Pirate Bay aims to sink BitTorrent
By Chris Williams
November 1, 2007 11:33 GMT

The buccaneers of Pirate Bay are working on a replacement for the BitTorrent protocol in fear their access to free music, video and software could be blocked by commercial interests.

The Swedish anti-copyright collective is building a new P2P system aimed at reducing the influence of BitTorrent's inventor Bram Cohen and the company he founded. The new protocol is also being designed to avoid malware, spam and the attentions of law enforcement.

In July 2006, version 6.0 of the official BitTorrent client was the first released without the source code. It caused grumbles in the file-sharing community that BitTorrent Inc., where Cohen recently switched from CEO to chief scientist, would stymie protocol development in its bid to cash in. Its new work on the protocol is now closed.

More recent attacks by copyright owners have highlighted the second front in the sharers' battle to continue exchanging files unhindered. The leaked Media Defender emails revealed how concerted efforts are made to stuff BitTorrent networks with useless honeypot files.

The Register
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The software people must be delighted that there is skirmishing in the ranks of the "enemy"

This is getting interesting...

On the early days, media contents were unprotected and were easily pirated.
Many media copy protections have been created to stop them, but the pirates are always have their way.
Then copyright holders gone underground and disrupt their network.
Now it's the pirates' turn to protect their network.

Will the network protection work? Will it prove that network based protection is better than media based protection?
Who knows...
One thing I know is that if the network protection works, it may "rock" the media industry.

I'll be watching this one closely. Hmm...