Ashwin Navin was the President and Co-Founder of BitTorrent, Inc. He joined Bram Cohen, the inventor of BitTorrent, in 2004 and reportedly handled business and company-related matters while Cohen focused on engineering and product development. According to a post on his blog, Navin has resigned from BitTorrent in order to focus on a new venture with YouTube co-founder Steve Chen, MySpace co-founder Aber Whitcomb, and Hot or Not co-founder Jim Young.
Before BitTorrent, Navin worked at Yahoo! from 2002 to 2004 in its Corporate Development group which handled corporate strategy and acquisitions. Before Yahoo!, Navin worked on Wall Street with Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch both as an investment banker and research analyst. Navin is a 1999 graduate of Claremont McKenna College with a dual B.A. in Government and Economics.
In 2000, Navin helped start a technology-based financial services company called Epoch Partners. Epoch was essentially the investment banking arm of several online stock brokerages including Charles Schwab, Ameritrade, and TD Waterhouse. Epoch Partners was eventually acquired by Goldman Sachs in 2001.
Navin reportedly evaluated Cohen's invention for Yahoo! in 2004. Although it was a notable development for the Internet, BitTorrent was widely considered to be the bane of the film industry, because it made the cost of transferring large files, including pirated movies, negligible to the end user.
Commercializing BitTorrent
Cohen entrusted Navin with the responsibility of crafting a business model for BitTorrent with hopes of bringing BitTorrent out of the fringes and into the mainstream. Navin has assumed the public face of the company as an evangelist for its commercial viability. In 2007, Navin launched 3 commercial products: the BitTorrent Entertainment Network in February, the BitTorrent SDK in June, and BitTorrent DNA in October.
To catalyze BitTorrent's commercialization, Navin began by engaging movie industry executives directly. Although predicted by many to be highly unlikely, BitTorrent has struck relationships with many major media companies including Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, MTV, Lionsgate, Kadokawa Pictures, and others [1] [2] The BitTorrent Entertainment Network, features mainstream movies and TV shows licensed from major media companies delivered with the BitTorrent protocol.
Navin has also announced the availability of a P2P content delivery service called BitTorrent DNA. According to him, "The Internet has become an essential source of entertainment for everything from music, games to TV shows, and even high-definition movies. Given the rapidly growing BitTorrent network, we already have the broadcast infrastructure in place that effectively multiplies the scale of the existing Internet to handle the next wave of content distribution. Implementing BitTorrent DNA on top of legacy infrastructure has the profound impact of allowing our customers to deliver a better user experience, higher quality video, faster software downloads, all with the security and reliability of a managed service."
Beyond copyright issues, BitTorrent also faced struggles with Cable companies and ISPs which were overwhelmed with high volumes of P2P traffic on their networks. In the wake of FCC hearings that pitted Comcast and BitTorrent against each other for traffic management policies that inhibited P2P file transfers, Navin was responsible striking a deal with Comcast that resolved the companies' differences and diffused a hotly contested issue at the heart of Network Neutrality debate.
References
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This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (December 2009) |
- Ashwin Navin's blog post on his resignation from BitTorrent
- Navin on the role of BitTorrent and its commercialization
- BitTorrent.com's company overview page
- BitTorrent's recent licensing activity
- Navin addresses the issue of Comcast traffic shaping P2P traffic in this video
External links
- NPR's All Things Considered interviews Ashwin Navin
- Ashwin Navin Speaking at Stanford
- An article from sfgate.com
- Podcast with Navin's views on the Download business and DRM
- Podcast with Navin's views on BitTorrent in China
- Navin challenges the decision of Ohio University' administration to ban P2P technologies
- Navin addressing the deal his company negotiated with Comcast
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