[haasted]

Along that tangent:

The use of torrent files as a universal link to the downloadable material is also genius. It removes the need for implementing a costly peer-2-peer search mechanism (Gnutella and Kazaa spent quite a lot of resources on search), and a potentially cluttered GUI. Instead, the torrent files can be distributed in any way people find convenient, eg. www, e-mail or RSS.

On top of that, including the tracker-URL transparently in the torrent file is a huge usability improvement. No more searching for lists of super-nodes to enter the network, as was the case with Gnutella.

[maxklein]

This was really what took him out. Nobody at the time thought to use a file to share all the meta information. It was always about urls or ip addresses or so on. He did not try to reinvent the world, he just took things that worked and put them together.