Speaker 1: Welcome to Text Stuff, a production from my Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech. And now we are
Speaker 1: going to listen to a classic episode. This episode originally
Speaker 1: aired on August twelve, two thousand. It is called how
Speaker 1: bit torrent Works. So we actually get down to the
Speaker 1: bottom of how torrents work and what's the big deal
Speaker 1: about it? And why is it so controversial? And is
Speaker 1: it at its heart illegal? All those sort of questions
Speaker 1: are the things we ask and try to answer in
Speaker 1: this episode. Hope you guys enjoy it. To start off,
Speaker 1: we kind of need to talk about just how you
Speaker 1: would typically get a file right, how how files are
Speaker 1: transferred period at all? Under so the normal process by
Speaker 1: either by by any of the protocols that you to
Speaker 1: use over the internet, be the FTP or htt P
Speaker 1: that's file Transfer protocol or Hypertext Transfer Protocol excellent acronyms.
Speaker 1: So traditionally, your your computer, which in this scenario we
Speaker 1: call the client, is going to contact a a host
Speaker 1: computer a server in order to say, hey, I want
Speaker 1: that thing exactly ye whether that thing is a web page.
Speaker 1: So if your web browser can be a client. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that thing could be a web page. That thing could
Speaker 1: be a music file, it could be a movie file,
Speaker 1: it could be uh an email. It all depends on content, right,
Speaker 1: that that you want to get. Um. The server would
Speaker 1: then send the file to your computer according to whichever
Speaker 1: protocol you are using, right, And it's using the basic
Speaker 1: set of rules that we all know from the Internet,
Speaker 1: the idea of everything's in packets. Those packets travel through
Speaker 1: different routes and then they get reassembled on your computer.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's essentially a one to one relationship, right,
Speaker 1: I'm asking the server to send me something, the server
Speaker 1: send something to the client. Done, done, and and you know,
Speaker 1: and the speed with which this can happen depends on
Speaker 1: the amount of traffic on the server, the size of
Speaker 1: the file. Yeah. So let's let's boil this down to
Speaker 1: an analogy. Alright, So, Lauren, you are a server, I
Speaker 1: am yea. So now you have entered into the uh
Speaker 1: the service industry. You are a server in a coffee shop. Okay,
Speaker 1: you served terrible at that job, alright, but let's let's
Speaker 1: imagine Lauren, that this is a reality where you're not
Speaker 1: terrible at your job. You're actually pretty good. You can
Speaker 1: serve up to three people simultaneously, so amazing, but only
Speaker 1: three people and uh, and the amount of time it
Speaker 1: takes you to produce the order for the customer depends
Speaker 1: upon what they ordered, like what size of it and
Speaker 1: how complicated is the drink. Obviously these things will factor
Speaker 1: into how long it takes you to prepare it. But
Speaker 1: you can still handle up to three. But then there's
Speaker 1: a rush, right like, uh, I don't know, there's some
Speaker 1: 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 but 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. Bigger, bigger,
Speaker 1: longer tubes, more tubes, bigger tubes, and more tubes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: those are your two choices, right. You make them bigger
Speaker 1: so that you can shove more stuff through the tubes,
Speaker 1: or you make a lot more of them so that
Speaker 1: there are a new ways for it to pass through.
Speaker 1: But you're still kind of ball necked by the the
Speaker 1: server itself and how quickly it can respond to requests. Sure,
Speaker 1: so if this approach is really slow, then one alternative
Speaker 1: is to distribute a file across a network so that
Speaker 1: you have lots of different options when you need to
Speaker 1: get that file. Right, So in this instance, instead of
Speaker 1: saying that Lauren is the only person who can serve
Speaker 1: coffee within a twenty mile radius. And that's why we're
Speaker 1: all kind of uh, you know, up the creek when
Speaker 1: we walk into the coffee shop and we see there's
Speaker 1: fifteen people ahead of Instead, we have a coffee shop
Speaker 1: on every corner and across the street from each other,
Speaker 1: and next door to one another. Their coffee shops everywhere.
Speaker 1: So really I just have to walk into any coffee
Speaker 1: shop and I can stand in the middle of the
Speaker 1: street and shout coffee and someone will bring one. Right.
Speaker 1: So that's that's kind of the idea of the peer
Speaker 1: to peer network. In this sense, you have some form
Speaker 1: of software that allows you to connect to a distributed
Speaker 1: network where when you participate in this network, you're essentially
Speaker 1: 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 pas and in sharing circles
Speaker 1: just because you're you're not putting anything back out into
Speaker 1: the community. Right. So with peer to peer, let's say
Speaker 1: you've got this folder that's designated as a shared folder,
Speaker 1: and when you're connected to the software, anyone who's also
Speaker 1: connected the software, when they're searching for a specific file,
Speaker 1: if your file, if you happen to have that file
Speaker 1: within your folder, you come up as an option to
Speaker 1: connect to download from your computer. Now, the problem with
Speaker 1: peer to peer, even it solves one issue, right, The
Speaker 1: one issue is that if you go with the clients
Speaker 1: server uh model, then you are limited by the server.
Speaker 1: Like if the server is the only machine out there
Speaker 1: that has an existing version of this file, then that's
Speaker 1: the one destination you can go to, and you are
Speaker 1: stuck with whatever problems that might have. In peer to peer,
Speaker 1: you're adding more tubes, but you're not making them any bigger, right,
Speaker 1: So in other words, like I could you know, if
Speaker 1: we're going back to our coffee shop, example, and we
Speaker 1: have these coffee shops everywhere, I can walk to the
Speaker 1: coffee shop. That's closest to me, But there's no guarantee
Speaker 1: that coffee shop won't have the world's slowest server, or
Speaker 1: you know, like that someone who's just they they are
Speaker 1: very meticulous about the way they make their coffee, or
Speaker 1: there might be two or three people in front of
Speaker 1: me at that coffee shop and I have to wait
Speaker 1: for them. Anyway, it gives me more options, it does
Speaker 1: not necessarily mean it will be faster, and the really
Speaker 1: good software will identify the person with the best connection
Speaker 1: who has that file exactly. Yeah, So that way it
Speaker 1: gives you the best chance of having a smooth transfer.
Speaker 1: And it's also good to note that this creates more
Speaker 1: stability when you're trying to get a file. So the
Speaker 1: other big issue with the old clients server approach is
Speaker 1: that if that server suffers a problem, if it goes
Speaker 1: down for some reason, power outage or whatever, then you're stuck.
Speaker 1: You know, you don't you do not get that file.
Speaker 1: And if you were trying to download a big file
Speaker 1: and it was maybe seventy of the way done and
Speaker 1: the power goes out, there's a chance that file could
Speaker 1: get corrupted in the process, and then you have to
Speaker 1: start all over again, right, which was a real bummer.
Speaker 1: When peer to pier was was really big back in
Speaker 1: the early two thousands, like late nineties, um, because you know,
Speaker 1: it was about that modems that could that could handle
Speaker 1: broader band than fourteen four it's became available for consumer purchase.
Speaker 1: And after that, you know, when when people started getting
Speaker 1: connected to the ethernet was really when peer to peer happened. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then you you were able to you know, one
Speaker 1: of the downsides is that traditionally, with most Internet service providers,
Speaker 1: your upload speed is a fraction of what your download
Speaker 1: speed is. Right. The reason for that is that ages ago,
Speaker 1: when companies began to offer internet service, they looked at
Speaker 1: the broadband that they had available, like the bandwidth they
Speaker 1: had available to the size of the tubes. Essentially, they're saying,
Speaker 1: all right, here's here's what we are capable of delivering
Speaker 1: to our customers. How are we going to determine how
Speaker 1: much is down link versus uplink? And then they said, well,
Speaker 1: you know, probably people aren't sending stuff up to the
Speaker 1: Internet that frequently. They're mostly trying to consume stuff pull
Speaker 1: stuff down. This was before we were uploading millions of
Speaker 1: years worth of YouTube videos every second. Yeah, this was
Speaker 1: This was back when that was not even a consideration.
Speaker 1: So the idea was that, well, you know, we can
Speaker 1: just make it a fraction upload speeds will be a
Speaker 1: fraction of download because you there's nothing as frustrating really
Speaker 1: as sitting down. Well this is probably that's that's exaggerating,
Speaker 1: but it's very frustrating to sit down and try and
Speaker 1: get at some sort of content online and then just
Speaker 1: see either a buffering thing or a loading screen and
Speaker 1: it just goes on forever. If you're talking about the
Speaker 1: old old days of the Internet, there's nothing like trying
Speaker 1: to look at a picture of something and watch it
Speaker 1: slowly load pixel line by pixel line, and you're just thinking,
Speaker 1: I have no idea what I'm looking at. I won't
Speaker 1: know for another forty five minutes. I would I would
Speaker 1: like the record to state that I just used I
Speaker 1: just gestured at Jonathan to help you guys understand what
Speaker 1: he was talking about and exactly how ineffective that was.
Speaker 1: That was a great visual representation on an audio podcast. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you know that this approach meant that we suddenly
Speaker 1: had all these other options, this peer to peer approach,
Speaker 1: and this is the way a lot of those file
Speaker 1: sharing services back in the day worked because lime Wire, Napster,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. Yeah, it's all about let's find
Speaker 1: people who have the stuff you want and connect this
Speaker 1: create a connection directly to them. Yeah, so it almost
Speaker 1: becomes like a direct phone line in a way, where
Speaker 1: the connection is between the host computer and your computer,
Speaker 1: so you can get the file and then of course
Speaker 1: once you have the file, your computer can become a
Speaker 1: potential host computer. So now an improvement on that was
Speaker 1: bit torrents approach, right, and I think it will be
Speaker 1: really interesting to get into the intricacies of how bit
Speaker 1: torrent works. But before we do that, let's take a
Speaker 1: quick break. Let's get back to the show. Alright, we're back,
Speaker 1: and Lauren, you alluded to bit torrent. Now, this was
Speaker 1: a totally different approach in the sense that it was
Speaker 1: someone coming up with the idea of how can we
Speaker 1: make these download speeds faster, not just more reliable so
Speaker 1: that I have more options, but how can I get
Speaker 1: the stuff I want faster, particularly if it's a really
Speaker 1: large file, you know, and if you're if you're like
Speaker 1: Jonathan said earlier, if your internet connection is maybe not
Speaker 1: the best and something cuts out somewhere that you won't
Speaker 1: lose all of the progress on downloading a file you
Speaker 1: had already made. So this was the idea of a
Speaker 1: programmer named Bram Cohen. Now, Bram Cohen had worked for
Speaker 1: several dot com startups that never really took off, and
Speaker 1: it just kind of failed over and over, and he
Speaker 1: really wanted to work on something that worked. That was
Speaker 1: a big ambition of his understandable And in two thousand
Speaker 1: one he was also getting really irritated by these problems
Speaker 1: we're talking about the slow download speed of large files.
Speaker 1: He liked the idea of the peer to peer network,
Speaker 1: but he didn't care for the execution. So in two
Speaker 1: thousand one he begins work on a new protocol. Now
Speaker 1: we've used the word protocol several times in this podcast,
Speaker 1: just to remind you. A protocol really is just a
Speaker 1: set of rules. It's kind of a kind of seven
Speaker 1: instructions for a computer to follow. So he designed a
Speaker 1: protocol that he called BitTorrent. Now, this was an attempt
Speaker 1: to solve that connection problem um and the speed problem
Speaker 1: at the same time. So you know, peer to peer
Speaker 1: adjusted the connection. He wanted to do speed as well,
Speaker 1: So how do you do that? Well. His approach was
Speaker 1: to create this protocol that would allow files to be
Speaker 1: distributed in pieces, and as you receive a piece, you
Speaker 1: are also able to upload that piece even before your
Speaker 1: file finishes downloading. So I might have a file that's
Speaker 1: at twenty seven percent as it's slowly downloading, that twenty
Speaker 1: seven 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 and you're just getting You're getting
Speaker 1: the whole puzzle, but you're getting them from different locations
Speaker 1: all at the same time. It's like it's like if
Speaker 1: everyone in that in that coffee house street has a
Speaker 1: cup of coffee and you just kind of run down
Speaker 1: 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're 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 U.
Speaker 1: But he figured that this was kind of a sure
Speaker 1: fire away and because it was freely available stuff, it
Speaker 1: wasn't like it wasn't copyrighted. He didn't have to worry
Speaker 1: about running into problems with torrent systems have having fact
Speaker 1: run into lots of copyright issues. We'll talk about that
Speaker 1: towards the end of the show. You know, that's that's
Speaker 1: a that's a totally different discussion. But he he he
Speaker 1: wanted to try and test it out, and apparently that
Speaker 1: wasn't considered a terribly auspicious beginning. But he eventually did
Speaker 1: launch a working version of bit torrent for the general
Speaker 1: public in October two thousand two. Now two years later
Speaker 1: in two thousand four, he had a five person company
Speaker 1: working on a search engine that would work alongside his protocol.
Speaker 1: So he designed the protocol, but one of the issues
Speaker 1: people were running into was how do you find the
Speaker 1: torrent files which are pointer files. I'll talk about them
Speaker 1: a little bit more in a second. How do you
Speaker 1: find these files that the facilitate the downloading process when
Speaker 1: you're you're actually using the bit torrent software, and this
Speaker 1: is via a tracker server. Right, So he created he
Speaker 1: worked with this five person company, actually five person company
Speaker 1: worked for him to create the search engine that would
Speaker 1: look for these torrents to help make this process work
Speaker 1: more smoothly. Uh. He was also then looked at by
Speaker 1: a little company called Valve. Yeah, so Valive. Valve is thinking,
Speaker 1: you know, we want to do a downloadable distributed network
Speaker 1: approach for our games. We want to have this ability
Speaker 1: to deliver games to our users that is fast and
Speaker 1: reliable and doesn't put a lot of pressure training on
Speaker 1: our own servers. Right, we don't that way, we don't
Speaker 1: have to build out a whole data center just to
Speaker 1: support this this model, this distribution model. So they contacted
Speaker 1: Cohen and they hired him to work on a platform
Speaker 1: that we now call Steam. Cohen was one of the
Speaker 1: people who helped build that program out, and it was
Speaker 1: all because he saw what he was doing with bit torrent,
Speaker 1: and they said, that's the approach we want to take.
Speaker 1: And in fact, Valve and Blizzard are two companies that
Speaker 1: use bit torrent for a perfectly legitimate means of distributing
Speaker 1: their files. It's a good time to just mention there's
Speaker 1: nothing illegal about torrent files. No, no, it's it's just
Speaker 1: a matter of distribution. It's kind of like if you
Speaker 1: were to say, yeah, but you can get illegal material
Speaker 1: that way. You can get illegal material through the mail,
Speaker 1: But you wouldn't say that means we should shut down
Speaker 1: the postal service. You might say we should shed down
Speaker 1: the postal service for other reasons, but not for that one.
Speaker 1: And same sort of argument you could use for bit torrent,
Speaker 1: like to say, let's get rid of bit torrent because
Speaker 1: some people are sharing illegal files, even lots of people
Speaker 1: sharing illegal files, doesn't mean that the tool itself is wrong, right.
Speaker 1: The technology itself can be used for lots of really
Speaker 1: cool things like yeah, like like letting people like Valve
Speaker 1: put games up online without having to buy giant servers,
Speaker 1: or independent artists put their music online, right right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And there there are a lot of reasons there their
Speaker 1: entire you know, whether it's software or video files, music files.
Speaker 1: You know, there are a lot of reasons why you
Speaker 1: would want to take this approach. And uh, one of
Speaker 1: the big ones is that it, like you said, it
Speaker 1: takes the strain off the provider. Right. So, if I'm
Speaker 1: a small business or an artist, an independent artist, I
Speaker 1: might not have the resources available to me to create
Speaker 1: a dedicated server where people can come and download stuff,
Speaker 1: especially if I'm having to pay lots of fees to
Speaker 1: maintain that. And you know, I mean, you know, for example,
Speaker 1: if you post some music to your personal website and uh,
Speaker 1: Neil Gaiman or Will Wheaton link it on Twitter, and
Speaker 1: all 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. Yeah, so I wouldn't even
Speaker 1: know what to do with myself I would probably totally
Speaker 1: flip out. No, I would totally flip out. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: probably there, there's no probably there. Yeah, Hey guys, it's
Speaker 1: Jonathan again. We're gonna take another quick break and we
Speaker 1: will be right back to talk more about bit torrent
Speaker 1: in two thousand five. Already by this time, okay, the
Speaker 1: bit torrents 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 I double A. Yeah,
Speaker 1: r I double A is is like, that's music. Essentially,
Speaker 1: an m p A is film. So m P A
Speaker 1: A UH in particular was concerned because the bit torrent
Speaker 1: protocol did make moving large files much easier, which meant
Speaker 1: that suddenly people were able to upload and download large
Speaker 1: files like rips of films. They take a DVD and
Speaker 1: ripped the film from the DVD and then share it
Speaker 1: and you would get illegal copies. Or if you were
Speaker 1: working on a digital film and you were part of
Speaker 1: a 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, bit 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, Bram 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 long. 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 dealt with Yeah, and probably
Speaker 1: dealt with or improperly submitted people who didn't actually have
Speaker 1: the rights to something demanding they get taken down, and
Speaker 1: then it gets taken down um, and then there then
Speaker 1: there's some embarrassing ones. I think Microsoft just recently issued
Speaker 1: a takedown request to itself. Yeah, so sometimes these sort
Speaker 1: of things can end up being kind of embarrassing. But
Speaker 1: he was saying that we want to you know, we
Speaker 1: don't want to up so um. Today you can find
Speaker 1: bit torrent on lots of different platforms. In fact, bit
Speaker 1: torrent today allows you to do things like produce content
Speaker 1: and then distribute it. So it's design more now to help,
Speaker 1: like I said, those small businesses, the independent artists to
Speaker 1: create content, and then even to to enable it so
Speaker 1: it'll perform properly on things like smartphones, tablets, consoles, creating
Speaker 1: a huge distribution network that people wouldn't have had access to,
Speaker 1: you know, ten years ago. So there are many reasons
Speaker 1: why it's a very useful tool. So let's talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about how it actually does what it does now.
Speaker 1: First of all, it's open source, which kind of tells
Speaker 1: you that Cohen wasn't necessarily looking to create like a
Speaker 1: a h multibillion dollar. This wasn't a commercial venture. No,
Speaker 1: he wanted he really believed in this. And open source
Speaker 1: means you can see the source code. You can go
Speaker 1: and get the source code for the bit torrent, play
Speaker 1: around with it. Yeah, you can change it. You can
Speaker 1: make your own product based upon it. It's open source um.
Speaker 1: And then there are sites that how torrent files. Torrent
Speaker 1: files are not They don't have any material in them
Speaker 1: other than pointer information that will point a your software
Speaker 1: to the right destinations that will have the actual file
Speaker 1: you're looking for. It's it's a little bit like that
Speaker 1: that like a protocol that we were talking about, but
Speaker 1: just in a in a file formata. It's and it's
Speaker 1: kindlling meta data. It's it's information about the file you want,
Speaker 1: the information mainly being where you can get it. Like
Speaker 1: it's it's allowing the software that you have on your
Speaker 1: computer and when when you when you run a program
Speaker 1: to uh to to go go out and find the
Speaker 1: little pieces of this file across the Internet, across the
Speaker 1: swarm of computers that contain it. That's good. Yeah. 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 connect to the network that
Speaker 1: have some portion of that file and are actively downloading
Speaker 1: and or uploading that file, that are also running this
Speaker 1: this torrent sideway. Right, everything has to be working running
Speaker 1: the software at the same time. If you stop running
Speaker 1: the software on your computer, you disconnect from this network.
Speaker 1: You're still on the Internet, but you're not part of
Speaker 1: the bit torrent network anymore. So, Yeah, the torrent file
Speaker 1: just kind of points the software in the right direction
Speaker 1: so you can get these pieces. It gives them the
Speaker 1: software the information it needs to identify and pull those
Speaker 1: those pieces of file into your computer. Classically, this is
Speaker 1: all organized by a central server called a tracker like
Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier. Um, these these days that's it's it's
Speaker 1: a little bit um has a little more complicated than that.
Speaker 1: But yeah, your classic bit torrent has a tracker server
Speaker 1: that kind of acts like a traffic driver, like it's
Speaker 1: it's the one that's making sure everyone is going to
Speaker 1: the right place. Um. And you're so you've got your seed,
Speaker 1: you get your swarm. You are constantly downloading as long
Speaker 1: as you're connected to this or downloading end upling as
Speaker 1: long as you're connected to this, uh, this network. The
Speaker 1: cool thing is with bit torrent that your download speeds
Speaker 1: depend upon your participation within the network. Right. You get
Speaker 1: a rank based on how many files you are allowing
Speaker 1: the system to upload from you, and and your and
Speaker 1: your actual upload speed as well, So those two things
Speaker 1: factor in. So if you are being you know, if
Speaker 1: you're altruistic and you're sharing a lot, then you can
Speaker 1: also download faster, right because your rank goes up, and
Speaker 1: that means that your download speed's improve and so you
Speaker 1: don't have to wait eight hours to get you know,
Speaker 1: that music file you wanted to get. It will download
Speaker 1: in a matter of minutes maybe or or faster, depending
Speaker 1: upon your broadband speed and the speed of course of
Speaker 1: the various computers that are hosting pieces of that file.
Speaker 1: But it does mean that you go much faster than
Speaker 1: you would with your traditional peer to peer or client
Speaker 1: server relationship kind of a protocol. You end up getting
Speaker 1: the pieces of the file you need, and then once
Speaker 1: you've got all the pieces you you're good to go.
Speaker 1: So you don't have to depend upon on computer and
Speaker 1: its connection to the network. You're depending upon the entire
Speaker 1: network and anyone who has pieces of that particular file. Now,
Speaker 1: like we said, there's nothing illegal about this. This is
Speaker 1: just a distribution network. So if your file that you're
Speaker 1: distributing doesn't have any sort of copyright to it, or
Speaker 1: if it's licensed under something like creative comments, that gives
Speaker 1: the person who has the file the the ability to
Speaker 1: distribute it however they like, then there's no issue there.
Speaker 1: That's completely legal, and in fact, that might even be
Speaker 1: the intent of that content. You know, the person who
Speaker 1: made it. Maybe I want this to be shared with
Speaker 1: as many people as possible. That's why I uploaded it
Speaker 1: to the bit torrent network. Uh. However, it does also
Speaker 1: mean that it can create an environment that allows for
Speaker 1: illegal sharing in a way that is a lot more
Speaker 1: difficult to fight than the client server approach, right right,
Speaker 1: Because it's not located in a single place. You can't
Speaker 1: go knock on one particular person's door and say you're
Speaker 1: holding this file. Because it's spread out over so many
Speaker 1: people that exactly, Okay, it's a lot harder to trace back.
Speaker 1: I can't go into Lauren's coffee shop and tell her
Speaker 1: that she has to stop serving this one type of
Speaker 1: coffee if everyone around her is serving that same type
Speaker 1: of coffee. It doesn't do any good, right, right, same
Speaker 1: 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 two people who who want excellent to
Speaker 1: buy it. Let me give you my money. They're eager
Speaker 1: to participate in this. If you make it easy enough
Speaker 1: and you don't price gouge, then you're not really inspiring piracy.
Speaker 1: There's also been several surveys of varying reliability that have
Speaker 1: suggested that people who pirate stuff also tend to be
Speaker 1: some of the it's right right, which, you know, people
Speaker 1: who are torrenting are probably more likely to buy things
Speaker 1: online than your average consumer anyway, because they're more computer
Speaker 1: and internet savage to begin with. But but you know,
Speaker 1: but the number that gets tossed around a lot is
Speaker 1: from a study by the American Assembly, which is connected
Speaker 1: to Columbia University. So it's more or less on the
Speaker 1: up and up. Yeah, this is that that's a that's
Speaker 1: a fairly reputable institution. They at least call themselves nonpartisan.
Speaker 1: They do, they do have a little bit of a
Speaker 1: liberal slant, I would say, but um, but they found
Speaker 1: that peer to peer file shared users purchase more music
Speaker 1: online than non peer peer us. And then of course
Speaker 1: there's also the argument that a lot of these organizations
Speaker 1: make the mp A A in r I double A
Speaker 1: is that UH stolen property UH directly translates to lost revenue.
Speaker 1: And we've seen multiple studies, including studies that were specifically
Speaker 1: UH funded by the government, you know, the 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 a 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: a 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 Gayman 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 wo and
Speaker 1: just just free ebook download. Go do it, people, And
Speaker 1: I don't think it's up anymore. I might you might
Speaker 1: not be able to find it. I could have just
Speaker 1: lied to you tremendously. But they had. They had a
Speaker 1: free copy at for a certain period of time, and
Speaker 1: sales increased, definitely increased, like appreciably increased in the immediate
Speaker 1: future after it was up. I will say that, um there,
Speaker 1: you know, And I've told this story several times in
Speaker 1: the past, so you know I'm comfortable telling it again.
Speaker 1: Uh the you know, I I definitely was one of
Speaker 1: the people who downloaded something outside the realm of the law.
Speaker 1: Because I downloaded a television show that was made in
Speaker 1: England that was not available in the United States. There
Speaker 1: was no way for me to purchase it legally. Not
Speaker 1: that that justifies illegal behavior. It doesn't. So I'm still
Speaker 1: in the wrong, you know, I'm still in the wrong
Speaker 1: for doing it, but I downloaded Space the show that
Speaker 1: eggar right 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 lead to get it
Speaker 1: in the United States at that time as soon as
Speaker 1: it became available as the day that it came out
Speaker 1: on DVD and 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
Speaker 1: popular because the quality tends to be better and you
Speaker 1: don't have to worry about like malware is usually unless
Speaker 1: the d r M is also malware. Sony, I'm looking
Speaker 1: at you. Um it's been much better recently, by the way,
Speaker 1: but you know that that CD thing still sticks in
Speaker 1: my craw. I think even classically though that I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, this conversation is reminding me of you know,
Speaker 1: how used to go to NERD conventions and they would
Speaker 1: have all of these illegal Hong Kong VHS tapes of
Speaker 1: various UM did Battle Royal that way, But I bought
Speaker 1: that as soon as it came available to and and
Speaker 1: I think that similarly that really that kind of underground
Speaker 1: black market VHS sort of thing. Aside from inciting nostalgia,
Speaker 1: people of 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 or 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. So so it's interesting.
Speaker 1: I mean, and again, you know, BitTorrent is just a
Speaker 1: means of distribution. You don't necessarily have to have it
Speaker 1: be something where you're pirrating movies and tv um um.
Speaker 1: There there is a little bit of a fight back.
Speaker 1: As of April of teen, McAfee head 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 advisor,
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. And that wraps
Speaker 1: up this classic episode of text Stuff how bit torrent works.
Speaker 1: Hope you guys enjoyed it. If you have any suggestions
Speaker 1: for future topics I should cover on the show, reach
Speaker 1: out to me on Twitter or Facebook. The handle for
Speaker 1: both of those is text Stuff hs W and I'll
Speaker 1: talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.