Rogers Cadenhead is Trying to Destroy BitTorrent
June 30, 2005
There's no fun in creating new awards if you can't give them out to people you like. I like Rogers Cadenhead, he's funny and smart. He's also intellectually dishonest! Let's review.
Rogers says, in the comments on his post, that he "[B]lame[s] Bram Cohen for misleading people about his original intent in developing BitTorrent." That intent? That BitTorrent was designed to enable piracy.
The evidence of this is a manifesto that Cohen had written a few years ago, where he published a long list of moderately radical social changes that he'd like to see. If Bram wanted to design BitTorrent to enable piracy, he wouldn't have made every tracker easily traceable to its host, as Rogers well knows. WASTE, for example, is far more decentralized in that regard, and far more anonymous, and Bram's certainly smart enough to design a system like that.
More to the point, it's irresponsible to post a headline so inflammatory, so designed to troll the traditional media when they're looking for a high-traffic piece when it'd be trivial to actually email the person being discussed and ask for clarification. Omitting that effort makes the post seem particularly ill-intentioned. (When I wrote this yesterday, I'd bet that CNET would pick up Rogers' post before Wired News did, but I was wrong)
Might Rogers be right? Possibly, but it's not a clear connection: The real story might be more nuanced. Legitimate uses of BitTorrent or similar technologies might enable businesses to get past the idea of distribution being costly or limiting, and might have them change their legislative goals to the point where "piracy" is no longer a crime. Already, what passes for privacy in copyrighted media is considered distribution under alternate IP regimes.
The bottom line? Rabble-rousing is easy, and therefore extremely lame. Rogers has perpetrated great media hacks, one of the best and most recent of which was squatting on the pope's domain name. The papacy has a long and glorious history of endorsing bad ideas and tolerating injustice, yet somehow Rogers didn't use any of his screen time to slam the pope for being intolerant, or for being insufficiently apologetic about his institution's past and current indiscretions and abuses. But it wouldn't be too hard, particularly if you're willing to go back into the past and look at writing that you've taken out of context. And you know what? I am cool with not doing that, because there's nothing wrong with just having some fun with a media stunt.
But when Rogers treats digging up someone's old web page to discredit a technology as if it's investigative reporting and throws a sensational headline on it, he's selling us all short and making us just as bad as the media we object to. Because I respect you Rogers, and because I think you care about this medium, I'm calling you out. I blame you for misleading people about BitTorrent.
8:26 AM
1 TrackBack
Anil Dash: "The bottom line? Rabble-rousing is easy, and therefore extremely lame."... Read More
9 Comments
Leave a comment
- Earlier: The Misunderestimation of Lauryn Hill
- Next: Happy Belated Monday
Just a spellecheck. Eabble = Rabble, I believe.
It is of course required by law that any post containing a correction to another's misspelling itself include a misspelling.
Typo fixed, and law abided.
When I ran into Bram at Codecon, we had this exchange:
"We remarked to Bram, 'Too bad about all those torrent trackers going down.' (The MPAA had instigated another wave of shut-downs just the day before) Bram's reply? "Fuck 'em."'
Speaking for myself, I installed BlogTorrent on SFist specifically so that I could distribute our own video, audio and print content without taking huge hits to our bandwidth bill.
Shows like Kevin Rose's "The Broken" and "Systm" are some of my favorite examples of using BitTorrent as a distribution medium for non-infringing content that should really be what the studios are afraid of -- talented individuals creating compelling content that they are distributing world wide, circumventing traditional media outlets. Rose even left G4 specifically so he could produce Systm.
I'm most surprised by Rogers' headline and post (and the Wired News story) because it seems like something straight out of a dirty politics playbook.
You take something an opponent said back in college, pull it out of context, then use it to smear them today. I recall reading what Bill Clinton and Howard Dean did and said during their college years, which was brought up on the campaign trail twenty years later to make them look unsympathetic, unamerican, and/or both. Not exactly fair.
I like Rogers and respect him a great deal, so it surprised me to see him title his post the way he did.
"More to the point, it's irresponsible to post a headline so inflammatory, so designed to troll...."
Y'see, that's *another* good reason not to read the newspapers, they'll getcha writing like that in no time! 8)
In retrospect I screwed the pooch on the headline, but I didn't see a possibility that it was anything other than a genuine statement of his intent. He linked to it on his home page for two years. Judging someone by a "technological agenda" from their home page seems like it's within the boundaries of fairness.
When I gave it the play I did, it was because I couldn't believe Cohen had publicly endorsed digital piracy after all the years of saying the right things. I viewed his agenda as a legitimate news story that would quickly find its way to the media.
Had I thought it might be a droll parody, I would have written about that and chosen a headline less sensational. I like readers, but not enough to unfairly torpedo someone's rep to get them.
Sorry, Rogers, but the "thank you bram" at the end is more offensive than the headline. Fact is, yet again, you made a bit of an idiot of yourself. The guy's software is responsible for a ridiculous amount of internet traffic. If you're going to bag on that, I'm afraid you are going to find many sympathetic ears.
"are not"
Fact is, yet again, you made a bit of an idiot of yourself.
Considering this statement of contempt, do you really expect me to give anything else you've said consideration?
Considering this statement of contempt
Yeah. Why not?