The Microsoft Monopoly Attacks BitTorrent

It would appear Microsoft doesn't like open source software (in other words free) competition. No surprise really considering how much open source software has been eating into its immense profits. Not that open source software is making an especially huge dent, however, that has to be qualified with a "yet".

Open source software has the potential to destroy Microsoft's dominance of the software industry. Everyone like things for free, especially when they work as well or better than the stuff you have to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for.

BitTorrent is an open source case in point. For those not in the know, BitTorrent is a form of software that enables large numbers of people to share large amounts of data all at the same time. It is similar to the sort of thing that happened to music with Napster and Kazaa, but with movies, and video. The difference, to radically simplify the whole process, is that BitTorrents break up data files, like a movie, into small pieces, once you've downloaded one piece you can start uploading it to all the other people who want to download the whole file. This forms a vast web of combined uploading and downloading that radically increases the speed information can be downloaded, and enourmously reduces the load on those attempting to distribute a particular data file, because everyone who is downloading the file is also helping to distribute it.

Content, however, is something Microsoft not only covets, it also wants to be the corporation you have to go to whenever you want to watch a movie, play a game, or do any form of computer interactivity on the internet. It wants to be the vehicle you have to use to see all these things. Why? So they can charge you for the privledge.

BitTorrent is an obvious threat to that effort, because it is free. It eliminates all possibility of monster profits through cornering the market, because everyone can not only use it for free, but they can also participate in improving it, if they have the technical ability.

In an effort to attack BitTorrent, Microsoft has launched a spectacularly bad bit of vaporware propaganda (vaporware being software that doesn't actually exist other than by its description).

They're calling the new vaporware "Avalanche" and they're billing it as a vastly improved form of BitTorrent. This from Forbes:

"Despite their enormous potential and popularity, existing end-system co-operative schemes may suffer from a number of inefficiencies which decrease their overall performance," the report says. "We propose a new end-system cooperative solution that uses network coding, i.e., data encoding at the interior nodes of the network, to overcome most of these problems." (click here for the full article)

Blah, blah, blah technospeak. No Microsoft doesn't have a working solution yet, so when they later go on to describe a 20% to 30% improvement in performance, you have to realize that all this is based on simulations, in other words "pretend". Vaporware to a "T".

Now if that weren't bad enough Microsoft is also using Fifth Columnists to propagandize against BitTorrents, by spreading inuendo that it will infect your computer with spyware. I guess Gates and co. are taking a few ideas from the radical right in the U.S. If you can't beat'em demonize 'em:

And now....it looks like the once (vaguely) happy, clappy world of Bittorrent is being invaded with the marketing campaign to end all marketing campaigns. A concerted effort to get everybody's favourite piece of advertising genius into your lives...Aurora. (click here for the full article)

Who does the quote above come from? According to John Dvorak of PC Magazine:

The Root of the Accusations. This was all begun by a Microsoft MVP character named Chris Boyd, who is always described as a "renowned" security expert. By whose standards is he renowned? Has he written books? Academic papers? Articles? What exactly besides blogging? So where does this assertion come from? The blog? (click here for the full article)

Of course, the internet, being what it is, especially in the area of communicating information, has pretty much been lambasting Microsoft and it's anti-BitTorrent efforts. There has been a veritable avalanche of anti-Microsoft response coming from all sectors.

The only ones dumb enough to buy this hoax, hook, line and sinker, are none other that the MSM. Especially what passes for it on the internet. Dvorak goes on:

Where Is the News Reporting? What bothered me the most about this episode was that there was no reporting whatsoever regarding the BitTorrent as spyware claims or even the credibility of the renowned MVP Chris Boyd. It was basically parroting a leap-of-faith accusation in a blog that somehow developed into these eventual talking points: Use BitTorrent and you'll get spyware. BitTorrent sucks, and oh, Microsoft has something better, although it's never been shipped—but it's better!

But peerhaps most convincing argument comes from the inventor of BitTorrent, Bram Cohen:

First of all, I'd like to clarify that Avalanche is vaporware. It isn't a product which you can use or test with, it's a bunch of proposed algorithms. There isn't even a fleshed out network protocol. The 'experiments' they've done are simulations.

It's a bad idea to give much weight to simulations, especially of something so hairy as real-world internet behavior. I spent most of my talk at stanford explaining why it's difficult to benchmark, much less simulate, BitTorrent in a way which is useful. But we can look at their simulation to see if it might at least be ballpark. (click here for the full article)

But really the best defense of BitTorrent comes in the actual using. It's not very hard. Do a Google search and you'll be able to find large numbers of websites all extolling its virtues and giving you lengthy explanations on how it works and which software applications to use to make use of this wonderful new technology. Admittedly most people use it for pirating software and movies, and that I think is the basis for the hatred it inspires in the business community, but none-the-less it is an excellent, and very free piece of software.