Imagine if, back in the day, record labels had said to Napster, “Sure, take our stuff,” instead of bringing down the big legal hammer and crushing the pioneering peer-to-peer service. Times have certainly changed.
Over the past week, the popular BitTorrent site has posted a short documentary from major-band Death Cab for Cutie, as well as songs and videos from a bunch of current and former Sub Pop Records acts, including the Postal Service, Hot Hot Heat, the Shins, Iron & Wine and Band of Horses. And within the week, there’s going to be content on the site from Fall Out Boy too.
The 5-year-old site — which distributes a piece of file-sharing software that makes it easier to distribute and download big files containing movies, games, software and music by breaking them into smaller, more manageable packets — is the world’s most popular peer-to-peer service, according to spokesperson Lily Lin.
With 90 million people downloading BitTorrent to date, its users account for 40 to 60 percent of all Internet traffic, Lin said, and soon they’re going to be able to get a lot of that material legitimately.
