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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.'"
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.
--greg Vulcan quiescent... Q: What machine shutdown with this message?
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.
Wouldn't this be better accomplished with IPV6 multicast?
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.
** http://www.nkhumanrights.or.kr/ ** Human rights in North Korea. 1 million estimated dead from starvation.
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.
Take the 90-Day Challenge! http://rwmurker.bodybyvi.com/
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.
The amateur are producing short films already using broadband to distribute their films.
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...
I pretend to know more than I really do by mooching off google and wikipedia.
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
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
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.
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.
Make money from Bit Torrent?... hmmm, Prodigem. Why slashdot hasn't picked up on our new ability to sell access to torrents baffles me.
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.
Peace and love, y'all
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.
"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.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.