BitTorrent file-swapping networks face crisis

CNET News.com: "BitTorrent 'hubs' that publish lists of movies, TV shows and other free downloads suddenly went dark this weekend, in a major victory for Hollywood that highlights vulnerabilities in technology behind the world's busiest peer-to-peer network. Last week, the Motion Picture Association of America launched a series of worldwide legal actions, aimed at people who ran the infrastructure for BitTorrent networks being used to distribute movies and other copyrighted materials without permission.

The MPAA's actions have put pressure on a short list of large Web sites that had served as hubs for the BitTorrent community and that had operated for months or even years. Many of those sites have now vanished almost overnight, including the SuprNova.org site that was by far the most popular gathering point for the community, serving more than a million people a day, according to one academic study.

What's new:
Many of the Web sites that served as hubs for BitTorrent file seekers have gone dark, including SuprNova.org, which was the most popular gathering point. The loss of the big sites is unlikely to eliminate BitTorrent swapping altogether, but it does bring to a close an era of operating in the open without fear of legal reprisals.

None of this means that BitTorrent is going away. The technology is already widely used in legal ways, such as to distribute games and versions of the Linux operating system. It saves the content publishers considerable money in bandwidth by deputizing their own customers to help in the distribution process.

Some online tinkerers have been working on ways to merge BitTorrent with the RSS (Really Simple Syndication) news feed technology to create new ways to distribute audio and video. Cohen said he's close to releasing a new version of the technology with some improvements and is spending most of his time looking for ways to make it more mainstream.

SuprNova organizers have been working on a more decentralized version of BitTorrent called Exeem, according to peer-to-peer news site Slyck.com. No word on that project was available after the site's closure. "