Lasse Penttinen
16 Aug 2004 12:02
The SP2Torrent.com offered an alternative distribution method of the Windows XP Service Pack 2 package, utilizing the efficient BitTorrent P2P software. In distribution of large software packages, such as SP2, the advanced P2P technology could really be of help, but the M$ thought otherwise. The software giant aimed their legal guns at the distributor to shut it down.Microsoft sent DMCA takedown notices to our two webhosts, one of which was just linking to a torrent file on another server. We've stood up to these kinds of legal threats before (see the Grey Tuesday protests), but we decided not to bother this time, because we started this site primarily as a demonstration and to that end it's already been a huge success. SP2torrent.com showed how filesharing technlogy gives people without budgets or huge servers the power to solve problems themselves, without waiting for the government or some corporation to do it for them. For another demonstration that's still in action, check out p2pcongress.org. If you need Windows XP SP2, you can download it from Microsoft's inscrutable webpage.
One should be very careful installing the SP2 anyway and consider waiting for a while, as there are a lot of incompatibility issues reported after the initial launch. The incompatible titles include well known games and applications, and even MS originated developer tools.