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BitTorrent May Prove Too Good to Quash
gollum123 writes "There is an article on washignton post on bittorrent where the author discusses why BitTorrent is here to stay. According to the author it is being increasingly used to distribute software and entertainment legally. It also mentions that in BitTorrent, unlike many other file-sharing programs, legitimate use doesn't amount to a token minority. It's central to this program's existence. It concludes by saying that the MPAA may be able to drive BitTorrent movie downloads into what Green called "the dark corners of the Internet," but this program isn't going to go away. It might, however, be just what movie studios and record labels need to market and distribute their own content efficiently on the Web."
as it doesn't mention the plethora of brilliant '3rd party' clients like Azureusand BitTornado which have been offering a variety of these features for a very long time.
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I've noticed a distinct speed decrease in torrents lately. Surely the only person who's had a decrease in torrent speed when they upgrade to 2meg. Seriously though, I don't know if my ISP is catching on to torrent use but I've gone from 100k+ to 20/30 average.... Not good.
BIYC Records
BitTorrent is a very powerful protocol. It's a shame that so many businesses automatically associate it with illegitimate filesharing. They miss out on a nearly-free way of distributing large files. Not to mention that most corporate networks block BT traffic making it impossible for employees to take advantage of legitimate torrents that are available.
But the Washington-based lobby hasn't sued BitTorrent's developer, Bram Cohen of Bellevue, Wash., nor has it gone after individual BitTorrent users.
;-)
How could they go after him? The software is open-source and its intentions are nothing less than noble. If Cohen was looking to *directly* make money on BitTorrent he wouldn't have released the source to it.
As far as going after individual users... They rarely did anyway. BitTorrent isn't as easy as Kazaa for finding "mass sharers". Most people are maxing their upstream on a single torrent instead of offering up their entire personal library in one place. That is why they are going after the sites linking to the trackers.
Independent musicians can also use BitTorrent to provide free samples. The Web site of the South by Southwest music festival (2005.sxsw.com/
geekout/sxsw4pod/) uses BitTorrent to offer a 2.6-gigabyte compilation of songs by artists playing at this Austin event. (In an unplanned demonstration of how BitTorrent doesn't always function at top speed, that torrent was more of a glacier Tuesday night, with too few users to serve up bits of the file.)
And the author of this article just proved how posting links to torrents on a highly trafficked site will get him his music faster.
The MPAA may be able to drive BitTorrent movie downloads into what Green called "the dark corners of the Internet," but this program isn't going to go away. It might, however, be just what movie studios and record labels need to market and distribute their own content efficiently on the Web.
And what? Put all those popcorn salesmen and ticket rippers out of their after-school jobs? Nope, at least not for now.
Am I the only one here who has a problem with bittorrent being used as a distribution medium for legally sold movies & albums?
Don't get me wrong, I LOVE bittorrent and don't mind using it for isos or distros. The problem I have is with someone makeing a big profit out of me AND using my upstream to limit their bandwidth costs.
Am I the only one who has a problem with this?
There is no "the BitTorrent"- no single point of failure. If you have a copy of the tracker, you can torrent anything you want and only what you want. Set up a complete torrent infrastructure on your own site and use it to serve only your (legitimate) content. It's just another type of server that anyone can use independent of anyone else on the net. They may as well try to kill FTP.
The irony of bittorrent is that while the technology is designed to be somewhat decentralized, from a piracy standpoint it actually works better when everyone goes to one site. In order for a file to remain healthy for an extended period of time, a minimum number of people have to be always downloading/uploading that file. So if you want to download a ten week old episode of The OC, the only way you're going to find that is if the 8 other people in the entire country are looking for it in the same place. A real replacement for suprnova has yet to emerge, indicating that the lawsuits are working.
If Debian and others are putting their ISOs out on BT and I and others are relying on them, then it's hardly 'token'.
BT is becoming the distribution method of choice for plenty of legitimate stuff. Sure there's vastly more illegal stuff, but the legal stuff is definitely not 'token'.
Justin.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
I'm surprised that the MPAA hasn't learned from the RIAA's lessons. We have the iTunes Music Store, the Napster store, and others, all proving that people will pay for downloads. Would they be better without DRM and if they also offered Lossless music? Sure - but there are some third party independents that are doing that, so perhaps they'll pressure the other "major" stores to do so.
So why hasn't the MPAA tried it? Open up an online store with a bittorrent back end much like Valve's Steam: able to distribute data to the hard drive that uses Bittorrent like technology to speed up the downloads, encrypt as it writes to the hard drive and let people watch it from there on their computers or portable devices or stream media (like Tivo, for example). Charge more for higher bit downloads, so if you order the HD quality movie you'll pay more for the download (but you should be able to have that compressed down onto your portable devices without having to buy again), or if you just buy the portable device only version you can pay less (but will look crappy as hell on your TV, so you get what you pay for).
There's no good technological reason why someone hasn't done this - only fear of loss of control and fear that someone will replace their distribution model from production companies -> theaters -> DVDs -> TV. But if they don't replace their production models themselves to production companies -> theaters/home use downloads (expensive, spending more for "just released" movies) -> DVD/home downloads (less expensive), someone else will do it for them, and they'll be worse off for it.
The author makes some good points about how currently MPAA/RIAA fights are to keep technologies down or even products off the marketplace (see the mobile carriers and the Motorola iTunes phone as an example), rather than embracing the technology and being the service company that makes it work for you.
Maybe that's the problem. The MPAA/RIAA/mobile carriers see themselves as seller of widgets, instead of services. They can make a lot more money by providing services with less costs of widgets (cost of pressing DVD and shipping is probably greater than bandwidth and creating once, in the long run), but it's that fear of "new" that keeps them from seeing that they're killing the goose that keeps wandering around their yard looking for food - without realizing that it keeps squirting out golden eggs.
Of course, this is just my opinion. I could be wrong.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
its here to stay if the internet stays true to its roots, but i can think of a few ways the labels can stop it (or at least marginalise it). Its all a mattter of $ and strength-of-will...something the 'labels' appear to have in abundance.
1. Make it illegal. Sponsor bills over and over and over again until something sticks. This may or may not work. It at least can pollute the atmosphere enough to slow bittorrent adoption...a 'chilling' effect among users.
2. Buy up as many ISPs and digital communication carriers as possible. Or merge. Or become acquired by these networking/communications companies and prove the merit (e.g. profit) of your media rights. After that you customise service offerings to filter bittorrent traffic. Bittorrent isn't very useful if you can't get out of your subnet. Nothing illegal here, just users can't use the tool.
3. Continue the strategy of pummeling bittorent portals into oblivion with legal paperwork. Yes there will always be distribution lists, usenet, etc...but you can kill off 50-75% of the mainstream traffic pretty easily by eliminating the main portals of entry into bittorrent trading.
4. Buy anti-virus vendors, spyware vendors. Offer the product for free, but identify any bittorrent code as malware and remove it. This is the 'trojan horse' method... market to parents, OEMs for ready made systems, try to get Microsoft onboard.
5. Buy or sponsor bios code for retail/consumer highspeed modems, wireless cards, routers, etc. Get filters put in place on these devices.
Yes, all of these techniques aren't 100% effective and some are more reasonable than others...my point is a creative RIAA/MPAA lobby focusing their efforts on a multi-tier strategy can really reduce the availability and adoption of bittorrent in the future. Uber-geeks will always have backdoors, hacks, etc, but this is a much smaller portion of their potential market. I think they can live with the slashdotters trading warez...its the other 95% that they want to cripple.
PS Note that I never suggest the labels will be smart enough to discount their products to improve uptake/sales.
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
BitTorrent may be an ideal way for the corporate media to distribute its crap, but they hate everything open source, right? All such software licenses need revising to charge the MPAA, RIAA and the rest of the leeches a billion dollars for each use. Why give the enemy your tools for free?
And the other problem is that such systems have never worked for other products(such as software) as there is no way to centralise or authenticate a user of the movie easily and convienently when the content is being viewed. The software in dustry is lucky in a way. It is a very service orientated industry, in most domains at least(games and skrinkwrap software being exceptions).
As for
It concludes by saying that the MPAA may be able to drive BitTorrent movie downloads into what Green called "the dark corners of the Internet," but this program isn't going to go away.
The problem with this is the the MPAA as going to have to be perpetually vigilant. The yare going to have to constantly rain threats out on illegal torrentors. If they let down their guard then illegal torrents will grow like mushrooms.
Hopefully one fine day they might realise that this is almost certainly not going to succeed. What they need to be focusing on is how they can "add value" to their product to make users *want* to purchase it. Novel concept I know.
I don't think 'token minority' means what you think it means.
Legitimate users may be a minority -- maybe even a tiny minority -- but they are not a 'token minority' by any means, in the sense of only there for symbolic purposes to legitimize the non-legitimate use.
I use BitTorrent *all the time* legitimately. Whether it's for some student movie or a big whopping disc image (like X-Plane). I might be in the minority but my uses are not token.
I'm not wrong. You haven't thought about it hard enough.
if you take the entire net down
The Internet is much more resilient against this than you may think. Remember: even in war zones, the last communication channels that break down are internet links. IP is designed in such a way that it can use ANY kind of link whatsoever in a pretty ad hoc manner. Taking down big ISPs may slow down the masses, but it won't take the Internet down!
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
Unless these files are locked up in some with (in)effective DRM, one person can download it and start up an alternative torrent.
This is a good point.
If I'm sharing videos with the world of my cat performing tricks, I don't care who else starts a torrent of it. Go ahead, it doesn't matter to me, and might actually save me bandwidth if it becomes as popular as the dancing baby or the StarWars kid.
But if I'm running a website where I'm selling videos for money, then I care very much if someone starts an alternative torrent with my content.
I figure a good sign that BitTorrent isn't suitable for licensed media is that the porn industry isn't using it.
Chip H.
What better way to save bandwidth - the single killer cost when each film might sum a gigabyte - than by having the box download the film using a restricted version of bittorrent, and use a proportion of the available upstream bandwidth on the local connection to supply other people renting the same film? As the file's encrypted piracy wouldn't be a concern as the key to play it would only be issued by the central server, over an encrypted channel.
;)
What better way to waste my money than to require me to pay for an Internet connection to download a movie that I paid for! Not only that but I don't get it instantaneously and I have to slow down the rest of my home network while maxing my upstream helping the content distributer not spend so much on bandwith costs.
This would have the effect - exactly opposite to a DVD-rental shop - that popular videos would be available more quickly than rarely demanded ones. The system has the same priorities as the company behind it.
More quickly? You haven't been to a large video chain recenty have you? I have never had a problem getting a "new" movie. In fact, I have a harder problem getting something that isn't "new". They have racks and racks of their latest releases and only one or two copies of the older stuff.
If I can't get it at Blockbuster I can walk across the street to Hollywood and get it there.
YMMV
as long as that's reflected in the pricing. Is it xandros where you can buy an FTP download iso for $30 or a bittorrent one for $15? That's the way it should be.
I am trolling
This is basically what Steam does. ...and it's a crock, because it's basically paying the company to use YOUR resources.
Plenty of people are willing to donate the upstream bandwidth they pay for to support noncommercial uses (be it legally for open source software, or illegally for liberated/copyrightinfringement software).
It's a whole different kettle of fish when your upstream goes to pay for THEIR costs.
A fairer scheme would be that they'd give you the material for free in exchange for you hosting their torrent long enough, so that people who have more money than time (executives, doctors, bankers) can pay for convenience, and people who have more time than money (students, minimum wage workers) can get what they want for free in exchange for taking the time and bandwidth to host stuff.
It may also be the lever ISP's use to raise rates. Face it 3 mb/s down is cool and easy to over commit when the end users are surfing the web and readin email.
Central to Bit Torrent is maxing our your pipe, then leaving it up long enough to let others have what you've got. That kind of allocation wasn't planned for when broadband was originally mapped out.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
What information are you basing this on? From what I can see, this little tidbit of yours came straight from your ass.
Lets take a look at the RIAA. They have opened the gates (albeit slowly) to online downloads. One word: iTunes. They provide music at $0.99 a song, a far cry from $14-$20 a CD.
The MPAA recognizes there is demand for downloadable movies. People are seeking more and more often to find distribution channels that are easier, cheaper, and require less real world venturing. Renting movies with all their late charges has been undermined by things like netflix.com, etc.
That being said, I think the MPAA recongnizes that as the user isn't getting the same physical hardware, there is a requirement for a lower cost. Basic marketing 101, there's gotta be value to your product. If the user can't see the value, they won't buy. The value of online distribution means "cheaper" to any and all users, you can bet your pretty little face the MPAA understands this.
To make a pun demonstrates the highest understanding of a language
Yeah, but you think that if you're paying $15 a month for a game they can damn well afford to dish out their own bandwidth instead of expecting its users to handle the load.
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
It's only a problem if you're looking at it from a piracy point of view. As a legitimate user, the server that in a pre-BT world would have been an FTP or HTTP server is now always seeding that torrent. The incentive to keep seeding is to ensure that your customers can always get the content at full speed via BT, so that they don't demand money back or switch to an alternative download method.
I appear to have a blog. Odd.
Uh, they do provide bandwidth of their own. But it's a fact that downloading the WOW beta or WOW patches via BitTorrent is a lot faster than a direct download, and no amount of bandwidth that Blizzard could establish would make a blind bit of difference to that reality.
You seem to be forgetting the huge installed user base of WOW players. Were talking about approaching 1 million (if not already past that figure) players worldwide. Can you imagine the chaos that would ensue if 1 million people were to try to directly download even a modest patch (say, 5MB) on the day it was applied?
By the way, I have no doubt that $15 a month leaves Blizzard with some profit, but I think you (and others with fixations about how much Blizzard is or isn't making from WOW) forget that a large chunk of that will go on the infrastructure (bandwidth, servers, big realtime databases, GMs, technical and other support) that's required to keep the game running.
Bottom line: patching via BitTorrent is the best solution for WOW or any other game with such a large installed user base.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
>>It might, however, be just what movie studios and record labels need to market and distribute their own content efficiently on the Web
If advertisements are added into the movie, just like it would if you saw it on broadcast TV, they could easily make a profit.
Remember that until the advent of cabel, advertisement was the ONLY source of revenue for TV stations. The signal was just pumped out into the ether and hoped that someone would watch and bring up ratings.
Remember folks, slashdot doesn't have a -1 "disagree" moderation!
That's different, and you know it. Strawman.
Using my bandwidth to download their client and play on their server is simply paying for my means of transport.
If I order something from a catalog or an online store (let's say Amazon), I'm expected to pay shipping and handling to receive the product. In the case of downloading something or playing it online, paying for my internet connection is equivalent of the shipping and handling.
A real-life equivalent would be Amazon demanding that I work in their shipping department and pay postage so they don't have to have to pay employees or postage for shipping products to other customers.
I'll give friends or even strangers copies of Knoppix without charging them for the CD-Rs or the time it takes me to burn them... I wouldn't handle distribution of Windows XP for Microsoft in the same way. If I'm doing work or expending resources for a profit-making corp -- they pay me, I don't pay them.
I agree that the legitimate use of bittorrent is probably a minority (although it's ~100% of my use), but saying that it's a token minority is a whole nuther story. In general, a "token minority" implies that it's just there for show ("look, we don't discriminate against blacks - we even hired one!"). The illegal uses of BT may be a vast, vast majority, but that doesn't contradict the claim that the legitimate uses go far, far beyond merely being token.
Funny, we're talking about license and you're talking about criminal acts. When you talk about copyright and patent law, promissory estoppel (aka "I said it's okay") is an acceptable defense. In criminal matters, it may or may not be - in your example, if AC happened to own the bank, it would be fine.
Some bands give permission to tape and trade. Those bands, by giving their permission, have made it such that you cannot be successfully prosecuted for doing so. You remain an Anonymous Idiot, and should never, ever try to post about the law again.
---
Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
Argument doesn't hold very well. It is true that download performance in bittorrent-style scenarios has a much higher amount of variability. However, theoretically, the lower bound of the performance should be on par with the sustained performance of a single server http/ftp servicing the same load, and that should be a rare low. The reason why so many torrents don't deliver what users expect is that there are no providers involved with a really decent pipe. If the resources used for a traditional http/ftp download site were largely repurposed for bittorrent serving, then you see really good numbers to, worst case, maginally better than http/ftp for the site's content.
As you say, the clients are increasing downstream more and more without significant upstream increases, and while this unbalanced growth does negatively impact bittorrent behavior, it even more so impacts traditional single-server downloads such as http/ftp. Any resources spent to increase the provider pipe for http/ftp has an equal effect on bittorrent-style service level (in raw numbers, proportionally if the upstream on clients never improves, bittorrent's advantages become more marginal).
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
It's quite effective for large distribution of eclectic files, since everyone kind-of shares bandwidth.. but for truely mass distribution, BT is extremely INefficient. Since uploading is required at the same time as downloading, there is twice the traffic going over whatever backbone network is used for the bulk of internet transfers. This is not really significant now because BT is not being used as a broadcast standard and most people have asymmetric broadband anyway.
The most efficient way to send things to large amounts of people is to combine cashing with multicast. Cut down on duplicating the bits sent to the greatest extent possible. This is already occuring to a certain extent. My ISP (formerly Time-Warner (and it actually worked BETTER when it was.. go-figure)) has been cashing patches for many online games "locally" for some time now, and provides very good download speeds for things that are 'in-network.' The only thing they are missing is transparency: It would be nice if frequently accessed pages, and infrequently updated but high bandwidth (like patches or ISO's) were cashed more locally, rather than individually downloaded. Digital TV is a sort of multicast method as well.
Dividing up the bandwith among several users and then attempting to re-aggregate that bandwith is a waste of resources for high-volume, high-bandwidth applications. It does however appear to save bandwidth on the initial server, but only as the cost is (hidden) shared by the users.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
The BT tracker does not know jack about how much you uploaded to / download from everyone... ... all it knows is how much your client claimed it uploaded and downloaded.
[ Amount Uploaded]&downloaded=[Amount Downloaded]&left=[Amount Left]&key=[Private ID]
Here is all that a peer sends to a tracker while doing tracker updates:
GET [InfoHash]?peer_id=[PeerID]&port=[Port]&uploaded=
The rest is the usual generic HTTP header stuff such as application name, encoding and compression options.
Since I did write a BT client in late 2003 (and currently am in the middle of rewriting it), I probably know what I am writing about.
Normal BT trackers only know how much a peer claimed to have uploaded and downloaded. The only real way to detect leeches would be to get feedback from specially written BT clients about actual peer behavior and report to the tracker. Generic BT clients do not do any of this so anyone who knows a tiny bit of python or Java could modify a BT client to report 10X as much upload as actual and be virtually freed from upload/download ratios.
You are claiming (anonymously) that, for two instances, Wal*Mart's lower prices are not due to Wal*Mart's lower labor costs and that VOIP vendors lower prices are not due to their lower traffic costs.
This is an extraordinary claim, and requires extraordinary evidence to support it.