What Happened To The Founder Of Torrents?

With the rise of affordable streaming services like Disney+, Netflix, Hulu etc, we have seen a significant reduction in pricay over the past several years. But for those that still engage in piracy, there’s no doubt that torrenting is the key that makes it all possible. Torrenting is basically a file distribution system that makes it extremely difficult to shut down piracy. Instead of downloading a file from a central server, with torrent, you download the file from thousands of other people who have already downloaded the file themselves. So the piracy sites like the Pirates Bay and Kickass torrents don’t actually have to host the files themselves. They just have to host the torrenting links that connect pirates from around the world. So, if the prosecutors take down a certain piracy website, the hosts of the website just have to upload the links to a new website which is no more than a few gigabytes. This ease of moving websites has made it impossible to shut down the large websites like Pirate Bay as they can just  constantly move websites thanks to torrents. Bram Cohen is the founder of torrent. Bram Cohen was born on October 12, 1975 in Manhattan, New York. He had mature interests and excelled at STEM-related competitions.. Bram’s career throughout the 1990s was not stable enough. It's not clear that if Bram couldn’t qualify for a job at a big Tech company like Microsoft or Cisco or he was trying to hit it big with a startup, but either way, this forced him to constantly switch jobs as each startup he worked for went under. While the startup world wasn’t too kind to Bram, it did provide him with unique concepts and ideas and this was especially true with last job at MojoNation. He was trying to create a decentralized method for safely storing and distributing confidential files. The idea was that the encrypted chunks of the original file could be spread across multiple computers. This way, to download the entire file, you would need cooperation from all the computers. So, a hacker couldn’t just get access to one of these computers and steal the entire file. It's not clear if this decentralized encryption method ever caught on, but this idea did inspire Bram who thought that it was perfect for file sharing.

BitTorrent: 

In April of 2001, Bram went ahead and quit MojoNation determined to bring his file sharing idea to life. Over the next year he programmed the first BitTorrent client which ran on Python.  Soon enough, Bram completed a Beta version of the software that worked alright. He worked with his roommate, Len Sassaman, to create a tech conference named Codcon. This presentation allowed Bram to create some hype within the tech world, but this was not exactly his target audience.. So, Bram developed a new idea to attract users. In 2002, Bram  offered some adult films for free on BitTorrent. This strategy was surprisingly effective, but Bram didn't want to be known as an adult film distributor. After getting recognition he stopped this. By this point though, many BitTorrent users started to realize the true potential of the program. Nowadays we have extremely reliable cloud storage platforms like Google Drive and Mega which allow users to download gigabytes worth of files in a matter of minutes. But, back in the early 2000s, moving around such large files was not only difficult but expensive due to the storage and bandwidth requirements. So, no one wanted to host such files. With BitTorrent though, no single person had to host the files. Instead, hundreds or even thousands of users could host them. And given that average people aren't charged for their bandwidth usage, this was basically free for most hosts. Considering these perks, I don't think you'd be surprised to hear that BitTorrent became the go-to place to share and download large files. BitTorrent was required for movies, games and softwares. And as users started to realize how easily such files could be shared using BitTorrent, the program became the soul of piracy.

Stance on piracy:

Given BitTorrent's major role within piracy, it's not surprising that BitTorrent was a massive target for prosecutors. But the problem is that they couldn't really charge BitTorrent or Bram for copyright infringement. Bram has made it clear that he didn't create BitTorrent for piracy. His main goal was simply to allow users to share and download large files cheaper, faster, and more efficiently than ever before. And it just so happens that the community started using it for illicit activities. So, given that there was no conspiracy to commit copyright infringement, prosecutors can't do anything. It would be like the FBI taking action against Facebook because scammers are using WhatsApp to conduct Bitcoin scams. With that being said though, piracy is a way bigger part of BitTorrent than Bitcoin scams are of whatsapp. So, prosecutors were constantly looking for ways to build a case against BitTorrent. But, Bram was well aware of this and he was sure to play it safe legally. He didn't pirate himself, he didn't encourage others to pirate, and he constantly tried to make BitTorrent more applicable to other user cases as well.  So, this was Bram's legal stance on the piracy issue. His moral stance, however, is a lot different. Bram believes that copyright holders need to get a life and stop going after every medium that inadvertently enables piracy. He argues that if copyrighted content was offered in an affordable and easily accessible way, people would have no reason to pirate content. And this does make sense given what happened to the music industry. Back in the 2000s, it was extremely common to pirate music to put on MP3 players and iPods. But, with the explosive growth of services like YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Music, music piracy has significantly declined. Why would you want to go onto sketchy websites and risk getting a virus when you can legally listen to any song on YouTube or Spotify for free with ads or for a reasonable fee without ads. So, Bram's argument makes quite a bit of sense, but this didn't stop copyright  holders from trying to fight back anyway.

Retaliation:

 Since copyright holders couldn't directly shut down or convict BitTorrent, they decided to go after the ones that were sharing the content themselves. Initially, BitTorrent was slightly involved in this given that there were links to copyrighted material on BitTorrent's official website. But, in 2005, Bram made a deal with 7 American studios that he would remove all piracy-related links from the website. This led to the rise of sites like The Pirate Bay and Kickass Torrents. Seeders are basically the thousands of hosts around the world that are making the content available to pirates. And since copyright holders couldn't take down BitTorrent, they decided to take down seeders. Copyright holders started finding the IP addresses of seeders and contacting their internet service providers to cut their internet. Considering these consequences, you might be wondering why anybody would seed content? Well, within the piracy community, it's common courtesy to seed for as long as you downloaded. But, even if you don't seed out of free, automatically be seeding as you're downloading the content itself. Copyright holders have actually gotten really good at identifying seeders and cutting their internet which has forced most pirates to start using VPNs which is quite ironic. If you're pirating any amount of substantial content, you're gonna have to get a paid VPN. Express VPN's cheapest option itself costs $100 per year. Meanwhile Disney+ only costs $80 per year. So, clearly, there's some sort of disparity going on here if pirates are more willing to pay for a VPN than a streaming service as Bram suggested. Nonetheless, copyright holders have continued to spend a lot of effort in taking down seeders.