- Bram Cohen
Infobox Person
image_size = 150px
name = Bram Cohen
caption =
birth_date = 1975
residence = flagicon|USASan Francisco Bay Area ,California
known_for = BitTorrent
occupation =CEO ,BitTorrent, Inc.
website = http://bitconjurer.orgBram Cohen (born 1975) is an American
computer programmer , best known as the author of thepeer-to-peer (P2P) BitTorrent protocol, as well as the firstfile sharing program to use the protocol, also known as BitTorrent. He is also the co-founder ofCodeCon , organizer of theSan Francisco Bay Area P2P-hackers meeting, and the co-author ofCodeville .He currently lives in the
San Francisco Bay Area with his wife Jenna and their two children.Early life and career
Cohen grew up in the
Upper West Side ofManhattan ,New York City ,New York . He learned theBASIC programming language at age 5 on his family'sTimex Sinclair computer. Cohen passed theAmerican Invitational Mathematics Examination to qualify for theUnited States of America Mathematical Olympiad (USAMO) while he attendedStuyvesant High School in New York City. He graduated from Stuyvesant in 1993 [cite web |url=http://bitconjurer.org/resume.txt |title=Resume |accessdate=2007-10-31] and attended the University at Buffalo. He later dropped out of college to work for several dot com companies throughout the mid to late 1990s, the last beingMojoNation , an ambitious but ill-fated project he worked on withJim McCoy .MojoNation allows people to break up confidential files into encrypted chunks and distribute those pieces on computers also running the software. If someone wanted to download a copy of this encrypted file, he would have to download it simultaneously from many computers. This concept, Cohen thought, was perfect for a
file sharing program, since programs likeKaZaA take a long time to download a large file because the file is (usually) coming from one source (or "peer"). Cohen designed BitTorrent to be able to download files from many different sources, thus speeding up the download time, especially for users with fasterdownload thanupload speeds. Thus, the more popular a file is, the faster a user will be able to download it, since many people will be downloading it at the same time, and these people will also be uploading the data to other users.BitTorrent
In April 2001, Cohen quit MojoNation and began work on BitTorrent. Cohen unveiled his novel ideas at the first
CodeCon conference, which he and his roommateLen Sassaman created as a showcase event for novel technology projects after becoming disillusioned with the state of technology conferences. It remains an event for those seeking information about new directions in software, though BitTorrent continues to lay claim to the title of "most famous presentation".Cohen wrote the first BitTorrent client implementation in Python, and several other programs have since implemented the protocol.
In the summer of 2002, Cohen collected free
pornography to lurebeta test ers to use the program.cite web|url=http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.01/bittorrent.html|title=The BitTorrent Effect|publisher=Wired|year=2005|month=January|first=Clive|last=Thompson|accessdate=2006-03-18] BitTorrent gained its fame for its ability to quickly share large music and movie files online. Cohen himself has claimed he has never violated copyright law using his software, and he suspects theMotion Picture Association of America would love to make a legal example of him if he did. Regardless, he is outspoken in his belief that the current media business was doomed to being outmoded despite theRIAA and MPAA's legal or technical tactics, such asdigital rights management . In May 2005, Cohen released a trackerless beta version of BitTorrent.In late 2003, Cohen served a short stint at
Valve Software to work on Steam, theirdigital distribution system introduced for "Half-Life 2 ".By 2004, he had left Valve and formed
BitTorrent, Inc. with his brotherRoss Cohen and business partnerAshwin Navin .BitTorrent and the MPAA
By mid 2005, BitTorrent, Inc. was funded by venture capitalist
David Chao fromDoll Capital Management , and in late 2005 Cohen and Navin made a deal with theMPAA to remove links to illegal content on the official BitTorrent website. The deal was with the seven largest studios in America. The agreement means the site will comply with procedures outlined in theDigital Millennium Copyright Act . [cite web|url=http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=174401655 Information Week|title=Hollywood Hopes BitTorrent Deal Will Reduce Illegal Movie Downloads|first=Gary|last=Gentile|date=2005-11-23 |publisher=Information Week]Other interests
Cohen's hobbies include original
origami andjuggling up to five balls, but his main interest is inrecreational mathematics . Cohen maintains ablog [ [http://www.livejournal.com/users/bramcohen/ Bram Cohen's Journal ] ] where he frequently discussestrust metric s withRaph Levien , as well as money systems, games of skill, and other math-related topics. He is also aBodger and Badger enthusiast. He types with theDvorak Simplified Keyboard layout instead of the widespreadQWERTY layout.Cohen claims he has
Asperger syndrome [cite web
url=http://wrongplanet.net/modules.php?name=Articles&pa=showpage&pid=98
title=Bram Cohen, Creator of Bittorrent
date=2005-05-07
publisher=wrongplanet.net
date=2005-05-07
accessdate=2008-03-22] based on aself diagnosis . [cite news|title=Torrential Reign|date=2005-11-14 |publisher=Fortune|first=Daniel|last=Roth|pages=91-96|url=http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2005/10/31/8359146/index.htm|accessdate=2006-11-06]References
External links
* [http://bitconjurer.org/ Bram Cohen's home page]
* [http://www.livejournal.com/users/bramcohen/ Bram Cohen's blog]
* [http://www.bittorrent.com/ Official website for BitTorrent]
* [http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2002146729_bittorrent10.html Interview with Cohen about BitTorrent and CodeCon]
* [http://www.metro.se/se/article/2008/04/22/14/3127-48/index.xml Interview with Bram Cohen about legal issues and The Pirate Bay]
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