Bram Cohen (born 1975) is an American computer programmer, best known as the author of the peer-to-peer (P2P) protocol BitTorrent, as well as the first file sharing program to use the protocol. He is also the co-founder of CodeCon, organizer of the San Francisco Bay Area P2P-hackers meeting and the co-author of Codeville. 1975 (MCMLXXV) was a common year starting on Wednesday. ... In computing, a programmer is someone who does computer programming and develops computer software. ... A peer-to-peer (or P2P) computer network is a network that relies on the computing power and bandwidth of the participants in the network rather than concentrating it in a relatively few servers. ... It has been suggested that this article be split into multiple articles accessible from a disambiguation page. ... File sharing is the activity of making files available to other users for download over the Internet, but also over smaller networks. ... CodeCon is a conference for hackers and technology enthusiasts. ... USGS satellite photo of the San Francisco Bay Area. ... Codeville is a revision control computer program. ...

He currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife Jenna and their two children. USGS satellite photo of the San Francisco Bay Area. ...

Early life and career

Cohen grew up in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, New York City, New York. He learned the BASIC programming language at age 5 on his family's Timex Sinclair computer. Cohen passed the American Invitational Mathematics Examination to qualify for the United States of America Mathematical Olympiad (USAMO) while he attended Stuyvesant High School in New York City. He graduated from Stuyvesant in 1993 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 being MojoNation, an ambitious but ill-fated project he worked on with Jim McCoy. The Upper West Side is a neighborhood of the borough of Manhattan in New York City that lies between Central Park and the Hudson River above West 59th Street. ... The Borough of Manhattan, highlighted in yellow, lies between the East River and the Hudson River. ... New York, NY redirects here. ... NY redirects here. ... BASIC (Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of high-level programming languages. ... Timex Corporation, best known for the production of clocks, watches, and other timepieces, attempted to enter the fledgling home computer market of the late 1970s and early 1980s with the Sinclair line. ... The AIME (or American Invitational Mathematics Examination) is a 15-question test given since 1983 to the top 5% of scorers on the AMC high school mathematics contest (formerly known as the AHSME). ... The United States of America Mathematical Olympiad (USAMO) is a prestigious mathematics competition held annually in the United States. ... Stuyvesant High School, affectionately known as Stuy, is a New York City public high school that specializes in mathematics and science. ... University at Buffalo, The State University of New York (also known as University at Buffalo or simply UB) is a coeducational public research university having mutiple campuses located on in Buffalo and Amherst, New York, USA. Offering over 100 bachelors, 112 masters and 98 doctoral degrees, it is... A Dot-com company, or simply a dot-com, was any company that promoted itself as an Internet business during the Dot-com boom. ... MCMXC redirects here; for the Enigma album, see MCMXC a. ... Mnet is a distributed, peer to peer, file store. ... This article is being considered for deletion in accordance with Wikipedias deletion policy. ...

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 like KaZaA 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 fast download and upload 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. File sharing is the activity of making files available to other users for download over the Internet, but also over smaller networks. ... Kazaa Media Desktop (once capitalized as KaZaA, but now usually left as Kazaa) is a controversial peer-to-peer file sharing application using the FastTrack protocol. ... This article is about the computer terms. ... This article is about the computer terms. ...

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 roommate Len 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". 2001 : January - February - March - April - May - June - July - August - September - October - November - December Events: April 1: An EP-3E United States Navy plane collides with a Chinese Peoples Liberation Army fighter jet. ... CodeCon is a conference for hackers and technology enthusiasts. ... Len Sassaman (born 1980) is the current maintainer of the Mixmaster anonymous remailer code and remop of the randseed remailer. ...

Cohen wrote the first BitTorrent client implementation in Python, and several other programs have since implemented the protocol. Python is a high-level programming language first released by Guido van Rossum in 1991. ... This article is about the client. ...

In the summer of 2002, Cohen collected free pornography to lure beta testers to use the program.^[1] 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 the Motion 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 the RIAA and MPAA's legal or technical tactics, such as digital rights management. In May 2005, Cohen released a trackerless beta version of BitTorrent. For album titles with the same name, see 2002 (album). ... Pornographic movies Pornography (Porn) (from Greek πόρνη (porne) prostitute and γραφή (grafe) writing), more informally referred to as porn or porno, is the explicit representation of the human body or sexual activity with the goal of sexual arousal. ... In software engineering, development stage terminology expresses how far through the development sequence things have progressed and how much further development a product may require. ... The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), originally called the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association of America, is a non-profit trade association based in the United States which was formed to advance the interests of movie studios. ... The RIAA Logo. ... Digital Rights Management (generally abbreviated to DRM) is an umbrella term that refers to any of several technologies used by publishers or copyright owners to control access to and usage of digital data or hardware, and to restrictions associated with a specific instance of a digital work or device. ... A BitTorrent tracker is a server which assists in the communication between peers using the BitTorrent protocol. ...

In late 2003, Cohen served a short stint at Valve Software to work on Steam, their digital distribution system introduced for Half-Life 2. 2003 (MMIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Valve Software is a Bellevue, Washington-based video game developer made famous by its first product, Half-Life, which was released in November 1998. ... Steam is a content delivery, digital rights management, multiplayer and communications service and platform developed by Valve Corporation for digital entertainment. ... Digital distribution (Also known as digital delivery) is the principle of providing digital information or content over the Internet, either in the form of products or services. ... Half-Life 2 (HL2) is a science fiction first-person shooter computer game that is the sequel to Half-Life. ...

By 2004, he had left Valve and formed BitTorrent, Inc. with his brother Ross Cohen and business partner Ashwin Navin. BitTorrent, Inc. ... Ashwin Navin is the President, Chief Operating Officer and Co-Founder of BitTorrent, Inc. ...

BitTorrent and the MPAA

By mid 2005, BitTorrent was funded by venture capitalist David Chao from Doll Capital Management, and in late 2005 Cohen and Navin made a deal with the MPAA 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 the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.^[2] The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) is a non-profit trade association formed to advance the interests of movie studios. ... The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a United States copyright law which implements two 1996 WIPO treaties. ...

Other interests

Cohen's hobbies include original origami and juggling up to five balls, but his main interest is in recreational mathematics. Cohen maintains a blog ^[3] where he frequently discusses trust metrics with Raph Levien, as well as money systems, games of skill, and other math-related topics. He is also a twisty puzzle enthusiast. The traditional crane and papers of the same size used to fold it A paper Pegasus designed by F. Kawahata Origami (Japanese: 折り紙 oru, to fold, and kami, paper folding paper) is the art of paper folding. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... Recreational mathematics includes many mathematical games, and can be extended to cover such areas as logic and other puzzles of deductive reasoning. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... In psychology and sociology, a trust metric is a measure of how a member of a group is trusted by the other members. ... Raph Levien is an influential member of the free software developer community, through his creation of the Advogato virtual community and his work with the free software branch of Ghostscript. ... Skewb Diamond Rubiks Cube Pocket Cube Pyraminx Magic polyhedra (also refered to as twisty puzzles) is a term for a specific type of puzzle, the most popular of which is the Rubiks Cube. ...

Cohen claims he has Asperger syndrome^[1][4] based on a self diagnosis.^[5] Asperger syndrome — also referred to as Aspergers syndrome, Aspergers disorder, Aspergers, or just AS — is a pervasive developmental disorder related to autism. ... Self diagnosis is the process of diagnosing medical conditions in oneself. ...

References

Wired is a full-color monthly magazine and on-line periodical published in San Francisco, California since March 1993. ... For the Manfred Mann album, see 2006 (album). ... March 18 is the 77th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (78th in leap years). ... 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... November 23 is the 327th day of the year (328th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 38 days remaining. ... Fortune magazine is Americas second longest-running business magazine after Forbes magazine. ... 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... November 14 is the 318th day of the year (319th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 47 days remaining. ... For the Manfred Mann album, see 2006 (album). ... November 6 is the 310th day of the year (311th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar, with 55 days remaining. ...

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Bram Cohen

• Bram Cohen's home page
• Bram Cohen's blog
• Official website for BitTorrent
• Wired.com article
• Interview with Cohen about Asperger Syndrome
• Interview with Cohen about BitTorrent and CodeCon