On Wednesday, 23 November 2005,
Bram Cohen, the founder and chief executive of BitTorrent
and Motion Picture Association of America Chairman Dan Glickman announced a
collaboration with the goal of inhibiting film piracy.
BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer
(P2P) file distribution application that can be used to distribute files without
the permission of the copyright holder. Cohen said
BitTorrent.com will remove all links to pirated content owned by MPAA companies
from its search engine.
"BitTorrent Inc. discourages the use of its technology for distributing films
without a license to do so," Cohen said in a statement. "As such, we are pleased
to work with the film industry to remove unauthorized content from
bittorrent.com's search engine."
It is expected that the move
will do little to actually reduce piracy, as the search
engine on BitTorrent.com is just one of many that finds "torrents". Many other
websites continue to refer visitors to movies, though the MPAA began suing some
of them.
November 24, 2005: Tanner,
Ben,
MPAA, Bit Torrent reach agreement, DMasia: "The Motion Picture Association of America
(MPAA) announced yesterday that it has reached an agreement with Bram Cohen,
the designer of peer-to-peer (P2P) software Bit Torrent, to remove links to
video content owned by the seven member studios of the MPAA from
Bittorrent.com."
November 23, 2005: Jardin, Xeni,
A Torrent or a Trickle?, Wired News:
"It's all but certain the deal between the Motion Picture Association of
America and BitTorrent creator Bram Cohen won't dent the file-swapping
epidemic, let alone stop it."
November 23, 2005: Smith,
Tony,
BitTorrent to block links to pirate flicks, The Register:
"BitTorrent creator Bram Cohen has agreed to strip links to pirate movies
out of his bittorrent.com search engine."
November 23, 2005: Utter,
David,
BitTorrent And MPAA Find Common Ground, Webpronews:
"The creator of the high-speed file sharing application has linked up with
Hollywood studios in an effort to clamp down on movie piracy and promote a
way for film distributors to get their wares to users online."
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