Bitcoin Global News (BGN)
January 04, 2019 -- ADVFN Crypto NewsWire -- Torrents became
popular with legal issues surrounding two popular websites, Napster
and ThePirateBay. The issues arise because of copyright
infringement. Millions of people around the world were using
torrents to upload, download and share content of all forms on the
internet. Thousands of people still use these websites, but it is
not inherently illegal. BitTorrent is one of the most prevalent and
longest running torrent file trackers - launched first in 2001.
BitTorrent itself is the name for the underlying protocol that
allows torrents to function, a website, and the company that
maintains, operates and further develops the associated the
systems.
TRON
Purchase
In June of this year TRON acquired
BitTorrent Inc., which was formed in 2004, and still operates out
of San Francisco, CA, U.S.A. as a private company with over 100
employees. The company will now be launching their own
cryprocurrency to facilitate advanced payment features in their
products and services based on the TRON network protocol. The
BitTorrent Token (BTT) will open the door for introducing
cryptocurrencies to their over 100 million userbase. run on
the tron protocol, developed by Tron, which acquired BitTorrent in
June of last year. The file-sharing software company claims to have
100 million users.
“In one giant leap, we can
introduce blockchain to hundreds of millions of users around the
world and empower a new generation of content creators with the
tools to distribute their content directly to others on the web.” -
Justin Sun, founder of Tron and CEO
Similarities to
Bitcoin
This partnership runs much deeper
than just expanding a user base or marketing efforts. The
underlying internet protocols which allow torrents to function have
many similarities to the decentralized networks of
cryptocurrencies. In the same way that the processing power for
Bitcoin transactions are distributed amongst miners and the ledger
that keeps track of it all is distributed amongst Bitcoin wallet
users who run a full node.
The original legal issues that
brought torrents to the public awareness stemmed from this same
decentralized infrastructure. In order for torrents to work, users
source content by accessing pieces of it from a decentralized
network. When this content would create copyright infringement,
it’s difficult to place blame on any single party. The data for the
entire file was not held by any single party, and because of the
decentralized protocol, no single entity was responsible for
exchanging the data for the file either.
In this way, the advantages over a
traditional centralized network are that it can work effectively
over networks with lower bandwidth. Several basic computers can
replace big, expensive servers while efficiently distributing files
to many recipients. Lower bandwidth usage helps to prevent large
spikes in internet traffic in a given area as well. This keeps
internet speeds higher for all users, whether using BitTorrent
protocol or not. As another similarity in features used between
cryptocurrencies and torrents, many torrent services now have
integrated encryption techniques, just like the encryption that
allows.
By: BGN Editorial Staff