BitTorrent is famous for developing an eponymous type of code that is now used to transfer more than a third of each day’s internet traffic, according to various estimates. That includes large files transferred internally by companies but also much of the world’s illegally copied music and films, which can be easily found online and packaged into downloadable files known as torrents.
BitTorrent has no more control over how others use the code its founder developed than Google has over what people search for, but it has spent the past few years struggling to shake off the stigma of its technology being used by pirates.
Yet now, thanks to the revelations of widespread state-backed surveillance and criminal hacking, the San Francisco company thinks it has a chance. BitTorrent’s peer-to-peer file-sharing technology makes it easy for people to move and store data without relying on one of the servers on which technology companies keep users’ data. That, BitTorrent says, can keep it away from spies and hackers. Data-rich servers have proved attractive to cyber thieves and were a source of the data governments have been collecting, according to documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor.
“Oh, we got so lucky. Running marketing, nothing better could have happened to this company than the Prism scandal last year, it’s so great,” says Matt Mason, BitTorrent’s marketing director, referring to the NSA’s programme for monitoring some user activity on sites such as Google and Facebook.
Eric Klinker, chief executive, shoots his head of marketing an alarmed look. “So great?”
“I mean, not, well – ” Mr Mason backtracks hastily to clarify “ – a nightmare.”
BitTorrent had been trying to explain to people for years that it can be unwise to store things on servers – “which doesn’t get you very far with consumers if consumers don’t know what a server is”, says Mr Mason. “After the Prism scandal, America suddenly understood what a server is, how it worked, and why it might not be such a good idea to store stuff on one.”
Last year the company launched BitTorrent Sync, a product that works in the same way as Dropbox, the cloud-storage system, in letting users access files on multiple computers or tablets. The difference is that using BitTorrent’s program keeps those files only on a user’s own computers rather than in the hands of a tech company.
Postagens
