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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.
I've been using BT for years to grab the latest and greatest anime from japan.. For once someone actually see's the good use for BT. Yeah I grab the TV Series.. I then later buy the dvds for the extra content.
There's no Freedom like UFP-dom
This reminds me of a bumper sticker I saw once that said "I'm a musician in favour of P2P". I think we need more people like this give stories. Afterall, if the ARTISTS (musicians, movie makers, whatever) come out and say they support online file sharing of this nature, then the MPAA and RIAA and such lose a lot of ground.
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.
Now when we get sued by the RIAA/MPAA, we can point them to this Slashdot thread and they will no doubt drop all of their lawsuits because Joi Ito has a larger fan base thanks to BT.
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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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There are many 'other sides' to bit torrent, such as downloading patches, programs, and non-copyright material. The only whining we hear about bit torrent is when the **AA complain about users downloading their material, thus attacking their distribution methods. I'm sure they'd feel differently about bit torrent as a distribution tool if they embraced it. Sadly, they seem to be attacking it in the same way they attacked VHS, cds and other recording mediums.
I'm not stressed. I'm just terribly, terribly alert.
If you have any comments about file sharing, copyright enforcement, etc. (and who hasn't?), this may be a good place to post them.
There are 10 different themes for discussion, including "Public domain and open information: at odds with the IP system or enabled by it?" and "Enforcement of IP rights in the digital environment".
Although it doesn't explcitly say so in the invitation, I assume that Slashdot readers are welcome to take part as well. But keep it clean :-)
Christian Engström, Former Member of the European Parliament 2009-2014 for The Pirate Party, Sweden
Joi Ito's opinion: "fans of the Japanese anime series Naruto regularly post translated episodes of the show to BitTorrent, which attracts more fans to the series." I'm really tired of seeing this sort of thinking repeated over and over as if it were to suddenly make the act of sharing copyrighted materials legal. I won't disagree that in some cases piracy can be a good thing, but that still doesn't make it any less illegal no matter what spin you put on it.
Typically, anime is only distributed via torrent when there is no american company planning to sell it. This policy is meant to help smooth frictions between american publishers and file sharers. It's hard to argue that money is lost when americans download episodes of an anime that may never even be shown anywhere but Japan, and if no money is lost then a lawsuit is rather pointless.
The day that Naruto got licensed for US distribution, the fanbase seemed to go completely crazy. No one wanted to stop watching. Several groups decided to take their effort "underground" (by which I mean not listed on popular anime tracker sites, only from IRC and obscure group webpages).
If anything, bittorrent is good for series like Naruto. Distribution companies get a free, zero-effort focus group for nearly every anime that comes out. By watching anime tracker stats, it's easy to see which series are a crazy success and which are bombs. This is also much more reliable than watching screening attendance at conventions (which tend to vary wildly by time and location).
It just goes to show that just because you can excercise your copyrights, it doesn't always mean you should. I seriously doubt an anime like Gantz (or even Midori No Hibi, although I think people would argue with me about that) would have ever seen american distribution without a lot of fan support from subbers and the thousands of people who download unreleased anime.
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
You need to take the logic one step further.
1) Series is not available outside of Japan.
2) Internet and fansubbing make series available outside of Japan.
3) Fansubs build series' popularity.
4) Publishers see demand and release series worldwide, seeing huge amounts of sale from fans they never would have had before.
5) Profit.
This works out extremely well for the developer, who doesn't need to spend money advertising, and gets a large amount of revenue they wouldn't have seen before.
On the flipside, maybe this is another reason the RIAA/MPAA are afraid of P2P and the internet in general - it allows content from other parts of the world (that they do not necessarily control) to come over here and become popular.
What the RIAA and MPAA are most afraid of is that there is now a free distribution mechanism for artists. they don't need someone to label and distribute their art, they can just push up on a bit torrent. They can by-pass the leeches that only exist to take more from the talented people producing great work. They also can't control what we listen to and what we watch. they make their money by pumping out the same crap month after month and taking a small percentage from the artists.
If they lose control of the mechanism for distributing art, then they can kiss their racket goodbye.
So no we don't assume that quality content will be made just to put on BitTorrent, but was can already safely say that all quality content will end up there, whether it's legal or not. Smart content producers will try to tap into this, it's an enourmous audience after all. I expect we'll see more of the same from the MPAA though, instead of trying to adapt to the new technology they'll just continue to sue everyone instead. What a waste of money.
Kedora lets you subscribe to a number of shows (including MS's Channel 9) and you're alerted by RSS whenever a new show comes out. You then click the link in the RSS and it downloads the show via bittorrent. If somebody could create a totally integrated solution with an iTunes style frontend (I'm thining in the playlists sidebar have all the subscribed shows) and then release good shows on it in decent quality without DRM then I would actually pay good money for a subscription to this service in the same was as people subscribe to cable and sattelite TV.
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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!
Considering how much the big conglomerates (TV and Movies) spend to secure your attention, a show capturing everyone's attention through somehting like BitTorrent scares the bejeebers ought of them. It means that they can't just slap something together and, "since its the only thing on..." expect to keep an audience. It means that in order to be successful they are going to have to take risks and provide a high level of quality in what they do. I think the pirating card they keep playing is more mcguffin (sp?) than anything. What they really want to avoid is having to be creative, innovative, and responsible to their audience.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
I'm not sure what universe you live in, but the vast majority of those pirating materials on the Internet aren't doing so because of the lack of a well-thought-out legal distribution model.
The reason is that these people believe/expect that everything on the Internet is free.
These are many of the same people that believe people are born with the right to pirate their copy of Windows because Microsoft has tons of money.
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START
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
Why don't *they* (MPAA ETC) use BT to their advantage and get on the bandwagon. Their day of controlling content is over, no matter how harsh they make the laws.
Because they don't actually make the movies, they just market and distribute them. Bitttorrent is a functional, if imperfect, replacement for half of what they do and a threat to their dominance of the other half. All they do is control content, without that and their marketing ability movie producers would just cut them out entirely.
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.
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.