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?
For nerdy nerds like us a torrent client isn’t anything complicated. Regulating up and downstream bandwidth to personal preference isn’t complicated. Managing torrents to seed and not isn’t complicated. For your Average Joe though…
Plus, Average Joe doesn’t have port forwarding set up to punch a P2P hole thru his IPv4 NAT router