Torrentocracy = RSS + Bit Torrent + Your TV

lerhaupt writes "I've started a project called Torrentocracy which is the combination of RSS, Bit Torrent and your Television. It's written as a plugin for MythTV (the homebrew Linux PVR project). This means you can not only easily find out about new torrents from various enclosure enabled blogs, but you can also start the torrent download process with the click of your TV remote control. Are RSS aggregators which support torrent downloads the next greatest thing since web browsers? What is the significance of hooking this directly to your TV? Here's a screenshot."

Comments

Re:Sounds Wonderful

[MeanE]

Mmm perhaps not.

You would have to leave your PVR/whatever on to seed, but as you might of noticed, your computer continues to function with your monitor off.

Computer + TV card

[freeduke]

A lot of people take the problem from the other side, while trying to download movies on your TV, we prefer to watch tv on our PCs.

Re:Bad rep

[Stevyn]

Not nessesarily, as far as p2p apps go, this has the best reputation in my opinion. For example, when mandrake released their ISOs of mandrake 10 to the club members, they distributed it over torrent. Another plus for bit torrent is you need to use a secondary method of finding the torrent files so unlike kazaa, there is no "search for music" option. Being open source also helps in that you can ensure there is no spyware. I think bit torrent can succeed as a reputable p2p app because it was not designed to steal music and divx movies, it just happens to do it well.

Now you've done it, Thanks for all the work Isaac.

[Fapestniegd]

I kept hoping no one would do this. I'd seen requests for something like it on mythtv-users. Now that MythTV will be indistinguishable from "Movie Pirates" in the MPAA's eyes. It's probably only a matter of time before the whole project gets litigated, albeit unjustly, into oblivion. Well I hope Isaac can file legal paperwork and code at the same time, but I'm guessing not. And don't bother telling me this is a separate plug-in for MythTV, I know that. What I'm saying here is that the MPAA's lawyers don't know or won't care.

Re:Appropriateness of torrents for this, and legal

[mjh]

Wouldn't this make no sense unless you wanted to wait forever for the program to be completely downloaded?

In a previous post I talked about a similar problem when TiVo suggested a similar feature. I think this would apply here too. This doesn't change the DVR recording model, which is schedule something and watch it later. The only thing that this adds is that it makes the Internet a like a TV channel, from which you can set up something to record, and then watch it later. It's not *exactly* like a TV channel, but it still fits the DVR model.

Does it make sense to put this amount of effort into support of what might be intended to be an illegal activity for most?

The person/people who are creating this tech have got to pull off a trick. They've got to figure out how to make sure that the only content available is distributed with the permission of the copyright holder. If they can do that, then they have a much more credible case that this is not intended to be a tool which is intended for copyright violation.

I don't mean to suggest that copyright is a good thing. But it exists in today's world. It never ceases to amaze me when we (the slashdot crowd) get up in arms when someone violates the GPL (i.e. violates copyright) and then we turn around and violate copyright when it comes to music or movies or ... The point is that we can't ride whatever side of the fence is most convenient. Either copyright should be enforceable and we support others rights to enforce their copyrights or copyright should not be enforceable and we allow GPL violations without restriction. Which means that if we want a solid GPL, then we should also ensure that this tech does everything to respect other's copyrights.

$.02.