“Torrenting” is kind of a dirty word. It makes you think piracy, doesn’t it? Well it shouldn’t. Torrenting isn’t illegal. It’s not even morally ambiguous. It’s just a way to send data, and it’s awesome. Those are the points BitTorrent’s trying to drive home with its rad new ad campaign.
Mysterious, anonymous billboards started going up a few weeks ago in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. All of them simple black text on a white background, spouting downers about regulating the internet and how great the NSA is. You know, the kind of ads The Man would take out.
But hey! Surprise! They’re not that at all. And starting today, BitTorrent’s dispensing some righteous edits:
This isn’t just idle torrent-talk of course. BitTorrent has been making a gigantic artist-friendly push lately. Between offering BitTorrent bundles full of artist-supplied content, opening up that process to anybody, and rolling out features that allow you to buy things in a torrent, BitTorrent is fighting back hard against the false equivalency that torrenting = piracy. Hell yeah!
These billboards (developed in-house by real dudes who really do love BitTorrent, no less) are the latest, most visible part of their campaign — but they’re certainly not the last.
But man, billboards for BitTorrent. Whodathunk it, right? [BitTorrent]