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| BitTorrent: 'Content for a Global Audience' |
| [Interview] Ashwin Navin, BitTorrent's COO, talks with OhmyNews about his company's aspirations |
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Xu Zhiqiang (xuzhiqiang)  |
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Published 2005-09-12 15:29 (KST) |
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The Chinese version of this email interview was published in the 21st Century Business Herald on Sept 7. -- Ed.
 |  | |  Ashwin Navin, Chief Operating Officer, BitTorrent Inc. | | | ©2005 A. Navin | Some distributors of anime in the United States have began to use BitTorrent as a tool and a way to distribute their products. Do you think it will become a new trend or model for the culture industry to distribute? Is there any chance that someday BitTorrent will grow into a distribution platform and channel for the culture or entertainment industry?
BitTorrent is becoming a critical player in bringing content to market online for the entertainment industry. The Internet tears down so many limits that the industry endured using physical distribution, and now, thanks to the efficiency of BitTorrent, the entertainment industry can securely offer unlimited selection at aggressive prices to a global audience.
According to a study by CacheLogic, eDonkey is now roughly on par with BitTorrent in the United States, China, Japan and Britain. In your opinion, why could eDonkey be on par with BitTorrent and what actions will BitTorrent do next to keep exceeding other P2P tools?
BitTorrent is a web-publishing tool, increasingly used by content creators and rights owners. We are not a P2P network, and we are not developing file-sharing tools. eDonkey and the P2P networks can have the entire file-sharing market because we're not interested in it at all.
What caused BitTorrent determine to transform its original P2P software role into a web-publishing tool? For the piracy crackdown pressure or the no-profit status quo? Furthermore, if BitTorrent loses its position in the file-sharing market, it means the user number will drop. In this circumstance, will content creators and rights owners still be interested in using BitTorrent to publish?
BitTorrent was never a P2P file-sharing tool. There are major differences between a file-sharing network (like eDonkey or Gnutella) and a web-publishing tool (like BitTorrent or Macromedia Flash or Adobe Acrobat).
A file-sharing application indexes your hard drive, and makes it available to other users in exchange for providing you access to their hard drives. A web-publishing tool allows you to put content on your Web site. The confusion starts when people publish files to their Web sites when they do not have license to do so. We have always discouraged this use.
Why did you decide to launch a BitTorrent files search engine? Has it worked well since it was launched at the end of May?
BitTorrent offers tools to publishers of digital content. Our first products (the BitTorrent downloader and torrent-file creator) allowed the publisher to make his content available online. The search engine allows users to find his content.
How do you make profit from the search engine? By advertising or fees from the content providers?
Some of the content in our search engine is commercial content, which allow users to try before they buy. We will share in the revenue with our publishers.
After a try, I find that the engine doesn't support Chinese characters.
As for the China market, we are very excited that BitTorrent is so popular there. We will be launching better Chinese language support in the future.
Actually in China, there have been many Chinese-language versions of BitTorrent search engines, similar to the one you launched. What do you think of their emergence?
We are very happy that the Chinese online population has adopted BitTorrent so rapidly. The businesses that have emerged using our technology should work with us to always have the best and fastest technology for their users.
More and more pirated music and DVDs such as "Star Wars" leaked to the Internet before their first showing. Do you think it is BitTorrent's fault?
We work with copyright holders to protect and secure their content online. The Web sites which host pirated movies using BitTorrent or HTTP or FTP or any other protocol will inevitably pay a penalty. There is no anonymity on the Internet or when using BitTorrent.
What is the essential motivation for you and Bram Cohen to create and maintain and update BitTorrent? And what is your expectation towards BitTorrent's future?
We expect to have a profitable business that also makes the world a better place. Our motivation and rewards come when we see a Chinese schoolteacher making his or her multimedia lesson plan available on the school bulletin board online. That lesson plan is now available to all teachers and students across China and even the world. This content would not exist on the Web at all if it were not for BitTorrent's cost-effectiveness.
Bram Cohen said "I maintain BitTorrent for a living." Is the donation enough for you to make a living and maintain the technology?
No, we sell advertising as well.
It is said that every day you will receive many calls from venture capitalists (VCs), do you have a plan to utilize funds from VCs?
No comment.
If you have absorbed VCs, will you charge users fees for BitTorrent some day?
BitTorrent's software will always have a free version available. We will also launch internationalization including Chinese language support, so all BT users in China should try to use our version because it will be the fastest and most reliable way to download using BT.
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©2005 OhmyNews
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