When I told you about YouHaveDownloaded.com in this story about the marketing genius that is comedian Louis CK a few weeks back, I didn’t realize we’d be getting to pick on the United States Congress. Turns out that our friends in Washington DC, the very folks who though SOPA was such a great idea, have been illegally downloading copyrighted works from the Internet using BitTorrent.
Shocker.
On the other hand, when I told you about BitTorrent, SOPA, MegaUpload, and Piracy, it did occur to me that there might be an SEO angle to the story. As you can see above, it turns out I was right; Google sees us as #6 for all spellings/misspellings of the phrase “bittorrent sopa”, despite the subject having been written about in many places, most way larger than Answer Guy Central. And that’s what Search Engine Optimization can do.
If you like, check for yourself. Search Google for the phrase “bittorrent SOPA” by clicking here. (by the way; this is as of January 23 2012. Our results will go up—or down— over time depending on how we pursue SEO for “bittorent SOPA” moving forward).
Regardless of what you think of Search Engine Optimization in general or me pointing out how good we are at SEO in particular, (and feel free to contact me about SEO), the story is this whole MegaUpload thing.
Oh yeah. And the hypocrisy of The United States Congress trying to pass laws like SOPA when they’re a bunch of BitTorrent-using software and media pirates, too. This story is about that, too.
Quick re-cap:
- You may be a pirate, and not even realize it.
- BitTorrent (and MegaUpload) have legitimate purposes. Of course, MegaUpload is gone now.
- While SOPA is currently on hold, the United States Congress is looking for ways to control how you use the Internet.
As I said last week, protecting the rights of copyright holders is one place where I don’t really have a problem with our government trying to make laws that “control” the Internet. And hypocrisy is part of life and all around us, so while I do want to take the opportunity to poke fun at Congress for being copyright infringers, I’m happy to see Congress members fall into their own traps, later.
But I wish our lawmakers had a clue what they were talking about and doing. BitTorrent is a cool technology, and useful in legitimate ways. And expecting hosts to act as police proactively is just wrong, and a huge business burden.
So call it SOPA, PIPA, or whatever it comes back as; when the United States Congress starts passing “anti-piracy” laws forcing business change in areas like how we share files on the Internet, we need to tell them to back down.
Or at least pay attention.
Jeff,
Binfer is a great option to send large files directly from person to person, without uploading to a server. You can send hundreds of files of any size with a simple drag and drop. Binfer will manage the transfers with auto resumes, encryption, notifications etc. Check it out: http://www.binfer.com
Thanks, Daniel. I didn’t know Binfer at all.Of course, it’s just one solution of many like it; I suspect you knew that.
What Binfer and products like it ISN’T, though, is BitTorrent. Remember that any point-to-point file transfer leaves you with the problems of breakdowns between points. BitTorrent, on the other hand, leaves highly-shared files in many places, and you access them from ALL of those places, not just one; it’s more efficient, and self-healing.
I just hope that whatever laws ultimately do get passed and enforced leave file sharing options like BitTorrent alone … difficult to police though they may be.
@jeff. I agree that BT is a smart technology but unfortunately its application is only for illegal uses. I have not seen any legal uses of BT. I use Binfer primarily for business and there is no way on earth I can have my private files scattered around the web. Also, I am surprised that there are other solutions like Binfer that do point to point sharing. Care to share what they are?
Daniel, I realize that my answers are going to be lukewarm persuasiveness-wise, and I apologize for that.
First, while I’ve come across quite a few PTP file transfer sites (at various flavors of free/not free/pretending to be free), I’m embarrassed to admit I don’t remember any of them … probably because I don’t use them. This is made all the more embarrassing by the fact that we actually have a page here that lets people send us large files. Large, in this case, means “up to 50 MB”.
There are quite a few, and I still can’t remember the one I considered my favorite for a few minutes, but here’s an article on the subject, complete with examples. Again … free/not free/pretending, but there are options. Ironically, MegaUpload is one of the services referred to, there.
As for your point about BitTorrent: I hear you. But while BitTorrent IS almost almost always used to trade things that shouldn’t be traded, let’s face facts: under that description, so would Binfer be. Because really, who’s trading humongous files they have the right to trade? You really want my home movies?
And BitTorrent can be used legitimately, in a private sharing environment; I pointed that out in this piece, and that the folks behind BitTorrent are trying to legitimize the technology.
No answers, ultimately. My largest concern was the MANNER in which the MegaUpload debacle was carried out.
Jeff,
If you have ever worked with design tools like autocad or photoshop or blender, you would know that those files are very very large and there are a lot and lot of us who deal need to transfer large files in legitimate ways. Tools like yousendit, Binfer etc keep trying to make it easier as files get larger and larger. The difference between these and the other tools is how easy they make it for illegitimate sharing. Not wanting to keep bashing torrents, but the torrent protocol was specifically designed to download from multiple copies of the same digital data, which does not make sense for private legitimate sharing. I would never have copies of my children’s video or of a business seminar, floating around different unknown computers. I dont see how whatever new branding they apply can change the fact that torrents are only useful for pirating digital content. It seems to me that torrent folks are worried and now just playing catchup with others by milking the torrent brand. I wish them the best.
Regarding the manner in which Megaupload was shutdown… I dont know all the internal details and probably you dont either. But, FBI is not stupid. The have very very smart people dedicated to upholding our law. The evidence is overwhelming that megaupload was used heavily to pirate digital goods. My concern is why did they not shut it down sooner and why did they spare the other similar ones.
Daniel, I won’t argue with your point, but I feel like you’re either showing your personal bias or taking yourself a bit too seriously.
Yes, of course it’s true that there are always exceptions to the rule, but let’s face it; most people with needs as specialized as transferring CAD files, etc., around also have access to FTP servers. I wasn’t talking about those people, I was talking about “regulat folks”.
As for the legaity issue: I have NO DOUBT WHATSOEVER that MegaUpload was doing all kinds of illegal things. My issue is the flagrant disregard of due process in this case.
That’s about it …
JY