Getting an Idea of What You Can Do with BitTorrent

All kinds of people and businesses are using BitTorrent to distribute large data files. For example, BitTorrent has found popularity among those people sharing versions of the Linux operating system, and that's just the beginning; there are many more examples of businesses and individuals taking advantage of this technology. Here are just a few ways that individuals, groups, and businesses are using BitTorrent:

• Distribute computer operating systems: The Linux operating system is an open-source operating system available for free. In fact, it is the main alternative for computer users who don't want to be tied to Microsoft Windows or the Macintosh OS. Because of the way Linux is licensed, any developer can download and alter it because so many versions are available. As you can imagine, an entire operating system can be quite large, which is one reason BitTorrent has become a favorite method for distributing Linux.

• Distribute your film to create buzz: Filmmaker Rick Prelinger is one of those who has used BitTorrent to do something he has never been able to do before. Prelinger used clips of publicly available industrial, educational, advertising, and amateur footage from 1940 to 1980 to create the documentary collage, Panorama Ephemera. Using BitTorrent, several thousand people have been able to download the film (which Prelinger has licensed for reuse and viewing). For Prelinger, BitTorrent made distribution easy — and inexpensive, which film distribution traditionally isn't.

• Distribute your book: Author and Stanford University professor Lawrence Lessig used BitTorrent to make his book Free Culture available for download. (You can also find and download an audio version of the book, created by volunteers who each read a chapter.)

You can download both Panorama Ephemera and Free Culture from LegalTorrents LegalTorrents, a Web site that lists legally downloadable torrents that are licensed for public use or viewing.

• Distribute musical recordings: Rock groups Phish and the Grateful Dead encourage concert-goers to make recordings of their performances; those large digital files are shared by fans using BitTorrent.

The Web site Etree.org is a community BitTorrent tracker for sharing live concert recordings of artists that permit their performances to be recorded. You can find recordings of Phish, the Black Crowes, Blues Traveler, the Grateful Dead, Radiohead, and many others through Etree.

• Distribute beta software: The game World of Warcraft, a multiplayer online role-playing game created by Blizzard Entertainment, was released in November 2004. Prior to its release, however, Blizzard provided beta versions of the game to its testers using BitTorrent, eliminating shipping and production costs for software that would be patched on a nearly daily basis.

• Today, software, tomorrow the world: Even the BBC is getting in on the action. Although it doesn't use the BitTorrent format, the BBC is investigating the use of a very similar peer-to-peer technology to provide TV shows to consumers for up to seven days after they are broadcast. The BBC ran a trial in late 2005 and used the interactive Media Player to deliver digital rights managed TV shows and radio programs to 5,000 participants.

Plenty of people are sharing content they shouldn't. Sharing copyrighted content is a crime.