50x Faster Than BitTorrent: I Want

from TechCrunch by Duncan Riley

Popout Thomas Crampton interviews Ogilvy China’s Kaiser Kuo on the current state of web development in China in the video above. It’s interesting in its entirity as they discuss the growing wave of Web 2.0 development in China, but of particular note is Kuo’s description of Chinese P2P file network Blin.cn.

Kuo claims that Blin.cn is 50 times faster than BitTorrent and when downloading the show 24 season 6 he was able to start watching it with 2.2% downloaded after only 3 minutes, and all in DVD quality.

It’s interesting to consider the broader ramifications of what Kuo is saying. His general argument is that without the artificial market restrictions imposed on P2P networks in the United States by the RIAA and the MPAA, Chinese companies have been free to innovate and are now producing superior web technology in P2P sharing, and a whole range of related industries. If you think it’s bad that China dominates the market for consumer goods, imagine that today companies in China have already created the next wave of P2P innovation and are thriving, perhaps ironically in a Communist country, with more freedoms than their American counterparts. It’s not unreasonable to consider that next year and into the future that much of what we do online may end up being based on Chinese designed technology and programming, and not good ol’ fashioned American know-how.

(via zeropaid)