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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.'"
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.
** http://www.nkhumanrights.or.kr/ ** Human rights in North Korea. 1 million estimated dead from starvation.
Yes, they finally realize that P2P is not only good lammers, it is also good for sharing good things.
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.
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.
** http://www.nkhumanrights.or.kr/ ** Human rights in North Korea. 1 million estimated dead from starvation.
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.
The Internet does not support multicast, so it doesn't matter. Also, multicast has nothing to do with IPv6.
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.
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