Last week brought news that Bram Cohen was creating a search engine for torrents. The idea is that it'd be nice to have a search engine that specifically focuses on torrents. Is this a mistake or the evolution of BitTorrent.

For those who don't know, BitTorrent is a software program that supports peer to peer file transfers. The key to a BitTorrent transfer is a tracker. The tracker is a file that points to an original copy of the file you'd like to transfer and other information. Once you find the tracker, you can start the file transfer in BitTorrent.

When the file transfer starts in BitTorrent, your client goes out and tries to find everyone that has downloaded the file or is downloading the file. This is the big thing you need to know about BitTorrent. While you are downloading you are also uploading.

For instance, let's say you'd like to download the latest Desperate Housewives episode. It weighs in around 300 megabytes, so while you are downloading from others they are also downloading from you. You're acting as a source for the file even though you don't have the entire file. Your BitTorrent client manages the process of downloading and assembling all the pieces.

Finding the trackers is the problem. There are many sites spread across many countries that offer torrents, but finding a specific file to download is usually an exercise in futility. Unless you know the exact location of the tracker, you're out of luck.

Bram Cohen thinks he can solve that problem by creating a search engine for torrents. He and a small band of developers have created the search engine on BitTorrent's home page.

This is interesting for three reasons:

1. Bram Cohen never was interested in search. His answer is specific to the client itself, but it remains the same across the basis of BitTorrent. Bran has been careful in the past to be the person who supplies the tools. In this case, he's also providing the access.
2. The MPAA just ran through a ton of torrent sites and shut them down for offering trackers. This kind of attention to the BitTorrent creator can cause a concern.  
3. This is a slippery slope. Even though the search engines are not liable to illegal information they point to, they can be forced to remove links to it due to the DCMA.

Is it a mistake for the developer of BitTorrent to offer this? I think so. BitTorrent is a wonderful technology and one that someday the companies whose content is traded with it illegally will embrace, but now is not that time. Who knows? Maybe the idea is to force those companies to deal with it now than later, but wouldn't time be better used improving BitTorrent?

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