MS shuts down Chris Pirillo's ​Vista​Torrent.com

http://www.vistatorrent.com/

edit: from longhornblogs.com

"Well, looks like Chris and Jake get to join the ranks of Mike Rowe Soft and others in the "Cease and Decist" Club, and VistaTorrent.com has shut down. Dumb move on Microsoft's part, since the seeders were well established Windows enthusiasts trying to get Microsoft's product into the hands of it's users... but that's why Shakespeare said "First kill all the lawyers.""

I dont understand why MS has such an issue with BT, its not often normal people try to help MS save costs and they hump them over.

Really silly in my opinion. If MS used BT to release stuff, they would soon notice the change

dahat wrote:

Why is it such a surprise?

Lets not forget that they did exactly the same thing when people started distributing the final XP SP2 on torrent.

Not a suprise...just stupid...
stupid++

But sometimes the best way to make friends is by getting your name out there....one way or another...

die-Sel wrote:

I dont understand why MS has such an issue with BT, its not often normal people try to help MS save costs and they hump them over.

Really silly in my opinion. If MS used BT to release stuff, they would soon notice the change

It's because they want everyone to use their own home-grown "Avalanche" product.

Now that u mention it, whats the progress on Avalanche, i havnt heard anything in months about it.

Very stupid on Microsoft's part... You *still* can't download Vista from Microsoft... And yet they are shutting down a source / method that works, and is proven to be the real deal (by MD5 hash).

Stupid Stupid Stupid

LarryOsterman wrote:



Manip wrote: Very stupid on Microsoft's part... You *still* can't download Vista from Microsoft... And yet they are shutting down a source / method that works, and is proven to be the real deal (by MD5 hash)? Stupid Stupid Stupid

MD5 is a broken hash algorithm, you CANNOT trust it.  It has been shown to be possible to generate two different documents with the same MD5 hash.

So you can't trust the content you get from the torrent.

In a test enviroment... Not in the real world... And I happen to know that the first 120 MB was identical (==) to that downloaded from Microsoft's site, because I continued on from where Firefox got cut off.

Anyway... If you have a better method for getting Vista right now, then let's hear it. The official site cuts you off at random intervals, and the official download client does the same.

blowdart wrote:

 OK, so MD5 is out. So's SHA1 now, as it's a collision as well.

Hmm, what hashing mechanism does windowsupdate use to validate downloads?

lol, Microsoft uses MD5 to sign their files.

dahat wrote:

Microsoft Connect works fine for me right now, I'm pulling Beta 2 at work through our ultra slow pipe at about 50k/s. At both home and work it works fine for me... perhaps you need to have a talk with your ISP or learn how to set the download, check on it every few hours and go out and do something else while it comes to you.

Before you say "But I don't have access to Connect," we've gone through this before and you have no one to blame but yourself.

Dude, shut the hell up... You beta members have been rubbing it in everyone else's face for ages now... Enough already!
 
No, I don't have access to connect as you are well aware (made clear even by your own post). And it is not a problem with my ISP or way the download is setup, it is the download.windowsvista.com site, and from the people I have spoken to I am not the only one experiencing the same drop-offs.

You could have written - "haha losers, I have access to the beta via the connect site, and I can download it EASILY ... Sucks to be you guys hahaha" - and it would have came across exactly the same way.

Sampy wrote:



I don't know if this is the official stance but...

You can't trust a Windows update that comes from anyone but Microsoft but claims to be official. You also can't trust a version of Windows that claims to be Microsoft but you download from a third party. It's mostly a trust and security issue it seems to me.

Like I said, I don't know if this is the official stance but it's why I wouldn't download updates from another source.

It's close enough to the official stance.

Why did Microsoft shut this down?  Two simple reasons.

First, Microsoft says over and over, to all customer large and small, Fortune 10 to Grandma to Chris Pirillo to C9ers - "do not trust anything claiming to be from Microsoft unless its from a Microsoft server".

There is no room to confuse the issue with "except, of course, for the torrent from those nice guys helping you out" or "except in this one special case".  There is no room to argue technicalities about breakable hashes or argue motivation.

Second, Windows Vista is the intellectual property of Microsoft.  The EULA and the rest all say "do not redistribute". 

In order to protect their intellectual property, any company needs to strive to vigorously enforce its licensing agreements in all cases.  There is again no room to confuse the issue with "nice guys helping us out" or "except this one special case".

<double post deleted>

Which brings us back to the central issue:

Why isn't Microsoft hosting a torrent on its own servers?

Edit: I'll make you guys a deal. If someone from Microsoft agrees to host a torrent for Vista, I'll write you guys a complete tracker in ASP.net by next week.

BruceMorgan wrote:

In order to protect their intellectual property, any company needs to strive to vigorously enforce its licensing agreements in all cases.  There is again no room to confuse the issue with "nice guys helping us out" or "except this one special case".

"in all cases", Bruce? Remember the conversation we had (on Messenger) about Urban Assault a few weeks ago?

Manip wrote:

Which brings us back to the central issue:

Why isn't Microsoft hosting a torrent on its own servers?

Edit: I'll make you guys a deal. If someone from Microsoft agrees to host a torrent for Vista, I'll write you guys a complete tracker in ASP.net by next week.

Microsoft can't really be seen to be endorsing BitTorrent. I love BitTorrent but I think you will agree that it is primarily used for copyright infringement.

If MS started hosting torrents they would introduce BT to a whole new audience who maybe would not have got it otherwise.

Also, imagine the hassles MS would experience when thousands of people start complaining about NAT errors etc when downloading Vista.

Just my two cents.

Kevin