Unfortunately, P2P is currently used mainly for the illegal spreading of copyrighted files. We believe that P2P is the future of content distribution and will mature from the current 'wild west' into a respectable business solution. We focus on the technical problems of P2P, and aspects of business models such as payments and advertisements are outside our scope. Spreading specialized content to only a small audience, such as video recordings of local concerts, soccer matches, and city council meetings, will suddenly become feasible due to the low cost of using P2P over the Internet.
With Tribler, we are creating software for video file sharing that has a basic understanding of human friendships, of user tastes in content, and of Internet connectivity between users.
Arno Bakker is one of the designers and implementors of the Globe and
Globule middleware platforms for large-scale (Web) applications. Since
September 2005 he works in the BSIK project Freeband I-Share, a
cooperation between the VU, and the TUs at Delft, Twente and
Eindhoven. Developed as part of this project is the Tribler
peer-to-peer television software which aims to radically reduce the
cost of TV broadcasting over the Internet. He holds an MSc. and PhD
from the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam.
