Where does this "statistic" come from? What is the basis of your accusation? Do your "facts" include the tens of millions of people that use bittorrent technology for legitimate uses? There are dozens of legal torrent sites, software/OS distros, and even World of Warcraft that use the technology legitimately, you know.
1. The decision on whether a piece of technology is legal is not based on its majority use, but on whether there are substantial non-infringing uses. (first Google result, didn't follow link: http://www.justice.gov/criminal/cybercrime/ipmanual/05ipma.h... "Indeed, it need merely be capable of substantial noninfringing uses.")
2. The vast majority of freeway traffic is in excess of the posted speed limit. You don't hear many arguments to shut down the freeways as a result. [Yes, I know proof by analogy is weak.]
How about HTTP traffic? BitTorrent is just a highly effective content distribution system like HTTP. But unlike HTTP, it scales even if the upstream bandwidth of the initial data server is limited. BitTorrent simply gets all the flak for this property.
Facebook uses BitTorrent internally to distribute new versions of their PHP-code to their server park of tens of thousands machines. Because the single server would be upstream-congested if it wanted to push out a change fast.
> I never said ALL and I never equated it to piracy.
No, of course not. You just said nobody was going to care if patents were being infringed because they use torrents for copyright infringement. No, you never said the word "all", but you did ask why this would change anything, which would be quite strange if you were at all considering, say, Blizzard.
Of course, this is before we even start to get in on your apparent conflation of the end users (who would be the ones committing copyright infringement with the software) and the developers (who would be the ones allegedly committing patent infringement).
And, because it's really not worth starting another comment for it: your automatic assumption that downvotes == people trying to silence the opposition and your subsequent goading are really childish. HN is, for the most part, a sane, sensical, and mature community and it reflects poorly on everyone when you make such baseless assumptions. Have you considered reflecting on what your comment adds or detracts from the conversation? I think you'll find that it adds little while the "everyone is so jumpy about it means I'm right" comment is an inane way to curb conversation.
To me, because everyone is so jumpy about it..it means I'm probably correct....just sayin
One of the greatest mistakes one can make, in my opinion, is believing that opposition equals justification. It's the "I know I'm right because they all think I'm wrong" argument that is a favorite of nutjobs everywhere. Don't get me wrong, there are times when a small minority is more right than a large majority, but this is not one of those times.
wow, you guys gave 3 examples. This is an exception, no the rule. My point still stands.
Now things like FTP, google, and the web are also used for piracy, but I'm not going to say that the majority of sites out there are for pirated materials.
Do these outnumber the pirates? I don't really have the figures to even start commenting on that. But I think it's pretty clear that it'll make some difference if the BitTorrent protocol is found to be infringing on some patents.
And game modders distribute their mods using it, since pushing a several GB download to thousands isn't that cheap, and more importantly everyone can download a newly-released torrent right away rather than maxing out the server's bandwidth.
I've noticed software download sites are starting to use torrents, too. That's actually pretty smart of them, because it would save a lot of money with hosting and bandwidth. I'm surprised they didn't do it earlier.
People may be able to distribute copyright violating material on Bittorrent, but the Bittorrent clients themselves are simply downloaded from normal websites. If they are found to be in violation of this patent it would be pretty simple to just send C&D letters to websites distributing the clients, a far easier task than going after individual Bittorent users.
Most people using Bittorrent are already violating copyright law. Why should they care about patent law?