Jessi Hempel, writing for Backchannel:
But from the start, BitTorrent had a branding problem — pirates used it to share movies illegally, making it the Napster of entertainment. Because the protocol was open-source, BitTorrent (the company) couldn’t stop the pirates. For 12 years, BitTorrent’s investors, executives and founders attempted to figure out many money-making strategies, including both enterprise software and entertainment businesses, while convincing us all that, sure, people might use the BitTorrent protocol to conduct illegal activity, but BitTorrent was just a tool — a really great tool you can use for really great things!