DonDaddy
Fortune magazine has a profile (http://www.fortune.com/fortune/print/0,15935,1117681,00.html) of Bittorrent creator Bram Cohen that is surprisingly even-handed, especially considering Fortune's core audience.
"Since the birth of the Net, programmers had been stumped by how to transfer massive files—movies, TV shows, games, software, whatever—without incurring astronomical bills or risking frequent failure. Cohen knew he could find a solution; all it would take was time, good code, and brute intellect. He had all three. The money would take care of itself. “I didn’t have any clear plans when I first started,” he says. “I wasn’t worried, partially because what I was doing was really cool, and partially because I’m broken and can’t feel anxiety.”
Cohen is not being self-deprecating. He never is. The 30-year-old speaks in a disarmingly literal way about almost everything, including—and because of—his Asperger’s syndrome. Often tagged as the “little-professor syndrome,” the mild form of autism tends to give its sufferers superhuman abilities to concentrate on certain things but leaves them confused by very human social cues. “Even those individuals who have coped well with their handicap will strike one as strange,” wrote one researcher. Cohen’s condition is just bad enough that he has had to train himself to look people in the eye when they talk to him. But it has worked to his advantage, enabling him to obsessively turn over the downloading problem in his head."
Fortune includes the obligatory hand-wringing about how file sharing (not over-priced cinemas, boorish audiences, and horrible, recycled garbage from Hollywood) is hurting the film industry:
“In the David and Goliath scenario, there really is a David,” says Big Champagne CEO Eric Garland. “There’s a kid at a keyboard who writes this incredibly disruptive technology.”
But they also discuss how Cohen, and Bittorrent, have managed to escape the army of lawyers the RIAA and MPAA have unleashed against other P2P networks:
"Last July, he met Dan Glickman, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, for drinks at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills and left him wowed. “He’s obviously a very brilliant guy,” says Glickman, who notes that Hollywood understands that it’s time to embrace these new technologies. “The opportunities are going to be there to get our content to millions more people.”
To understand how Cohen is managing to avoid Hollywood’s wrath, you need to get inside his head . . ."
And Fortune does just that. It's a fascinating look into Cohen's mind, the minds of the industry heads who seem to be wisely embracing his technology, and the VC firm that just gave him $8.75 million to see what he can do with it.
"Since the birth of the Net, programmers had been stumped by how to transfer massive files—movies, TV shows, games, software, whatever—without incurring astronomical bills or risking frequent failure. Cohen knew he could find a solution; all it would take was time, good code, and brute intellect. He had all three. The money would take care of itself. “I didn’t have any clear plans when I first started,” he says. “I wasn’t worried, partially because what I was doing was really cool, and partially because I’m broken and can’t feel anxiety.”
Cohen is not being self-deprecating. He never is. The 30-year-old speaks in a disarmingly literal way about almost everything, including—and because of—his Asperger’s syndrome. Often tagged as the “little-professor syndrome,” the mild form of autism tends to give its sufferers superhuman abilities to concentrate on certain things but leaves them confused by very human social cues. “Even those individuals who have coped well with their handicap will strike one as strange,” wrote one researcher. Cohen’s condition is just bad enough that he has had to train himself to look people in the eye when they talk to him. But it has worked to his advantage, enabling him to obsessively turn over the downloading problem in his head."
Fortune includes the obligatory hand-wringing about how file sharing (not over-priced cinemas, boorish audiences, and horrible, recycled garbage from Hollywood) is hurting the film industry:
“In the David and Goliath scenario, there really is a David,” says Big Champagne CEO Eric Garland. “There’s a kid at a keyboard who writes this incredibly disruptive technology.”
But they also discuss how Cohen, and Bittorrent, have managed to escape the army of lawyers the RIAA and MPAA have unleashed against other P2P networks:
"Last July, he met Dan Glickman, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, for drinks at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills and left him wowed. “He’s obviously a very brilliant guy,” says Glickman, who notes that Hollywood understands that it’s time to embrace these new technologies. “The opportunities are going to be there to get our content to millions more people.”
To understand how Cohen is managing to avoid Hollywood’s wrath, you need to get inside his head . . ."
And Fortune does just that. It's a fascinating look into Cohen's mind, the minds of the industry heads who seem to be wisely embracing his technology, and the VC firm that just gave him $8.75 million to see what he can do with it.