Hollywood Looks to BitTorrent for Distribution

daria42 writes "Vinton Cerf, who wrote the original TCP/IP protocol and is currently chairman of ICANN, said this week he had recently discussed BitTorrent with at least two interested movie producers. 'I know personally for a fact that various members of the movie industry are really getting interested in how to use the Internet--even BitTorrent--as a distributed method for distributing content,' Cerf said. 'I've spoken with several movie producers in the last month.'"

Comments

Hang on a minute...

[TripMaster Monkey]

From the article:

Hollywood is anxious to embrace BitTorrent as a method of movie distribution, according to the father of the Internet, Dr Vinton Cerf.

But I thought that Al Gore invented the Internet...

Re:Hang on a minute...

[ravenspear]

No, he only took credit for it.

Re:Hang on a minute...

[d34thm0nk3y]

allright, thats the slashdot i know and love. None of this encouraging enlightened discussion crap. I, for one, welcome back our trollish first posting overlords.

mostly joking given the actual content of the link...

Re:Hang on a minute...

[Dogers]

Yeah, but Microsoft patented it first!

It will happen, but not for a long time.....

[Greg Wright]

Notice that the first link under that article in the 'related links'
section is, "BitTorrent hubs close after ISP raid". In that article is
says, "The music industry's anti-piracy unit claims 50 file-sharing
[BitTorrent] hubs in Australia closed....". Seems like the
entertainment industry's one hand doesn't know what the other is
doing. That is the biggest problem as I see it; trying to get all the
content holders, content producers, content creators and talent all on
one page. Until they do that none of them, nor us, will be able to
benefit from what the Internet has to offer as a new channel for media
distribution.

Will it be easy? No. Will it happen at all? Eventually. In the mean
time it is going to be very painful indeed. Two steps forward, one
back.

Re:It will happen, but not for a long time.....

[turbosk]

Is anyone concerned that MP/RIAA would want to know their "enemy" better in order to discover its weaknesses and close it down more effectively? I can picture the discussion with Mr Cerf, and the movie guy is nodding and taking notes furiously, saying, "yes, do go on".

It's the same reason some men read Cosmo magazine- it's like getting behind the lines and into the mind of the adversary.

Re:It will happen, but not for a long time.....

[Anonymous Coward]

All you have to do is read ONE cosmo. After they are all the same stories over and over.

Re:It will happen, but not for a long time.....

[snuf23]

There is a big difference between closing bittorrent sites that act as trackers for pirated materials and using the bittorrent protocol for distributing MPAA's approved legal content. Just the same as Blizzard using bittorrent to seed patches for World of Warcraft while not condoning piracy of their software over bittorrent.
It would be beneficial if the MPAA, RIAA or others embraced using p2p such as bittorrent because it helps to legitimize p2p. This doesn't mean protection for pirates, but it does mean protection for the protocol (i.e. we won't see legislation forcing it to be killed at the ISP level).

Re:It will happen, but not for a long time.....

[JustinHoMi]

Seems like the entertainment industry's one hand doesn't know what the other is doing.

I'm not sure you see the point. Of course they're shutting down illegal torrent hubs. It's all part of one plan: legal distribution of their product.

Re:It will happen, but not for a long time.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh I benefit.... not legally...

Re:It will happen, but not for a long time.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Irregardless, I think we can safely say that it wouldn't happen sooner if it was patented.

Re:It will happen, but not for a long time.....

[podperson]

I see no contradiction.

If Hollywood chooses to use BitTorrent to distribute films (legally) but fights to shut down illegal distribution (via BitTorrent) this is no different from it distributing films by video and shutting down video pirates.

BitTorrent is a technology, not a legal or moral imperative.

Re:It will happen, but not for a long time.....

[GweeDo]

I thought it was for the pictures?

Re:It will happen, but not for a long time.....

[hazzey]

Closing down BitTorrent sites has nothing to do
with "one hand not knowing what the other is
doing."

That is like saying police seizing illegal guns
is a case of "one hand doesn't know what the
other is doing." Just because they are going
after the illegal portion doesn't mean that there are not legal ways.

The fact that BitTorrent sites are so popular
for downloading illegal movies shows that they
could be popular for downloading legal (DRM'd
of course)movies.

Re:It will happen, but not for a long time.....

[Curtman]

Seems like the entertainment industry's one hand doesn't know what the other is doing.

I don't know.. Seems like providing legal ways to for people to get content using state of the art technology would be a great thing.

Re:It will happen, but not for a long time.....

[Anonymous Coward]

it will happen when they work out precisely how to make the same profit if not more than previously - just like itunes.

Re:It will happen, but not for a long time.....

[memoriesofgreen]

Your missing a trick here. Your seem to assume that the industry is one or a number of entities.

As far as I see its a large number of companies with a huge number of individuals all acting with competing goals.

Their will always be conflict and disagreements. I think the best analogy of the ents industry would be /. itself. When was the last time their was complete agreement in any discussion?

Re:It will happen, but not for a long time.....

[Anonymous Coward]

P2P is a legitimate file transfer protocol. Bittorrent requires no protection. 'Pirates' is an incorrect term, RIAA propaganda speak. Please stop bending over.

Re:It will happen, but not for a long time.....

[barawn]

It would be beneficial if the MPAA, RIAA or others embraced using p2p such as bittorrent because it helps to legitimize p2p. This doesn't mean protection for pirates

Actually, it could. Part of the problem with BitTorrent is the fact that downloading necessitates uploading - so even if you have a legal right to obtain a copy of something, in order to do it, you have to upload to other users (who may or may not have the right to have it). By embracing BitTorrent as a protocol, they're removing one of the possible objections - namely, they can't claim that a person downloading something from BitTorrent illegally is committing copyright infringement thousands of times - just once.

(Of course, this presumes that they won't recognize this problem and build it into some license agreement crap thing, which they probably will. It also doesn't avoid the objection that just because I have a legal license to one copy of a copyrighted work, and a fair right to make one copy of that copy, doesn't give me the right to make a copy of a different copy.)

Re:It will happen, but not for a long time.....

[NanoGator]

"Is anyone concerned that MP/RIAA would want to know their "enemy" better in order to discover its weaknesses and close it down more effectively?"

If that's the case, they're already doing it now.

Frankly, I don't care. I'd be willing to pay for legit versions of movies or TV shows for download. I'm more worried about restrictions like "You can't copy it to your laptop after you've purchased it".

Re:It will happen, but not for a long time.....

[FreeUser]

There is a big difference between closing bittorrent sites that act as trackers for pirated materials and using the bittorrent protocol for distributing MPAA's approved legal content.

Sure there is, and that isn't lost on anybody.

The point is that the recording and movie industries have attempted to buy legislation banning the technology itself. This would have made using bittorrent (or any other peer-to-peer technology) illegal even for legitimate means, such as distributing Linux iso images. Now these same industries, who tried their damndest to ban the technology completely, are embracing it. That is news, and as you say, protects the technology, not those using the technology to violate copyright.

Re:It will happen, but not for a long time.....

[Anonymous Coward]

the contradiction comes from their attempts to paint the technology as inherently bad. They are the ones who are claiming peer to peer networks have no legitimate uses and are exclusively for illegal distribution of copyrighted materials.

Re:It will happen, but not for a long time.....

[Anonymous Coward]

um....no. The source code is available and they can watch how it's being used now without saying they will think about dist. movies and such with it. I honestly think they would like to use BT to dist content. Their profits would go from 60% to between 70% and 80% (assuming the recent figures for DVDs are accurate) because they wouldn't need to press and package and ship DVDs.
Oh, and I read Cosmo for the pictures not the articles, thank you.

Re:It will happen, but not for a long time.....

[tokabola]

I think it's important to remember that the RIAA and the MPIAA are not the same. While they are similar in their zeal to protect "company assets", they have a significant difference. The MPIAA members (movie studios) don't face the same risk as the RIAA members (record labels).

The real risk that P2P distribution poses to the RIAA isn't that people won't buy music. The risk is that artists will no longer need labels. The only real function that a Label provides to the artist is distribution. With out a label, you can't:
1. Get airtime on commercial radio, so people don't know you exist.
2. Produce enough discs and get them placed in all the stores.

While it used to be that albums had to be recorded in quality (expensive) studios, and artists needed the label to "front" the money for the studio and producer (to be paid back from the artist's share, typically 3 to 5 percent of sales) this is no longer true. These days there are thousands of small, inexpensive studios with first rate equipment where you can record a disc for about five grand. For instance Nirvana's Nevermind was recorded at Smart Studios in Madison Wisconsin (owned by Butch Vig, of Garbage). They have both analog and full digital equipment, and you can cut a demo for about $500 if you go during "off hours". Moby recorded his first album on his own computer, and didn't have to pay for a studio at all.

File sharing is the "new radio", a great way for a band to gain exposure. Most people who like your music will not be satisfied with a low quality MP3 and will order a disc. Since you don't need to put 10 copies in every record store, you can start with a much smaller first pressing. You could just sell .wav versions of the music online and let people burn their own - and not have to invest thousands in the discs at all.

In short, electronic distribution makes the record labels obsolete, and totally uneeded. They will no longer be able to steal music from the artists with unfair contracts, which until now the artists have been forced into because only the labels could get you on the radio and in the stores. They will no longer get to keep almost all of the profits, while paying the creators of the product pennies on the dollar. The label executives (and major shareholders) won't be able to buy new mansions and Mercedes while the artist struggles to pay rent, and rides a bus.

The movie studios don't share this. It takes a lot of money to make a movie, even a "budget" film costs quite a few thousand dollars. You've got writers, directors, actors, set builders, cameramen, etc to pay. Even if you shoot the movie on your camcorder and edit it on your PC, you'll be stuck doing "straight to video" stuff. After all, to get into the theatre you need your movie to be on 35mm film, at $3000 to $5000 per, and you'll need at least a couple thousand copies. The theatre I work at finally got a copy of Million Dollar Baby just last week. It was the soonest we could get it and we have "first run" status with that studio, but they only made about three thousand prints so there just weren't enough to go around.

In short, the movie studios are worried about losing sales, the record companies are worried about survival.

Tommy

Re:It will happen, but not for a long time.....

[d34thm0nk3y]

It might just be consumer programming but I would be much more comfortable with a rental type d/l model for movies than I would for music (e.g. napster etc).

Re:It will happen, but not for a long time.....

[Babbster]

The problem with that is this: If the movie or record industry was to embrace BitTorrent, the idea would likely to be to have authentication to access the tracker. Thus, it could be presumed (if the system was secure) that everyone accessing the tracker - and, thus, everyone to whom a downloader would be uploading - would be authorized to be receiving their copy. In the case of a copyrighted work being distributed via BT by someone NOT authorized to do so, everyone downloading is committing the dual violations of receiving and distributing.

Re:It will happen, but not for a long time.....

[Forager]

Now these same industries, who tried their damndest to ban the technology completely, are embracing it.

I wouldn't call it "embracing" the technology so much "grudgingly admitting that there may be some merit to the technology that has completely usurped a large chunk of their business."

Now, if we can just get them to consider $3 BitTorrent downloads of their movies ...

Re:It will happen, but not for a long time.....

[snuf23]

Yeah whatever. The RIAA didn't make up the term. It's been used for well over 25 years in the software community to refer to acts of digital copyright infringement. Hell, plenty of "warez" groups have played up the pirate theme.
Saying that something isn't illegal when it is by current law is just stupid. Copyright infringement is illegal under US law and most other countries. Stating that does not mean I agree with the RIAAs actions or the law itself.
P2P is not a protocol, it's a term used that covers a number of protocols. Bittorent does need protection, or rather needs to be shown as a legitimate (i.e. has significant non-infringing usage) just as much as the VCR did in the '80s. Why? Because the RIAA and MPAA etc. have been trying to make P2P protocols and applications made illegal. Showing significant non-infringing usage goes a long way to helping make sure we never see laws affecting P2P.

Re:It will happen, but not for a long time.....

[hazee]

Isn't that just the same as with video recorders? First they tried to ban them, and when that failed, they figured out a way to use them to their advantage to make huge profits.

Re:It will happen, but not for a long time.....

[caino59]

You sure these two (or more) producers really represent the all of the MPAA?

Re:It will happen, but not for a long time.....

[barawn]

Doesn't matter. Unless it's in the license when you download, the downloader is not allowed to make a copy of the copyrighted work, and that's what they're doing. That's why I figure it will probably be in the license agreement. No way their lawyers are that stupid.

I would love if they would make the argument that if they're authorized to have it, then they are authorized to download, and upload as well: because that just justifies the previous argument.

If they say "yes, it's okay for a recipient of a legal copy of a copyrighted work to make a copy of it to give to another person who has purchased a license for said copyrighted work", that justifies a person downloading an MP3 of a CD that he owns.

Then, P2P networks of copyrighted material become legal - it just becomes illegal to download if you don't own it already (how many of those disclaimers have you seen?).

Re:It will happen, but not for a long time.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't matter. Unless it's in the license when you download, the downloader is not allowed to make a copy of the copyrighted work, and that's what they're doing.

When the tracker gives you an IP, it's implicitly giving you permission to upload to that IP (of course, this permission is only valid if the tracker is legal).

Besides, the copyright holder is the only one who could sue people for uploading, and they'd be stupid to sue every customer of their official service. They don't have to explain to anyone WHY they're not suing.

Re:It will happen, but not for a long time.....

[Anonymous Coward]

So they're just starting to learn about the Internet? And here I thought they were making intelligent decisions when persuading lawmakers to introduced tech legislation.

Homer

Quote #1: "The Internet, ey?"
Quote #2: "[The Internet] Is that thing still around?"

Re:It will happen, but not for a long time.....

[xgamer04]

Now these same industries, who tried their damndest to ban the technology completely, are embracing it.

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." --Some Gandhi

Re:It will happen, but not for a long time.....

[_undan]

You confuse 'Read' with 'Look At' ;)

Re:It will happen, but not for a long time.....

[barawn]

When the tracker gives you an IP, it's implicitly giving you permission to upload to that IP.

Only if it says somewhere in the license agreement that it does. Which, I believe, it will. Otherwise, you have no right to make a copy and send it to the other IP, by the strict letter of copyright law.

They don't have to explain to anyone WHY they're not suing.

They do if they try to sue someone else for doing the same thing - they're implicitly accepting that it's not copyright violation to upload in a BitTorrent download. It won't get that person out of the one copyright violation, no, but it will prevent them from tacking on a hundred other violations. It's at least a good argument for a judge.

Re:It will happen, but not for a long time.....

[sangreal66]

The term has also been used for well over 150 years in the court system. Long before the [RI|MP]AA existed.

Re:It will happen, but not for a long time.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Only if it says somewhere in the license agreement that it does. Which, I believe, it will. Otherwise, you have no right to make a copy and send it to the other IP, by the strict letter of copyright law.

You're right, it's not part of copyright law. But uploading is part of the BT protocol, and when you release a file on BT you have to expect people will upload. It would be an implicit contract if it wasn't mentioned (quote: "You made an implicit contract when you went through the socially conventional mechanisms for eating at a restaurant, thereby accepting the socially conventional, implied contract for doing so.").

Re:It will happen, but not for a long time.....

[kyojin the clown]

They are embracing BT because someone just figured out that eventually content WILL be delivered over the net. and someone else figured out 'Hey! Why the hell should we pay for the bandwidth neccessary to deliver all this content when we can get all these geeks/idiots to do it for us??'

My upwidth is 1/8th my downwidth. why the hell should I use what precious little upstream I have distributing content for major content providers? using bittorrent is a Fucking Stupid Idea for anyone but these content providers. there are plenty of protocols designed to distribute over the web. use them.

Most of the people here seem to be jumping on the 'BT is great' bandwagon without actually thinking about it. which i suppose is fairly standard for /.

Re:It will happen, but not for a long time.....

[lucason]

They don't have to be on the same page. In fact I prefer if they aren't!

Every player is free to choose their own opinion on the matter and governments and lawmakers that seem cater to the "entertainment industry" as a whole should understand that it simply doesn't exist. Laws should be made by the merits of the case and not by the opinions of industries.

People and companies alike have the right to be considered as individual entities. The perception of groups by groups is part of the problem and never the solution.

Re:It will happen, but not for a long time.....

[Crash Culligan]

Now these same industries, who tried their damndest to ban the technology completely, are embracing it. That is news, and as you say, protects the technology, not those using the technology to violate copyright.

Your optimism is refreshing, but misplaced. They will continue to try to ban the technology, but they'll change tack slightly: they'll instead try to ban the technology for any but **AA-approved uses.

They'd get to use the technology to reduce their distribution costs (and I betcha the content still goes up significantly in price), and nobody else can do anything with it unless it's been blessed first by the corporate overlords. They win! Consumers lose! Everybody's happy!

Re:It will happen, but not for a long time.....

[Dashing Leech]

"why the hell should I use what precious little upstream I have distributing content for major content providers . there are plenty of protocols designed to distribute over the web. use them. "

It's clear you don't understand the swarming nature of BT. BT allows you to download more robustly, and usually faster overall, because there isn't a single bottleneck from one download source. It gets part of the data from different people. Ideally, this means you could always be downloading at your maximum bandwidth rather than being limited by someone else's transfer rates and/or losing your single connection. But you can only get the file "bits" from other people (pun intended) if they are also uploading them. So, if everybody ceased to allow uploading then you can't download as fast or robustly, which is why BT enforces uploading, it's a requirement to make the whole system work as well as it does. In the system you describe, you'll end up with longer and flakier downloading even with the small loss of uploading bandwidth.

That is why people are on the BT bandwagon. Now, it only works if there are other people downloading or making available the same file you are getting, so if you are downloading something obscure or old, you might be better off with a direct download. On the other hand, if it is obscure then nobody else would be looking for it and you'd have no requests for uploading it either.

Re:It will happen, but not for a long time.....

[kyojin the clown]

BT works brilliantly well at minimising the cost of distributing content, however, i do not belive that the protocol is inherently any more reliable than a client-server model, when coupled with a download manager that can resume half finished downloads.

my complaint is the Major Movie Studios can afford to have a crapload of servers to distribute their content. If i am uploading content on behalf of MGM (or whoever), i expect to be paid as a distribution outlet, otherwise why in the hell should i seed? to help MGM? fuck MGM, they can afford to do ALL the seeding.

Re:It will happen, but not for a long time.....

[Anonymous Coward]

That's PlayGirl.

NO WAIT!! fuck...

*hides*

Re:It will happen, but not for a long time.....

[Bitmanhome]

Seems like the entertainment industry's one hand doesn't know what the other is doing.

It's much easier than that.

Distributors want the internet shut down; artists want to use it. *AA represent the distributors, so it's no surprise what they're doing. But the artists are going the other way, and that includes looking into BitTorrent.

Door of no return?

[fembots]

The thing is, if any movie producers/directors decided to distribute their works over the internet, they might not be able(allowed) to go on big screen anymore.

So any promising producers might not take up the offers, and those less-promising ones might only attract a lower level of interested audience.

We have seen few success stories in online music distribution by bands, but the mainstream still hasn't moved yet.

Having said that, anything has to start somewhere.

Re:Door of no return?

[RM6f9]

One would think the success of "The Blair Witch Project" would keep cinema owner/distribution chains from shooting themselves in the (collective) foot with such an arbitrary decision. Meanwhile, were I a producer eager for eyeballs and had confidence in my work, 'twould seem that making $2-$3 per viewing/download would create more profits for me than whatever I'd get once I got done paying the conventional distribution chain - and, I'd receive them faster.

Re:Door of no return?

[michelcultivo]

But I known only a few peoples that don't like to go to the Movie to see the on the Big Screen.

Re:Door of no return?

[LocoMan]

I know that for movies/shorts to be eligible for an oscar nomination they must be premiered on the big screen first (or at least that's how it used to be), so in the animated shorts it automatically would disqualify anything that was shown first on the internet.

Personally I'd like this, but I don't think I'd make much use of it... I like DVDs as they are (I'd welcome lower prices, of course), and the ones I buy I mostly buy for the extras, and personally there are lots of movies (specially the ones with lots of CGI) that I always prefer to watch first in the theater.

My take on this is that it'll go like it's going with music now, as you say, some movies (specially niche ones) will find this method of distribution better, but I don't think it'll be too succesful on a mainstream level because I'd bet most people will just like to watch movies in a simple way (plug DVD, hit play or go to the theater), and won't want to bother with TV outs, playing on a computer and the like. Music (itunes, for example) has had success mainly because there's no alternative to MP3 players when you want to listen to music and have so much to select from on a portable player, and buying music off an online store isn't any harder than ripping a CD and copy to the player that would be the only other (legal) alternative.

Re:Door of no return?

[cpeterso]

81% hated iCLOD city on 1st day. Can you stand it there?

Re:Door of no return?

[zymano]

Actually Hollywood hired some directors from the screening of shorts from sites like atomfilms.com .

I think the director of Elisha Custhbert's last movie was hired like this from reading his bio.

eric.

Re:Door of no return?

[shark72]

"The thing is, if any movie producers/directors decided to distribute their works over the internet, they might not be able(allowed) to go on big screen anymore."

On the contrary; many directors have gotten their start by creating films which they've distributed online. My grandmother was in one such film that was an online sensation for a time (if you never caught it... trust me, you probably wouldn't want to see your own grandmother in it) and which opened a few (small) doors for the director. And, a few years back, BMW recruited Joe Carnahan, Tony Scott, and John Woo to direct some short films that were distributed on BMW's web site. This didn't hurt their careers. Online film distribution is a huge industry, and has been for quite a while. Just spend a few minutes browsing ifilm and you'll see what I mean.

Get with the times...

[Anonymous Coward]

are really getting interested in how to use the Internet--even BitTorrent--as a distributed method for distributing content

I've been doing this for years!

Music video legitimately released via bittorrent

[garagekubrick]

We released a video we made for Portland band The Decemberists to bittorrent on purpose. We've had much greater impact from that than the few times MTV2 aired it.

Wired article details how and why.

For everyone concerned some four weeks later it's been an enormous success.

Cheaper than a movie

[fwice]

If it costs less than the $10 i have to pay for a movie ticket, plus the $5 for a soda and $4 for a small popcorn, then I think it's a definate plus.

Went to see sin city last night. $20 for two tickets, $4.50 for a soda, and $4 for a popcorn. Not exactly a cheap date anymore.

Re:Cheaper than a movie

[Monkelectric]

Not to mention standing in line with a bunch of hot teeners remembering when you could get girls like that with your fat g/f at your side ... >sigh(laugh, its a joke)

Re:Cheaper than a movie

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, if you skip the soda and popcorn you benefit in more ways than one. If you can't do without, that's an unhealthy addiction.

Re:Cheaper than a movie

[Anonymous Coward]

Er ... sorry, but can you remind me is the soda+popcorn mandatory or needed to see the film ?

Re:Cheaper than a movie

[houghi]

Not exactly a cheap date anymore.

Meet her inside and save 10USD.

I personally do not see why going together to a movie should even count as a date. Go to a nice non fast-food restaurant and actually talk to each other.

Re:Cheaper than a movie

[garcia]

It best be less expensive than the $3.50 rental or $10-13 DVD purchase and allow me to watch it without time restrictions like DVDs or it will flop.

Re:Cheaper than a movie

[That's Unpossible!]

Meet her inside and save 10USD.

And lose any chance of a second date...

I personally do not see why going together to a movie should even count as a date.

It doesn't. No one just goes to a movie for a real date.

Ever heard of "dinner and a movie"?

Re:Cheaper than a movie

[glitch23]

$20 for 2 tickets? Sounds like you need to find another theater. I don't know of any theater around me who charges more than $7 per ticket and that's not even matinee.

Re:Cheaper than a movie

[SA Stevens]

Shit. I thought a 'date' was 'going to WalMart together to buy cat food.'

Guess I'm on the wrong bus again...

Re:Cheaper than a movie

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but that $4.50 popcorn is enough to feed a medium-sized country for 3 weeks.

Seriously, though, that's the way it's rigged. Theatres pay gobs of money to rent reels, and have to pay a sizeable percentage of profits back to the studios, too. If they didn't mark up popcorn 10x (no exaggeration), they'd go out of business.

So it does all go back at least as far as the studios. (I don't know if *they* need to do it to pay high-priced actors/directors.) Dare I suggest it, but as long as people keep paying $30 for 2 hours of entertainment, they're going to keep charging that.

Re:Cheaper than a movie

[TiggsPanther]

I personally do not see why going together to a movie should even count as a date. Go to a nice non fast-food restaurant and actually talk to each other.

Ummmmm. There's probably a reason why, certainly here in the UK, a lot of cinemas are surrounded by non-fast-food restaurants.

Both for dates and non-dates it makes sense to combine going to a movie and sitting down to a proper meal. OK granted when you do it that way it's more or less written-off as being a cheap day out.

Just for This Thread

[fuct_onion]

Can we call Bittorrent a 'Decentralized' Network? The word 'distribute' has too many uses in this context; my head hurts.

Next VHS?

[a_greer2005]

The MPAA has done 180s before when it comes to tech, look at their complete change of face on the VCR and video industry after the famed surpreme court case.

hmm

[Sv-Manowar]

Ironic, how the industry turns to one of the tools their were claiming ruins it.

It's a smart move by the movie business, they are expanding into the online market, better late than never. They just need a way to make sure to stop piracy, as shown with the iTunes mp3 encoding.

Re:hmm

[0x461FAB0BD7D2]

I guess they're doing what parents do to stop their kids from doing things they don't like: they do it too to make it uncool.

I mean really how many 1337 war3zers would want to continue releasing stuff if you could get Revenge.of.the.Sith.DVDScr.XVID.AC3-MPAA ?

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Ironic, how the industry turns to one of the tools their were claiming ruins it.

What they really want is be prepared to get exclusive rights to use that method of distribution when common people will get accustomed at downloading content instead of watching it in theatres.
What they're doing now is merely preventing small businesses from entering that market before the big names by making it look wrong both morally and legally.
Technology always helped the smaller/weaker to get done the same work of the bigger/stronger, but traditionally is the bigger/stronger that holds power. For the same reason, independent news sites will see more restrictive laws in the future because big press/television names aren't exactly happy to see common people creating appealing sites and/or interesting podcastings/videos.

We're facing a deep social change driven by technology. Sadly, somebody will go to jail to bring us that kind of innovation.

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

"Ironic, how the industry turns to one of the tools their were claiming ruins it."

Yes, because the entire industry claimed that, and this is the entire industry fully embracing Bittorrent.

Bittorrent for Movie Theater Distribution???

[bagboy]

Why not? A topic of discussion before, how about movie theaters participating in a p2p "theater only" version of bittorrent? They could efficiently distribute large digital film content in an economical manner.... Wouldn't this help legitimize the whole p2p debate?

Re:Bittorrent for Movie Theater Distribution???

[Anonymous Coward]

Because theaters use film, not the newer digital projecters.

Speaking of which, what happened to Lucas's plan to not let theaters who do not have digital projecters present Episode III?

Re:Bittorrent for Movie Theater Distribution???

[SA Stevens]

Yes, indeed it would. The only entities allowed onto the Torrent would be credentialed and paying movie theatres, and the content would be narrowly distributed to theatres for conventional pay-only viewing by conventional movie theatre audiences.

It would legitimize p2p distribution and establish the clear rights of content 'owners' to control how the content is distributed on p2p networks.

I suspect it would set an excellent precedent for the content owners to vigorously go after people distributing the content without their approval.

I also suspect it would suck for today's average p2p user.

It's about time

[Anonymous Coward]

It's about time they started considering Peer-to-Peer as a method to help make them money instead of attacking something they don't understand.

Fast Show

[brejc8]

"a distributed method for distributing content"
Reminds me of the Fast Show quote:
"The mafia is probably the most organised of the organised crime organisations"

Just you wait!

[assimilat]

All this as George Lucas has himself arrested for distributing episode 3 via bittorrent. Lucas Motto "He thought it was a good idea....till he thought it was a bad one."

Re:Music video legitimately released via bittorren

[Anonymous Coward]

I just heard them on XM 47 Ethel - they kick ass.

Surprise!

[gazz]

Does this come as a surprise to anyone here?
If there's a law that governs "resistance to new things", it seems it's finally getting to it's next stage or development...

You know what they say

[nutznboltz]

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

Re:You know what they say

[Anonymous Coward]

What who say? There are quite a few people in the MPAA who say "If you can't beat 'em, sue 'em."

Re:You know what they say

[drmerope]

More like shove the distribution costs onto users and still change them a fee. BitTorrent is great--when the originator of the content cannot or should not be expected to foot the bandwidth costs himself.

Seriously though, they'll have a method to charge for their content (almost certainly right?) but all the expense of "shipping" that content will appear on the user's ISP costs. Sounds like a great scheme to me.

I hypothesize that, given the relatively high cost of consumer upstream bandwidth, doing this would raise the real cost of content versus distribution directly from the studios.

Who wins there?

IPV6

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't this be better accomplished with IPV6 multicast?

Re:Music video legitimately released via bittorren

[garagekubrick]

I should've mentioned - the band are not on a major label.

The album and video came out in the same week. A week later the band found themselves without the support of a major label in the Billboard Top 200 and in the top 10 at iTMS and top 20 at amazon.

They don't even have to do anything!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just stop suing the sites and bam, they will distribute it for you! It's amazing.

I have to confess I am rather skeptical

[Lead Butthead]

The net in general has been around for quite some time; much of which the music and film industries has met it with open hostility. In particular P2P applications thus far has met with nothing but legal hostility. That said, I am suspicious this is but a ploy to lure out some of the application authors to be crucified at a later date.

Up with bittorrent in the mainstream

[tantalus]

This would be terrific for showing that bittorrent is worthwile for small and large business models in which legal content is served. In Canada, one major cable ISP, Shaw, uses traffic shaping to heavily throttle bittorrent since they see it as a tool for pirates, but more mainstream uses of bittorrent would put pressure on Shaw to ease up on the throttling.

Re:Up with bittorrent in the mainstream

[Curtman]

In Canada, one major cable ISP, Shaw, uses traffic shaping to heavily throttle bittorrent since they see it as a tool for pirates

Where? I'm in Winnipeg on Shaw, and I just used bittorrent to download the Ubuntu install and Live CD's, and I got a steady 650kB/s within seconds of adding the torrents. That's as fast as this thing goes, so I don't think there is a very effective throttling in place if there is any. I think you just need to fix your firewall, and/or get a better client.

Re:Up with bittorrent in the mainstream

[Recovery1]

The Throttling is done mostly in Vancouver, and some places in Alberta. Saskatchewan and Manitoba users are not throttled. (yet)

Re:Up with bittorrent in the mainstream

[Curtman]

Health care premiums, outrageous car insurance prices, and throttled bittorrent.. The Alberta advantage is what again? ;)

Re:Up with bittorrent in the mainstream

[Anonymous Coward]

A right wing government that is slightly less corrupt than the liberals! Yay!

Re:Up with bittorrent in the mainstream

[Curtman]

A right wing government that is slightly less corrupt than the liberals! Yay!

Haha, I was expecting an answer like "you don't have to live in Manitoba". ;)

I'd count King Ralph as a plus for Alberta. I was living there during the incident where Ralph went to the homeless shelter and berated the locals. I'd vote for him again if I had the chance. He's like Trudeau, except not a pussy. Ralph for PM!

Re:Up with bittorrent in the mainstream

[tokabola]

You could try using a different port, since traffic shaping looks for activity targeted a specific ports only. If you're using the default Bittorent port you'll likely be slowed, but pick a port that's commonly used for something else that they don't throttle. For instance, if you're not using bt while also playing Quake III, set your Bittorent client to use port 27960. Most ISP's don't throttle the gamer's ports because that's the only reason a lot of people get broadband to begin with.

Tommy

Re:Up with bittorrent in the mainstream

[tlhIngan]

You could try using a different port, since traffic shaping looks for activity targeted a specific ports only. If you're using the default Bittorent port you'll likely be slowed, but pick a port that's commonly used for something else that they don't throttle. (snip)

Nope. Shaw uses Ellacoya based traffic shapers. These units work very close to the application layer, and thus recognize BT traffic, no matter what port you use. They aren't your simple port-based throttlers most ISPs use. Of course, it would be very expensive to scan every packet, so I'm fairly certain it scans only TCP connections, and like a stateful firewall, ignores or shapes traffic.

Of course, Shaw's also got some interesting "usage" scenarios... the "average" user consumes 2-3 GB of traffic a month (they have a 20-30GB soft limit for the standard package). I used to do that when I was on dialup... The unfortunate reality is that our DSL provider (Telus) has a 10GB cap...

Dubious

[Daath]

Well, I don't know about you. I think BitTorrent is very cool and has it's uses, especially amongst those who don't have multiple redundant fiber connections. But when game companies (Blizzard for example) and movie companies start to distribute their wares by way of BitTorrent, that makes me wonder.

Now I myself don't pay by volume, but I do know some who do! Are we supposed to pay for their wares, and then we get to download, sometimes slowly because BitTorrent downgrades users that don't share because of closed ports/firewalls etc.

We pay them, but we have to distribute it for them?!

Big companies, who probably have big a** internet connections themselves, should make their wares available for direct download by standard HTTP and/or FTP...

Well, maybe that's just me.

Re:Dubious

[Future Man 3000]

I'll bet that if P2P becomes a viable commercial transport mechanism we will all see caps/pay-by-volume appear on our accounts. Most ISPs aren't going to take on the bandwidth of major servers (and BitTorrent protocol overhead) in addition to client traffic without infrastructure upgrades.

It'll make a good excuse to add sliding fees for upstream use. But maybe we'll get back to the point where we can download game demos and patches without "waiting in line" for an hour.

Re:Dubious

[stoanhart]

Just like to clarify that BitTorrent doesn't "downgrade" people. It's just that the concept on which BitTorrent functions is inhibited by the lack of full two-way communications. It's not to punish leechers, it's just the way it is.

Re:Dubious

[baadger]

Good point.

If your paying for your bandwidth by the GB and you purchase that hollywood torrent.

It's a bit of a kick in the balls to have to pay more to download it off BT.

Imho, using BT is a charitable choice to help support projects/producers that can't afford distribution costs. Why does hollywood need to use BT?

Re:Dubious

[Anonymous Coward]

We pay them, but we have to distribute it for them?!

Big companies, who probably have big a** internet connections themselves, should make their wares available for direct download by standard HTTP and/or FTP...

The problem is that when a patch is released it's like a self-induced DDoS in the first hours for most companies (united-admins, steam,...)

They have three options :
1: do nothing and let people be angry for a day or two
1: spend an awful lot of money to buy more bandwidth, used just for this short time
2: rely on bittorent to share the load between users in a more effective way

You are complaining because upload cost money for you, OK but that's not the same for the majority of people. And the option 2 (more bandwidth from the company) that you want, cost money to the company, who would then charge the additionnal costs to all the customers.

The problem is that they choose the *globally* more efficient option and that, unfortunatly, you are on the small *locally* impacted group.

To sum up :
You are f**ked up, but it's for the benefit of the majority.

Re:Dubious

[Eradicator2k3]

"Are we supposed to pay for their wares"?

Actually, I find game companies' products much more cost effective to me when I find them on BT sites listed as "warez."

Re:Dubious

[hackstraw]

We pay them, but we have to distribute it for them?!

Big companies, who probably have big a** internet connections themselves, should make their wares available for direct download by standard HTTP and/or FTP...

Well, maybe that's just me.

Well, for me, regardless of their fat pipe, I would prefer a torrent download vs a regular HTTP or FTP one.

Why?

It will probably be faster, and its more efficient on the net in general. I don't know about you, but whenever I hop on a hot torrent, the thing screams. I've never had a direct download from a remote server over the internet compare to a torrent with 50 to 100+ seeders and a number of leachers.

What needs to happen is for it to be more transparent for users. To have bittornent as a service running on their machines that is configurable, or autoconfigurable so that it shares x percentage of the upload on the machine, and that it _keeps running_, so that selfish bozos don't immediately close their bittorent client as soon as their download is complete. This _should_ or _may_ be welcomed by ISPs because it _should_ or _may_ reduce their bandwidth to the outside world because peers would be downloading from each other from the same ISP and not going all the way out on the net. Also, ISPs could reconfigure their networks to raise or uncap the bandwidth limits within their network to encourage such peer to peer traffic.

I personally see this as the "way of the future" for all media. Personally, I thought for years that no one should directly pay for media like a CD or DVD, but instead simply pay a monthly fee like we already do for cable and broadband, and simply allow us to download, and lord forbid, share whatever the hell we want.

One thing that the media suppliers seem to forget is that individuals do _NOT_ have infinite storage and time requirements. And we always are looking for something new to watch or listen to. A service type payment would be ideal, and torrents or similar is the best solution.

Re:Dubious

[Tyler Eaves]

For some reason I don't think those who pay by the byte are gonna be big World of Warcraft players...

Re:Dubious

[slashdot.org]

Well, I wouldn't get my panties in a knot quite yet.

It says it all in Hollywood "looks" to BitTorrent. I mean, sure. I look at Uranus to park my boot, but is it gonna happen? It'll probably never make it there.

Re:Dubious

[shish]

Big companies, who probably have big a** internet connections themselves, should make their wares available for direct download by standard HTTP and/or FTP...

I think you overestimate big companies - there's good reason that ftp.idsoftware.com only allows ~50 (IIRC) users with one connection each; and gamespy / fileplanet has 250 with 500 queued -- it's simply impossible to deal with several thousand users wanting ~30MB updates at once via HTTP or FTP; queueing and P2P are the only sane solutions. Given the choice between a couple of hours wait for direct download or giving a bit of upload in a swarm, I'd go with P2P every time.

Re:Dubious

[Timbotronic]

There's a couple of things they could do here. An obvious one is charge less for BitTorrent distribution than direct HTTP or FTP downloads. You're doing them a favour by reducing their bandwidth costs, so that should be reflected in a lower price.

The other option is to move the BitTorrent distribution up one tier to the ISPs. If pay per view content is cached at the ISP level you could potentially stream it in real time which is the logical way to send video anyway. The ISPs would save considerable bandwidth on popular files and use BitTorrent amongst each other for distribution.

Re:Dubious

[Anonymous Coward]

Your post is ridiclous. I saturate my DSL download with HTTP/FTP routinely, and that's never ever happened with BitTorrent.

Re:Dubious

[Anonymous Coward]

[eric_cartman]
Goddamit! You quit looking at my anus!
[/eric_cartman]

Re:Dubious

[k8to]

No, what will actually happen is they will deploy products to mitigate the problem much more effectively without pissing off their users (like they are already doing): http://www.sandvine.com

Re:Dubious

[Pop69]

Actually, most ISPs in the UK are currently switching over to a volume based charging structure rather than a speed based one.

This is due to the way that British Telecom the former state owned monopoly has changed their wholesale pricing structure. Vast majority of ISPs in this country are just resellers of ADSL products from BT anyway so have no choice in the matter.

Re:Dubious

[Anonymous Coward]

Might be a Good Thing(tm). One of the *AA's arguments for not paying artist more is the distribution costs associated with getting the medium to the market. If they start distributing over BT, the distribution costs should go through the floor, leading to more of our dollars going into the artist's pockets. Which is what we want, right?

OTOH, the Hollywood studio execs are more likely looking for a more efficeint means of lining their own pocketses. Artists be damned.

Re:Dubious

[Mojojojo Monkey Inc.]

IF it becomes a viable mechanism??? Since Napster came out in 1999, what sources for getting "free" music or movies don't have some sort of upload mechanism built in (besides IRC or newsgroups, which still require voluntary uploading from a significant portion of the community)? And there really aren't any consumer-level DSL or Cable ISPs that provide anywhere close to synchronous up/downstream bandwidth, so I'd say the cap has been in effect for quite a while.

Bittorrent For TV

[TheFlyingGoat]

Take a look at my journal for my idea on how BT could work for TV networks.

Partially OT, but some of the ideas would fit a movie distribution model as well.

Lets just hope the DRM will be reasonable

[ZP-Blight]

I'm hoping that they come out with decent DRM, one that lets you burn a copy of the content onto a DVD-R or similar device (while maintaining the DRM), so that we actually get to OWN a copy of the content we buy with no further online authentication. The few experiments of consistant online authentication (requiring you to be online to play the content) pretty much failed (original DIVX, a few WMV DRM such as T2:UE). If they made it smart, let you download a disc image, along with printable covers with a DRM that is self authenticating, I think they would have a lot of business, as lets face it... people want contant NOW, like right now. Even 24h shipping is too much for some.

Re:Lets just hope the DRM will be reasonable

[baadger]

Printable covers?

Personally I think the futures heading toward harddrive based PVR's. Like downloadable packages that contain the video, extras, surround sound, and all the meta data into your PVR under your TV.

All they would have to do is have the downloadable content DRM'd on the fly to match your PVR box. Off course there are problems then with hardware failure or upgrades, and storage capacity.

I don't think watching movies on your PC or burning off DVD's is going to take off mainstream and it'll be a while before true any movie any time on-demand services are available in a fair manner.

My money is ready

[kwerle]

I'm ready to pay a dime/episode of The Daily Show. With commercials. I'll pay a quarter/episode without commercials. Sell me a torrent in a timely fashion.

I can get it illegally now, but I'd much rather pay for it and be able to get it timely, consistently, and in better quality than some of the rips seem to appear.

Re:My money is ready

[stickytar]

Me too

Re:My money is ready

[kamapuaa]

Wow, a few nerds willing to pay a dime an episode! That could quickly add up to maybe fifty or a hundred dollars. I'm sure the Daily Show is going to jump all over that easy cash.

Re:My money is ready

[adpowers]

They don't want to charge too much. I believe The Daily Show has four new episodes a week. If you were to buy every episode at $.25, that would be 4 $/month. If you watch a few more weekly shows, then this would quickly add up. People can't be expected to pay too much for each show, or else they wouldn't be able to afford more than one show. I would happily pay a quarter to download a high quality episode of The Daily Show with BitTorrent. They could also sell it on Google Video when that matures, but I'm not sure if you will be able to save videos from there or if that would be cost effective (BT would be cheaper than having everyone download it directly).

Andrew

Re:My money is ready

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, a few nerds willing to pay a dime an episode! That could quickly add up to maybe fifty or a hundred dollars. I'm sure the Daily Show is going to jump all over that easy cash.

How much do they make for an episode now? I'm guessing it's much less than a dollar per viewer. I get the Daily Show on two broadcast TV channels, supported by ads (in the midnight-00:30 timeslot). If they released episodes with ads on BitTorrent, they'd still make advertising revenue, but their distribution costs would be almost nothing.

10 cents per viewer per episode is probably the order of magnitude TV advertisers are already working on. The main problem would be processing these tiny transactions, but they could find a way around it (something like a $20 minimum order maybe, or monthly subscriptions).

Re:My money is ready

[kwerle]

In the meantime, they're burning cash.

I wish someone would throw money at me...

Let me get this straight....

[Anonymous Coward]

On top of paying $10 for a ticket to see a movie, they want me to use up my bandwidth to help them distribute it to other theatres?

Eh

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately I fear any distribution method they use will be closed and more than likely windows only, utilizing a proprietary Microsoft format.

MIAA enemy is time

[Anonymous Coward]

The tactic before was controlled releases around the world, that isn't going to work anymore. They need to release their content on the same day, on the internet, in a special file only their software can decode, all at once, for everyone, everywhere. Then charge a small reasonable fee and people will eat it up.

They would rake in billions on the first day of release.

HOWTO - Download these movies legally

[deszaras]

Manny Perry: click a couple of buttons -END-

Gnutella?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeh and they'll be using Gnutella to distribute the .torrents ;-)

Why don't they let everyone download an encrypted file, share it in anyway they like.

You go to a website and download a key to decrypt, a one time key specifically for your movie player, via challenge response.

Of course it will be cracked, everything is, but it will serve as DRM and most people will do good if given the option.

Just change the algorythm on a per film basis.

Then people could swap stuff and pay to view.

technocrat.net

Good news

[Red Moose]

Hopefully I'll not have to d/l russian screeners anymore then.

Re:Good news

[pilgrim23]

Actually, BT is a good source of the movies Hollyweird will never distribute in the US. Hong Kong, India, Eastern Europe, South Africa..etc. The world is full of creativity and that is far more then can be said for Hollywood. Does anyone know a good source for the Polish film Avalon with subs? -it Makes the Matrix look boring....

Re:Good news

[paedobear]

The Japanese film Avalon you mean? Shot in Poland, in Polish, with a Polish cast, but written and directed by Mamoru Oshii

Re:Music video legitimately released via bittorren

[Anonymous Coward]

You know how the name gnutella is, like, a play spreading (g)nuts around? Well if this is what bittorrent is about they should call it craptella. If I were you I'd post this sort of information as an AC next time.

They are late to the game.

[zymano]

The amateur are producing short films already using broadband to distribute their films.

Re:They are late to the game.

[memoriesofgreen]

http://www.atomfilms.com/ is one of my favorites

Re:They are late to the game.

[Anonymous Coward]

Somehow I do not think Hollywood is losing tons of money to these amateurs.

Re:They are late to the game.

[zymano]

True artists don't care.

Re:They are late to the game.

[zymano]

good link. There is one more that I used but i forgot the link to. It downloaded movies in the background while you surfed.

Re:They are late to the game.

[Anonymous Coward]

looks like you accidentally mispelled 'content producers' as 'true artists'. True artists always and only cared about the act of creation. The trash distributed by MPAA members is the artistic equivalent of sheets, toasters and fried chicken.

There's a Soviet Russia joke here...

[suitepotato]

...but I am too apathetic to look for it. What follows is no troll. I swear.

My first reaction to this and the article was, "what amount of crack is being smoked now and by whom?"

My second reaction was, "this is par for the opportunistic and predatory but too stupid to live course."

Once again, late to the party and like the worst newbie's granddad, going "ooohh, what's this I hear about this inter thing?" Anyone remember their take on the VCR for years and years? It was the money people reacting to the new dynamics of the entertainment market with the entrenchment of the VCR that led to the end of all crap straight to the first run cinemas theme of the 70s and beginning of the straight to video with those what were we thinking mistakes theme of the 80s on.

I think the experienced net-going public's desire to adopt a DRM-ified torrent system is about like their desire to see a musical version of Trainspotting starring Andy Dick. We know that DRM is going to be the first thought on their minds. I think we can also see some sort of iTunes-like pruveyor appearing and it being half-assed to start, broken repeatedly, the IP providers getting stern and filing lawsuits, and the system progressing to some sort of bastard offspring of Tivo and BitTorrent.

No thanks. They still don't get it? Indeed.

Re:There's a Soviet Russia joke here...

[Chaos750]

There's a Soviet Russia joke here...

I've got it covered.

In Soviet Russia, Bittorrent considers distributing through you!

Maybe not...

What do users get in return?

[Anonymous Coward]

So let me get this straight, the movie companies get to piggyback off of their customer's bandwidth to take a chunk out of their expenses? I can see the sense of community when its free stuff being distributed, but for DRM'd files and when you know someone is getting a profit, I'd think the sense of community that is normally associated with BitTorrent will vanish.

There has to be incentive for a person to use their internet connection to help out a publisher. Whether it be credit, cash, or free services, there has to be something there to make people want to seed.

Re:What do users get in return?

[Anonymous Coward]

Whether it be credit, cash, or free services...

How about getting the movie for free. If you host it you get to watch it. Hmmm. that's kind of how it works now.

Re:What do users get in return?

[shish]

Not really - if the movie owners give one seed and there's one downloader at a time, there's a little overhead more than HTTP. Two downloaders at once and their bandwidth halves -- even if people disconnect as soon as they have all the file, the upload they gave during their download still gives a massive saving over plain HTTP.

It's called embrace and extend

[paulexander]

Maybe they will take a page from another succesful business model...

Will anyone let torrents run long enough?

[Game Genie]

One of the biggest issues with BitTorrent is the leeches that don't leave their torrents uploading after they are done downloading. I would expect this to increase greatly if the files being downloaded are DRM'ed and paid for, because less people would feel a sense of community or otherwise see a reason not to leech. This problem could well be minimized by the software (perhaps integrate the downloader and the player, or put the downloader in a background daemon), and if it was done in a way that is not too intrusive on bandwidth it would be accepted by the mass majority of users, assuming they didn't know what was going on and didn't care (eg, not /. geeks). Nevertheless, considering most consumer broadband connections have shit for upstream bandwidth, it would be challenging to make the bandwidth hit unnoticeable. Can it be done? Sure. But it is going to require a company that has some real attention to detail and understands the importance of quality in software. Remember, this needs to be of at least of comparable quality to NetFlix to get the early adopters to reach critical mass, and NetFlix has the bandwidth of the USPS on their side.

Re:Will anyone let torrents run long enough?

[stoanhart]

It shouldn't be an issue. If the MIAA wanted to distribute with bittorrent, they would proably go and set up dedicated seeding machine - hundreds to thousands of them - all around the world. Then people could close the torrent right afterwards since it wouldn't matter, and they would still be helping out during the download process. Efficiency down a little bit, but with the MIAA covering the cost of the bandwidth, which would take the place of DVD production, Cover ink and materials, shipping, etc...

Re:Will anyone let torrents run long enough?

[tocs]

It seams that if you are going to pay to download something you might get paid to make that content available to upload, a sort of monetary incentive to be good citizens.

Re:Will anyone let torrents run long enough?

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the good things about BT (and it's one of the very few good things about it since it's so horrible overall) is that even without a seed, your download will still work if the leechers have all of the file between them. I've completed quite a few downloads that didn't have a seeder.

What the movie studios really need to do is come-up with a peer-to-peer protocol that actually works, unlike BT. Then they'd control something of value. I know I'd switch away from BT if there was any other choice.

Bittorrent is the way!!!!

[Barnizagaitas]

Yes, they finally realize that P2P is not only good lammers, it is also good for sharing good things.

Hang on a second...

[DaFrogg]

Yesterday the RIAA wanted to have ISP's nuke anyone with big bandwidth use (because they MUST be pirates!). Today the movie folks want to use p2p for movie distribution. Do I sense a clash here?

Re:Hang on a second...

[tankd0g]

Mouth saying one thing while the hands do another? Business as usual.

Re:Music video legitimately released via bittorren

[DeadChobi]

The thing most people dont realise which is a contributing factor to this success is that a music video is basically an advertisement for a band. By distributing your ad to people who are intelligent enough to comprehend BT, and not the near-illiterate common denominator of MTV, you might actually succeed in reaching people who are not only jaded enough to know when something is bad, but jaded enough to realise that something is good.

(Disclaimer: Note that if you disagree with anything I just said, you're probably right. I'm really not one to argue. I'm more one to ramble.)

Oh, that and MTV just plain sucks. Those of us interested in something new/original frequently avoid MTV stuff, because most of it lacks originality. Hell, everything I hear on the radio is just a rehash of everything I heard a year ago on the same station. Different name, same sound.

From the No Duh department

[cryptochrome]

Yeah, but this one was totally predictable. Overloaded servers and bandwidth limitations have been THE obstacle to growth for internet media. BT and its ilk solve those problems nicely. But these would-be distributors going to have to convince the ISPs to give consumers synchronous bandwidth to really make this scheme work effectively.

Re:From the No Duh department

[liam_p]

If this gets me synchronous bandwidth I'm all for it! :-)

On the down side, if it doesn't then if all my peers are using it isn't my isp likely to get a bit overloaded?

Or do they have tonnes of fat wires just hanging around waiting for this data?

Re:From the No Duh department

[R4quez]

I think you meant to say Symmetric bandwith...

Re:Bittorrent

[Anonymous Coward]

i second that... the uploading handicaps you like a one legged cat trying to catch turds on a frozen pond..

Glad Vint is involved

[PeterCook]

Glad he is getting involved - he is a very smart and nice guy. He delivered a talk about the future of the Internet for my lecture series at Temple University in Philadelphia last year and he was talking about the use of new technologies like this.

Vint also has friends in Hollywood (specifically within the Star Trek folks).

From the I'll-Believe-It-When-I-See-It Department:

[jtosburn]

'I know personally for a fact that various members of the movie industry are really getting interested in how to use the Internet--even BitTorrent--as a distributed method for distributing content,' Cerf said.

I think he mis-heard those movie producers. What they said was that BitTorrent is a "disturbing method for distributing content."

You can't have a cake and eat it too

[__aaitqo8496]

You want to sue people over the use of peer-to-peer applications, but at the same time monopolize on it's popularity?

Until I can legally download & burn a movie cheaper than going to blockbuster and doing the same, forget it.

Re:Music video legitimately released via bittorren

[Elwood P Dowd]

I'll point out that the Decemberists have really excellent performance and songwriting on their side. Not just BitTorrent :)

Reality Check

[mokolabs]

As inevitable as IP-based film distribution is, Vint Cerf talking with TWO movie producers isn't news and doesn't herald the dawn of a new age.

If Slashdot worked like Fark, we'd file this under... OBVIOUS.

Re:Reality Check

[Anonymous Coward]

If slashdot worked like Fark, the site would be covered in ads for pornography and pro-republican T shirts.

And they are still outraged

[Toba82]

when the movie ends up online before it's out in theatres. What gets me is that bitorrent does not encrypt traffic (AFAIK, correct me if I'm wrong) and someone at the ISP of *any* of the theatres could just sniff for HTTP requests that end in .torrent and download an extremely high definition file of the movie for free. Just tossing that out there...

The hard part

[overshoot]

will be getting the law changed so that they're the only ones who can legally use it.

On the one hand they're trying to convince the United States Supreme Court that the developers of a technology can be sued into oblivion if at any point the technology is mostly used for copyright infringement.

On the other hand, they want to use it themselves. That's going to take some tricky wording.

Anyone remember the Lazarus Long line about how no sane adult wants justice, but it's what we're willing to settle for?

In Other News...

[100lbHand]

The US Army turns to the French for millitary training
Veterinarians turn to Chinese resturants for pet care
Software developers turn to EA for human resource advice
Grumman turns to Poles for submarine construction
Geeks turn to /. for relationship advice

Re:In Other News...

[shish]

Geeks turn to /. for relationship advice

"Geeks turn to /. for current, factual news" would be better - The relationship thing actually happened, once.

Re:In Other News...

[Excen]

Geeks turn to /. for relationship advice

You mean chicks don't like going to LAN parties to watch you game?!?!?!?!?

I don't think so

[maxpublic]

Can't say I have any more faith in the MPAA waking up and smelling the coffee than I do the RIAA. If you've actually worked with the powerhouses in the industry you'll know that they value control far more than they do money, and despise everything internet-related precisely because it strips them of some of that control. This is an industry where execs regularly torpedo projects with huge promise and/or ratings just because someone working on the project has pissed them off. Money has very little to do with it so long as a certain minimal amount keeps rolling in (and sometimes not even then).

Don't look at this through rose-colored glasses. Execs in the movie and TV industries are some of the biggest egomaniacs alive. If anyone is looking to distribute movies/TV via BitTorrent it'll be some small house outside the mainstream that can't get their films into theaters. The big guys will never follow suit; they'll take the RIAA path and try to legislate/intimidate p2p into oblivion.

Max

Re:Music video legitimately released via bittorren

[garagekubrick]

Well we really thought it would be a good way to share a video that was made with their fans in mind. The band couldn't afford to host it. MTV2 botched the airing in ways I don't care to ennumerate. Their persistent logo is pretty big, by the way. So we figured hey their fans are smart, if we can convince them to use bittorrent the least we can do with this thing is let them share it amongst themselves. Why have them wait for an MTV2 airing to capture, encode, and distribute themselves. Give them the highest quality we can directly instead. We thought a few hundred people would do that. So far we've had a number of downloads equal to half the people who bought their last album. Here's a direct link to the torrent. If the video offends you, I apologize. And recommend you check out this as an alternative.

Listen closely, all of you

[gosand]

Is anyone concerned that MP/RIAA would want to know their "enemy" better in order to discover its weaknesses and close it down more effectively? I can picture the discussion with Mr Cerf, and the movie guy is nodding and taking notes furiously, saying, "yes, do go on". It's the same reason some men read Cosmo magazine- it's like getting behind the lines and into the mind of the adversary.

This applies to the ??AA and those men you mention who read Cosmo: You won't get anywhere until you stop treating those you are trying to understand as adversaries.

Re:Listen closely, all of you

[kyojin the clown]

Fine, I'll stop trying to understand and just go down the adversary path. it'll be easier in the long run.

*Throws Cosmo in the bin*

Argh, my eyes.

[Acy James Stapp]

I'm a smart guy, but I'm having a little trouble parsing that first paragraph. Maybe a comma or some extra periods?

Re:Argh, my eyes.

[PakProtector]

Thank you, Clippy.

No, really. It's funny.

Please... not the downmod! ARRGG!

Redundant? FUNNY!

[10537]

Who on earth modded this "redundant"? I'm guessing it was either someone not old enough to remember the whole "Al Gore invented the internet" thing, or someone who didn't read the post properly and missed the last line. Either way, they're fucktards; can someone mod it funny, please?

license DRM, not own

[USCG]

The fact is, licensing to the end user/viewer is a common business practice, and is not going to go away. You may physically own the media, but you will always (or at least for the near future) be licensed to consume the content in an assumed way from major content providers. By licensing, additional business terms can be added, which ultimately restricts what you can technically do with the content in countries where such things can be enforced-through unending bribing of lawmakers. So you'll get your DRM, and it will be licensed for you to view, and you'll like it, and that's how hollywood choses to end your story.

It's just like EULA's...they aren't going away anytime soon.

Does not mean anything

[randomwalker]

I hate to be critical, but movie producers are not movie distributors. In fact a movie producer can be anything from agent, script right holder, banker, to part of a star's entourage. Cerf talking to movie producers is like me talking to cows to judge what Mcdonalds is doing

The movie studios (the distributors) are well aware of bittorrent and the myriad of other distribution technologies that are available. The distributors do not generally distribute directly to consumers, but use middlemen (which include hotel VOD systems, cable, TV broadcasters, airlines, retail stores, rental services, etc). If someone implements a system using bittorrent which meets the security requirements they have, they would license content to it. Bittorrent would just be a component of the system.

Not really

[Wesley Felter]

The Internet does not support multicast, so it doesn't matter. Also, multicast has nothing to do with IPv6.

Re:Not really

[Anonymous Coward]

The Internet does not support multicast, so it doesn't matter.

I would have thought that Hollywood offering movie downloads would be one of the few things that could change this.

Also, multicast has nothing to do with IPv6.

Are you sure about that?

Re:Not really

[Glendale2x]

The Internet does not support multicast, so it doesn't matter. Also, multicast has nothing to do with IPv6.

Ours doesn't, but I'm pretty sure that part of Internet2 is a multicast requirement. Right now multicast usually gets dropped at the edge.

Re:Not really

[Wesley Felter]

Multicast creates per-group state in core Internet routers, which is a serious scalability problem because those routers have finite memory. Given that the IETF has been working on this for years, I don't see how Hollywood is going to fix it.

Multicast is part of IPv4 and IPv6. It works the same in both protocols. Thus using IPv6 does not have any effect on multicast. If you don't have multicast today, then you still won't have it after everyone switches to IPv6.

Re:Not really

[SA Stevens]

I stop and think of what the religious organizations, who think nothing of funding large powerful UHF Television and Short Wave broadcasting stations to broadcast their programs.

What they would do if there was a multicasting requirement makes me realize I SHOULD buy copper futures if multicasting ever becomes a requirement on the 'regular' internet.

Re:Not really

[mikeborella]

The difference is that Bittorrent is out there and works, whereas v6 (which works) is not widely deployed...yet. But this could be solved easily with bittorrent over v6. v6 uses local scope multicast for a lot of stuff but wide area multicast requires more coordination by the service providers and has proven difficult to manage in native form. OTOH overlay multicast, like the 6bone works ok.

Using BT effectively...

[P2PDaemon]

The music industry could profit immensely from using BT as a distribution source. Say I want to buy and download a movie for $10. Now, if we're using Bit Torrent, and I upload the whole movie to 10 other people, the movie industry could institute a "payback" plan for saving their bw by using mine. They could credit me say $1 for each complete movie I upload back. That would be a HUGE incentive to not only buy what the industry is putting out, but also to be a part of it.

Re:Using BT effectively...

[What me a Coward]

except the music industry would then be loosing money and thats not what their about.

Re:Music video legitimately released via bittorren

[isecore]

Hell, everything I hear on the radio is just a rehash of everything I heard a year ago on the same station.

Which in turn was a rehash of the crap from the previous year, which in turn was a rehash of the crap from the previous year, which in turn was rehash from the previous year, and ad infinitum.

Shame on you, hollywood!

[lightspawn]

According to Andrew Lack, President of Sony Music, "P2P stands for piracy to pornography." Which P are you planning to use, MPAA?

Re:Shame on you, hollywood!

[ka1ser s0ze]

So... his point... was what???

Pay for it yourselves!

[Anonymous Coward]

If I'm going to be paying for my movies like the MPAA wants, the LEAST I can expect is to get some marginal added value, like direct, painless downloads from a fast server. Bittorrent is still slow and much more of a pain in the ass than clicking on a download link in my webbrowser.

The distribution costs are already so completely marginal that I can't believe this is being seriously considered.

Re:Pay for it yourselves!

[Anonymous Coward]

What if your money paid for them to seed the files on nice, extremely high-speed links? Where damn near any average residential user could saturate their connection?

BitTorrent for distribution method not that great.

[dBLiSS]

This isn't really that great of an idea for consumers. I mean people use BT to downloaded pirated media because they get it for just the cost of bandwidth. Hollywood now wants you to pay for the media as well as supply the bandwidth to help them distribute their product. Sounds like a win-win for them, and not much to gain for consumers. Well, other then avoiding being sued.

Obligatory Army of Darkness Quote

[Anonymous Coward]

"First you wanna kill me, now you wanna kiss me. Blow." - Ash

And what a better way...

[awfar]

to get people to install a DRM'd viewer on their machines than to actually provide some content they want to watch, maybe temporarily Free until they Embrace and Extend, then Control. People will make significant long term tradeoffs for short term gain, as VISA and MC already know.

Prodigem sells content via bit torrent

[lerhaupt]

Make money from Bit Torrent?... hmmm, Prodigem. Why slashdot hasn't picked up on our new ability to sell access to torrents baffles me.

Re:Redundant? FUNNY!

[Anonymous Coward]

Shouldn't it actually have to be funny to get modded funny?

Re:Music video legitimately released via bittorren

[dominion]

The video was funny, the song was really good.

I really like anti-war messages that aren't packaged in your typical angry punk song.

And for further amusement: America (Fuck Yeah!) We Stand As One

BitTorrent = Discount

[iamghetto]

I have a problem with BitTorrent being used to distribute content that I'm paying for. While I agree that movies and television shows should be legally available for download, they people supplying the content should pay for bandwidth.

If I use BitTorrent, I'm using my own bandwidth to help them redistribute/resell the exact same content that I just paid for.

Because of this, any content distributed over torrents should be discounted accordingly.

I believe that torrents work right now because their content is recieved for free. There is a sentiment of community. You can only get a file because other people seeded it. So in kind, people continue to seed the files to return to favor. That's what makes it work.

If I'm paying $10 for a movie, I wouldn't count on me spending anytime seeding it. I've paid for it. I don't owe the community anything.

If that makes any sense... :)

Re:BitTorrent = Discount

[u2pa]

I agree with you, but imagine you'd save $1 or $2 by downloading via bittorrent instead of http/ftp.. what would you choose then?

Anyway the studios will probably include their own bittorrent client in their DRM player. (Which might mean you are seeding as long as the program is running (downloading/watching/watching other movies and havent deleted the first one yet)

Re:BitTorrent = Discount

[Phishcast]

I agree, but idealism aside, I'll gladly provide upstream bandwidth if it means I can download at 400K/s instead of 12K/s.

Suspicious...

[Spy der Mann]

Is it April 1st? Nope. Check.
Is it an invented quote from The Register? Nope. Check.
Does it have a </sarcasm> tag at the end? Nope. Check.
Is it in the list of things that will never happen? *bzzt*

Now wait a minute, something's wrong here...

No irony to see here

[42Penguins]

...please move along.

Really GOOD Idea

[whig]

This is actually a fantastic opportunity for the movie industry, if they embrace it rather than trying to demonize the protocol. Remember, folks, Bittorrent is just a tool for content delivery, and the direct-to-home video market is huge (i.e., Netflix).

Bittorrent trackers can be configured to serve content only to authorized subscribers. Delivering high quality releases over the net from the source is something that would have a huge market potential, but would place nearly impossible bandwidth demands on the content server were it not for the distributed nature of the protocol.

I can also see this as being something that companies like HBO with their huge catalog of movies could make available online on-demand, just as they do over digital cable today.

Re:Bittorrent

[kyoko21]

Comparing FTP with Bittorrent is like comparing apples and oranges. And even that is even too modest to apply for your analysis of FTP and Bittorrent.

For starters, you cannot extrapolate that FTP is surperior to Bittorrent simply because you have experienced surperior transfer rates with FTP over bittorrent. You have to ask yourself, what kind of speeds would you get if the FTP site that you are transfering from were to be the seed a particular torrent, and that it was only seeding the file to a few clients.

Reversely, you also have to ask yourself what kind of performance you would get from each of those individual "ips" that you were connected with as peers when you were using bittorrent if they all ran FTP servers for you connect to?

Your arguments for claiming "bittorrent" not living up to the hype is not justified and poorly formed. Can I answer the questions that I posed? Not unless I do the exact same thing.

One thing can do is to perform a simple test of using clients such as Download Accelerator or GetRight, or Xi's NetworkConnect to purposely connect multiple times to a single URL but spread out the download. Observe the speed that you obtain by a single download stream vs the aggregate download streams of connecting multiple times to the same file. Most likely you would see that you obtained a much higher aggregate throughput when you hammered it in multiple streams.

Bittorrent is simliar in that it is attaching itself to multiple nodes in obtaining the single goal of a file. The problem what you may have experienced is perhaps the 'torrents' you are trying to acquire are not being seeded by sites that have a lot of through put and the clients that are part of that swarm are not very 'upload' friendly. Just because you see 150 peers that does not mean you have access to all 150 of those peers. Individually those peers can have different settings, and like most people, they probably tuend their bittorrent clients to not to occupy their entire upload stream and maybe with a maximum number of upload streams set to 2-4. With all these constraints in place, you cannot just plainly say that Bittorent sucks because if those 150 peers allowed for unlimited upload sreams with unlimited capacity to the best of their ability, I would safely say that you would much better performance than a single stream of a FTP.

Your argument for not setting the MTU or TCP windowing to optimize your other application to INCLUDE bittorrent is not justified. "Optimizing" in itself is to make compromises so that the available resources are utilized to the best of the abilities by those consume it. The fact that you don't want to include bittorrent in your suite of application is not optimizing at all. If you find a suitable MTU or TCP windowing setting that works for not just bittorrent but your "other" suite of application, that is truly optimizing. Simply ignoring it or even attacking the problem is not the best solution. Maybe the new settings will affect the other applications in some manner. But do you really need to optimize Gopher protocol? or telnet? if these were application protocols that somehow that took a hit? You don't know that, and I don't know that. Do you even know that FTP and SFTP would be affected?

Also, you claim that you can achieve speeds of 400KBps on your ftp download. This would mean that your ftp site has an upload capacity of at least 3.2768Mbps. With overhead, let's just say it has about 4Mbps. Last I checked, I have not seen many residential dsl or cable provider(s) that offer services that include a 4Mbps upload.

And no. I don't know what I am talking about because I don't have any certs. No CCNA, CCNP, or CCIE.

Anyone else have something to add to this? After all, I could be and probably wrong... :-( Though if someone would be willing to attack the aforementioned problem that would be great!

Re:Music video legitimately released via bittorren

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen. Having free access to an audience doesn't guarantee an audience. :)

We've also had luck with IMNTV

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm posting anonymously since we're now with a label who would flip if they knew we released videos "for free."

Anyway, the guys at IMNTV http://www.imntv.com/ were offering to play video on American cable TV for a while back around 2001-2002. Later they went to just streaming over the net. We've gotten more interest from people who saw our video there than the couple of times that we got "major" exposure (also on MTV2) and through traditional marketing. We're considering sending them some more stuff since our current label sometimes seems a bit asleep at the wheel.

As content production prices approach zero, we're going to see more and more people releasing top quality music/video through non-traditional means. And that's good for us all. I'd much rather have people see my music and potentially make a little less money than have it all go over the event horizon of a greedy distributor.

Rock and roll!

Re:We've also had luck with IMNTV

[garagekubrick]

My problem with this argument though is that content production prices will not approach zero. Or it shouldn't. You need a decent crew and if you ask me high end sourcing to really compete with the giant videos. Even a format like HDV is just not good enough in my opinion.

Half the budget on this video went to sourcing on film and the steps necessary in post production to produce a high end format ready for broadcast. The other half went on traditional expenses like costuming, food, location lockdown. Everyone worked for free. But we can't ask the same people to work for free on the next one.

The reason so many amazing videos came out of commissions from the UK in the 90s (all those Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry, and Chris Cunningham pieces or say all of Radiohead's videos) is due to the mid budget video - something we don't really have in the US anymore. Now it's either the $5 million budgeted video, or the $10k video.

The problem is in the low budget, indie music world that there isn't really a point to making a video; which I as someone who wants to get jobs making videos understands. Every video is a gamble in the hopes of making it to rotation on MTV. That's a fact.

But the push from MTV is dependent on its playlist and brand attitude. Currently MTV2 decided to change and become another whole network and focus on major label pop punk and hip hop. For the most part all other music gets shunted to one hour a week timeslots. The other push is that there's some weird unwritten rule that a music video must contain primarily performance footage.

Result being - creative stagnation. And the bands who could make really interesting videos not having enough money to go to town when they realize how limited their distribution options are.

I'm hoping more people pick up the bittorrent torch and run with it and it leads to a blossoming of creativity in music videos. Artists who don't have the tools of a major label should add this to their arsenal.

Re:We've also had luck with IMNTV

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I don't necessarily agree that you need a big budget to produce great video. The video we sent to IMNTV cost us about US$20k to produce (and that was a couple of years ago). It was all done on "prosumer" DV gear on the video end and the audio was done on a tricked out Mac with Protools.

For $20k, did we get Star Wars or Lord of the Rings quality CGI and cinematography? Hell no. But it was certainly broadcast TV quality. And most importantly, viewers liked it. So we didn't have well known supermodels slinking around in bikinis or exotic shoot locations, but I'm proud of the quality of the resulting video, and we achieved the results we were looking for.

We approached our label about producing a video and their A&R guys just rolled their eyes (this was AFTER they signed us). Frankly, I'm just tired of having all the initial profit from a CD release get eaten up in "production" and "marketing" costs. It costs virtually nothing to produce a CD these days, especially if you're not going to roll up your sleeves and open your wallet to create some videos and then deal with Viacom's payola machine to get them aired.

There's got to be a better way. I hope bitorrent is the basis for a new way of distributing content that doesn't shaft the people that actually create it.

Good luck in your musical pursuits. It's a tough world out there.

Re:We've also had luck with IMNTV

[assassinator42]

I see the video is at launch also. I wonder how many people watch it on there. Nice video, BTW. Pretty funny. And I perfer videos that have things other than just the band performing. I like music videos like gorillaz. And to someone else who wanted an alternative to quicktime for viewing mp4, use VLC.

I had an idea similar to this.....

[Anonymous Coward]

It involved a bittorrent-like network that had a monthly fee of say, $5. All content on the network would be reviewed and rated, so there could be parental controls to keep junior from watching naughty videos. It would also only contain material that the developer, artist, etc allowed. Free content could be added, but it too would be reviewed. Each torrent would have some special identifier that made sure other torrents didn't get within the network. That way, you'd be guaranteed good files and no viri. If the artist wanted payment, he would be payed based on the percentage of the total downloads. So, in short, it would be like a search engine for a database of specific torrents. I'm almost positive this won't happen, because unless it had a massive userbase it wouldn't make enough money to please the rich executives, but I just thought if the MPAA and RIAA wanted to embrace filesharing as a means of distribution this would be a great way of doing it. As they say, "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em."

Sweet Jesus on a Motorbike!...

[IdJit]

Make up your mind, Hollywood!

Re:Music video legitimately released via bittorren

[angrist]

Post the torrent file?

Did anybody read this like this?

[chris_mahan]

>Hollywood Looks to BitTorrent for Distribution

Hollywood is looking for ways to distribute bittorent?

we have a contradiction

[nathanmock]

I think Hollywood and Bittorrent are oxymorons

Re:Music video legitimately released via bittorren

[garagekubrick]

Here's the torrent.

The Great Bet...

[zogger]

..and obligatory Kramer...

"I'm OUT!"

Re:The Great Bet...

[Danga]

haha I love that episode. "The Contest", see who can go longer without masturbating. That episode is tied for my favorite with the soup nazi episode. God I miss that show...

Re:The Great Bet...

[zogger]

those two and the "bucket of balls" episode.

That was a seriously funny show.

Strangely...

[PixelScuba]

-58F is cold but, I live in Minnesota. Some days that would be a heat wave.

I'm not a Pirate!

[Nom du Keyboard]

I'm not a peer-to-peer file sharing pirate.

I'm a beta tester for the MPAA's 21st century digital distribution system.

Time for a special tax on Hollywood then

[crush]

As they'll be slowing down the internet so that they can distribute their content over it. Are we all supposed to be jumping up and down and clapping our hands in joy that private content producers and promoters of the idea of "intellectual property" are going to be sending terrabytes of their "content" onto the bittorrent sites? No thanks. They can stick up centralized sites with massive bandwidth paid for by themselves and we'll wget/curl/ncftpget/rysnc the content from them instead.

Songwriting?

[tepples]

the Decemberists have really excellent performance and songwriting on their side.

Then how do they know that they actually wrote their own song and didn't subconsciously copy it from somebody else's?

Thanks to hollywood

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad hollywood has my ISP block BitTorrent.

Re:Redundant? FUNNY!

[Rallion]

The only thing about it that ISN'T redundant is the fact that he linked to a site almost entirely composed of articles debunking the media's harsh reporting of his statement.

There may be some problems for some people

[Anonymous Coward]

Last night I wanted to download the DVD for Centos
version AMD64 and found only bittorent files.
Unfortunately bit torrent does not work on
SuSE 9.2 version AMD64.
Since I have Winblows XP I booted on Win XP
and went on to download the file. After a few
minutes the PC rebooted. I repeated the same
procedure 4 or 5 times and after a few
tabarnacs and other colorfull swears
I gave it the fuck it goodnight.

As far as I can see bittorent is nothing
but shitware.

Re:There may be some problems for some people

[Anonymous Coward]

After a few minutes the PC rebooted.

man, patch your machine before you connect it to the net! it's not a Bittorrent problem, but something like Sasser. update your windows and use a PFW, if you really _need_ to run a shitware OS ;)

Cable ISPs and shoddy service

[sowth]

Shaw is a cable internet provider, correct? A cable company throttling bittorrent because they want to prevent piracy? I don't think so.

More likely they want to reduce their user's bandwith usage. One of the things they do so they can claim "unlimited" access, but only try to provide a limited email and web gateway. They'll only take off the shaping if a lot of users complain or leave because of it.

These are the companies who try to set bandwidth quotas to levels below what a dial up user would expect. These are the companies who want to block all UDP traffic. These are the companies who think having outages for 10% (or more) of the time is acceptable. These are the companies who don't want to provide access to Usenet. ...and so on.

They only want grandmas who will pay insane rates just for a little email traffic and light web browsing.

Logistics of asymmetric BitTorrent streaming

[tepples]

Not "synchronous bandwidth". "Synchronous" refers to a clock signal, which isn't what you were talking about at all. The word you're looking for is "symmetric", which describes equal upstream and downstream throughput.

But swarming based movie rentals to customers in the United States can still work, as many U.S. cable and DSL plans have been upgraded to at least 256 Kbps up. At typical DivX bit rates, this means that five or six uploaders can feed one downloader in real time. Ensure that people leave their clients running by giving low-share-ratio users a "Very Long Wait" a la Netflix.

Re:Logistics of asymmetric BitTorrent streaming

[xtracto]

Ensure that people leave their clients running by giving low-share-ratio users a "Very Long Wait" a la Netflix.

That is a nice idea, but I am pretty sure, some people will ask "why should I need to waste my bandwidth when I have payed to get the vide, I only want to see it.

What would be needed, is some kind of "tray icon" program that stays sharing the video while the ppl is doing something else, that way the normal Joe-Six-Pack will not care, and even if he closes his window, he will still be sharing (at least while watching the video??)

"IP providers" has four relevant meanings

[tepples]

the IP providers getting stern and filing lawsuits

By "IP providers" do you mean "Internet Protocol providers" or "copyright, patent, trademark, and/or trade secret providers"? If the former, do you mean "providers of IPv4 address space" or "providers of Internet access"? If the latter, do you mean "providers of licenses to copyrighted works" or "providers of licenses to patented inventions such as MPEG-4"?

Re:"IP providers" has four relevant meanings

[SA Stevens]

I'm pretty sure he means the people who provided the Internet Protocol. I.e. the people who published the RFC. Was it BB&N?

Re:Music video legitimately released via bittorren

[Tiger4]

If only mp3.com hadn't sold out*, things would be a lot better for indies now. They had name recognition, a good cross section of music, and a willing audience. The combination of BitTorrent (for full "album" distribution) and mp3.com (for mini-homepages and downloading sample songs) would have been awesome.

* actually the sequence is Got Greedy, got stupid, screwed up, sold out, folded. But it didn't want to get technical.

Very Long Wait

[tepples]

One of the biggest issues with BitTorrent is the leeches that don't leave their torrents uploading after they are done downloading.

Do it like Netflix. If you haven't seeded your last rental, and your last rental is underseeded, you get a "Very Long Wait" on other movies that are underseeded.

DRM using constant ciphertext

[tepples]

What gets me is that bitorrent does not encrypt traffic (AFAIK, correct me if I'm wrong) and someone at the ISP of *any* of the theatres could just sniff for HTTP requests that end in .torrent and download an extremely high definition file of the movie for free.

Distribute the movie files and the decryption keys using two separate networks.

Re:DRM using constant ciphertext

[Toba82]

The same decryption keys getting sent to thousands of recipients without any leaking? I don't think so...

Re:DRM using constant ciphertext

[tepples]

The same decryption keys getting sent to thousands of recipients without any leaking? I don't think so...

The decryption keys are themselves encrypted with a key unique to each PC, and then possibly sent over SSL. Go read the Windows Media DRM white papers for more information.

Re:DRM using constant ciphertext

[Toba82]

Sorry if I was unclear. I meant that they would be leaked by people with access, not by network security problems.

Re:DRM using constant ciphertext

[tepples]

I meant that they would be leaked by people with access

Who would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. These license files are traceable.

Re:DRM using constant ciphertext

[Toba82]

The point of the question was bittorrent - if it was being distributed via bittorrent, someone with the key could decrypt the .torrent file and then publish the .torrent, not the encryption key.

Re:DRM using constant ciphertext

[tepples]

if it was being distributed via bittorrent, someone with the key could decrypt the .torrent file and then publish the .torrent, not the encryption key.

The .torrent file doesn't need encryption. It's the actual .wmv file being distributed through BitTorrent that is encrypted.

Re:DRM using constant ciphertext

[Toba82]

Sure, go right ahead and do that. Now you've distributed the same file to a couple thousand theatres. They have to have the same key, as bittorrent distributes one file to lots of people. Now, what exactly is keeping a person with access to the key (there are thousands of these people) from decrypting the movie and then letting it out?

Re:DRM using constant ciphertext

[tepples]

They have to have the same key

No, they have different encrypted keys. The key is never sent in the clear; rather, each copy of the key is sent encrypted such that only one player can decrypt it.

Re:DRM using constant ciphertext

[Toba82]

That's all well and good, but the same encrypted movie file is distributed to all. Even if the decryption keys are different, once decrypted, the movie file will be untraceable (or a skilled cracker could reverse-engineer the decrypting program and modify it to leave no fingerprints). There is no way to keep it completely secure unless it's all done via proprietary hardware with self-destruct devices attached, which isn't going to happen.

Re:DRM using constant ciphertext

[tepples]

There is no way to keep it completely secure unless it's all done via proprietary hardware with self-destruct devices attached, which isn't going to happen.

And that's where the set-top boxes and Treacherous Computing hardware come in.

Re:DRM using constant ciphertext

[Toba82]

My point is, they won't just be downloading it on bittorrent. It would require other things.

You don't know how BT works

[Anonymous Coward]

The only people who "distribute" the content are people who choose to download it and in turn act as a source of data for other people to download from. Please read up on what P2P and bit torrent is before spouting off these totally ignorant statements.

Re:You don't know how BT works

[crush]

Duh. You could try analyzing the situation a bit more and not assuming that I'm as dumb as you are. Once Hollywood decides to use P2P to distribute their "content" there will be increased load on intermediate routers. Please think up on what the topic is before spouting off your ignorant statements.

RIAA != MPAA

[tepples]

Yesterday the RIAA wanted to have ISP's nuke anyone with big bandwidth use

Warner and Universal spun off their music operations within the last couple years. Now only one of the big four labels in the RIAA is also in the MPAA, and that is Sony.

About video budgets

[garagekubrick]

That's what I mean about the zero point of production though - you spent $20k on DV gear when you could've sourced on film. Our video cost under $6k and we were incredibly resourceful. DV shooting at quality still requires money - I think the dolly grip is one of the most underrated members of a crew and good ones deserve to get paid, for example. The problem is as a production company you can't keep expecting to people to work for free, and in my opinion they deserve to get paid for what they do.

In my ideal world labels would spend $40k for their bands on a video. We'd have middle budget videos, that sort of sweet spot where something technically proficient with a pro crew can be made but it's not such an enormous investment it requires comissioners to get involved in making a video that yet again looks like a bunch of dudes lip syncing performance while the cinematographer emulates the look of Fight Club and arbitrary cuts take you into some ridiculous story usually involving some hot chick.

But in my ideal world there's no such thing as the legal payola of the indepdent radio promoter, nor Viacom's stranglehold, and MTV2 would play a broad array of music programming all day long especially relfecting the way the Internet has changed music - people listen to The Shins in Itunes followed by Kelly Clarkson followed by Outkast. Issues of cool aside, that's a fact today - people have access to a broad array of various music crisscrossing genres. I wish "music television" would relfect that.

Good luck to you, too... As tough as it is being an independent filmmaker, I worry for all souls who have to deal with A&R people.

Dr. Cerf missing actual cartel goals

[Anonymous Coward]

"People think of video and they think of real-time, watching it as it's coming out [downloading]," he said. "But most video doesn't have to be watched in real-time. With Tivo and those other things it doesn't have to be watched in real-time."

"It doesn't matter whether it's delivered by a real-time video stream, or a triple-charge thing that drops packets into a file like BitTorrent. Who cares? At some point you get the whole file and then you watch it. You don't care how long it took to get a file before you watch it."

Cerf concluded that too many people got caught up in the real-time functions of the Internet, rather than realising only a very small number of Internet applications actually needed real-time capabilities.

Highly unlikely the MPAA is under a false impression that they need real-time delivery for their movies for a good experience. Far more likely that they are attempting to create a distribution method similar to a RealNetworks stream, where the end-user never gets an opportunity to save the movie to disk (unless using Linux or a Mac user with technical abilities, neither of which they understand anyway).

I'm sure floating around in their monopolistic control-freak minds of theirs, they are thinking that they can somehow prevent just a bit more fair use by using RealMedia type streams, where the movie buffers just enough for viewing, and they get to charge monthly or package fees vs. allowing users to download the complete file, whether encrypted or not, for viewing. They may be clueful enough to know that they'll never completely be successful with digital restrictions management, but they are probably counting on real-time for a little extra deterrence for just a few more percentage points of profit.

With everything we've seen of the MPAA (and RIAA), it is far more likely that they view real-time as a little more deterrence for the casual thief, rather than an issue of viewability.

Re:Music video legitimately released via bittorren

[d34thm0nk3y]

Does anyone know of a better player for this *.mp4 file? Quicktime player on windows is even worse than realplayer. I prefer MPC but can't find a codec.

Re:Music video legitimately released via bittorren

[Anonymous Coward]

Link is dead, can't find mirrors through googling. Host a copy?

<rant>Why do all those fricking blogs link to stuff instead of mirroring it, for when it inevitiably goes down. Idiots.</rant>

Re:Music video legitimately released via bittorren

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.blogtelevision.net/p/Watch-Video-Amer ic a-We-Kick-Ass-as-One___1,2,,21908.html

April Fools!!!

[BigPappa]

Ok, is it just me, or would this have been a really good April fools post? Just doesn't seem believable.

I won't accept it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless they give out the movies for free. BitTorrent has been reliably slow because of leechers. I would not pay for a service or a d/l that I could not expect reasonably fast speeds. Plus the fact I would have to give up a portion of my bandwith.

About Your Tagline

[Anonymous Coward]

My Powerbook (165c) is in my vintage computer collection. My table saw, out in the garage, is for real work.

worked for me

[adpowers]

I bought the CD after seeing the music video. My friend posted about the BitTorrent release on his blog. I downloaded it and then read more about the band on The Stranger's website and listened to them on KEXP's website. After researching them using only the internet, I end up buying their CD just a few days after downloading the music video. As you can see, it earned them a sale.

Re:Music video legitimately released via bittorren

[Anonymous Coward]

VideoLan (Debian package "vlc") plays it fine, and the Windows version of VLC seems popular among some friends of mine.

MPlayer can play the video (using ffmpeg/ffodivx). It tries to play the audio using "faad", which seems to work, except that it's entirely silent ("-ao pcm" produces a valid wave, full of null bytes). It's weird, MPlayer is keeping track of audio sync and everything.

You get what you pay for

[MikShapi]

A hollywood studio is a commercial entity. It sells a commodity for profit.

What you're charged for covers making the film. Let's call that X. Add to that the cost of the distribution.

If they distribute it using Bittorrent, distribution costs, say, n.
If they distribute it via their own server, distributiion costs 2n.

What would you rather do, pay X+n and share or X+2n and download direct? I assume with time both options will be viable.

Of course, for a negligible n (in relation to X), you'd expect a company that cares about its clients to provide you with the X+2n option.

Re:You get what you pay for

[Anonymous Coward]

This is Hollywood we are talking about. Expect n to be negative. P2P is all the rage now, right? So pay for it! (See also production costs of VHS vs DVD for reference).

Re:Music video legitimately released via bittorren

[Harker]

All I can say to this is, Way to go!

I'll check this out after work.

H.

Distribution to whom?

[FishinDave]

I suspect Cerf's movie producers were interested in BitTorrent distribution to theaters, not individuals.

Re:Music video legitimately released via bittorren

[Anonymous Coward]

media player classic.

You've got to download the codecs, however, they come in a package with all of them. Works wonders for me.

Decentralized Solutions and Distribution Costs

[pixelcort]

By utilizing BitTorrent or other decentralized internet protocols, media holders can distribute their works at lest cost, meaning more profit for them and less cost for us.

Issues with copyright infringment don't go away, but they may be negligable by legitamite alternative means, such as advertising through the site providing the core infrastructure for distribution or even directly in the media itself.

For premium content, pay-per-torrent solutions are also possible, and even DRM systems as a last resort.

Re:Decentralized Solutions and Distribution Costs

[Lucractius]

As obvious as it is that the MPAA are the (insert choise expletive)s behind all the copyright stuff and theyll want all the control they can get... ego... etc...

There remains the fact... Movies Make Money Before Theyre Even Seen

Product Placement... Coke pays $500000 for some (blank) to keep drinking coke at random moments throughout the film.. as their drink of choise... i know $500000 isnt enough to pay for a movie...

But think about how much more they might pay... If anyone could see this gigantic 2 hour video that to them equates to being an ad for their product. And that people might WANT to look at this "ad" ... and that more than 1 company is paying for this kind of exposure.

I see at least a few million in Product Placment Acruing regardless of how its distributed. if not more for open/freely distributable movies...

---2c over---

Re:Redundant? FUNNY!

[10537]

But it is funny, you insensitive clod! In North Korea, only old people are funny! In Soviet Russia you aren't funny, funny is you! Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these! But does it run Linux? (In other words, "funny" is subjective, and doesn't seem to be a requirement.)

Assuming, however, it isn't funny, at least mod it "off topic" and not "redundant"!

But Hollywood already does this

[Legion303]

A screener is leaked, seeded and in the hands of BT users worldwide in hours.

Oh, you mean legit. Nevermind.

Re:Music video legitimately released via bittorren

[kyojin the clown]

try this http://www.free-codecs.com/download/QuickTime_Alte rnative.htm

Re:Redundant? FUNNY!

[Anonymous Coward]

see, that was funny

also you forgot "all your funny are belong to us"

So behind the times

[Brewdles]

Most movies are already distributed over bittorrent...

That seems unlikely

[No Such Agency]

I doubt that even in today's legal climate the coders behind BitTorrent could be prosecuted/sued for how people use it.

They might be offered jobs, on the other hand. Like the "Cancer Man" on the X-Files would do - the best way to defeat your enemy is to get him working for you.

cool, but anonymous also can share the torrent too

[samxiao]

all you need it's a .torrent file even you don't register you can still use it what's the whole point?

And when a movie store rents out movies

[phorm]

They don't know whether or not the movie renter is going to slap it in their computer, run it through a copying program, and burn a copy.

Neither does the P2P uploader know if the recipient has a legit copy... but why should they be any less liable than Blockbuster? Hell, the P2P user doesn't even get paid for this...

Re:And when a movie store rents out movies

[barawn]

Neither does the P2P uploader know if the recipient has a legit copy... but why should they be any less liable than Blockbuster? Hell, the P2P user doesn't even get paid for this...

You're missing the point. Someone renting from Blockbuster doesn't cause copyright laws to be violated (i.e. nothing new is copied). So Blockbuster can't be in trouble at all, because all they're doing is using the legitimate copy they purchased in whatever way they like. Right of first sale allows them to do that. Whatever illegal acts the user does, Blockbuster can't be held liable for, because they didn't do anything to violate copyright law.

For a P2P user, though, nothing in copyright law allows them to upload a file to another user in the act of downloading. They're making a copy. Only the copyright holder is authorized to make copies. It's not a question of "the downloader isn't responsible for someone else breaking copyright law" - the downloader is breaking copyright law.

Re:And when a movie store rents out movies

[phorm]

P2P users don't actively upload. The terminology is that data coming from the source PC is generally uploaded, and the destination PC downloads it. However, there is no active attempt to send data to anyone, but rather the recipients are connecting on their own. You are not intentionally sending an "illegal" file to a recipient, but rather making it available, and recipients with either legal rights (already own it) or not may retrieve it.

Re:And when a movie store rents out movies

[barawn]

P2P users don't actively upload. The terminology is that data coming from the source PC is generally uploaded, and the destination PC downloads it. However, there is no active attempt to send data to anyone, but rather the recipients are connecting on their own. You are not intentionally sending an "illegal" file to a recipient, but rather making it available, and recipients with either legal rights (already own it) or not may retrieve it.

This argument is relatively semantic - the question then becomes whether or not the person participating in a BitTorrent swarm is allowed to make the file available for download to other people. By saying "yes, those downloaders are allowed to do so just because they're using BitTorrent" means that you can make the same argument for piracy uses, and then you can only be held liable for your own infringement.

Besides, that argument has already been tried in court for P2P, and it's failed every time - the persons making the file available are still held liable for contributory infringement.

Shutting down torrents, or shutting down torrent?

[phorm]

Shutting down people who are hosting pirate torrents etc is one thing, however the MPAA has been known to strongly badmouth the torrent technology itself, and make attempts to kill the P2P/torrent/etc technology as a whole.

So what do they really want? Kill torrent, use torrent, or kill torrent for everyone else but use it for themselves?

Re:Music video legitimately released via bittorren

[DeadChobi]

No, very little offends me. Besides, I was more posting that comment in support of releasing the video via BT, as you're more likely to reach an intelligent audience. Also, it kinda turned into a rant against the way mainstream music has sunk in focus from originality to sales. Sorry if you misunderstood me.