BitTorrent Creator Praised 'Digital Piracy'

Because so many copyright holders offer files legally over BitTorrent, some experts believe the file-sharing technology will survive the inevitable scrutiny of the courts. As Ed Felton notes, creator Bram Cohen has frequently promoted the legal non-infringing use of his creation.

Stories about Cohen frequently cite his good intentions:

Cohen denies that he wrote BitTorrent with the intent to assist piracy and says he is the last guy you would ever find stealing digital content.

A recently discovered mission statement on Cohen's personal web site online since July 2001 appears to suggest that he developed the software to enable piracy:

I am a technological activist. I have a political agenda. I am in favor of basic human rights: to free speech, to use any information and technology, to purchase and use recreational drugs, to enjoy and purchase so-called 'vices', to be free of intruders, and to privacy.

I further my goals with technology. I build systems to disseminate information, commit digital piracy, synthesize drugs, maintain untrusted contacts, purchase anonymously, and secure machines and homes. I release my code and writings freely, and publish all of my ideas early to make them unpatentable.

Technology is not a panacea. I refuse to work on technology to track users, analyze usage patterns, watermark information, censor, detect drug use, or eavesdrop. I am not naive enough to think any of those technologies could enable a 'compromise'.

Despite my emphasis on technology, I do not view laws as inherently evil. My goals are political ones, even if my techniques are not. The only way to fundamentally succeed is by changing existing laws. If I rejected all help from the political arena I would inevitably fail.

By declaring intentions to enable piracy, Cohen makes it much easier for the courts to view BitTorrent software as a contributory infringer of copyright.

Instead of being able to build systems on BitTorrent and know that its servers and clients will be allowed to operate legally, we have a future Grokster smackdown waiting for us.

Thanks, Bram. Maybe you'll have more success with your plan to create undetectable new recreational drugs.

Update: Cohen has added a preface stating that the piece was a parody of another manifesto.

Programming · 2005/06/29 · 31 COMMENTS · Link

The elderly Pablo Picasso had an affair with a 45-years-younger woman who had once interviewed him for a school newspaper. Her recollection of the relationship reads like a surreal romance novel:

The affair began when she was visiting the 70-year-old Picasso at his studio in May 1951, when he was living with Francoise Gilot, the mother of two of his children. A thunderstorm approached. "I said I was going to go home," she said. "At that moment, it was like a fairytale. The room grew dark, and through the skylight I saw a sky like I had never seen before, except in the Congo during tropical storms. He told me, 'Wait a little while, there is going to be a storm' ... I have no memory of what happened next."

Did they have date-rape drugs in 1951?

2005/06/28 · 3 COMMENTS · Link

New Mailing List: Manila Uptime

Buzzword.Com turned one earlier this month, and the Frontier Manila server running the site has decided to celebrate by taking some time off.

The server's been offline for 24 hours and I'm still trying to find a solution. When I run Frontier, it immediately grabs 100 percent of the CPU and stops responding to my requests.

This coincides with some other problems that Buzzword users have been experiencing. I've learned in the past year that Manila's a hard program to run well when you're hosting several thousand weblogs and you don't know shit from Shinola.

I have begun a new mailing list, Manila Uptime, to document my efforts to bring the server up to the level of reliability I expect from Apache. I hope that we can rope some other Manila admins to the list, fix some bugs and find mistakes I've made that hosed the server.

Manila · 2005/06/28 · 1 COMMENT · Link

Meet Sunsara Taylor, the media's favorite young communist blogger and hardest working running dog in prole business:

Sunsara Taylor has emerged as an important leading voice of a new generation dusting off the dream of revolution and picking up communism as it is being creatively re-envisioned by Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party. She fiercely believes humanity is capable of a morality flowing from principles which guide an ongoing struggle to uproot all vestiges of male supremacy, to promote and base ourselves on science and truth, to value people around the world as much as ourselves, to overcome the brutal history and present reality of racism, and to construct a whole better world in the process. She writes for the Revolutionary Worker, has appeared on/in: Hannity & Colmes, Fox & Friends, The New York Times, Air America, The Amsterdam News, 1010Wins, CNN.COM, NY1, and on more. For speaking or interviews: sunsarasworld@yahoo.com

I was so inspired by her biography that I started a fire in one of my trash cans and overturned my car.

Politics · 2005/06/25 · 6 COMMENTS · Link

One Nation Divisible by Zero

A State Department employee recalls how liberals reacted after the 9/11 attacks:

I remember President Bush coming to our agency to make a speech about three weeks afterwards. Although, as is common with federal workers in DC, many people were Democrats and liberals who had voted against him, you would not have known that from the tumultous applause he got. He was the Commander-in-Chief, and we put aside politics to support him.

Some conservatives are cynically proud of Rove for exploiting 9/11 as a wedge issue, such as Glenn Reynolds.

I believe that Rove did this on purpose, of course, but the idea that it demonstrates his intelligence beggars the imagination. Telling a wide swath of America they wanted therapy for the architects of 9/11 is making a lot of people madder than hell, including normally calm moderates like Joe Gandelman.

To understand why, look no further than President Bush's speech to the nation on Sept. 20, 2001:

Tonight we are a country awakened to danger and called to defend freedom. Our grief has turned to anger, and anger to resolution. Whether we bring our enemies to justice, or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done.

I thank the Congress for its leadership at such an important time. All of America was touched on the evening of the tragedy to see Republicans and Democrats joined together on the steps of this Capitol, singing "God Bless America." And you did more than sing; you acted, by delivering $40 billion to rebuild our communities and meet the needs of our military.

Speaker Hastert, Minority Leader Gephardt, Majority Leader Daschle and Senator Lott, I thank you for your friendship, for your leadership and for your service to our country.

The 2004 presidential election was the most polarized in at least 32 years, according to exit poll data. Republicans chose Bush 93 percent to 6 percent and Democrats chose Kerry 89 percent to 11 percent, both new highs.

At a time when President Bush needs every supporter he can get to stay the course in Iraq, Rove's robbing him of the one moment in which his reputation as a uniter wasn't a punchline.

Politics · 2005/06/25 · 6 COMMENTS · Link

In Case of Emergency, Dial 9/11

"9/11 changed everything" is the context by which everything follows. No speech about homeland security or Iraq should being without a reference to 9/11. -- GOP advisor Frank Luntz

President Bush had a 90 percent approval rating in the Gallup Poll conducted Sept. 21-22, 2001. He has 47 percent approval in the same poll today.

As the White House flounders for reasons to explain the record lows in the president's public support, perhaps they should consider the corrosive effect of their repeated attempts to play the 9/11 card whenever they get into political trouble.

Not far from Ground Zero, Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove said that liberals wanted to "offer therapy and understanding" for the 9/11 attackers, insulting millions of Americans who supported the president in 2001, regardless of how we felt about the bitter recount battle that denied Gore the presidency.

Had a pollster called, I would have eagerly been counted among that 90 percent. Like many liberals, I supported the war to oust the Taliban and Al Qaeda from Afghanistan. I would have supported the invasion of Iraq, had Saddam Hussein been complicit in the massacre of 2,996 people. I eagerly await the day Osama bin Laden pokes his head out of a mountain cave in remote Wherethehellistan and is greeted by a Daisy Cutter.

Now Bush's second-term agenda is in disarray: His plan to privatize Social Security is deader than Elvis, the news brings daily Gitmo allegations, and the Iraq insurgency shows no signs of getting weaker. The vice president tells Americans we'd be more confident in the war if we looked up throes in the dictionary.

So of course liberals are being told that we wanted to coddle the 9/11 attackers and are motivated by a desire to endanger our troops when we're not burning flags or pulling out feeding tubes at hospices. The White House criticizes our response to the savagery of 9/11 while remaining silent on the prospect of Bin Laden's capture, 1,383 days (and counting) after he murdered thousands of Americans.

As much as I want a positive outcome in Iraq, in spite of my opposition to the war, I can't see it happening under a White House more serious about fighting Democrats than terrorists.

Politics · 2005/06/24 · 7 COMMENTS · Link

Liveblogging Talk Radio

A cool thing happened Monday night during the experiment to promote the Alan Colmes Radio Show on the Drudge Retort.

As the show broadcasts from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m. weekdays, I post live links plugging the next hour. I wanted to see if the site's night owls would tune in and talk about it in real time.

On Monday, Colmes interviewed Cindy Sheehan, a mother who began Gold Star Families for Peace after her son died in Iraq. On the Retort, we discussed her desire for an impeachment inquiry, and I called such talk a fantasy.

Listen to the attached audio to see what Colmes did on the air less than two minutes after I posted the comment. I've included the entire nine-minute segment and a combative mother-vs-mother call Sheehan received later in the show.

Podcasts · Politics · Radio · 2005/06/22 · 2 COMMENTS · Link

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