Slashdot Mirror
Legal Torrent Sites Help Legitimize BitTorrent
Jeff writes "In today's Seattle Times, technology columnist Paul Andrews highlights how legal torrent sites such as CommonBits may lead to wider adoption and acceptance of BitTorrent. With reports that illegal torrent usage may be more than a third of Internet traffic, sites like LegalTorrents, Torrentocracy, Prodigem and bt.etree may offer a compelling defense to future legal attacks while simultaneously promoting fair use rights. Andrews goes on to argue that the future of television may be no further away than integration of podcasting, RSS, tagging and BlogTorrent."
Doesn't that imply that the mere (former) existence of sites like Lokitorrent and Suprnova was illegal?
I'm not sure if that was ever decided by a court - rather it appears that scare tactics caused them to be shut down. For that reason, I personally don't feel comfortable declaring linking to content hosted on other systems illegal.
I'm a big tall mofo.
It only takes 1 illegal site to put BitTorrent in the crosshairs of the *AA groups. In fact, the fact that we are celebrating some legal sites speaks volumes to where BitTorrent currently stands.
But is be legal to download anything that I'm ever going to have any interest in?
I somehow doubt that the content of these sites, and by extension the sites themselves, are going to be popular in the long run.
Just to state the bleeding obvious, of course.
Examples like this can only help the cause, though I'm not sure by how much.
I too have felt the cold finger of injustice.
With reports that illegal torrent usage may be more than a third of Internet traffic, sites like LegalTorrents, Torrentocracy, Prodigem and bt.etree may offer a compelling defense to future legal attacks
MPAA: I'm suing you for you website with links to Torrents of all our movies.
Pirate: Look, that other site over there offers torrents of non-infringing material.
Court: Because other people are using torrents lawfully, this guy can pirate all he likes. Case dismissed.
With reports that illegal torrent usage may be more than a third of Internet traffic
The reports state that BitTorrent use may be more than a third of Internet traffic. They don't state that illegal BitTorrent use may be more than a third of Internet traffic.
You've just gone and assumed that BitTorrent is exclusively illegal, while moaning about the fact that others do it too. Way to go, dickhead.
When the article says the intent is to provide otherwise inaccessible content to Internet "viewers", it only applies to the novice users and those who don't read /. But I must say this is a start. If the companies can support this actively, it would be better.
... and I shall strike upon thee with great vegeance, furious anger and a slightly positive karma.
Get it from http://www.bittorrent.com.
The license has changed to the BitTorrent Open Source License
Release Notes:
The only problem with "legitimizing" bittorrent's image is that, as a protocol, it's still the most popular one for illega filesharing. We admins quite frankly don't give one hoot about its benign uses: we KNOW that the second we stop filtering BT traffic, our bandwidth usage is gonna go up.
------- "From bored to fanboy in 3.8 asian girls" ----------
I missed last week's episode of Lost. None of my friends had recorded it so I found the torrent and downloaded it. Hurley's crazy. Anyway, I would rather have gone to the ABC site, paid like a $1 or something, and downloaded it from them. I want to support stuff I find interesting but there is no way to do that with TV episodes. What do I do, wait for the DVD next year? Please. ABC and the like could use BitTorrent to distribute Pay Per View content. I'd like that very much.
Speak truth to power.
they got slashdotted already :/
anybody got a torrent?
Why exactly is there a need to "legitimize" the Bittorrent protocol?
AFAIK there never was an initiative to outlaw the protocol itself.
Talk about paranoia.
120 chars are not enough for a signature. I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to c
With reports that illegal torrent usage may be more than a third of Internet traffic...
Sorry, but how the hell are the people who come up with the numbers able to differentiate between legal and illegal torrents?
First of all, how do you tell between traffic that's due to Linux ISOs and traffic that's due to the latest movie release? Secondly, how do you differentiate between copying of material that may be legal in one country and copying of the same material that may be illegal in another one?
I'm not saying that legal torrent usage is greater than illegal torrent usage (any more than I would say that more drivers stick to speed limits than break them) but it seems to me that there's no real way of differentiating between the two, so all those reports are arguably just speculation.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's not censorship. They specifically say that it's a "resource for politically left people". So you know what to expect when downloading their content. If you want no political slanting, don't use their service, that's all there is to say.
Again: not censorship
120 chars are not enough for a signature. I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to c
So any legal material that doesn't fit their leftist worldview will be censored... how nice...
No, you idiot, it will just fail to be promoted by this site. There is a big difference. You can do the same kind of thing with your right-wing attack site if you so wish. At the least you can agree that there is a market for news for leftists (whatever "leftist" means - in the USA it apparently means anyone who is not a rabid neocon)
What I want to see is for this to have no biases
So make your own. The existence of this site doesn't stop you doing that, and good luck; you'll need it in heaps. Unbiased news is very difficult, arguably impossible.
I want no political slanting of what gets in, I would far rather it be noted for the fairness of their coverage.
Try the BBC, it comes close.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
I find it hard to think of torrent as anything other than another transmission protocol.
/. Would start torrent/mirroring it.....
I know it isn't since it is acting at another layer, but for all purposes how is it different from tcpip?
I think if it was bundled with a browser websites would start using this for load balancing. People that love
I know it wouldn't work like that, but I can see a lot of potential in bittorrent for legal purposes
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
Slackware has been using BitTorrent for a while now. You have the option of using that, or the normal download methods. You can visit them here.
I've seen many other legitimate uses for BitTorrent, since there are a lot of things to download that are of considerable size.
Guns are sometimes used to commit crimes, yet we do not outlaw them. Bongs are being sold at the local Waterbeds N Stuff. Knives that aren't practical for neither hunting or home protection can be purchased in lots of places. Why should software be any different?
And they said zombies weren't real!
Everyone remembers that article about privateer 1.0 remake?
;)
My university sits on 2.5gbyte/s pipe, i have control over around 500mbyte/s.
I decided it would be cool to help share the wealth and let around --max_upload_rate 20000 for a few hours. It was maxed out
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
"With reports that illegal torrent usage may be more than a third of Internet traffic"
I wish I had a link, but I have also heard that spam accounted for two thirds of Internet traffic.
So, the entire bandwidth of the Internet is taken up by illegal traffic?
I downloaded the fairly recent Unreal Tournament patch yesterday from 3D Gamers here and their "World" download is a .torrent. When download sites like these start using BitTorrent, I really think it has become a mainstream technology.
I also downloaded the Linux version of the same patch.
Needless to say, the Windows version downloaded at 200+ KB / sec, and the Linux version was restricted by their slightly loaded server at ~80 KB / sec.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
that Bit torrent has been given such a bad name by the MPAA and RIAA. Bit torrent is an amazning technology that deserves acceptance by the mainstream media.
I still remember how cool I thought it was that Blizzard used Bit Torrent to distribute the beta for World of Warcraft. At least one company understands its potential...
In a shocker announcement, Common Sense LLC announced today that HTTP, FTP, TELNET, email and other protocols can also be used for piracy.
MPAA has already announced it plans to sue the creators and maintainers of such protocols and its clients. Other associations are expected to follow suit shortly.
I know this is a bit far off but it would be interesting ot see google run a tracker for legal files. If anyone they make bit torrent legit. Two years ago i never would have considered it, but given google's expansionist policies recently it sounds plausible if still unlikely
A rabbit in the hand is worth 4 in the cage
Don't forget that the authors of the I Love Bees Anthology DVD chose BitTorrent to distribute their DVD online! AFAIK this was the first commercially produced DVD to be legitimately distributed via BitTorrent-- an important first that I think didn't get enough attention.
If that's not legitimizing BitTorrent then I don't know what is!
...unfortunately no one can be told what The Mat^H^H^HGoatse is...they must experience it for themselves...
Instead of saying , the MPAA this, the MPAA that have you ever tried sending them an email and actually asking them what their position is? Jesus it takes someone as stupid as me to make an informed post.
Dear Oliver,
Thanks for your e-mail.
While Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks allow for a great deal of opportunity
for distribution of entertainment, P2P networks unfortunately enable
massive amounts of pirate activity.
When people upload or download others' copyrighted works, that is, in
fact, illegal. There is nothing illegal about P2P technologies, if
you're sharing work that you have the rights to share. But, most
commercial works you find available on P2P networks (e.g., albums you
find in stores, movies you find in theatres or stores) were not posted
there legally.
It is only this illegal activity that the MPAA is fighting against. We
will continue to embrace technology and the opportunities it offers
responsible citizens using it legally.
Thanks again for writing, and please let me know if you have additional
questions.
Anne
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Well, the submission hits all the buzzwords. Perhaps "wiki" is missing.
Torrent...Podcasting...RSS...Blog...
Which of these will we use consistently in, say, three years?
I've been worried about BitTorrent being squashed by the ??AA, not because I download illegal material, but because the *legal* material I download is still a threat to the ??AA. After all, the possibility of artists distributing superior quality material without relying on the ??AA still endangers the stranglehold the bureaucracies have on the "art" world. They're going to get away with outlawing independent distribution if the public is not aware of legal media exchange before the laws eventually pass.
Nobody really seems to care, but it's still very refreshing to see that the point has at least been made in the media.
*** Disclaimer : I'm one of the founder of Jamendo ***
/. thread, sorry about this, I can't resist explaining what we're doing here in Luxembourg.
...
/. crowd to present our project in this thread, but I really felt it was on topic ! So if you want to listen to indy music coming from Luxembourg, Belgium and North of France point your favorite BitTorrent client to jamendo.
Reading this
We started jamendo beginning of 2005. The aim of Jamendo is to help artists use P2P technologies and particulary BitTorrent to get to a larger audience. We combine Creative Commons Licence with BitTorrent to have artists publish their work, and promote a legal use of BitTorrent or eMule or Shareaza or
Thanks to our jamloader , artists put their demo CD in their PC/Mac/Linux and automagically their work get published as a torrent on jamendo and accessible with eMule. The software rips the CD to FLAC, ask to choose one of the 6 creative commons licenses and uploads the datas to our servers. On our servers we do the rip in other various formats, Ogg, MP3, AAC, and do the creative commons watermarking. We also do some kind of community moderation, in order to avoid the ones that upload the latest Britney Spears or the ones that upload the latest neo-nazy band. Bands have to link back to our website from their official website as a control ( see godon for exemple )
Finally we use iRate as our core technology to do the rating of the music, and do intelligent propositions to our audience. Our XMLRPC-iRate server ( http://irate.jamendo.com/ ) supports the latest features of the iRate protocol but today, there's not enough client software, but we have the project to write our jamplayer that will combine iRate and BitTorrent and foxytunes.
What about the money ? Our business model differs from the one of magnatune for instance ( I quote magnatune because John Buckman made a very nice and cool entry in his blog, thanks again to him). We have a more ad-centric model were the service is free for the artists, is free for the audience, but the web pages are ad supported (no popup), the streamed music may be ad-supported up to 1 audio ad every 3 songs, the published archive in P2P networks are high quality archives with no ads. The idea is : bandwidth heavy is ad-supported, bandwidth friendly (i.e. BitTorrent) is ad-free ! We are not a label but rather a "community driven music hosting company" , we allow the bands to put their paypal button to receive donation on their jamendo page, jamendo takes no margin.
Sorry again
Laurent.