent for the
Speaker 1: general public in October two thousand two. Now two years
Speaker 1: later in two thousand four, he had a five person
Speaker 1: company working on a search engine that would work alongside
Speaker 1: his protocol. So he designed the protocol, but one of
Speaker 1: the issues people were running into was how do you
Speaker 1: find the torrent files which are pointer files. I'll talk
Speaker 1: about them a little bit more in a second. How
Speaker 1: do you find these files that then facilitate the downloading
Speaker 1: process when you're you're actually using the bit torrent software
Speaker 1: and this is by a tracker server. Right, So he
Speaker 1: created he worked with this five person company. Actually, this
Speaker 1: five person company worked for him to create the search
Speaker 1: engine that would look for these torrents to help make
Speaker 1: this process work more smoothly. Uh. He was also then
Speaker 1: looked at by a little company called Valve. Yeah, so Valive.
Speaker 1: Valve is thinking, you know, we want to do a
Speaker 1: downloadable distributed network approach for our games. We want to
Speaker 1: have this ability to deliver games to our users that
Speaker 1: is fast and reliable and doesn't put a lot of
Speaker 1: pressure on our own servers. Right, we don't that way,
Speaker 1: we don't have to build out a whole data center
Speaker 1: just to support this. This model, this distribution model, so
Speaker 1: they contacted Cohen and they hired him to work on
Speaker 1: a platform that we now call Steam. Cohen was one
Speaker 1: of the people who helped build that program out, and
Speaker 1: it was all because they saw what he was doing
Speaker 1: with bit torrent, and they said, that's the approach we
Speaker 1: want to take. And in fact, Valve and Blizzard are
Speaker 1: two companies that use bit torrent for a perfectly legitimate
Speaker 1: means of distributing their files. It's a good time to
Speaker 1: just mention there's nothing illegal about torrent files. No, no,
Speaker 1: it's it's just a matter of distribution. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like if you were to say, yeah, but you can
Speaker 1: get illegal material that way. You can get illegal material
Speaker 1: through the mail, But you wouldn't say that means we
Speaker 1: should shut down the postal service. You might say we
Speaker 1: should shut down the postal service for other reasons, but
Speaker 1: not for that one. And same sort of argument you
Speaker 1: could use for bit torrent, like to say, let's get
Speaker 1: rid of bit torrent because some people are sharing illegal files,
Speaker 1: even lots of people sharing illegal files, doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: the tool itself is wrong, right. The technology itself can
Speaker 1: be used for lots of really cool things like yeah,
Speaker 1: like like letting people like Valve put games up online
Speaker 1: without having to buy giant servers, or independent artists put
Speaker 1: their music online, right right, Yeah, And there there are
Speaker 1: a lot of reasons there their entire you know, whether
Speaker 1: it's software or video files, music files. You know, there
Speaker 1: are a lot of reasons why you would want to
Speaker 1: take this approach. And uh, one of the big ones
Speaker 1: is that it, like you said, it takes the strain
Speaker 1: off the provider. Right. So, if I'm a small business
Speaker 1: or an artist, an independent artist, I might not have
Speaker 1: the resources available to me to create a dedicated server
Speaker 1: where people can come and download stuff, especially if I'm
Speaker 1: having to pay lots of fees to maintain that. And
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, you know, for example, if you
Speaker 1: post some music to your personal website and uh, Neil
Speaker 1: Gaiman or Will Wheaton link it on Twitter, and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, you're completely overwhelmed. This, by the way,
Speaker 1: is a complete invitation for both Will Wheaton and Neil
Speaker 1: Gaiman to tweet about our podcast. We would love that.
Speaker 1: That would be gorgeous. Um. But yeah, so I wouldn't
Speaker 1: even know what to do with myself. I would probably
Speaker 1: totally flip out. No, I would totally flip out. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't probably there. There's no probably there. But yeah, in
Speaker 1: two thousand five, already by this time, okay, the bit
Speaker 1: torns only three years old from when it officially launched.
Speaker 1: Even by then, Hollywood had taken notice and was not
Speaker 1: terribly happy. Yeah, the Motion Picture Association of America and
Speaker 1: also the Recording Industry Association of America. That's um, the
Speaker 1: m P A A and the R double A R
Speaker 1: I double A is is like that's music. Essentially an
Speaker 1: m P A is film. Uh So m P A A.
Speaker 1: UH in particular was concerned because the bit torrent protocol
Speaker 1: did make moving large files much easier, which meant that
Speaker 1: suddenly people were able to upload and download large files
Speaker 1: like rips of films. They take a DVD and ripped
Speaker 1: the film from the DVD and then share it and
Speaker 1: you would get illegal copies. Or if you were working
Speaker 1: on a digital film and you were part of a
Speaker 1: digital film production and you had access to the file,
Speaker 1: there were movies that leaked out. Um some famous instances
Speaker 1: of movies that leaked out before they had even hit
Speaker 1: the theaters where people were getting hold of pirated copies,
Speaker 1: and Hollywood was really taking him a bit torrent, even
Speaker 1: though again, as we said, but torrents a tool, it's
Speaker 1: not like it was specifically facilitating the illegal activity. However,
Speaker 1: on November twenty two, two thousand five, Brand Cohen had
Speaker 1: a joint news conference with the chairman of the m
Speaker 1: p A A. Dan Glickman, and announced that he had
Speaker 1: agreed to prevent his own bit torrent website from linking
Speaker 1: to torrents pointing to illegally available movies. Now, before that point,
Speaker 1: their policy was that if they were alerted to a
Speaker 1: torrent that linked to those pointing to they would take
Speaker 1: it down. So that was there, that was their policy
Speaker 1: all all along. But they said, well now we're just
Speaker 1: going to make sure that that's much more streamlined. Which
Speaker 1: if you've followed these kind of these kind of cases
Speaker 1: not just with bit torrent, but with other providers, other
Speaker 1: platforms like YouTube for example, there are examples of takedown
Speaker 1: notices that were improperly um yeah, in probably dealt with
Speaker 1: or improperly submitted people who didn't actually have the rights
Speaker 1: to something demanding they get taken down and then it
Speaker 1: gets taken down, um. And then there then there's some
Speaker 1: embarrassing ones I think Microsoft just recently issued a takedown
Speaker 1: request to itself. Yeah, so sometimes these sort of things
Speaker 1: can end up being kind of embarrassing, but he was
Speaker 1: saying that we want to, you know, we don't want to.
Speaker 1: So um, today you can find bit torrent on lots
Speaker 1: of different platforms. In fact, bit torrent today allows you
Speaker 1: to do things like produce content and then distribute it.
Speaker 1: So it's designed more now to help, like I said,
Speaker 1: the small businesses, the independent artists to create content, and
Speaker 1: then even to to enable it so it'll perform properly
Speaker 1: on things like smartphones, tablets, consoles, creating a huge distribution
Speaker 1: network that people wouldn't have had access to, you know,
Speaker 1: ten years ago. So there are many reasons why it's
Speaker 1: a very useful tool. So let's talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about how it actually does what it does now. First
Speaker 1: of all, it's open source, which kind of tells you
Speaker 1: that Cohen wasn't necessarily looking to create like a a
Speaker 1: uh multibillion dollars a commercial venture. No, he wanted he
Speaker 1: really believed in this. An open source means you can
Speaker 1: see the source code. You can go and get the
Speaker 1: source code for the bit torrent, play around with it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can change it, you can make your own product
Speaker 1: based upon it. It's open source UM. And then there
Speaker 1: are sites that house torrent files. Torrent files are not
Speaker 1: they don't have any material in them other than pointer
Speaker 1: information that will point a your software to the right
Speaker 1: destinations that will have the actual file you're looking for.
Speaker 1: It's it's a little bit like that that like a
Speaker 1: protocol that we were talking about, but just in a
Speaker 1: in a file format. It's and it's kind of like metadata.
Speaker 1: It's it'share information about the file you want, the information
Speaker 1: mainly being where you can get it. Like it's it's
Speaker 1: allowing the software that you have on your computer and
Speaker 1: when when you when you run a program to uh
Speaker 1: to to go go out and find the little pieces
Speaker 1: of this file across the internet, across the swarm of
Speaker 1: computers that contain it. That's good. Yeah, it's so. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Your basic computer that has you know, the file, the
Speaker 1: full file on it, you would call it a seed.
Speaker 1: It's a seed computer. UM. And then the swarm is
Speaker 1: all the different computers that are connect to the network
Speaker 1: that have some portion of that file and are actively
Speaker 1: downloading and or uploading that file right that are also
Speaker 1: running this This torrent sway, right, everything has to be
Speaker 1: working running the software at the same time. If you
Speaker 1: stop running the software on your computer, you disconnect from
Speaker 1: this network. You're probably you're still on the internet, but
Speaker 1: you're not part of the bit torrent network anymore. So, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the torrent file just kind of points the software in
Speaker 1: the right direction so you can get these pieces. It
Speaker 1: gives them the software the information it needs to identify
Speaker 1: and pull those those pieces of file into your computer. Classically,
Speaker 1: this is all organized by a central server called a
Speaker 1: tracker like I mentioned earlier. Um, these these days, that's
Speaker 1: it's it's a little bit um a little more complicated
Speaker 1: than that. But yeah, your classic bit torrent has a
Speaker 1: tracker server that kind of acts like a traffic driver,
Speaker 1: like it's it's the one that's making sure everyone is
Speaker 1: going to the right place. Um, and you're so, you've
Speaker 1: got your seed, you've got your swarm. You are constantly
Speaker 1: downloading as long as you're connected to this or downloading
Speaker 1: end upling as long as you're connected to this, uh,
Speaker 1: this network. The cool thing is with bit torrent that
Speaker 1: your download speeds depend upon your participation within the network. Right,
Speaker 1: you get a rank based on how many files you
Speaker 1: are allowing the system to upload from you, and and
Speaker 1: your and your actual upload speed as well, So those
Speaker 1: two things factor in. So if you are being you know,
Speaker 1: if you are altruistic and you are sharing a lot,
Speaker 1: then you can also download faster, right because your rank
Speaker 1: goes up and that means that your download speed's improve
Speaker 1: and so you don't have to wait eight hours to
Speaker 1: get you know, that music file you wanted to get.
Speaker 1: It will download in a matter of minutes maybe or
Speaker 1: or faster, depend upon your broadband speed and the speed
Speaker 1: of course of the various computers that are hosting pieces
Speaker 1: of that file. But it does mean that you go
Speaker 1: much faster than you would with your traditional peer to
Speaker 1: peer or client server relationship kind of a protocol. You
Speaker 1: end up getting the pieces of the file you need,
Speaker 1: and then once you've got all the pieces you you're
Speaker 1: good to go. So you don't have to depend upon
Speaker 1: one computer and its connection to the network. You're depending
Speaker 1: upon the entire network and anyone who has pieces of
Speaker 1: that particular file. Now, like we said, there's nothing illegal
Speaker 1: about this. This is just a distribution network. So if
Speaker 1: your file that you're distributing doesn't have any sort of
Speaker 1: copyright to it, or if it's licensed under something like
Speaker 1: creative comments that gives the person who has the file
Speaker 1: the the ability to distribute it however they like. Then
Speaker 1: there's no issue there. That's completely legal, and in fact,
Speaker 1: that might even be the intent of that content, you know,
Speaker 1: the person who made it. Maybe I want this to
Speaker 1: be shared with as many people as possible. That's why
Speaker 1: I uploaded it to the bit torrent network. Uh. However,
Speaker 1: it does also mean that it can create an environment
Speaker 1: that allows for illegal sharing in a way that is
Speaker 1: a lot more difficult to fight than the clients server
Speaker 1: approach right, Right, Because it's not located in a single place.
Speaker 1: You can't go knock on one particular person's door and
Speaker 1: say you're holding this file. Because it's spread out over
Speaker 1: so many people that exactly I can't it's a lot
Speaker 1: harder to trace back. I can't go into lawrence coffee
Speaker 1: shop and tell her that she has to stop serving
Speaker 1: this one type of coffee. If everyone around her is
Speaker 1: serving that same type of coffee, it doesn't do any good, right,
Speaker 1: same sort of thing. Yeah, So this is although I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know you could. You can make some arguments
Speaker 1: that even even the illegal portions of torrenting are beneficial
Speaker 1: in a way because you know, first of all, it's
Speaker 1: it's made the industry um create its own legal ways
Speaker 1: of distributing files the faster, you know. I I think
Speaker 1: that the direct streaming on like Netflix and Amazon Instant
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff is of direct response. I
Speaker 1: agree to torrenting. I agree. And it also means that,
Speaker 1: you know, encouraging the studios to find new ways to
Speaker 1: get content to people who who want want to buy it,
Speaker 1: let me give you my money. They're eager to participate
Speaker 1: in this. If you make it easy enough and you
Speaker 1: don't price gouge, then you're not really inspiring piracy. There's
Speaker 1: also been several surveys of varying reliability that have suggested
Speaker 1: that people who pirate stuff also tend to be some
Speaker 1: of the it's right right, which you know, people who
Speaker 1: are torrenting are probably more likely to buy things online
Speaker 1: than your average consumer anyway, because they're more computer and
Speaker 1: internet savvy to begin with. But but you know, but
Speaker 1: the number that gets tossed around a lot is from
Speaker 1: a study by the American Assembly, which is connected to
Speaker 1: Columbia University. So it's more or less on the up
Speaker 1: and up. Yeah, this is that that's a that's a
Speaker 1: fairly reputable institution. They at least call themselves nonpartisan. They do,
Speaker 1: they do have a little bit of a liberal slant,
Speaker 1: I would say, but um, but they found that UM
Speaker 1: peer to peer file share users purchase more music online
Speaker 1: than non peer press. And then of course there's also
Speaker 1: the argument that a lot of these organizations make the
Speaker 1: m p A and r I double A is that
Speaker 1: UH stolen property UH directly translates to lost revenue. And
Speaker 1: we've seen multiple studies, including studies that were specifically UH
Speaker 1: funded by the government. You know, there were government agencies
Speaker 1: that looked into this to see how much, how how
Speaker 1: much in damage is really is caused by piracy, and
Speaker 1: the conclusion is that you cannot come up with a
Speaker 1: number because you cannot say for certain that someone who
Speaker 1: pirates something would have purchased that something had they not
Speaker 1: had access to the piracy software, and furthermore, that they're
Speaker 1: not going to go out and purchase it afterwards, that
Speaker 1: they weren't trying before they bought it. Right, So in
Speaker 1: both cases, you don't know if they went out and
Speaker 1: bought it anyway, and you don't know if they would
Speaker 1: have bought it. So without knowing those two factors, you
Speaker 1: can't say that this actually cost anybody anything. And and
Speaker 1: you know, it's not like a physical copy of something,
Speaker 1: where if I walk into a store and I shoplift,
Speaker 1: that store is out a physical piece of inventory. When
Speaker 1: you download a digital file, you're making a copy of something.
Speaker 1: The original version of that file is still on a
Speaker 1: person's computer somewhere else, so it's not like they have
Speaker 1: lost that. So with all of these factors, it really
Speaker 1: means it's so complicated that we cannot put an actual
Speaker 1: dollar amount. Not that that has stopped anyone from doing
Speaker 1: so when creating massive lawsuits against either a company that
Speaker 1: creates the software or the users of that software. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: And we we will talk a little bit about that
Speaker 1: in a future episode that you'll hear probably in just
Speaker 1: a couple of days, because I think we're recording get
Speaker 1: immediately after we finished this one. Yes, we're talking about
Speaker 1: specific right. Um. My favorite unofficial study, by the way,
Speaker 1: is an anecdote on the effects of purchasing and and
Speaker 1: free downloads was when uh Neil Gaiman in his publisher,
Speaker 1: which I believe in this case is HarperCollins, um put
Speaker 1: up a copy of American Gods for free and just
Speaker 1: just free ebook download. Go do it, people, And I
Speaker 1: don't think it's up anymore. I might you might not
Speaker 1: be able to find it. I could have just lied
Speaker 1: to you tremendously. But they had. They had a free
Speaker 1: copy up for a certain period of time, and sales increased,
Speaker 1: definitely increased, like appreciably increased in the immediate future after
Speaker 1: it was that. I will say that, um there, you know,
Speaker 1: And I've told this story several times in the past,
Speaker 1: so you know I'm comfortable telling it again. Uh. The
Speaker 1: you know, I I definitely was one of the people
Speaker 1: who downloaded something outside the realm of the law. Because
Speaker 1: I downloaded a television show that was made in England
Speaker 1: that was not available in the United States. There was
Speaker 1: no way for me to purchase it legally. Not that
Speaker 1: that justifies illegal behavior. It doesn't. So I'm still in
Speaker 1: the wrong, you know, I'm still in the wrong for
Speaker 1: doing it. But I downloaded Space, the show that Edgar
Speaker 1: Wright and Simon peg And and several other people did,
Speaker 1: and uh, and I loved it, but you know, there
Speaker 1: was no way for me to legally get it in
Speaker 1: the United States at that time. As soon as it
Speaker 1: became available, as the day that it came out on DVD,
Speaker 1: I went on purchase it because I loved it, I
Speaker 1: wanted to support it, and I wanted to have a
Speaker 1: really good copy of it. UM. That's another reason that
Speaker 1: things that like the studio backed stuff is getting more popular,
Speaker 1: because the quality tends to be better and you don't
Speaker 1: have to worry about like about malware packages usually unless
Speaker 1: the DRM is also malware. Sony, I'm looking at you,
Speaker 1: UM much better recently, by the way, but you know
Speaker 1: that that CD thing still sticks in my craws. I
Speaker 1: think even classically though that I mean, you know, this
Speaker 1: conversation is reminding me of you know how you used
Speaker 1: to go to NERD conventions and they would have all
Speaker 1: of these illegal Hong Kong VHS tapes of various UM
Speaker 1: did Battle Royal that way. But I thought that as
Speaker 1: soon as it came available to and and I think
Speaker 1: that similarly that really that kind of underground black market
Speaker 1: VHS sort of thing, aside from inciting nostalgian people of
Speaker 1: a certain age, really pushed movie companies to say, oh, hey,
Speaker 1: there's there's a reason like there's a reason for us
Speaker 1: to publish this in America, people in other countries outside
Speaker 1: of their original origin. People love this. There is a
Speaker 1: market for it. We can you know, if we provide
Speaker 1: it and we price it properly, we will make money.
Speaker 1: Like That's that's the lesson that a lot of these
Speaker 1: companies have learned. Uh. And people can argue that, you know,
Speaker 1: these are things that various industries have had to learn,
Speaker 1: uh in a staggered amount. So like the music industry
Speaker 1: learned it first, and now the book industry also because
Speaker 1: with the books that definitely raised it. But as broadband
Speaker 1: speeds have improved for the common users. Yeah, so so
Speaker 1: it's interesting. I mean, and again, you know, BitTorrent is
Speaker 1: just a means of distribution. You don't necessarily have to
Speaker 1: have it be something where you're pirating movies and tv
Speaker 1: um um there there is a little bit of a
Speaker 1: fight back. As of April, mccaffee had patented a system
Speaker 1: that identifies pirated content and can prevent users from downloading
Speaker 1: it by um either blocking it entirely depending on how
Speaker 1: you set up the software. UM it's it's through side advisors,
Speaker 1: So depending on how you set up side advisor. It
Speaker 1: would either block the software entirely, um or block the
Speaker 1: download entirely I'm sorry, or just give you a little
Speaker 1: pop up window that says, hey, it looks like you're
Speaker 1: trying to use a torrent file that is torrenting illegally
Speaker 1: copied material. Do you really want to do that? Maybe
Speaker 1: here's some legal alternatives that you could use to download
Speaker 1: that that on the up and up for money you
Speaker 1: give to the creator. I kind of wonder how John
Speaker 1: McAfee would feel about that. He's, of course the guy
Speaker 1: who who founded that company, and then we did a
Speaker 1: whole podcast about him. He crazy, he's uh, he is
Speaker 1: a character. Yeah, he's to have more character than a
Speaker 1: Tolstoy novel. Alright. So yeah, guys, I hope you enjoyed
Speaker 1: this discussion about bit torrent and torrent technology in general.
Speaker 1: It's really an interesting innovative way of getting around that
Speaker 1: speed problem. And uh, and it leads us into a
Speaker 1: discussion about a particular website that we will talk about
Speaker 1: in our next podcast, which I don't want to give
Speaker 1: it away here, I'll just say y anyway, Uh, if
Speaker 1: you have any suggestions for if you your topics that
Speaker 1: we should cover here on tech Stuff, Send this an
Speaker 1: email let's know our addresses tex stuff at Discovery dot com,
Speaker 1: or find us on Facebook or Twitter. You can do
Speaker 1: that by looking for the handle tech stuff hs W
Speaker 1: because that's us and we'll talk to you again really soon.
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