Rich Fiscus
8 Nov 2007 0:12
Apparently motivated by BitTorrent's high profile dealings with content owners, Peter Sunde, co-founder of The Pirate Bay, says the site is working to develop a new P2P protocol. Sunde said in an interview, "If they go and do something stupid, it will affect a lot of people." The Pirate Bay gets around 1.5 million visitors each day.
For his part, BitTorrent president Ashwin Navin isn't losing any sleep over the site's planned switch. "We are not really disappointed here," he told Reuters. "The pirate community has never paid us a dime." Last month BitTorrent launched a new media distribution service that Navin hopes will increase the overall number of people using the company's self-named P2P protocol by more than 5 times. They already have Brightcove, which distrubutes video for prominent clients including CBS, Fox Entertainment, and Viacom as a client. Deals like those are what worry Sunde.
At least one industry observer, Eric Garland, CEO of BigChampagne, isn't surprised by The Pirate Bay's apparent distrust of BitTorrent's corporate ties. "Future development (of the BitTorrent software) will almost certainly be focused on things that do not benefit or further the aims of the pirate," Garland said.
Source: PC Magazine