If you live in New York, Los Angeles or San Francisco, there's a good chance you've come across one of several mysterious billboards in recent weeks with controversial statements like the one above. Other billboards have touted messages like "The Internet should be regulated" and "Artists need to play by the rules." Now, we finally know who is behind them: BitTorrent.
The peer-to-peer service revealed in a blog post Tuesday that the billboards are intended to "remind the world what's at stake on the world wide web." This week, BitTorrent is crossing out one or two words on the billboards to change the messages to reflect the company's true beliefs.
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"With the reveal, we are showing people that things don't actually have to be like that," Matt Mason, VP of marketing for BitTorrent, told Mashable in an interview, referring to the original bleak messages. "If you look at BitTorrent's technology and protocols, things can be a different way."
Here are two shots — before and after — of the billboard messages, courtesy of Mashable Editor in Chief Lance Ulanoff, who spotted them on the street:


Mason says the billboards represent the company's first major marketing campaign and are intended to "re-introduce" the brand to consumers. "For so long, the word 'BitTorrent' has been used as a placeholder for piracy," he says. "We wanted to start saying loudly that we are a respectable tech company."
As part of that effort, the startup and its marketing team have worked to partner with content companies and better educate businesses and consumers on the legal uses for its technology. BitTorrent is also building new products like a secure chat tool to help users avoid data breaches.
So why would a digital company choose to go with a billboard campaign for its first big marketing effort? In part, it's precisely because it's counter-intuitive.
"It is the antithesis of what people would expect," Mason says. "We wanted to do something that was very visible and very easy for people to see and understand, and that would be billboards."
BitTorrent has bought about 30 billboards to date, according to Mason, and plans to continue the campaign through the end of the year. Mason would not disclose how much BitTorrent is spending on the campaign.
Image: BitTorrent