
If a file exists, there is torrent of it. If not, it will be burned - blasdel
http://burnbit.com/
======
cschep
I'm having trouble with their use of "burn". Is this a common idiom? I keep
thinking it's like.. burning a disc? If you burn a file is that creating a
torrent of that file?

~~~
zackattack
think feedburner

~~~
hugh3
I still don't know what that is.

It seems like every time I stop paying attention for a week somebody has
invented a new verb.

~~~
steveklabnik
I've heard of Feedburner (and had an account for a few years), and I didn't
make the association. It's not just you.

~~~
hugh3
... and yet you still won't tell me what it means?

~~~
steveklabnik
Sorry.

Basically, FeedBurner was a startup that was acquired by Google that lets you
input an RSS feed, and they produce another feed. You keep the original one
secret, hand out theirs, and you get analytics and other features.

Compare

<http://watch.steveklabnik.com/posts.rss>

to

<http://feeds.feedburner.com/watch_steve_episodes>

to get an idea. They called this 'burning' a feed. I guess this is what
they're alluding to; give me your media file, and I'll turn that into a
torrent.

------
influx
Every file in S3 can become a torrent just by appending ?torrent:

[http://carltonbale.com/how-to-create-and-seed-a-torrent-
down...](http://carltonbale.com/how-to-create-and-seed-a-torrent-download-on-
amazon-s3)

------
jacquesm
Add one more little thing to this: a way to expire the original torrent after
24 hours and you have the torrent equivalent of wikileaks.

After the 24 hours have past it's whackamole time.

I started building something like that a while ago when wikileaks did their
'shut down' play.

------
rwhitman
Wow, I can see this making major waves. It seems like this would be
legitimately useful tech for any site with legal media downloads, but the fact
that the top of the site deliberately links to torrents of movies etc means it
probably won't be used this way.

Does this technology expand the scope of who the authorities go after for
piracy? Will takedown notices extend from beyond the torrent to the site that
seeded the 'burn' of it? Or am I misinterpreting what it does?

------
agravier
Registration does not support email+stuff@domain.wut.

It should.

------
jrockway
So BitTorrent clients will use the real server as a "peer"? That's really
cool; seems like the best of both worlds.

~~~
sp332
"Web seed" has been supported by various clients for a while, it's good to see
someone finally taking advantage of it.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent_(protocol)#Web_seeding

~~~
Zev
And the spec for HTTP-based seeding: <http://bittornado.com/docs/webseed-
spec.txt>

~~~
modeless
If clients implemented that spec then burnbit wouldn't work because it
requires specific server support. Here's a different spec using standard HTTP
range requests, which makes a lot more sense:
<http://www.getright.com/seedtorrent.html>

~~~
Zev
I forgot about that one. It is much simpler to implement on the client-side,
as well. And Bram and Arvid apparently contributed to its development.

The main benefit that I can see to the bittornado spec over getright is that
it wants to be able to " _Intelligently tell peers how long they should wait
before retrying._ " Which seem like a pretty reasonable things to want to have
the server be able to tell the client. Rather then simply block the user.

------
mike-cardwell
Shame it doesn't support HTTPS yet.

Would be nice if there was an option where you simply go to:

[http://burnbit.com/directburn?url=http://example.com/somefil...](http://burnbit.com/directburn?url=http://example.com/somefile)

And then a .torrent file was returned in that single http request. Rather than
a webpage being loaded which contains a link to the torrent file.

------
jeff18
I have been looking for a way to do this for a really long time -- Amazon
supports this by adding ?torrent at the end of S3 files, however it has always
been really flaky. I am really, really excited about this!

------
TamDenholm
From my understanding of the service this seems like an excellent idea. The
one main weak point of torrents is that old torrents die or get painfully
slow. Keeping them alive for longer is a superb service.

------
MBlume
Just burned the final Python2.6 release to play with this

<http://burnbit.com/torrent/153621/Python_2_6_6_tar_bz2>

~~~
daychilde
I've downloaded and will seed for a couple days or so, at the least - in the
interest of testing. :)

Also, I've uploaded my album for a little larger test:

[http://burnbit.com/torrent/153663/Daychilde_Journey_Beginnin...](http://burnbit.com/torrent/153663/Daychilde_Journey_Beginning_2010_zip)

~~~
larelli
I added the file to my torrent tool, but the only seeder online (you) somehow
won't start to transfer the file.

------
ZhuHan
But it consumes a lot of bandwidth of the service provider to burn these
torrent, doesn't it? I'm wondering how the business to be sustainable?

~~~
uxp
No, it doesn't.

If you're asking about the bandwidth incurred by burnbit.com, no. They're just
acting as a public bittorrent tracker, which does nothing other than tell its
clients to connect to other people. Bandwidth consumption is trivial for a
tracker.

~~~
ZhuHan
But burnbit.com has to download the file and computes the hash signature to
build the torrent file, if the URL hasn't been submitted by somebody else
before. Did I miss anything here?

~~~
wmf
Maybe they have free incoming bandwidth.

------
gkelly
I still wish there was a popular, easy way to send large files directly,
without using 3rd-party bandwidth.

This requires the file to be available on http. If my grandma wants to send me
a large video clip, she's not going to know how to put it on a web server.
(Also, a web server is 3rd party in this case.) IRC direct connect and AOL's
IM client are the closest I can think of, but neither are at the level of
popularity/ease-of-use for my grandma, not to mention the technical hurdles of
firewalls (and the security concerns firewalls are addressing.)

As far as I know, this is an unsolved problem that has created a work-around
market (dropbox, rapidshare-style services.) But perhaps the work-around
market exists for a reason: there is no revenue in letting users directly
connect to one another.

------
kingkawn
My confusion was along the lines of only the torrented web will survive?

------
Geee
That's really nice and I like the semi-fluid layout of the site. Trying to
burn www.burnbit.com says connect recursion ;)

------
henryw
it's pretty cool idea to let people create their own torrents for their files
on their blogs/sites/etc. they provide the torrent tracker server so you don't
have to use thepiratebay or something like that.

    
    
      toy.story3.flv 46.5% complete 1.67 GB  =)

~~~
atomical
Clearly this is an omen for what this service will become: A haven for
pirates.

~~~
andymorris
Or, you could think of the legitimate uses ... someone who just wants to offer
something for download, and then has to pay a fortune in bandwidth. Instead,
someon uses this service, and we all benefit! \-- Ayjay on Fedang

------
heinel
Wow, but I guess this doesn't work on file sharing sites like mediafire and
some such?

~~~
sbierwagen
Nope.

It'll work with anything that will give you a direct download link. Since the
business model of file sharing sites depend on making you look at ads before
letting you download the file, they don't have any reason to do that.

~~~
chc
Most of those services give you a link that only resolves to a direct download
once you've looked at ads and filled out a captcha and even then only if you
haven't hit some download limit (or, alternatively, if you're signed in as a
paying customer). I don't see how it could work with those.

------
gkelly
How is this different from BitTorrent Inc's DNA?

<http://www.bittorrent.com/dna/dna-overview>

------
wicknicks
Hmmm.. I am not sure if any file needs a torrent. For eg, my /etc/passwd file.

------
krmmalik
Someone needs to make every file exists into an NZB, with RARs and PARs.

Personally, i still maintain thats the best method of downloading large
content at full speed with a built-in mechanism for error-checking

~~~
omh
I'm not sure if you're kidding, but why would you prefer NZB/RAR/PARs over
bittorrent?

Bittorrent has basic hash checking, will re-download as needed from peers and
most usefully you don't have to extract anything afterwards.

~~~
krmmalik
I'm certainly not kidding, but nor am i technically adept as your goodselves,
so i'm more than happy to stand corrected.

I havent used BitTorrent in a very long time, simply because i was endlessly
frustrated waiting for peers to come online for many files so that i could see
from them.

Seems like a constant constraint to me.

My experience with usenet has been quite the opposite. No dependency on peers,
and no uploading of my own necessary.

I understand that BTs error-checking may very well be good. I dont have any
personal experience of it., but so far as extracting the files and combining
them and whatnot is concerned there are many clients available today that
automate the whole process upon presenting a single NZB file.

Anyway, this is just my limited experience, and maybe i'll begin to like
BitTorrent again one day.

PS. Using binaries from usenet, i also have the option of simultaneous
connections (20+) as well SSL and header caching.

~~~
xiongchiamiov
You have to connect to _someone_ to download stuff. The protocol doesn't
change that.

