Authored By seanphippster

This week, tech websites across the world have been discussing the world’s oldest torrent file, now active for more than 12 years.

The torrent file was created to share a fan-created ASCII version of “The Matrix” with others on the Internet. Both the torrent file and the movie it shared were created in 2003 as a labor of love by Jack Zielke, then a student at Chattanooga State.

Torrents and ASCII What is a torrent file? Read more here. What does ASCII mean? Read more here.

According to TorrentFreak.com, the file is “the oldest torrent that’s still being actively shared.” And the numbers are staggering: the torrent has been active for 4,420 days and downloaded tens of thousands of times. To put it in perspective, a 2007 study on torrent activity revealed that the average lifespan of a torrent file at the time was about 9 days and between 30-300 hours.

Zielke recently reuploaded the original website he built to share his version of the film, including more information on his process and, for the first time, allowing his name to be associated with the project.

Nooga.com spoke to Zielke about his motivation to create the ASCII version of the film, which he said he created as a parody. This is his first interview with media regarding the project.

An edited version of the interview is below.

Why create a version of “The Matrix” in ASCII?

I thought it would be fun to make “The Matrix” in green text. I wasn’t anticipating it lasting more than a few months. It was supposed to be just a novelty. In fact, getting to the DVD took a long time. I was initially thinking of modifying a monitor or old TV to only light up with green. In the end, I went with a DVD because that could be played anywhere and I wouldn’t have to lug around a broken TV with me to show off “The Matrix” in green text.

When did you create it?

There’s a little bit of a discrepancy that I’m reading on some websites. Some people are pointing out the Dec. 20, 2003, date. And my website says January 2004. Basically, I created the torrent on Dec. 20, 2003, and it was put on my torrent tracker … and if you knew that it was there, it was live at that point with a seed. So, it has been seeded since then.

How did you create it?

I actually patched a text ASCII rendering program in August 2002 to start doing this. The program running on my computer had to be the top window to take a screenshot to save the text as an image. So, if I was doing anything in front of it, it would put the window I was working on in the screenshot. I couldn’t use my computer when I was running this, so I’d let it run overnight. I got married and let it run through the entire honeymoon. It was often on for months and months to get all the frames.

How did the torrent take off?

I had a really terrible internet connection at the time, and if you wanted to download over 4 gigabytes from me it was going to take a long time. So, I ended up burning DVD copies of it and then sending it out to my friends. I gave seven different people the DVD to seed. They could just copy it to their computer and connect to the torrent. Five of them were mailed to places like Oklahoma, Minnesota and California.

These people had a copy of it so when I officially announced it there would already be seeders with fast connections. Some people said they would seed it for a week and others said they would seed it for a month to help me get started. It was created and seeded and just kind of sitting there until Jan. 16, 2004, because I wanted it to debut at Chattacon. [Chattacon is an annual sci-fi convention in Chattanooga]

Have people tried to contact you throughout the years?

Yeah, I get emails every so often. Sometimes I get hate mail from people expecting a pirated version of “The Matrix” and they found green text instead. But usually it’s people telling me they really like it and that they appreciate that I did it.

Were you ever concerned the Motion Picture Association of America was going to take issue with the parody?

I was always nervous about it. That’s another reason I didn’t post it before it debuted in the theater [at Chattacon]. If I had posted it online and Warner Bros. said “take this down” and a week later I played it in a theater, that would’ve been a really dumb move. That said, in 12 years I haven’t heard a peep. I don’t think I am reducing a single sale of theirs. But there’s a chance-with the recent resurgence-that people might actually be buying copies of the original. It may have increased sales, actually.

Looking back, is there anything you’d do differently?

I don’t know about doing it differently, but I guess it was a sign of the times. At the time, if you wanted to watch a movie you’d do it on your DVD player. Now, you watch on your computer or mobile device. You wouldn’t burn it before watching it. So, in 2012 I put up the original, high-quality 7-gigabyte file that would not fit on a DVD. I thought if you’re going to play it on a computer or a streaming player you might as well get the higher quality one. It didn’t really dawn on me at the time that people would be streaming like they are now. I also did not own a DVD burner when I did this. I bought an external enclosure and an 80-gig hard drive and went to a neighbors house and burned copies of it.

This is the first time you’ve talked about this to media?

Yes. The website was hosted at Chattanooga State. I was a student there when I made this. There was a page there for years. That was removed last September, but the torrent was still going. The email associated with that page was a .edu domain, so unless you emailed me and I told you who I was it was really hard to turn that into a person. Yesterday, I put it on one of my domains. With a simple WHOIS search you have all my contact info. So, I guess I’ve kind of outed myself. I never got an email from Warner Bros. or a lawyer in 12 years, so I figure if they wanted to get me they would’ve a long time ago.

Would you do it over again?

Oh yeah. It was tremendously fun.