BitTorrent Gives Hollywood a Headache

Legally by Omkar · 2004-12-10 23:07 · Score: 5, Insightful

Are BitTorrent users more vulnerable legally (not practically) since they automatically upload? I'd think that makes them distributors, which presumably brings higher penalties than consumption.

Re:Legally by Porn+Whitelist · 2004-12-11 02:45 · Score: 5, Interesting
There is only one way to accurately track the use of a file on BitTorrent, and that is to have a complete block of data sent from your BT client to the intellectual property tracking company's BT client. As you start uploading straight away, there is a high probability that your client could send data to the "wrong person".
Since they're also uploading, they'd have a hard time arguing that you're breaking their copyright - they're helping distribute their copyright material ...
That's the real problem with going after torrent users. Unless the accuser actually downloads the file from the same torrent, they have no proof that the file is actually what it says. Once they do this, though, they are distributing their material knowingly.
So,
1. Movie studio downloads file using bittorrent
2. Accuses other torrent users of copyright violation.
3. Defendants show that accuser was sharing the file with them via bittorrent
4. Judgment for the Defendant
--
my journal: scripts for leaching porn baked fresh daily
Re:Legally by ichimunki · 2004-12-11 03:00 · Score: 5, Insightful

Copyright law does not have any language regarding intent that I'm aware of. Anyway, if you are using BitTorrent to download copyright restricted works, I can't imagine how that's going to engender any sympathy on the part of your local judge or jury. There is already a prevailing feeling (among the people I talk to, anyway) that even downloading is not morally acceptable.

In this case, it would be wise to simply not use BitTorrent for sharing copyright restricted works without permission from the person or organization that has the copyright for the work. BT was never intended to anonymize users or be a one-way stream. The BT application works best when users share data and client and tracker software can accurately detect which IP is doing what. If no one shared while using BT, the whole process would be no more efficient than a simple HTTP or FTP transfer. Anonymity would interfere with the tit-for-tat algorithm that throttles upload and download to different clients depending on their own sharing practices.

Personally I'm done using BT for "sharing" copyrighted works. Too bad for the MPAA and RIAA, really. My latest discovery via P2P was "Penn and Teller's Bullshit!" After viewing several episodes downloaded via BT, I went out and bought the DVD set of the first season. A $45 purchase I would have never made otherwise. Oh well, there's still USENET. :)

Or for the same price I could just get cable and subscribe to a few premium channels and record all this stuff directly to digital (for now). You'd think the MPAA would learn from the RIAA and move quickly to get direct digital distribution going. I'd pay $2 for a commercial-free 1/2 hour show and $4 for hour shows. $5 or $6 for a movie. Skip all the useless DVD packaging. Of course, the files will need to be at least as good quality as the rips out there, and playable on GNU/Linux.

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I do not have a signature
Re:Legally by FHMyles · 2004-12-11 04:05 · Score: 3, Informative

I *was* going to say that here in Canada, (thanks to a supreme court ruling) placing stuff in a shared folder is legal (because it is) and doesn't qualify as distribution of copyrighted material. But then I stopped and thought for a moment and I realized that BitTorrent might not be protected by that. It could be said that an inherent function of the program is that when you run it you send material to other people, instead of just placing it in an accessible shared folder. I'm no lawyer, but I'd say us Canadians might have to watch out in the near future after all.
Re:Legally by debrain · 2004-12-11 04:23 · Score: 3, Interesting

Are BitTorrent users more vulnerable legally (not practically) since they automatically upload? I'd think that makes them distributors, which presumably brings higher penalties than consumption.

That depends on your legislation. In Canada, for example, you only infringe copyright if you intended to infringe it. The high penalties associated with infringement of copyright, ie. criminal sanctions, leads to a high burden on the crown to prosecute.

So if a tech-unsavy person is uploading while downloading as part of the protocol, s/he is likely not intending to infringe copyright in the uploading, and therefore likely not guilty of an infringement.

However, the downloading itself may be an infringement, and by virtue of clicking the link, you have shown intention (though shown, it's not proven; accidental clicking, etc.).

Incidentally, I do not know what would happen if you were downloading a copyrighted movie you already own (fair use/dealing), and you were aware of the uploading. In that case you may be infringing copyright, but at the same time exercising your right to a backup, though to exercise that right through the bittorrent protocol, the only means of acquiring a backup given the DVD copy protection, you must redistribute and inherently infringe portions of the copyright.
Re:Legally by tylernt · 2004-12-11 05:16 · Score: 3, Interesting

There are plenty of anonymous web proxies, I wasn't aware that proxies even existed for BitTorrent though? Anyways, they would soon be flooded with traffic. The reason BT is so fast it you're downloading and uploading in parallel. Send everything though a proxy and now you've got a choke point; kind of defeats the purpose.

--
DRM 'manages access' in the same way that a prison 'manages freedom'

What's the problem? by tesmako · 2004-12-10 23:11 · Score: 5, Insightful

I really don't see the problem here, other P2P apps are tricky since the users themselves make the content available, but with BitTorrent it should be very clear-cut who to complain to if content you own show up as a download; the tracker.

The tracker is what facilitates the download, the person who runs the tracker has set it up with the intent to share the specific file being shared. The tracker site is typically also the root of all the sharing through being a base seeder as well. So, basicly this brings things back to the days of piracy over public FTP and HTTP download sites, just attack the one facilitating the downloads. While foreign hosting and such might make this trickier it sure is way simpler than trying to attack the typical P2P network where the users are also the ones bringing the content to the table.

Re:What's the problem? by Fallen_Knight · 2004-12-10 23:14 · Score: 3, Informative

problem is with trackers outside of the USA...
Re:What's the problem? by Idimmu+Xul · 2004-12-10 23:28 · Score: 4, Informative

The tracker is what facilitates the download, the person who runs the tracker has set it up with the intent to share the specific file being shared. The tracker site is typically also the root of all the sharing through being a base seeder as well. So, basicly this brings things back to the days of piracy over public FTP and HTTP download sites, just attack the one facilitating the downloads.

Man, you're so wrong. The tracker only hosts the .torrent files, if that! It's primary roll is to just keep a database of who is sharing what as that is the information the bittorrent client's request from it. This is why it's so hard for the MPAA to crack down on them, as it basically does the job of google but for a specific audience. It doesn't host or upload or share any copyright material, it just tracks those that do.

--
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
Re:What's the problem? by tesmako · 2004-12-10 23:41 · Score: 4, Interesting

Trackers typically have some initial seed locally arranged, needed to get the whole thing going. On most sites the seed also stays around to make sure that no fragment ends up lost.
Either way I can't say that I think it is obvious in any way that it should be legal to keep a tracker just because it does not actually hold the file. Its only purpose in existance is to provide access to the file, and also, the hashes that it keeps are generated from the file. While some people are tempted to compare the trackers information to plain linking I think it is a flawed argument. While the tracker only points out where each file fragment is available from the pointed to hosts are not there for any other purpose than to be pointed out by the tracker. They are if you will not really practically reachable in any other way. In that sense one can just as well see the tracker as an integral component in a system that as a whole is illegal.
Re:What's the problem? by Ath · 2004-12-10 23:54 · Score: 4, Insightful

Nice try, but that's essentially the same as what Napster was doing. Providing a central "database" where the material was linked.
The only defense here for such a website is that DMCA-style laws and even old copyright laws provide a safe haven clause. This means that the copyright holder must inform them that the content is copyrighted and unauthorized for sharing. If you check most sites that host Bittorrent links to copyrighted content, they always have some clear language saying "if you are the copyyright holder and this is your stuff, tell us and we will remove the link". Until that kicks in and the copyright holder informs them, there is no liability.
That all being said, the newer laws (like the one just passed in Australia) lets anyone notify the site and force a reaction. No longer is only the copyright holder themself required.
Re:What's the problem? by grazzy · 2004-12-10 23:55 · Score: 3, Informative

Well i suppose sometimes it makes sense for the seeder to start a tracker on his own computer, thats not the recommended way.

A properly run tracker should never host any data. Just torrents. A torrent is merely a file with checksums + some info.

How do you think for instance, www.thepiratebay.org (swedish) can stay online?
Re:What's the problem? by 91degrees · 2004-12-11 00:30 · Score: 3, Insightful

I have to wonder how well that sort of disclaimer actually protects the owner. I mean, if it's quite clear that the site exists to facilitate copyright infringement (n.b. 'if'. I'm not saying it does), then I think that disclaimers not worth the paper it's not printed on.
Re:What's the problem? by EpsCylonB · 2004-12-11 02:43 · Score: 5, Funny

Fucking AC and ./ grammar Nazis... If you understand the message, what else does it matter?

This isn't nam, this is slashdot, there are rules.

I don't think BitTorrent will be much of a problem by SimianOverlord · 2004-12-10 23:13 · Score: 3, Insightful

I imagine the copyright holders will go after the people who index bittorrent seeds, rather than the people involved in the filesharing, for facilitating the crime. If they hit these people, BitTorrent will become less popular as it becomes increasingly difficult to find what you want. It probably won't even matter if this is dubious, legally, just look at the RIAA's actions. A few C&D letters will cool off most people who have neither the money or inclination to fight a protracted court battle.

--
Meine Schwester ist sehr, sehr reizvoll - Nietzsche

What's the difference? by pen · 2004-12-10 23:15 · Score: 4, Insightful

Kazaa:

Run a modified client on a standard ISP address
Record IP addresses of everyone allegedly sharing your copyrighted material
Send out the DMCA notices to ISPs

BitTorrent:

Run a modified client on a standard ISP address
Record IP addresses of everyone allegedly sharing your copyrighted material
Send out the DMCA notices to ISPs

(The effectiveness and ethics of this method are a different story.)

Re:What's the difference? by Sique · 2004-12-11 06:03 · Score: 3, Informative

With BitTorrent you are forced to share. So when you start downloading something you are also sharing copyrighted material.

You fell for a small but important trap. Just because you are downloading something doesn't mean you are downloading copyrighted material. And just because you are downloading copyrighted material it doesn't mean you are doing anything illegal. And just because you are downloading copyrighted material and at the same moment share it to other people interested in the same material you are still not doing anything illegal.

Many people distribute their own stuff with BitTorrent, because so they only need to seed the material and have maybe to handle the amount for two or three complete downloads from their site. All the other people get their data from those who already got the block in question. This is a huge bandwith saver for all involved parties. Mandrake Linux gets distributed that way for instance, and you can also get other distributions that way, completely legal.

So different than KaZaA or other file sharing networks where you have to look out to find some legitimate use, with BitTorrent it's easy.

On the other hand: The article especially points out that one of the counter technics employed by MPAA and RIAA is to put bogus files with an interesting file name up for sharing. So people searching for a special file may end up with a file with the same name but a different content. Centralized hosting of "proven" files like Napster did made them liable for copyright infringement. Calculating checksums would only help if you could compare the checksums with a trusted database, which is open to the same type of liability, because the database has to calculate the checksums by using the original files. So infecting KaZaA with bogus files and forged checksums is easy. And you know how many files everyone is actually sharing, because you can just query the client and ask. This makes KaZaA and similar systems vulnerable to two types of attacks: Tracking people distributing immense amounts of files, and poisoning the data pool with fake files.

With BitTorrent it's different. Everyone seeding a file is taking technical responsibility for the correctness of the file. But the actual data blocks are coming from other computers. The tracker keeps track of the different computers sharing exactly this file. For every other file there is another tracker. So with the tracker data you can actually find out who's sharing a specified single file, and because of checksumming you can be confident that all people listed in the tracker are sharing the same file derived from the same original data. But you don't know which files else are being shared on the same computer, because their trackers are being somewhere else. So all a copyright infringement tracking bot connecting to that tracker gets to know is information about this single file. Quite ineffective, and if you go to a judge with an IP address and tell them: "From this IP this one file was distributed" he'll probably tell you that he has more important stuff to do.

So people sharing large amounts of data don't appear any different to the bot than people just sharing a single file. And poisoning the data is also not easy, because you can't spoof someone elses seed and tracker. So you have to establish yourself as a second source, with your own seed and tracker, and if you don't provide correct data, your seed will die out soon. There may be an attack possible if you hack BitTorrent yourself (it's GPLed, after all), and if you take part of the actually ongoing BitTorrent sharing, but send fake blocks to every request you get. But then the checksumming will detect you quite soon, and you loose again.

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.sig: Sique *sigh*

So many legit uses by Zorilla · 2004-12-10 23:15 · Score: 5, Insightful

Perhaps the difficulty in battling BitTorrent is because it's harder to argue that its only purpose is to pirate material? We've seen plenty of good uses for it, such as alleviating the bandwidth pains of downloading Windows XP SP2, high demand game patches (Take THAT, Gamespy and your system of waiting behind 400 people in line!), etc.

--

It would be cool if it didn't suck.

Re:So many legit uses by legirons · 2004-12-11 01:23 · Score: 4, Interesting

Pretty interesting article, and it seems to show quite clearly that some people will stop at nothing to destroy large sections of the internet.

The article is full of quotes about film-industry people bitching about how difficult it will be to destroy bittorrent. "It's very difficult for an interdiction company to get in the middle of that system" ... "BitTorrent has proven to be resistant to some of the countermeasures the entertainment industry has taken to sabotage file-sharing"

Uh-huh. Yes, the internet is resistant to people attempting to destroy it, that's part of the design. The worrying thing is how many people are completely open about wanting to do so.

" [John] Malcolm of the MPAA declined to say whether the trade group intends to sue Cohen" - I think that says it all really, that such options are even being considered. You may as well sue the founding fathers for allowing people to speak in public.

As long as there is a legitimate use... by darnok · 2004-12-10 23:17 · Score: 4, Insightful

of Bittorrent (e.g. downloading Linux distros), the RIAA and MPAA have no legal way of killing it off. Bittorrent is outstandingly useful for downloading all sorts of large files, and not all large files are copy-disallowed material.

As the article said, the genii is now out of the bottle, and there's no way it can be captured and contained again.

Private Trackers by Celt · 2004-12-10 23:18 · Score: 3, Interesting

Even here in Ireland one friend of mine got a notice from his ISP saying he was downloading from suprnova and that Universal had tracked his IP.
So sites like suprnova are wayyyy to open and as time goes by the smart people have moved away from such sites.

But there are private trackers as well they have.
- Alot of people
- Alot of content
- Good ratios so speeds are good

Nothing like suprnova and they are monitored carefully by the owners, so how are the MPAA/RIAA going to monitor these?

--
"WebTV: bringing the Internet into the shallow end of the gene pool since 1995" - Martin Bishop

Why don't they use it instead by tero · 2004-12-10 23:18 · Score: 5, Insightful

I'd be willing to pay for legal (non-DRM:ed) downloads of movies and tv-shows. Subscription or just per download, take you pick, I don't care.

I fail to see why Hollywood won't learn from RIAA's mistakes (and Apple's success) and start a service like this, the audience is global, there's tons of cash to make!

I live in a small nordic country (Sweden) where you have to wait 1-2 years for most "cool" shows (and even then they might get a timeslot around midnight) or get passed altogether (example, they just started running Angel Season 1, 01:00), so downloading series and buying them in DVD formats is more of a norm for me and many of my friends.

Now, a legal torrent.. that I'd pay for (and they'd even get my upload bandwidth for free).

Re:Why don't they use it instead by alwsn · 2004-12-11 00:08 · Score: 4, Insightful

Rather than fight BitTorrent, the networks need to realize the powere behind online distribution. Here is what a successful TV distribution system needs.

Light DRM
While DRM is disliked by end users, a DRM free system will never be launched. The networks wouldn't allow a DRM free system as it could, and would, be used to distribute shows to people who didn't pay. DRM should be in a similar style to iTunes, allowing a reasonable amount of use, while still making it very difficult for the casual user to instant message or upload a song over P2P to someone. Ability to play the show should remain for at least the length of the show's season.

Reasonable and Flexible Cost
Although many users enjoy shows, 'my cable bill' divided by 'number of shows I watch' will drive end user logic about perceived value of a show. $3 dollars per show is low enough to be reasonable, and hopefully high enough to generate revenue. Offer package deals, if someone is a fan of the show, offer the season at a 25% of 33% discount of all episodes are bought up front.

Marketed Well
DRM distribution of files would allow the networks to promote their shows. Sign up for the service, and get one free episode from each show on the upcoming fall lineup. This would help get potential new viewers to generate more income. Tie online season pack sales in with significant discounts on eventual DVD releases. This will help people feel they're actually getting something tangible for their money. Market internationally, as many countries don't have new shows promptly available.

Acknowledge the Inevitable
Thousdands, if not millions, of people are already downloading episodes. Many of these people would be happy to pay for these episodes and would enjoy the convenience and reliability of a legal option. Younger people are watching less TV and are spending an increasing amount of time on computers. Move the media to where people want to view it.

Re:I don't think BitTorrent will be much of a prob by mowler2 · 2004-12-10 23:28 · Score: 5, Informative

In some countries, like sweden, bittorrent trackers are legal. Since they do not spread copyrighted material but just link to where one can find copyrighted material.

Also there is a court ruling from the BBS-time that says that the BBS administrators is NOT responsible for what the users do on the BBS (such as trading warez). It is argued that the same reasoning can be done for a torrent tracker. However if there are copyrighted material transferred without the copyrightholders approval, people that USE the tracker is still doing something illegal.

The industry has tried to remove torrents from piratebay.org, which is the biggest torrent tracker in sweden, with limited success. (they have even gotten calls from Microsoft when Halo 2 was up for downloading) :)

Re:Simple solution. by julesh · 2004-12-10 23:32 · Score: 4, Interesting

Encrypt the file (breaking it would violate their own laws, should they pass)

No it wouldn't. It's only illegal to break encryption if it forms an effective copyright protection measure (I forget the exact terminology, but that's close enough). In this case, it wouldn't actually be protecting anyone's copyright, so they would be legally entitled to break it.

and give out the key in a special license, so that anyone/anycorporation/anyorganization that uses the key in any way forfeits all ability to punish anyone/anocorporation/anyorganization for it's contents.

The legality of such a license is questionable, at best. First of all, can an encryption key (a purely functional item, usually automatically designed) be considered copyrightable? If not, then you do not need a license to use it. Secondly, can a license take away a person's rights to their own IP? I wouldn't have thought so.

IANAL, etc.

Peerguardian by Idimmu+Xul · 2004-12-10 23:33 · Score: 3, Interesting

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Peerguardian just stop incoming and outgoing connections to it's list of banned IPs? If so, how does this stop a member of the **AA from connecting to a tracker and simply receiving the list of all the IPs connected to that torrent... How does it make a difference?

--
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!

Re:PeerGuardian by TheRealJFM · 2004-12-10 23:37 · Score: 5, Informative

happily:

PeerGuardian is based around the idea of an open list of blocklists collected from known fake files/scaners etc.

The **AAs are not very sophisticated in their searching - man scans come from a very small number of ranges.

The ranges are found by:

1) Whois searching, If we know the name of the company we can easily find them by scanning whois databases. They *have* to give their company name (eg BayTSP) so they are easy to find.

2) Log comparison. PG collects a log of every ip you connect to against the time. If someone gets a letter we get them to cross-reference the time the infringement is said to be on the letter (this must legally be included) with the ips in their log. 9/10 it is an obvious IP doing the scanning that can be found.

see our forum on this topic here:
http://methlabs.org/forums/forumdisplay.php ?f=41

PeerGuardian is simply a low level firewall that blocks these ips. PeerGuardian 2 will be open source, and will update automatically.

We're also trying to make the database more open, by adding a system where all the ranges can be viewed on a webpage, and users can comment, report bad ranges, and vote on how useful a range is.

See the reviews of PG2 *closed beta* here:

http://www.afterdawn.com/guides/archive/peerguar di an_2_review.cfm
http://www.p2private.org/review/

I expect PG2 to be out before the new year, but it will be out when its ready, not beforehand.

Thanks :)

Joseph Farthing
Administrator & News Editor
Methlabs.org

--
Joseph Farthing
http://josephfarthing.com

Re:Newgroups? by julesh · 2004-12-10 23:39 · Score: 3, Informative

Or is there some technical reason that they can't do anything about them?

I believe Harlan Ellison successfully sued somebody who was posting copies of his stories to alt.binaries.e-books (or similar). He also tried to sue AOL, who settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.

See details here: http://www.authorslawyer.com/c-ellison.shtml

Re:Peerguardian by TheRealJFM · 2004-12-10 23:39 · Score: 5, Informative

This is very simple:

collecting the IP addresses of people connected to a tracker does not ammount to proof of infringement. You have to actually recieve some data from them to prove they are illegally transmitting copyrighted material. :)

Joseph Farthing
Administrator & News Editor
Methlabs.org

--
Joseph Farthing
http://josephfarthing.com

Confusion on the tracing. by Fussen · 2004-12-10 23:42 · Score: 4, Informative

I was explained to that torrents are not easily traced because all the data is sent in small packet chunks.. I think it might be in 256k chunks.
And that since all these data packets are being sent randomly from various sources, it would be much more difficult to actually point a finger at a source or destination.

It was described that sure you might be able to intercept the transmition of data, but you are not witnessing the transfer of a in-tact file.

So you could see that maybe it's some sort of mpeg stream or maybe part of a larger compressed archive, but it's just a piece of it. And once the next version of the torrent system comes along with the ability to transfer without use of trackers or servers, it becomes here-say on any legal action.

So does this packet chunk bit torrent stuff actually hold true? And if not, Why?

:)

Re:Peerguardian by TheRealJFM · 2004-12-10 23:56 · Score: 4, Informative

to hold up a case in court they have to actually *prove* the person is sharing the file.

getting a list of ips just won't be good enough without some sort of evidence

then again we have seen some stupid occasions where stupid takedown notices have been given:

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/20/ 23 51242&tid=188&tid=123&tid=17&tid=1 06

--
Joseph Farthing
http://josephfarthing.com

Legit uses by knightrdr · 2004-12-11 00:09 · Score: 3, Insightful

How many government snafu's will be revealed by file sharing? Look at some of the things published on P2P networks already, concerning prisoner abuse by the U.S. military. Some of the information was originally made public by more traditional means, but many hot stories have broke because of pics or videos from Iraq on P2P networks. Of course there is the flip side of beheading videos being published by terrorists or a meere "gore loving freak". I wonder how long until we hear about "those terrorist P2Pers". Don't think it can't happen...

I think BitTorrent users are harder to sue by swilver · 2004-12-11 00:32 · Score: 5, Insightful

"Anyone who uses BitTorrent and is under the illusion that they are anonymous are sorely mistaken," Malcolm said. "There is no reason why those lawsuits wouldn't include BitTorrent" users.

Actually, there is a reason why the lawsuits wouldn't include BitTorrent users. It is much harder to sue BitTorrent users for multiple infringements at once, which (I think) is what makes the current lawsuit approach cost effective.

When you find a BitTorrent user participating in a big swarm, you can only sue them for that single infringement, not for sharing hundreds of movies or music files via programs like Kazaa. In order to make it cost effective they would have to keep track of your online BitTorrent activity for quite a while to collect multiple infringements.

Re:I think BitTorrent users are harder to sue by snark42 · 2004-12-11 02:20 · Score: 4, Interesting
they would have to keep track of your online BitTorrent activity for quite a while to collect multiple infringements.

They also need to:
- Make sure your dynamic IP doesn't change.
- Monitor a LARGE number of torrents without being blacklisted for being with the RIAA/MPAA/etc.
- Not engage in sharing the said copyrighted material themselves which would make the download a legal one.
I think many of these are the same reasons IRC and Usenet can go along without being bothered too much, plus the critial mass of people aren't there, but that's how a lot of the files get out to FastTrack or BitTorrent I'm sure.

Legal Threats by Zedrick · 2004-12-11 01:12 · Score: 3, Informative

There's some funny examples of various copyright holders' cease-and-desist-mails (and the replies they got) to a Swedish torrent site on: http://static.thepiratebay.org/legal/

One they day will get a clue and start hunting down the users instead.

Think about this...Bootleg quality SUCKS! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-11 02:15 · Score: 3, Insightful

The answer is that the MPAA and RIAA are all being lazy.

Think about what happens when you download music, I'd say 40% of the time. You find that there's a click or a pop or an early cutoff in the song. Not 100% recording studio quality, or maybe even the encoding rate is less than 128k.

Also, anyone who has ever seen a bootleg knows that even TELESYNCS are of worse quality than that old TV that used to be in the garage with the aluminum foil on the antenna, and whose antenna was actually a coathanger.

The answer is to make reasonable quality movies available easily to people. TiVO has the right idea, and this idea may just bury the whole theatre industry (or set it back hundreds of paces).

I've bought bootlegs on every corner of NYC, and they all SUCK, and I'm not just talking about quality. Same has been said about the quality of the music that is being released these days. The RIAA is mad that we're downloading music that isn't worth even a legit 0.99 cent download. The answer? GET MORE TALENT ON THE LABELS!

Same is true for movies. Let's do a brief history of movies that have come out recently, shall we?

Lady Killers - I fell aasleep, personally. Horrible.
Van Helsing - PUH-LEESE. Should have ended 45 minutes before it did.
White Chicks - umm...right. White Chicks.

So one could argue that buying/downloading bootlegs is really just saving us from having to spend $10 now on a crappy movie. 10 BUCKS! Maybe there wouldn't be so much downloading if tickets were still reasonable. $10!

When I buy/download a good movie, I go to the thetre and see it.

SAW is a perfect example. GREAT MOVIE, new, fresh, original. Bought a bootleg, watched 15 minutes, and went to the theatre. They DESERVED the price of the ticket.

Spiderman 2 also....downloaded it, watched it, and went ot see it 3 times in the theatre.

My advice to MPAA/RIAA...better product. Make it so that we're foolish to try and get a cheap copy of your product. Nobody is out there manufacturing BMW knockoffs, are they? THey'd be FOOLISH to.

Take a lesson, and stop complaining.

Just my .02.

The Stuff You Can't Get by josefek · 2004-12-11 02:39 · Score: 5, Interesting

I receive tons of hits from various groups sniffing about while I'm d/ling via BitTorrent (I run PeerGuardian) and I often wonder how culpable I am. While not all of my downloads are technically "legal," it's all stuff I'm pulling down because it's the only way I can get it.
My most recent downloads, for instance, have been copies of Sifl & Olly (which hasn't been released on DVD) episodes of the BBC's Spaced (which, while released on DVD, is only available in the UK on region 2 media, and I'm in the states), and the Drive-By Truckers Pizza Deliverance, which is woefully out of print. In the case of the Truckers, I already own a copy of the record, but it's beat to shit. Supposedly they'll be re-releasing it sometime in 2005, and I'll undoubtedly be buying myself a new copy. In the meantime, however, I'd like to be able to listen to it.
I'm one of those folks who would happily purchase the stuff I pull via BitTorrent... if I could. It irritates the shit out of me to be snooped online, and to read article after article about the RIAA and MPAA pissing and moaning over downloading, when they don't really seem to be paying attention to what is being downloaded.
Sure, there's a shit-ton of folks dealing in warez and publicly available media, but there are also tons of sites dealing specifically with stuff people seek that can't currently be purchased legitimately (I don't understand downloading a crappy boot of a movie destined for DVD release, or downloading a movie that can be purchased for a few bucks online or rented. Frankly, it's a waste of my bandwidth). You'd think they'd look at the popularity of, say, Sifl & Olly torrents and say "Well shit, there's a market. Maybe we should release a DVD of that stuff."
And hey; how about not pricing it outlandishly (a la Carnivale or Six Feet Under)? Nothing makes me consider downloading more than knowing that, by purchasing it, I'm voluntarily allowing myself to get screwed.

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rev.jsfk

TV by nns6561 · 2004-12-11 02:53 · Score: 4, Interesting

Why haven't TV stations decided to offer up torrents of recent shows? By including ads, they should be able to achieve similar levels of profit as broadcast TV. The bandwidth should not be a stumbling block if torrents are used. It might even increase revenues by exposing their product to a larger market.

Not! by Mistlefoot · 2004-12-11 02:57 · Score: 3, Interesting

And the Movie studio states clearly that they only uploaded '30 seconds' worth of the information before disconnecting from the torrent.

It is incredibly common for studios to offer samples of their work without compromising their rights to to it.

This PeerGuardian bs again? by Jugalator · 2004-12-11 03:00 · Score: 3, Interesting

And with the likes of PeerGuardian, et. al., it only gets harder for the corporations to put the virtual, and legal, smackdown on file sharing.

OK, can someone once and for all tell me how PG makes it more difficult for corporations to track down file sharers? All the have to do is use a public network, right? I just don't get it. Do some think they'll sit behind a special kind of RIAA network to scan people and have totally missed the news of PG mentioned everywhere?

Have we got any data on blocked RIAA connections?

People mentioning PG is always talking about the software like it efficiently blocks the organizations you've picked. :-S

--
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!

Re:So many legit uses-Barrel Spoling. by legirons · 2004-12-11 03:21 · Score: 3, Insightful

"And you haven't made the case yet that P2P is "large sections of the internet"."

If you wanted to do so, you could cite the percentage of internet traffic which bittorrent uses, some figures were even in the article.

Some people estimate 800,000 copies of bittorrent might be running at any one time. Download.com estimates that 1.5 million copies of the standard BitTorrent client have been downloaded from their site alone (more than firefox). I think the claim of "large sections of the internet being affected by someone trying to fuck-up BitTorrent" is justified.

"Copyright violations aren't a free speech issue"

Indeed. Wasn't suggesting they should be. But trying to shut-down whole systems of communication for fear that copyrighted stuff might be transmitted on them is a free-speech issue.

My analogy was with speaking in public. You can read a copyrighted book in public. You can sing a copyrighted song. But restricting the ability to speak in public is not a valid solution to either of those problems. Similarly, restricting the ability to use BitTorrent is not a valud solution to the problem of people using it to share other peoples' video.

Or to use a more specific example, I don't want MPAA-funded vandals interfering with my Debian and Mepis downloads, then claiming that what they're doing is legitimate.

They cheated the system by Migraineman · 2004-12-11 04:11 · Score: 4, Insightful

(with a US bias ...) The file sharing backlash is, IMHO, an example of civil disobedience in response to the **AA organizations cheating the system. Copyright and Patent structures are a *temporary* monopoly granted to the author (and enforced thorough the legal system) in exchange for incentive to expend resources and take risks for the creative process. When the Copyright/Patent period expires, the work is supposed to fall into the public domain for the benefit of society. So, exactly when do the authors make good on their end of the deal? The Sonny Bono Copyright Extension-to-Infinity Act distills down to "effectively, never."

There are two paths to changing the law - pursue it through petition to representatives, or pursue it through civil disobedience. Since the congresscritters appear to be bought and paid for, disobedience seems to be the only reasonable choice that remains. The file sharing folks aren't making a buck doing so. In fact, it costs them time and resources (electricity, disk space, bandwidth, etc.) to participate in the activity. The pirates who sell the materials are a different matter ...

Wrong by Q2Serpent · 2004-12-11 04:26 · Score: 5, Insightful

You aren't allowed to upload 1 second of the material, since you don't own the copyright!

Is it that hard to understand? They can distribute as much of it as they want, because they OWN IT. You, however, do NOT.

Hollywood & this article misses the point agai by OneInEveryCrowd · 2004-12-11 06:05 · Score: 4, Insightful

Here are some questions I wish the author of this article and some of the people he interviewed would address.

Why can't "Hollywood" adapt to technological change instead of fighting it ? Why can an unemployed programmer sitting in his apartment out-inovate a handful of multi-billion dollar corporations ?

Why do these wealthy CEO and entertainer types think they're immune from change ? I used to be a high paid COBOL guy, I had to adapt. Do any of these people expect me to feel any sympathy or support for them ?

Why would people want to download in the first place ? Is it because ticket prices are too high, and the cost of soda and popcorn is almost offensive ? Do people in one country want to see the movie as soon as people in another country ?

Is the loss of revenue real or imaginary ? Is their existence really threatened ? Are movie industry profits really sliding ? Are American high school kids really going to start staying home instead of going to the theatre ?

Sorry if this sounds like a bit of a rant. I'm really tired of the pro-CEO slant in the mainstream media. If any journalists are reading this I hope you address these questions in your future articles. It would really make me alot more interested in what you do for a living.

Off Topic: grammar critique discussed by Changa_MC · 2004-12-11 09:57 · Score: 3, Insightful

Although I dislike drawing this thread farther from the topic at hand, I feel compelled to continue on with this dicussion. I'd like to begin by pointing out the fact that this corrective post consisted entirely of fragmented quotes interspersed with sentence fragments, and quotation marks were used inversely from their indications; around original text rather than cited materials! Let us illustrate instead some proper corrective techniques.

We can start by breaking down the original essay, to wit:

"Man, you're so wrong."

In my classroom this contraction would be inappropriate, but in an informal letter, it is acceptable.

"The tracker only hosts the .torrent files, if that!"

This is acceptable, since the suggested usage, "tracker hosts only..." implies that nothing else is on the server at all, whereas the original more correctly implies that the tracker does not host any other part of the specific transaction that interests us.

"It's primary roll is to just keep a database of..."

This is actually a mistake; "it's," is always a contraction for, "it is." What was meant here is ownership, so "its" is correct.

The use of primary is admittedly confusing, since it implies secondary roles. Perhaps our author includes maintaining DNS position and such in the server's secondary roles. Certainly, the actual error in this sentence is the incorrect use of, "roll," where, "role," was intended. Perhaps our self appointed grammar expert could expand to definitions of common words as well?

"...The information the bittorrent client's request from it"

Similar to another mistake made previously. The use of, "client's," is incorrect since it implies ownership. Perhaps if we reworded the sentence this way: "the bittorrent client's request is only for the database of who is sharing, so that is the tracker's role."

" ...Any copyright.."

As was pointed out, this ought to be in the past tense, since the copyright in question would have already been issued.

"...material, it just tracks those"

A travesty of modern education is the use of commas where semicolons are more desirable. This is a typical example, and is common worldwide. Even the highly educated tend not to use semicolons where such items technically ought to be used.

But again, our young grammar nazi^H^H^H^H expert failed to point out the most critical error here, which is the ending of the sentence.

Overall, the English usage here was excellent although obviously informal.

I am drawn to conclude that the original author's grasp of English is acceptable for a native speaker, whilst quite impressive in any other case. Whilst the individual writing the critique, in contrast, is simply an ignoramus with a giant lump of coal wedged up his sorry little ass.

Thank you for your time and consideration, I hope we have all learned something here today.

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Changa hates change.

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