When bittorrent was released, I saw the technological aspects as groundbreaking, thinking it would be repurposed for much more than ISO downloads and mass media distribution. How did the technology not become a more popular way of distributing via crowdsourcing large community datasets, such as openstreetmaps, or something like distribution of Android rom updates, when the costs of distribution are so expensive?
I think it, or derrivative methods are used more than you think, but aren’t talked about because torrenting has a bad rep.
I believe windows update and World of Warcraft either do or did use p2p downloads for updates