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The Other Side of BitTorrent
ByteWoopy wrote to mention a Wired article giving more coverage to the upside of BitTorrent. From the article: "Film and television executives no doubt wish the increasingly popular BitTorrent peer-to-peer file-sharing system never saw the light of day. Thousands of consumers are using the software to download hundreds of movies and hours upon hours of television programming. But one industry's threat is another's opportunity. There's an upside to allowing viewers to transfer copyright material content over BitTorrent. As noted by Japanese entrepreneur Joi Ito, fans of the Japanese anime series Naruto regularly post translated episodes of the show to BitTorrent, which attracts more fans to the series. The relatively obscure program has spawned a global following in online forums, internet relay chat channels and fan sites."
If they were to distribute Movies over BitTorrent on a pay per download basis, they could make a lot of money.
The reason a lot of people use BitTorrent is not because it is free, but because it is easy. If the industry were to give people easy access to data, more people might purchase it.
Looks like the smartest ones have understood what "innovate or die" means. Small companies will innovate while behemoths will slowly disappear... or not?
Global warming is a cube.
To call Joi Ito just a Japanese entrepreneur is to slight his credibility. Joi is not just an entrepreneur, but also a venture capitalist. He is also on the board of directors of ICANN and Creative Commons, among other organizations. His blog is ranked in the top 100 on technorati, although personally I have always been a bit suspicious since he funded that company also.
Come on guys, bittorrent is not limited to illegally sharing copyrighted materials for evil (which movies companies hate) or for good (which obscure anime companies love).
There is also this large world of legally sharing copyrighted content, like linux ISO or actually free radio or TV shows.
I happen to follow naruto - its incredible how this works.
The show airs in Japan on wednesday night at 7:28pm local time. Within 24 hours, a fansubbed version is released on the internet. The most recent version was released about 13 hours ago, and there are currently 15770 seeds and 13600 peers on this torrent. In 12 hours, 11.5 terabytes has been transferred, and just over 71,000 people have downloaded the episode.
I honestly wonder if there is an environment that does the same thing to bittorrent on such a scale.
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And that's it. There is simple answer to all that - of coarse, I don't protect copyright infrightement - BUT there is simple rule and it sounds like that - people who CAN and WANT to pay for your product (movie, music, media, game, etc.), they WILL. Those who can't, will stick with 'piracy'.
It is simple as that.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
Again there is a push to attack the P2P application. We hear this more than anything.
So when do we start hearing more about companies moving their attacks to the source of the problem? The movies don't spontaneously appear in P2P search queues. Someone had to take a movie and convert it to a share-able format, and stuff it up on the P2P networks.
If you ask me, that should be the major focus of the industry. BT has legal uses. Either way, all the companies are doing by attacking BT (and any other P2P app) is spraying the flames, not the fire. It's a pointless agenda.
Instead of hate it and wish it gone, why not work towards this new technology with hopes to use it with fewer worries?
./er and industry executives. While the parent comment is indeed something that seems totally resonable and based entirely in common logic, for some reason the industry has time and again rallied against innovation that has proven over and over to make it money in the long run.
/. (or, at least those who post comments), I have yet to be able to come up with a substantial explanation for the vast divide between logic and the industry.
This is a common illustration of the canyon-like divide between the common
Without citing the vast library of examples directly related to the current technology push and pull (betamax, DVDs, tape recorders, CDRs) it is often interesting to me just to witness the complete lack of logic employed by the industry. On the one hand you have an industry whos business it is to distribute content, and on the other hand you have the same industry doing its best to shut down, criminalize, and sue out of existance the very distribution channels adopted and eventually preferred by their customers (again, and again, and again.)
So although I am certainly a subscriber to the logic posed by the parent poster, as are most people on
Excuse my speling.
Making The Bar Project
The cartidges weren't cheap, either.
So we used a few unique ways to help make an informed purchase:
- Rent the game from a video store.
- Borrow your friend's cartridge.
- Read game reviews in your trusted game magazine.
There was no "downloading" of these games possible. And certainly no burning ISOs to discs to "try" a game.We had to buy the game (or at least incur the expense of renting it).
People today are using BT to download games for their modern consoles and PCs. Instead of relying on game reviews and rentals, they're making their own digital duplicates and then deciding if it's worth their money.
That's not how it's supposed to work.
You either make an informed decision or gamble. Either way, you pay for the game.
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START
I'm the project coordinator for dattebayo's Naruto. The 24-hour release process is highly optimized to have a mix of quality and speed. The single fastest release we ever did was 10 hours after it aired, but yes, typically its 20-24 hours. As far as scale, Naurto is the most popular fansub known, and it holds the records as far as I've seen for torrent occupancy, at least in fansubbing. Those numbers you pasted are typical, but back before dattebayo worked on this project, a torrent on a.scarywater.net had 59000 leachers to 37 seeds at one point. (This was Darkanime's Ep 59 if anyone is keeping track). A typical episode gets about 200,000 downloads via bittorrent in about a week, and an estimated additonal 4000-7000 from IRC Driect connection bots and hosted websites. Bittorrent revoultionized the distrobution of fansubs, converting it from a system of private FTPs and bots to a system where anyone can enjoy them.
People expect stuff to be free, advertisers will leverage this by releasing content over P2P, advertisers already sponsor shows, product place in shows and buy advertising between shows.
Mark Pesce was on about this recently and had some math to show it was cheaper to pay for a show and distro it via P2P than buy advertising - I am bit skeptical as many shows fail to take off in a Broadcast environment, but given the huge size of the Long Tail of Interniches...
He reckoned regionality would be a problem, well ok for department stores, but not for web stores, well maybe web stores that only ship to one zone so they overcharge chumps in the UK - but for online gambling, a show about sexy winners, winning and having a good time.
Then there is subscription models like the BBC and WBAI new york.
Web CI* and P2P is good because it takes cash from all those dodgy fake DVD selling pirates who are tied to organised crime.
Prohibition of stuff people want, whether absolute or to create scarcity to drive up prices, funds organised crime.
*Copyright Infringement/ Copying Information
This brings to mind a real slippery slope on the "Pirate" vs. "Legit". Here is a short tale moral tale:
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I am a recent convert to anime. A friend turned me on to a series of Japanese toons called Cowboy Beebop which is an absolutely awesome series (and I think the inspiration for the game Freelancer; look at the trade lanes and think about it)
From there I grew to love a series called Full Metal Panic. I could go on about the careful attention the animators in Japan give to detail as vs. the typical Saturday morning fare here but, the point of this: After seeing a few Full Metal Panics I had downloaded via Bit Torrent, I decided to do my good citizen bit. I was at the Mall and ducked into a Sam Goodies store to see what was on the Anime Shelf and there was a few episodes of Full Metal Panic.
Joyfully, I bought them and put them on the old DVD when I got home. There, right at the beginning, was the exact same credits (including the fan's IRC channel and website listed) as the downloaded "Illegal" stuff with ONE MINOR DIFFERENCE: My "commercial" copy had the logo "This is an Anime Fan-Sub. Not for Resale" partially removed. You could see where the pixels had been diddled with...
So, I be good and buy what I THINK is a legal commercial copy from a usual retail outlet and what do I get? A pirated copy of a pirate copy.
Anymore, I am having a hard time keeping track of who is driving the getaway car.....
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
I completely agree. Most of the music I listen to is obscure old jazz that typically exists in one of three forms. A lot of the time it has gone public domain and downloading MP3s of old records ripped by total fanatics (i.e. great quality) is 100% legal. Most often family members of the artist (who died a long time ago) think they deserve to profit on grandpa's talent... Uhm, screw them... Then there is the worst; when the record company owns the rights. Should Sony be able to profit on grandpa's talents? Hell no. Those bastards routinely con up and comings into signing away the rights to music they created and after they're dead for some strange reason the price of the CDs doesn't drop... Hmmm... Quite often the stupid record company won't even bother releasing it in digital form and the records are out of print, so they just sit on the rights and prevent the music from being reproduced, sold, or sometimes even published (which sucks for us musicians)... Again, screw them.
Now let's take Charlie Hunter as a modern example. He sells his albums in FLAC format (or MP3 or WMA if you prefer) for around $10 through a Bay Area based on-line company as well as distributing CDs on an indie label. So maybe you havn't heard of Charlie Hunter, but he is quite famous in jazz world and makes plenty of money. He's also fairly share-friendly like Phish or the Dead, which has only lead to more people discovering him and his related projects. There is now a whole community of Bay Area musicians that distribute their music this way.
Meanwhile Sony, BMG, AOL-Time Warner, etc. has decided that ripping CDs should be prevented at the hardware level and any digital content needs to be heavily DRMed (and DRM b-b-b-b-blows for us Linux users)... So what possible reason could I have for getting in my car, driving to the store, and plopping down $18 + tax for whatever Boy Band / Blonde Bimbo Shill Disney is propping up this month? If one of the Big 5 signs a band I like (with 98% of the market it is bound to happen) I'd sooner "pirate" the album and mail the band $20. Humph.
Actually, I wrote my thesis on life experience.
I'm not sure why they seem to think that bit torrent has seemly created a fansubbing scene, all it's done is made it a little easier to find.
The fansubbing scene has been going on for years, and started long before bit torrent was even first thought of. Heck, I've been in it for almost 3 years now. But, before bit torrent came around it was limited to those of us who knew, or who had the patience to learn how to use an IRC client.
But the post does make a valid point; allowing the public of a region where a show isn't licensed for distrubition to see an unofficial version of the show is excellent marketing. But it's a marketing plan that needs to be regulated; allowing it to get out of hand would ruin a companies ability to sell the series it wishes to license.
I used to work with the fansub group #Anime-Kraze, found on irc.rizon.net or www.anime-kraze.org and while I still maintain a presence, I no longer help out with creating the subtitled releases. Because we are picky about what shows we will fansub, 99% of the series we choose are eventually licensed. Unlike a lot of other groups - for those of you who aren't new to the scene you may reconize the group - #anime-Junkies was notorious for this, they would refuse to stop fansubbing or distrubting a series after the company that owns the distrubtion rights to requested them to. If the company ever requests that we stop, we would. We have about a dozen series that we'll temporarily ban a user from our channel if they are found to have it available for download.
Having helped out with so many different series, having seen some many series from other groups, there are a lot of animes I have purchased that I would never have considered even watching had it not been for the fact that I was able to view them at no charge. Heck, I've bought 5 complete series since December.
The fansubbing communty isn't about piracy, and never will be, it's about taking something we enjoy and allowing others who may not be able to understand the original language, a chance to properly experience it. Not everyone has easy access to imported anime, around here the only place you can rent it is Blockbuster and they have a VERY limited selection, so we provide them the ability to see it.
I don't deny that some people simply download so that they don't need to buy a series, but you'll find that there are far more of us who, once we find a series we love, will buy it happily. And just so you don't go thinking that those of us who sub it are the worst for not buying a series, we're actually the best for it. So many of us that fansub have huge collections of the series we and our friends sub.