Rightscorp COO Robert Steele has come out swinging against BitTorrent, but not just piracy that occurs on the network, but the company that invented the file transfer protocol.
Rightscorp, a Los Angeles based copyright monetization company, has been the target of criticism in recent times for their business model, which involves making users suspected of copyright infringement pay to settle potential lawsuits. Critics have argued against business models similar to Rightscorp's, labeling it as a form of legal blackmail.
And Rightscorp appears keen to wrap themselves up in more controversy thanks to Facebook comments made by the company's COO Robert Steele. The comments attacks the San Francisco based BitTorrent Inc, the inventors of the BitTorrent peer-to-peer file sharing system, and also publishers of the popular uTorrent client.
BitTorrent Inc has been vocal in their assertions that they have no control over what gets transferred over the decentralized network BitTorrent network, and that they have never supported or condoned piracy. Their words have, however, fallen on deaf ears, and Robert Steele held nothing back in his attack of the company.
"BitTorrent's architecture and features are designed for one reason only – to assist people in avoiding legitimate law enforcement efforts when they illegally consume other people’s intellectual property," Steele says in the interview.
Steele then makes his position even clearer by accusing BitTorrent Inc, and the company's investor, venture capital Accell Partner, of "driving and facilitating piracy" because by not implementing a "blacklist of copyrighted hashes".
Steele then finishes by saying that BitTorrent Inc should be taken to court for their actions.
"Bram Cohen and Accell Partner's BitTorrent should be held accountable for the wages and income they have helped take from hundreds of thousands of creative workers just like Limewire, Grokster, Aimster, Kazaa and Napster were," Steele argues.
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