BitTorrent set out how it thinks the internet should be (Picture: BitTorrent)

BitTorrent has launched an advertising campaign on billboards across Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York that subverts conservative internet guidelines, declaring that ‘the internet should be people-powered’.

The giant posters build on ominous messages that were plastered to buildings around the cities which BitTorrent said were statements ‘internet culture has accepted’.

The phrase ‘artists need to play by the rules’ was re-worked to reflect the crisis the music industry is having with monetising content, while a jab at the US government insisted data should belong to the people not the NSA.

Torrenting has long been confused with pirating when in fact it is merely a means of exchanging data, a clarification BitTorrent is keen to spread.




It said in a blog post: ‘These statements represent an assault on freedom. They also, for the most part, represent attitudes Internet culture has accepted. Chips we’ve traded for convenience. Part of the allegiance we’ve sworn to the web’s big platforms and server farms. That’s what you get for going online.

‘We put these billboards up last week in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Because we wanted to remind the world what’s at stake on the world wide web.

‘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.

‘But these things are just that. They’re choices. And these choices belong to us.’