BitTorrent

BitTorrent, protocol for sharing large computer files over the Internet. BitTorrent was created in 2001 by Bram Cohen, an American computer programmer who was frustrated by the long download times that he experienced using applications such as FTP.

Files shared with BitTorrent are divided into smaller pieces for distribution among the protocol’s users, called “peers.” A peer who wishes to download a file is directed by a software application called a “client” to access a Web site that hosts a tracker. The tracker keeps records of all the peers who have previously downloaded the file and then allows pieces of their copies of the file to be downloaded by the peer conducting the search. By breaking the file into smaller pieces and allowing peers to download those pieces from each other, BitTorrent uses much less bandwidth than would be the case if all the peers downloaded the complete file from the original source. Once a file is completely downloaded, it becomes a “seed”—that is, a file from which other peers can download pieces. However, BitTorrent can also work without the existence of a seed; a group of peers can share pieces of a file as long as they have among them all the pieces of the original complete file. Some tracker Web sites encourage seeding by penalizing peers who do not seed their files after their downloads are complete.

Many file-sharing Web sites are based on BitTorrent because of its efficient use of bandwidth. The entertainment industry has mounted an active legal campaign against those sites that use BitTorrent to share files of copyrighted material. Success has been limited, however. For example, the operators of the Swedish file-sharing Web site the Pirate Bay were sentenced to prison and fined for copyright infringement in 2010; afterward, however, the Web site still operated and remained extremely popular, receiving about three million visitors per day.