My god, it's Full of Macs!

Usually when we hear about BitTorrent or peer-to-peer file sharing, it’s in the context of ‘pirated’ software or ‘illegal’ music sharing.  They’re not the same, they shouldn’t be confused and I’ll explain why.

(A series of men’s restrooms?  Nope, Peer-to-Peer.)

What is BitTorrent used for? BitTorrent is used to share large files.  Researchers at universities use it to share data.  Media make programming available through BitTorrent ( for example, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation), Amazon offers users BitTorrent capabilities in their online file storage service, the content for World of Warcraft is distributed through BitTorrent.  It’s being used everywhere for ‘legitimate’ purposes.

Let’s talk about what constitutes a ‘legitimate’ use of the network on computers in a university environment.  What’s obviously ‘legitimate’? – email, blogging, building web sites?  But spam is email and it’s not considered an acceptable  activity.  A blog full of stolen credit card numbers is blogging, but it would be considered a crime.  And what about a web site that incites violence?

It’s easy to see that activity on the internet is not identical to the technology used to perform the activity.  The technology is a tool.  Email is a tool.  BitTorrent is also a tool.  In reality, I think it’s more complex than that – but for now, let’s think of them as simply tools and without any moral value attached.

(How will you use your tool?)

Research by ipoque has shown that BitTorrent is the dominant protocol on the internet.  That means it’s used more than http, the protocol used to serve and access web pages.  To put it another way, BitTorrent is used more widely than web sites. That’s a popular tool!

Yes, BitTorrent can also be used to share a copyrighted music or video file without the permission of the copyright owner, but so can email, ftp and http and CDs and DVDs and hard drives.  With Gmail’s allowed attachment sizes, for example, you can send entire albums of music in one email.  But where is the effort to ban or stop email?

(This is not a crime.)

The RIAA has mounted a massive campaign against BitTorrent users – prosecuting them for sharing music.  But this isn’t a new activity.  When I was a kid we would copy albums onto cassette tapes and give them to our friends – this was never called ‘a crime.’  But now that the recording industry’s mode of operating is no longer profitable, they’re trying to criminalizing sharing.  They ought be spending that time re-evaluating their mode of operating, but that’s another post.

Even if they succeed and even if it is ‘illegal’ to ’share music’ – BitTorrent (and other peer-to-peer sharing protocols) is and should remain a legal, usable, and useful protocol for sharing large files.  As Manuel Castells said in the M. Nathan W. Levin Lecture at the New School in 2007 “The hackers built the network and they built it open.”

So, if you’re told that you can’t run file sharing software or BitTorrent isn’t allowed – ask why.  Ask why they don’t want you to engage in a legal file sharing practice.

(Well, not these hackers…)

Want to give it a try and download something?

First, you need an application, you can read about some options here:

http://torrentfreak.com/mac-bt-clients/

And here are some free sites for legal torrents:

http://www.legaltorrents.com/

http://www.publicdomaintorrents.com/

http://www.legittorrents.info/

http://www.bittorrent.com/

http://2007.sxsw.com/toolbox/

http://bt.etree.org/

http://www.zudeo.com/

http://www.torrentfreak.com/

http://linuxtracker.org/

Elizabeth Housley, a a doctoral student in the Environmental Psychology program, is setting up Moodle for her Social Psych course at Hunter this summer and will be blogging about the experience here.

Elizabeth has extensive experience working with Blackboard alternatives with Project Stretch, a technology-based literacy program developed by the Stanton/Heiskell Center for Public Policy in Telecommunications and Information Systems. We’re looking forward to reading about her experience using this tool as an alternative to Blackboard in her course.

The new Mac Media Lab on the concourse level of the Mina Rees library is open during library hours.  Some days, the lab might be reserved for a class or a workshop.  There is a new link above that will take you to the calendar as well as a new sidebar item with buttons. You can always get there by going to:  http://tinyurl.com/gcmaclab

The XML button will give you the RSS feed of the calendar. The ICAL link will allow you to subscribe to this calendar in iCal, Outlook or Google Calendars. The HTML link will give you the calendar on screen.

Have a look at this brilliant film about collaboration, trust and safety in the online world.  They make the radical proposition that by trusting and being more open we actually build more trust and openness.

“With contributions from Clay Shirky, Alan Cox, Paul Miller, Don Tapscott and many others, Us Now explores the ways in which new technologies and a closely related culture of collaboration present radical new models of social organization.

The principles of trust, transparency, self-selection and open participation are coming closer and closer to the mainstream of our social and political lives. Us Now describes this transition, telling the stories of the online networks whose radical self-organizing structures may change the fabric of government forever.

The film is streaming online for free and the filmmakers intend to license all of the footage with a Creative Commons license.”

via RealitySandwich