Coding In Paradise

Movie file-sharing hubs poised to decentralise:

BitTorrent software automatically finds other users with relevant chunks of data, a process that generates a "swarm" of data rather than a linear stream and so provides the most efficient download possible.

Copyright holders in the music and movie industries have been unable to mount successful legal attacks against "peer-to-peer", or P2P, networks on which content is distributed. But central servers are currently required to find BitTorrent files and track them during download.

This centralisation provides sites against which the MPAA can mount legal attacks. However, SuprNova is thought to be developing and testing a new program which would decentralise BitTorrent searching.

"The best effort so far to decentralise the searching aspect is a mysterious project known as eXeem," says Brad Neuberg, an expert in programming P2P networks. "But SuprNova have been a bit secret about it so far, doing a closed beta trial with 5000 users."