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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."
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!
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
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.