BitTorrent behind NSA billboard campaign

BitTorrent has claimed responsibility for a number of mysterious billboards with messages including "The Internet should be regulated," "Artists need to play by the rules" and "Your data should belong to the NSA."

Some 30 billboards were bought across New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles, and BitTorrent went back to all of them and changed one or two words to change their meanings.

The peer-to-peer service revealed in a blog post that they were behind the billboards, and that the Internet doesn't have to be considered that way.

The revised messages now say "The Internet is people-powered," "Artists need options" and "Your data should belong to you."

BitTorrent's VP of Marketing Matt Mason wrote that these principles are at the core of a free and open Internet.

"As a society, we’ve chosen to accept data centralization: personal information as property of a powerful few. We’ve chosen to accept walled gardens of creativity: a lifetime of work (our life’s work) locked into digital stores that take 30% of the revenue and streaming services that pay pennies in royalties. We’ve chosen to accept surveillance culture: the right of security agencies to violate the Fourth Amendment; to see and store data as they see fit."

Mason goes on to say that "this is the generation that will decide whether the Internet is a tool for control, or a platform for innovation and freedom."

The campaign was designed to "re-introduce" the BitTorrent brand to consumers.

"For so long, the word 'BitTorrent' has been used as a placeholder for piracy," he wrote. "We wanted to start saying loudly that we are a respectable tech company."

To that end, BitTorrent is partnering with content companies to educate consumers and businesses on the legal uses for its technology, including new products like a secure chat tool for preventing data breaches.