The inspiration behind BitTorrent was to enable likeminded people to cooperate to make a digital asset more available on the Internet, overcoming the infrastructure barriers that stifled access.
In 2004, I left Yahoo! to co-found BitTorrent, Inc. with its inventor. The protocol was revolutionary: large files — be they software binaries or digital media — were notoriously difficult to host or access. BitTorrent would allow these files to be found on the Web, but delivered with an alternative protocol to HTTP. It employed a peer-to-peer collaborative approach, breaking files into pieces, and allowing interested parties to swap pieces they have for pieces they need to form the full file. While a traditional client-server architecture like HTTP would get overwhelmed by high demand for a large file, BitTorrent flipped the supply-demand dynamic because the more popular a file becomes, the more sources arrive and the faster it downloads.
At peak, 50% of all internet traffic was BitTorrent.
Legitimizing P2P
The vast majority of BitTorrent usage was for pirated video — TV shows and movies for the most part — which created a stigma for BitTorrent the commercial entity. My first job was to learn from Napster’s mistakes and legitimize P2P before the media industry would litigate it out of existence. The key moves were:
- 2005: Cut a deal with the MPAA and seven major studios to demonstrate a legal application of the technology
- 2006: Acquired µTorrent (the largest torrent client) to consolidate control of the protocol and the roadmap for the technology
- 2007: Launched three commercial products — BitTorrent Entertainment Network, Device SDK, and the BitTorrent CDN — to establish the business model for the company
Partnerships with Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, MTV, and Lionsgate were critical to establish legal cloud cover for the company. Even artists like Nine Inch Nails embraced it for legitimate distribution.
The First Victim of Net Neutrality
Just as the coast was clearing up, BitTorrent became the first victim in the battle against Net Neutrality in 2007.
In 2007, a Comcast subscriber discovered unexpected TCP reset packets killing BitTorrent connections on his home network. The Electronic Frontier Foundation tested it using a public-domain King James Bible — in two out of three tries, the transfer was blocked. Comcast used specialized hardware to inject forged TCP reset packets spoofed to appear as if they came from the other user’s computer, which created an uprising for what felt like a direct attack on the user’s network communication. Peter Svensson’s memorable analogy: “If it were a telephone conversation, it would be like the operator breaking into the conversation, telling each talker in the voice of the other: ‘Sorry, I have to hang up.’”
FCC Chairman Kevin Martin put it even more bluntly: “Would you be OK with the post office opening your mail, deciding they didn’t want to bother delivering it, and hiding that fact by sending it back to you stamped, ‘address unknown — return to sender?’”
Comcast’s story shifted five times — from denial to partial admission to claiming peak-hours-only throttling to finally admitting interference occurred “regardless of the level of overall network congestion.”
The Fight Back
My response: “They’re using sophisticated technology to degrade service, which probably costs them a lot of money. It would be better to see them use that money to improve service.”
I personally negotiated the March 27, 2008 agreement with Comcast: protocol-agnostic network management, expanded broadband capacity, and BitTorrent software efficiency improvements. As I said at the time: “Internet management should be fair, agnostic and disclosed.” And: “We are thrilled with this.” BitTorrent traffic would be treated the same as traffic from YouTube, Google, or any other Internet company.
The FCC voted 3-2 on August 1, 2008 to order Comcast to stop. Commissioner Michael Copps declared: “Today, we choose the open road.” The case became the catalyst for formal net neutrality regulation — the first enforcement action under internet openness principles, leading to the 2010 Open Internet Order and 2015 Title II reclassification.
This was called “the first true violation of net neutrality” because it was an active, secret interference with a specific protocol — not merely a proposal or policy debate.
Looking Back
It was tremendously gratifying to spend four years legitimizing a groundbreaking architecture for the internet. And then furthermore fighting for digital freedom of expression and communication — and actually winning. Which many would not have expected given the nature of BitTorrent traffic, its expense to ISPs, and the political environment in DC.