Illegal file sharing (more accurately described as copyright infringement) has been plaguing copyright holders since bulletin board systems started and speeds were limited to sub-1 kbps transmission rates. That was the 1980s. Welcome to 2007 where entire movies, television episodes and software packages can be downloaded in their entirety in a matter of minutes.

While the USENET has always been a bastion for file sharers, it wasn't until the original Napster showed up that the RIAA started suing to protect the interest of the music labels. Napster was shut down in 2002, but the publicity it generated also generated clones and other types of file sharing services. One of these, Kazaa, has been the service the RIAA has primarily targeted the users of. The rest is, as they say, history.

Bram Cohen designed the BitTorrent protocol in 2001, distributing the very first client for it and using it on his own website. It didn't take long for other programmers to create clients of their own, using a variety of programming languages. The clients run on all manner of computer platforms, including Linux and Windows.

The advantage of the BitTorrent clients, and the protocol itself, is that "torrents" can be used to distribute anything in a very efficient manner. It saves the host a ton of bandwidth by using the upstream bandwidth of each computer that's downloading the file, and all of it happens seamlessly. There are literally thousands of legal torrents out there along with the illegal ones. Does the fact that piracy is being aided by this particular protocol make it evil? If you listen to the RIAA, the MPAA and other such types of organizations, you would think so. The real answer is the complete opposite. The problem is that the companies fighting piracy haven't adopted a business model that takes advantage of the protocol. Instead, they'd rather sue to protect the income stream they're comfortable with. The income stream they have control over.

There was a gaping void left by the shutdown of Napster, and websites that index torrents along with Apple's iTunes store, have filled that void. The entertainment industries were caught napping and with their pants down.

My favorite BitTorrent client is µTorrent. It works flawlessly on Windows XP, which I still use. I understand it works very well on Windows Vista too. Recently, while I was setting up my new computer, I downloaded some software packages on the old computer and burned them to CD. I then used those CDs to install the software on the new computer.

Before settling back down with Windows XP, I installed and tried to get Debian Linux to work for me. While I couldn't use it right then, the fact that Debian provided complete CD and DVD downloads via torrents made that determination much quicker than FTP. I'd say at least 10 times quicker.

I attempted to download the OpenOffice.org office suite from their website, but only FTP was available. Knowing how slow FTP was compared to BitTorrent, I searched for the suite using the search engine at ScrapeTorrent and found it quickly. It downloaded fast and I had it installed on the new PC within half an hour.

This is what the BitTorrent protocol is all about — fast downloads of the files you're looking for. Sure you can download illegal copies of movies, TV shows and software, but that's only part of what can be done with the protocol. Other software clients, not only BitTorrent clients, are using the protocol to distribute media files of all kinds. In my book, there's nothing evil about that at all.

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