Moving at the Speed of Creativity by Wesley Fryer

BitTorrent and iTunes

In last month’s article, “BitTorrent’s Grab at Respectability,” Business Week revealed the surprising attempt to move a peer to peer (P2P) file sharing program most closely associated with illegal movie downloads into the legal mainstream.

I have never used BitTorrent (yet), but from what I have read the amazing thing about the technology is the way it allows huge files to be quickly downloaded. The files are broken up into pieces, and multiple users share the same pieces which can be downloaded in a non-sequential order to be ordered later after all the pieces are in. Limewire uses the same or a similar technology to grab files from multiple users at the same time. It really speeds things up.

The article also mentioned that BitTorrent was passed up last year by eDonkey as the most popular P2P program. I had not heard of eDonkey. Shows how I am on the fringe of being out of the loop here, I guess.

I wonder if Apple will be able to use a technology similar to BitTorrent to speed up downloads from the iTunes music (and now video) store? This past Wednesday night, when I and doubtless thousands of other eager iTunes 6 early adopters were downloading the software and our first $1.99 music videos, the transfer speeds did seem a bit slow. That is to be expected right after a new software release I suppose, but if (as I expect it will) the popularity of iTunes as a source of video as well as audio content will continue to rapidly increase, this situation will have to be addressed.

I predict that the media outlets who adapt and change to this new environment of digital downloads quickly will be the winners. I am sure there will be lots of holdouts. Apple’s stock climbed up to $54 today. These will be important trends to watch.

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