BitTorrent

Has the Church considered using the BitTorrent protocol for distributing content from Church websites?

One application I would love to see, for example, would be for the Training Lessons for clerks being distributed this way. I serve as stake clerk and I like to install copies of all the lessons on the administrative PCs used by the ward and branch clerks in their buildings. It is great that there is a link posted on the page to download all the lessons in one zip file. Once it is done the first time, it is frustrating that the only way to access the new content is to download the whole file once again. What would be ever better if they were provided as a .torrent file as some BitTorrent clients allow the selective downloading of files with the package. Then when a new lesson is added I would only need to download the new files, saving me time and the Church bandwidth.

I could also see this being beneficial for serving up the MP3s from General Conference, the Ensign and other materials. I'm not sure what kind of bandwidth usage you experience when new content is first made available? Using BitTorrent would help reduce the load.

I agree that BitTorrent is awesome technology... The only problem with it is the complexity of needing to open port 6881 and deal with .torrent files. I think BT is beyond the less technical user.

Brad O.

Most modern BitTorrent clients (such as Azureus 2.4+) don't require you to open port 6881 (instead you have to open some higher arbitrary port) or you can use UPnP (which is what I would assume most less technical users would end up using without their knowledge; a default WRT54G Linksys router and someone using Windows XP SP2 has everything to make UPnP work out of the box). On the other hand, I have no idea why a normal user would be downloading something like Azureus in the first place.

Anyway, there are other ways to make use of BitTorrent while making its use nearly transparent to the user. For example, Warner Brothers uses BitTorrent as a backend to its movie download service (I've never used it, but I've read about it). There are also other BitTorrent based media systems such as Vuze http://www.vuze.com/

Some sort of system along those lines would certainly not hurt anything. There is no reason the lds.org servers should take all of the beating from all of the people wanting to download the latest general conference videos.

I agree, I think ideally what could be done is the creation of a custom manager/player tool.

Take a tool like Miro (formerly Democracy Player http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miro_(software) ), a combination RSS reader, bittorrent client and video player, and modify it into a tool that always provides members with a current list of available video content, updated by an RSS feed provided by Church HQ.

Members browse the list of available materials, select the ones they want to watch, and then the client starts pulling them via Bittorrent. Once the DL is complete they can watch the videos while their BT clients share along so other members can benefit.

The application would be upfront about its bandwidth consumption and storage use, allowing members to select how much bandwidth they are willing to grant to the tool.

This would allow for a large catalog of material to be available to members without the normal bandwidth costs for offering a large collection. Add in a seach functionality and tagging of videos with subjects and suddenly I can sit down with my LDS Video Library, search on 'Atonement', and see Conference talks, info videos and other church videos on demand.

Like Cottrells, I thought that bittorrent would be a useful technology for the church.... but MikeHillyer, you're making my mouth water!

brado426 wrote:I agree that BitTorrent is awesome technology... The only problem with it is the complexity of needing to open port 6881 and deal with .torrent files. I think BT is beyond the less technical user.

Brad O.

There is a new open source Java Applet that is a simple BitTorrent client. Its called bitlet and it can be found at http://www.bitlet.org

It seeks to make the downloading of torrents as transparent and simple as possible to the user.

Aaron

Doesn't anyone think that bit torrent would be seen as tacit approval of a perceived-as-illegal protocol? I mean, philosophy aside, one really doesn't see legal things done with p2p yet, and it doesn't seem to me the church will go that close to the line...

mrcolj wrote:Doesn't anyone think that bit torrent would be seen as tacit approval of a perceived-as-illegal protocol? I mean, philosophy aside, one really doesn't see legal things done with p2p yet, and it doesn't seem to me the church will go that close to the line...

Nothing legal done with p2p? BitTorrent is how I obtained most of the past few releases of Mandriva Linux, including a few proprietary components (the Powerpack edition), to which my paid club membership entitled me. It was legal, and it was done with p2p.

(Mandriva Linux mentioned strictly as an example of something legal for which p2p is used. No intent to imply any sort of official endorsement.)

rmrichesjr wrote:Nothing legal done with p2p? BitTorrent is how I obtained most of the past few releases of Mandriva Linux, including a few proprietary components (the Powerpack edition), to which my paid club membership entitled me. It was legal, and it was done with p2p.

(Mandriva Linux mentioned strictly as an example of something legal for which p2p is used. No intent to imply any sort of official endorsement.)

Well, I still think he has a point...

There isn't any major companies I can think of that deliver main stream content via Bit Torrent.

mkmurray wrote:There isn't any major companies I can think of that deliver main stream content via Bit Torrent.

How about

• 20th Century Fox
• MGM
• MTV
• Paramount
• Warner Bros.
• PBS

PBS Press Release wrote: PBS joins an established roster of leading content partners, including 20th Century Fox, Lionsgate, MTV Networks, MGM, Paramount and Warner Bros, who utilize BitTorrent’s entertainment platform to provide feature-length films, TV shows and music videos direct to consumers. Not only does BitTorrent’s entertainment platform provide fast, on-demand access to the most comprehensive licensed catalog of thousands of movies, TV shows, music and games, it also provides content creators a publishing platform to list their works in high-quality alongside the most recognizable titles from major movie studios, TV networks, and record labels.
http://www.bittorrent.com/about/press/p ... ces-online

See also http://www.bittorrent.com/about/partner ... ess_l-a_lt

I understand why mrcolj raises this point, but like most media distribution channels, it's not the channel which is the problem but the content that people distribute. BitTorrent/P2P networks can be used for good and evil. I just think the Church and members would benefit from the reduced distribution/production costs.

cottrells wrote:How about

• 20th Century Fox
• MGM
• MTV
• Paramount
• Warner Bros.
• PBS

Well, it appears I stand corrected. Thanks.

I think this argument could be made about just about any technology.

Internet chat (in all its various forms) is notorious for horrible uses, yet we use it on mormon.org to connect the missionaries to investigators.

Sattellite television is used to deliver all sorts of negative items, yet we use it for general conference.

I don't think we should let the image of a technology stop us from using it if it is the best option.

Just my $0.02.

Aaron

My opinion is a bit different. I believe if CHQ decided to distribute updated material via torrent, then it wont be long before individual units that have broadband access will want to have BT (or some other torrent client) installed on their unit's PC. This (IMO) is now playing with fire. Besides the issue of the immediate availability of questionable content (to put it mildly) that may or may not be able to be filtered, a slight misconfiguration of BT could expose every file on the PC.

Again IMO, I feel it's best left the way it is. Personally, I don't think DL'ing the entire ZIP every once in a while is all that bad, but maybe that's just me.

Mikerowaved wrote:My opinion is a bit different. I believe if CHQ decided to distribute updated material via torrent, then it wont be long before individual units that have broadband access will want to have BT (or some other torrent client) installed on their unit's PC. This (IMO) is now playing with fire. Besides the issue of the immediate availability of questionable content (to put it mildly) that may or may not be able to be filtered, a slight misconfiguration of BT could expose every file on the PC.

Again IMO, I feel it's best left the way it is. Personally, I don't think DL'ing the entire ZIP every once in a while is all that bad, but maybe that's just me.

I agree with your thoughts on the BT branded client.

The Torrent protocol is open, and a church customized client / tracker could limit exposure to other content, and mitigate concerns about configuration.

BitTorrent technology first appeared when podcasting first exploded on the scene in 2005. It's still smaller than doing podcasting and other audio/video technology like mp3 and m4u, but it's there.

The controversy over it has gotten such that there have been issues with Comcast over downloading files that use it, which the FCC is addressing, and that has ignited a firestorm as it is. That aside, we will not see major usages of the technology on the scale that mp3 and other audio/video distribution formats will still have, but then again things are changing so rapidly as you mentioned with some of the majors, I could end up being wrong.

Mikerowaved wrote:My opinion is a bit different. I believe if CHQ decided to distribute updated material via torrent, then it wont be long before individual units that have broadband access will want to have BT (or some other torrent client) installed on their unit's PC. This (IMO) is now playing with fire. Besides the issue of the immediate availability of questionable content (to put it mildly) that may or may not be able to be filtered, a slight misconfiguration of BT could expose every file on the PC.

I can think of no possible way for me to misconfigure my torrent client in such a way for me to give access to every file on my computer. The best I could do would be to generate a huge torrent of everything on my computer, find an open tracker to host it at, upload the .torrent file somewhere where people can find it, and then seed the torrent file. That would be virtually impossible to do accidentaly.

Perhaps you are confusing BitTorrent with another p2p protocol?

Also, we wouldn't have to give access to a traditional BT client. See this article for an example of how one organization has dealt with just such a concern by installing a modified BT client:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20 ... rrent.html

Aaron.