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."

Comments

Now thats the right kind of thinking..

[ufpdom]

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.

Artist In Favour of P2P

[Elecore]

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.

Joi Ito

[pHatidic]

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.

Only two sides?

[braindead]

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.

Naruto

[epiphani]

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.

WIPO wants your feedback

[Christian Engstrom]

The World Intellectual Property Organization WIPO is hosting an online discussion about "Intellectual Property in the Information Society" from June 1 to 15, 2005.The conclusions of the Online Forum will form part of WIPO's contribution to the WSIS Tunis Summit.

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 :-)

No kidding about Naruto

[Paradox]

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.

Now, take that further...

[DrEldarion]

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.

Re:Now, take that further...

[zalas]

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 used to be true, until now, when more and more American companies start negotiating series with Japanese licensors before the show even starts airing... Some shows, such as Tenjho Tenge were created with money paid up front by American companies. Sure, the very obscure show will still get some benefit from BitTorrent, but a good chunk of shows, the super popular ones that fansubbers sub, tend to be noticed by companies before airing and perhaps are already in license negotiations once airing starts. And face it, I'm sure most of the people downloading Naruto wouldn't even think of buying the DVDs. I mean, just look at all the complaints on the forums when the Naruto license was announced, when their free flow of episodes was in danger of getting shut down.

It's all about control of distribution channels...

[RenegadeTempest]

What people sometimes fail to grasp is that the entertainment industry (RIAA & MPAA) aren't really concerned about piracy. They will bitch and moan about decreasing revenue but those are a drop in the bucket. Most revenue lost due to piracy wasn't real revenue anyways. The people infringing on the copyright would have never bought the product in the first place.

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.

RSS + Bittorrent

[taskforce]

Bittorrent and RSS together actually make an excellent subscription broadcasting solution. An excellent example of which is Kedora.

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.

Repeat after me...lost potential sales is a MYTH

[Pecisk]

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.

Yeah Right

[Vandil X]

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.

Re:Yeah Right

[GMFTatsujin]

I'd back you up here, but I don't subscribe to Slashdot, I adblock all the flash on the page, and don't allow popups.

Funny thing: once upon a time, everything on the Internet WAS free. Pay for access, sure, but once the pipe was open there was a whole world of academics, collaborators, hobbyists, and so on whose whole reason for being on the Internet was to share. Share! Amazing!

Commerical interests have no "this isn't how it should be" claim to stake. They're the Jonnys-come-lately online, and they *still* have to learn how to adjust.

Re:Yeah Right

[orasio]

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.

I, myself, think Microsoft, even having tons of money, doesn't have the right of having me copy (not pirate, pirates have sailing ship and I don't) MSWindows, without paying me in exchange. I am very happy with slackware, thank you very much.

Re:Yeah Right

[AKAImBatman]

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.

Try again. The lack of a well-thought-out legal distribution model is EXACTLY the reason for rampant piracy. What we have here is the same sort of loophole that brought Napster into existence. The public wants their entertainment media combined with the convenience of the Internet. In the case of Napster, the RIAA tried to ignore the market pressures and stiffle the distribution of MP3s. Yet without realizing it, they only managed to add to an economic vacuum. As you probably know, nature abhors a vacuum.

As a result, every attempt by the RIAA to crush the MP3 craze only served to increase it. Before they knew it, MP3 players started popping up and an entire market grew around something was supposed to be illegal. This prompted Steve Jobs to call the music executives a bunch of idiots, and then go on to figure out a music distribution model for them. Today, iTunes is a highly successful product that has spawned a large number of competitors. Between them, they have caused people to pay for music that they would have otherwise pirated.

The same thing is now happening to the Television industry. Between TIVOs and BitTorrent, the world is demanding digital, on-demand television. The TV industry has been somewhat supportive with things like TV on DVD releases and Cable on-demand(which has probably helped a lot), but can't seem to let go of its traditional content delivery models. This is slowly causing a vacuum which BitTorrent is quickly filling.

Which is really too bad. An Internet distribution model could allow TV producers to completely break free of the rigors of program scheuduling, annual show seasons, required program order sizes, and primetime competition. Instead, shows would compete directly on how attractive they are to the market.

As for movies, I think a vacuum is developing, but it's not a real problem yet. People want Internet content delivery, but are still happy with it being exclusively released to the Theater first. Most of what's going on right now is true piracy that the industry has always had to deal with. As a result, it doesn't currently impact their numbers by much as long as they keep it in check. But in the near future, I predict that people are going to feel much more strongly about having on-demand access to old movie libraries (where old is any movie that has been out for more than a year to a year and a half).

Re:Yeah Right

[mc900ftjesus]

Not many people expect much for free. We just don't like being bled dry by the entertainment industry.

Convince me that a CD should $15. I believe they were right about $15 when CDs first came out. If prices don't change for over 10 years, the record companies make tons of money and the artists get a small piece of that action, I say that's crap. I will say that artists are really stupid if they think they can't sell music off of a website on their own.

Movies? No actor deserves $20M for a movie. If it costs too much to pay to make a movie, hire some new actors that don't ask for ridiculous amounts of money and pass that down to the consumer. Look at reality TV, except replace the horribly fake people with actual actors. Of course that savings would never make it to the consumers, it would make it into an executive's pocket.

The quality of movies and music has also fallen by the wayside. Why should corporate bands music cost the same as real music? Or crappy sequels to movies? With most industries you get what you pay for, not entertainment, it's more of a gamble. Hell, you can't even return CDs or DVDs when you find out they suck unless you pay to rent them first, which only makes them more expensive. You can't win.

So, I would like to stop people from calling downloaded movies and music "stealing." This is the age of the euphemism, I'm calling it "reparations" from now on. Isn't that what you call being paid back for years for crappy treatment?

Re:Yeah Right

[AKAImBatman]

You give the average person too much credit.

I don't give anyone credit for anything other than that they will do what is most convenient. Consumers would happily have used an iTunes service back when MP3s first appeared. At the time I said that the music industry needs to get this done or they won't be able to stop MP3s. Well, guess what? They couldn't stop MP3s.

An economic vacuum has absolutely nothing to do with the intelligence of the individuals. It has everything to do with the desires of the mob. The mob wanted MP3s. Back when Napster came out, they were rare as gold. I have few doubts that people would have plunked down small amounts of money for each song (possibly even under a Napster model). But the music industry didn't want to give up their precious CD price hikes, and as a result they got burned. There's no two ways about it.

iTunes survives on a thin number of subscribers compared to the number of people who still warez their music, simply because iTunes costs money.

Got any figures? If there was any good statistical models for Internet piracy, I'm willing to bet that they'd show a marked decrease in the number of songs pirated. Or, at the very least, the growth curve flattening. Meanwhile, iTunes is putting real money in the pockets of music studios. Real money that they wouldn't otherwise have.

Re:Positive

[IAmTheDave]

Instead of hate it and wish it gone, why not work towards this new technology with hopes to use it with fewer worries?

This is a common illustration of the canyon-like divide between the common ./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.

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 /. (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.

Re:Naruto

[interactii]

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.