The incredible but controversial download tool BitTorrent has so far been relatively unimpinged by the long arm of the law, but last night American law enforcers shut down a hub, Elite Torrents, which had been making the latest Star Wars movie available.
From BBC News:
The Elite Torrents site allowed 133,000 members to download thousands of films and software programs, according to the Homeland Security Department.
The Justice Department said fans used it to download Revenge of the Sith 10,000 times before it was released.
It was shut after raids by federal agents in 10 cities across the country.
As we've written in Online before, BitTorrent is a fantastic tool and should be applauded for democratising the online distribution channel. But now its creator, Bram Cohen, has released new versions of the software which make it much more akin to traditional filesharing networks. Here's what BetaNews has to say:
Cohen has launched an online search that links to torrent files, which are used to download content via the protocol.
Along with the online search comes a new decentralized BitTorrent client that eliminates the need for a "tracker" - Web sites that aggregate torrent files. In essence, this means that while the Feds may have gained some ground by shutting down tracker Web sites, actual file sharing and the ability to search for illicit content will not be brought to a standstill.
Whether BitTorrent can withstand the forthcoming onslaught remains to be seen... but let's hope it can: it would be a shame to lose such an incredibly useful technology.
