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BitTorrent Gets $8.75M From Venture-Capital Firm
funny-jack writes "BitTorrent's drive to legitimize itself as a tool for distributing legal content appears to be gaining steam, as evidenced by the $8.75 million venture capital they recently secured. 'The piracy business is not something anyone can make money on,' says Ashwin Navin, who co-founded BitTorrent with Bram Cohen. 'We want to distribute paid and ad-supported content, using this technology.'"
...support it, please consider making a donation to BitTorrent, Inc.
Donate (via PayPal): $20 $10 other
I think they hit 'other'.
Jesus saves souls and redeems them for valuable cash prizes
Soon they'll have the resources to add DRM filters and redesign the GUI so that that they can show ever more ads on it....
It's bad enough we had to worry about "poisoned" torrents.... Now we've got advertising to deal with as well.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Why would a movie studio use BitTorrent instead of just allowing someone to download from their site or from, let's say, iMovies by someone like Apple?
Evil people don't think they're evil. - George Lucas, Making of Ep III
Is it good when the inventor of a technology acknowledges that it has only been used for piracy?
Every time I hear another rush of VC's I have horrible nightmares of the DOT BOMB...
They're like a bad form of birth-control -- where pulling out doesn't always work.
My ZooLoo
To raise the funding, they ask that everyone send in a couple bucks each to help seed the system. As they receive cash, the money will be invested, and a map of generous investors will be created. The more money you contribute, the higher rate of return you'll see, and so on.
...
The investment will continue until they hit the $8.75 million mark, then they'll keep the fund the same size and just feed the profits back into the investment group as other people join and leave.
A constant threat will be a type of invester known as a 'leech' who makes minimal contributions but attempts to collect large returns and-
Gosh... I'm really trying hard to make this a funny bittorrent joke, but I find that I've just described actual commerce. How depressing.
For example: Just because Apple makes money on iTunes (ie: legitimate music sales) they make far, far more on sales of the iPod -- which are prediated on the availability of free pirated music. iTunes keeps Apple's music initiatives legitimate, but to say that Apple hasn't benefited from piracy would be wrong.
And let's talk about storage media: How much will Seagate, iOmega, yada yada yada, benefit from storing pirated digital movies? Tons!
Piracy is huge business.
Hell, I pull out my wallet for storage and playback media far, far more than I do for music. And I don't think I'm unusual at all -- most people are the same.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
I'm thinking that share ratios could become a kind of online currency once BitTorrent becomes commercially accepted. Seeding a file could earn you points to download other media. For example, sharing an artist's latest music video using the .torrent from her/his site could be rewarded with downloads of free singles or swag.
I'll see their millions and bet that this will either flame out in a matter of months or the psychotic Bram Cohen will be ousted and lose control of his BitTorrent.
I certainly hope that whoever implements BT for commercial use can make it work better than the World of Warcraft updater. I've had nothing but slow downloads (and yes I've forwarded the ports) and crashes using their client. I've given up using it and now just download patches via http from directly from WoW fansites.
It's one thing when a free torrent link is slow or not working well, but totally different when a commercial service I pay for doesn't live up to expectations.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
Bittorent was released under the MIT license, so pretty much anyone can take it, modify, make their own version (like the one Blizzard patches World of Warcraft with) and basically do as they please so long as they include credit to the original author. So really, anything particularly special that Bittorrent manages to do, can't anyone else just copy it?
They donated $8.75m, but will this do much more than put lots of ads in the software? Oh boy, this could be a huge mistake, a good thing for BitTorrent, horrible for it's users..
Add me as a friend!
Bittorrent is in my opinion better that kazaa or limewire for downloading when you get a good torrent file. I am glad to see a program that can be used for pircay receiving financial support. This is good news compared to limewire blocking unliscenced content and the new anti piracy lab.
What is this actually going to pay for? Their expenses and plane tickets to meet with execs while they try to push BT? Or is there some actual technical innovation that this is going to pay for?
If you're an investor, you can throw your money in the hole over there.
this will lead to the improvement of torrents overall due to increased capital to work with, or will worsen them by making them a larger target for poisoning. Personally, I can deal with ads, so long as theres tangible benefit to be had. I just don't want to see torrents become a more powerful version of limewire (in the sense of delivering spyware and viruses to unsuspecting users).
Is Bram Cohen rich these days? He pioneered this thing called "Bit Torrent", so I would assume so.
God-dammit. The best BitTorrent clients have been the 3rd party ones for quite a while, and now this. Good job, you created a P2P protocol that was useful only after throwing away your shitty client. They should now concentrate on improving and fixing BitTorrent as a service protocol.
Instead they're taking their commercializing and are going to ruin it. First come the advertisements (it's been "donationware" for a while), next comes the walled garden (I bet you're going to have to authenticate soon to download particular swarms), then will come DRM.
Someone must have an alternative to BitTorrent that works in a similar way? Anyone?
although I don't think he works for them anymore, at least his projects seem to be continuing to gain steam....
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
From the article: "Michael McGuire, an analyst at research firm GartnerG2, says Hollywood is getting the message that fighting new technology may not necessarily be the best answer."
Notice how the only technology the entertainment industry doesn't want to squash is one that will save them money (bandwidth).
Just thought I'd point out the selfishness...
i wouldn't worry about potential ads, drm, etc... there are other, more innovative clients out there...
Get your torrents...
The piracy business is not something anyone can make money on,' says Ashwin Navin
Yeah, just ask Kazaa.
I don't know whether to laugh or be terrified! I can't believe that I had never noticed this before but, BitTorrent is obviously a high-tech ponzi scheme!
So BitTorrent is illegal, after all!
will know how to get the stuff for free anyways. Let them make their millions from average joe.
The overall user experience for legit content doesn't suck at all, if the seed and tracker is hosted professionally. Picture something like "MovieFlix" with a dedicated Bittorrent Client. At worst, for an old movie or something, they serve the entire movie directly to you. At best, for a new release, they only have to serve part of it to you, and the swarm of other people who want to see it works to their advantage.
It's a GOOD system, and it gets better and better the better the host is and the more constant the demand for the content is.
Never confuse volume with power.
I looked through the article and I searched to see if there actually was a way to donate money! Not that I was going too, but I ...Ok, here's my geek card. It's expired anyway. Sorry. :-(
Evil people don't think they're evil. - George Lucas, Making of Ep III
It's moderated funny, but I seriously question this investment. Are the VC's getting wacky again? Are we going to see the return of the sock puppet??
Gorkman
I'm sorry, but BitTorrent sucks. If they take it and commercialize it until no one wants it anymore, fantastic. It works, but it's in no way well designed. Maybe someone else will come along and make something better, firewall friendly, something that's actually peer-to-peer...
If you disagree and think it is well designed, fine. Keep using it, by all means. So do I. But if you don't think there's a whole lot of room for improvement, you're not very imaginitive.
Random and weird software I've written.
between web browser ads and Bit Torrent client ads?
I mean won't people just make clients that can read the streams and block the ads just like web browser clients??
I'm sure folks will just dl the latest BitComet which will have all the access to Cohens content but with no ads correct?
Now subscription services could block this since you could enforce a registered user security model, but I think ads are a no win.
...welcome our new Bittorent overlords.
I, for one, would be happy to download torrents of my favorite tv shows with commercials included. Sell the torrent ad space! At least the ads would be semi-targetted (as on slashdot) to thinks that I might actually care about. Hell, I'd even pay to subscribe to torrents of specific shows with ads. My purchasing power as an emerging late-20s demographic should be worth a pretty penny to corporations. So let them vie for my attention by supporting awesome shows.
First we get the coporate tv torrents; then we get torrent Neilson ratings; then they see the massive popularity of shows like Firefly and Battlestar Galactica and just how many people are watching; then we have more awesome shows to watch.
The downside? Oh no, I'll have to watch commercials again. What ever will I do?
The reason I said "you may end up with shit" is that there have been cases where the biz founder actually had a successful biz, but becuase of the ROI clause in the VC contract, the idea gets shit. If I can find a link I'll post it.
Evil people don't think they're evil. - George Lucas, Making of Ep III
So, the article is about Bittorrent getting venture capital funding to apply BT for commercial uses. I point out issues with a current company using BT for commercial uses and get modded offtopic.
Well here's hoping I can get a "troll" or maybe "flamebait".
Sometimes my arms bend back.
Second point, BT is not that user friendly, since it often takes a long time to start up, and isn't always very fast. It's reliable, in the sense that things usually get to you *eventually*, but it's not an appropriate technology for mainstream downloads.
Another case of VCs dumping money at popularity rather than something that can actually make money.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Just keep using whatever version of Azerus you have right now.
the money's passed around to the leechers before any of the seeds get it.
Interestingly enough, the Economist this week is running an article about the dot com bubble version 2.
But what they want and what the user wants and what they really can do can be very different things. BitTorrent works now because a lot of individual users are willing to help pitch in and share their computer resources and electricity and bandwidth to help share files, usually motivated by little more than wanting the system to work so their own next download goes fast and smooth. I'm seeding the new Knoppix DVD by BitTorrent right now, have been for several days, and seeded about 85-90 gig worth of the last version too. But if some company is distributing files that I have to pay for, I'm hardly likely to keep seeding after I get mine. I'm much more likely to exploit some of the vulnerabilities that are known to exist in BitTorrent to make it look like I'm uploading when I'm not and impove my download even more. Pretty much the same if some fat cat is getting rich off of my bandwidth delivering ads.
A more malicious user may even put some effort into poisoning torrents, mucking up the entire model and system.
Of course, they can always take that money and spend a little of it on bandwidth and seeding systems. But then you give up the main concept of BitTorrent; you are back to a central download point (even if it is on multiple computers and even if parts of it are scattered around the country or globe). It really is nothing more than some download manager with the BitTorrent name on it. What we know as BitTorrent would not really be what is going on in such a case. The difference between this new BitTorrent and what we know now as BitToreent would be as large as the difference between the old and new Napsters; they are the same in name only. Napster users were not going to host files and spend their own bandwidth so that the music industry could make a profit from it, and I don't see people downloading large files by BitTorrent making their resources available so that the MPAA, RIAA and others can offer files for download for pay on a BitTorrent system anything like we know now.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
.... as evidenced by the $8.75 million venture capital they recently secured....
For a second, I misread "secured" as "screwed"
The BitTorrent protocol is pretty mature already, with numerous implementations. What's left to make money on? Embedded and secure versions. Optimized software and hardware implementations, and special-purpose implementations for data beyond ordinary filesharing. Live and archived streaming media without the overburdened servers. The options are endless. I know I've speculated on them before.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Ameriquest funding the Rolling Stones tour.
Just when did the music die?
Much like using the existing power grid and supplementing central generation with a mesh of solar cells will help as consumers continually use more power, commercialized BitTorrent may do the same for teh intarweb.
If all computers included a BitTorrent client by default along with intelligent cache of video/music files; a massive mesh of free/subsidized content could be available with minimum bandwidth tolls. Regarding the article yesterday, we see that 12+ Mb pipes are going to cut down the number of users a 100Mb server (from 60 (@ 1.5Mb to 8 (@ 12Mb)); thus wider pipes are going to dictate massive increases in data bandwidth (much as evolution of technology increases the electrical load per household).
BT can help mitigate this; as far as the issue of control, industry will not be onboard until it's commercial and there's commercial-grade support and a roadmap, etc.
This is a Good Thing (tm)
From what I understand they are going to try making money off the BT software name by selling the software, or including advertisments. But can't you still just use a different application to access the different BT files online like bitornado etc?
TruePunk | Games
So getting money from a VC is in no way, shape, or form, an endorsement of your idea or your business plan. It just means you're good at talking to VCs.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Obviously the Slashdot crowd is not going to like how some business uses Bittorrent for money. However, this can really succeed if speeds are high. Example: just look at Apple and iTunes... DRM'ed, pricy, yet very successful. This is good news, IMHO.
No, if this were 10 years ago, they would have gotten 100 times what they did.
That you'll skip the commercials. (b/c I would)
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Informative? For recommending that we justify the media organisations' protests about 'piracy'?
Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshipped. Calvin Coolidge
just don't use the official client.
That said, 8.75 million? Wow. That'll buy a ton of dvd-r's.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Now I can dust off my plan to use Paperclips as intercontinental people launchers and my Fart powered hovercraft.
- 1.html
Lets all party like it's 1996!
Actually I do think somebody found a bunch of Cocaine on sale. Don't get me wrong, I think Bittorrent is a wonderful idea and a fine technology. However I am currently wearing a t-shirt from a DotCom that had an idea that they would put ads in their client and make big money. They were stable with a stock price of $26 and a bunch of buzz and lots of Clients, paying clients. Then somebody had a not so bright idea.
The company was Talk City, look them up on http://www.fuckedcompany.com/ one of the more telling posts was this one
http://fuckedcompany.com/comments/html/9373696332
If Bittorrent was the owner of the tech maybe just maybe it could work, but there are better clients and they don't do ads.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
A lot of folks here seem to think BT is primarily used for piracy. This sentiment can be found all over the internet.
;-)
If this is true, why not give the cash directly to the lawyers and eliminate the middle man (BT itself)?
Of course, if I were an attorney prosecuting piracy cases I'd toss in some cash just to help collect the list of people using it-- HTTP Request, meet HTTP Response
Cogito Ergo Sum
Great for the seller, but if i bought ie. a movie i sure wouldn't want to waste my uploading bandwith just because someone else bought the same movie. If i pay for i don't want be a "seeder", it's their job to pay for the bandwith when their selling something. You don't have to pack another customers shoppings in the local grocery store or do you?
Why would a movie studio use BitTorrent instead of just allowing someone to download from their site or from, let's say, iMovies by someone like Apple?
I think the question is: why would I be willing to download a movie using BitTorrent instead of from the movie studios directly?
I'd be willing to use BitTorrent to download a linux ISO (in fact, I just did) when the ftp sites are down, but only because I like linux and most of the people who support it do so for no money. When I download using bittorrent, I'm donating my precious upstream bandwidth to prop up the distribution network for someone else's content. I'm fine doing this for Debian, but there's no way I'm going to let the movie studios use my internet connection.
It's my understanding that Steam (the networked client software that's responsible for managing games from Valve like the popular Half-Life 2) works the same way. When Valve releases a bugfix, a few gamers get to download it directly from their servers, but then Steam functions like a peer to peer network where gamers upload the patch to other gamers so that everyone gets it without costing Valve as much money for bandwidth.
I'm not OK with this.
...will be more cooperative to the protocol. I know my ISP doesn't like bittorrent too much.
For sustaining an upload they cap upload speeds to 14 kbytes from 120 kbytes up.
yeah yeah, you're right. us "evolutionary" non-christians don't get to post first.
Only 'intelligentally' designed christians get first post.
If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants.
I thought we all loved Open Source because it prevented this type of maneuver... looks like that was a farce. Rather ridiculous I say... so why would I want to spend MY bandwith for them to make MONEY? WHY use MY network connection to distribute revenue generating material for THEM!
If you were someone who wants to download something, and you are paying for it, why would you want simultaneously share it, the way BT works now? I'd demand fast downloads, and just shut-off my upload stream completely. Why? Because I am paying.
So the P2P model would not work. On the other hand there are two possible alternatives:
1. Use BT as a infrastructural distribution model - meaning, you'd host downloads in a network of BT seeders for people to download from multiple streams simultaneously, thereby better distribute the download load. You could even use BT itself to propagate the downloads across seeding servers.
2. Use BT to allow people to make money by paying people for their download bandwidth - meaning, if I am willing to upload, then pay me for the amount of data I upload, then I wouldn't mind paying for downloads and sharing at the same time.
When downloading torrents I am paying with my upload bandwidth usage already, which makes it much less desirable for paid content.
But I think the intelligent way to implement banners or video ads would be to include them in the individual torrent or tracker.
Thus the option would be up to the distributor to decide if they wanted ads or not.
Can't believe I'm the first one to say this, but
Step 1: Bit Torrent
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Profit!
You must ALL be new around here!
No problem, just DL it straight from the high speed server, but because the bandwith is not community subsidized, you will need to pay a 40% premium. (for example)
Cheers,
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
Ever wonder if people like this are hired by the MPAA? We know they are out there. Sorry ac1djazz, but when I click on your history of posts, you dont look very trustworthy.
There are not very many posts from this guy and the site he mentions hardly has any registered users or forum entries. Lots of torrents, but seriously who is this guy?
PO BOX listed as address on whois lookup.
Ick.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
'The piracy business is not something anyone can make money on..'
Look at newsgroups, namely alt.binaries.* The people that give pay-per-bandwith access to those servers are making money like there's no tommorrow.
Not like I want to see that be the next thing cracked down on...
Why are all the media corporations such fucking retards? If they don't want me to download the season premiere of The O.C. (third season) two weeks before it airs, then there should exist an Internet subscription that comes with my Cable TV and Cable Internet! (Preferably, it should be just as easy to steal.)
By the way, Trey doesn't die, and Julie Cooper tries unsuccessfully to blame Ryan for his bullet wounds.
La mort, c'est la mort,
Mais l'amour, c'est l'amour,
La mort, c'est seulement la mort,
Mais l'amour, c'est l'amour.
Rant mode.
To be perfectly honest, Bittorrent is an example of a half assed technology that caught on and succeeded because of its success. There's nothing particularly innovative in bittorrent, and nothing even particularly interesting technologically. Distributing things in that fashion was not a new idea, and we know the system has its flaws.
Unfortunately at this point bittorrent's success kind of crowds the market, making it harder for better technologies to succeed. Why jump to a different system when a crude hack can make bittorrent almost nearly somewhat just as good?
And the worst part is that we bitch and complain about Microsoft being in the same position!
$8.75 million... my ass.
dont forget this at the bottom:
"try the litebay alexa toolbar"
offering anything from alexa is one way to get me close the browser as fast as i can.
you guys check out http://www.litebay.org/ yet? pretty good selection, and all are super fast, i got batman begins in 2 hours. -acidjazz
--from litebay.org forum: acidjazz Administrator Registered: 2005-08-22 Posts: 3
Idiot.
All I can say is congratulations to BitTorrent! As far as my own use of it is concerned, it's the best thing to come along since FTP, so I'm happy to see Bram and company hitting the big time with some major VC cash (plus $10 of my own, hee hee). Besides, he's got a kid to support, and I know that isn't cheap!
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
Why not cap download based on history? Say if someone habitually does not seed they take a hit to their download speed. Of course there's a few problems with keeping track of a history legitimately on some people, but the bulk of users would not know how to disable or manipulate such a thing. It would be a very simple change. Say every time they don't seed they take a 5 KB/s hit they can gain that back by seeding and never let the cap go below 5 KB or so? Dialup users for the most part can't really afford to seed if they intend to use their computer.
ads themselves. We make porn. Sometimes we'll make something that we think is clever and entertaining freely available, e.g. a Pirate vs Ninja short we made for a local film festival. People get free stuff they like, we get exposure and hopefully customers, everybody wins.
RIAA: hey Cohen, how do we put poisonned torrents on ThePirateBay, there's way too many people downloading our worthless crap for free?
;-)
MPAA: don't forget MiniNova or we won't get Time Warner's money and Microsoft will never buy in.
Cohen: it'll cost ya $8.75m
#include <sig.h>
allow people to make money by paying people for their download bandwidth
in theory if i were to do this i could pay my content costs, and then some;
in theory could enyone else who has some of the content;
so in theory the costs of hosting on BT would cost more than the profits of the content viewing.
Hate to say it... but... told you so. http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=157847&cid=132 24736
'The piracy business is not something anyone can make money on,' is the most stupid thing I ever read. Are not The Pirate Bay making money? If you think they are not then look at their traffic http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details? q=&url=thepiratebay.org and ask yourself "Is there a website with that much traffic that is NOT making money?". Yeah, I realize that their sponsors, the advertisement companies they use, are among the worst in the industry. Why? Because more serious corporations like Google Adsense does not allow their advertisements to be placed on websites like that. But even though they are using the worst paying solutions in the industry, they ARE making money. Lots of money.
.mp3. Then the MPAA started their propaganda in the media against movie piracy and I rewrote the spider and the scripts and so they automatically removed all movies. Then were was only television shows left, and the MPAA did not indicate they minded that. But later they decided that too was bad and again pushed propaganda on the media, and then there was nothing left to filter away and I closed those sites, contacted the mainstream entertainment industry, tried to get legal deals and found that only the adult industry were willing to allow some content to be distributed by BitTorrent. Today I have several (legal) adult torrent sites.
.torrents make a lot of profit off piracy. That is the truth and we all know it, we just choose to support this and turn the blind eye because it suits us (and also because there IS NO LEGAL ALTERNATIVE that is equally good).
BitTorrent sites are generally not about "being kind" or "we are against copyright or have some other justification". Websites (including BitTorrent trackers) ARE ABOUT PROFIT. And there IS profit in it. I know. I once had sites who, then, had the same traffic as the pirate bay had. It was not a tracker, the sites merely indexed trackers and mirrored their torrents. So it was even "more innocent" than the pirate bay. And I could claim that "we are not hosting this content" and "we are not even tracking it" and therefore me, in fact, in reality, making money off piracy was therefore alright and justified. Then the RIAA started getting angry about music and even though the sites technically were not doing anything wrong it was obvious the money made was made because of piracy. So I choose to remove the music section and configure the spider to ignore
I honestly consider I did consider the alternative: Rent servers in a country like Sweden and engage i major copyright theft. I even made spreadsheets and so on. Even though I got quite pissed off when the MPAA stupidly claimed that sharing television shows is somehow piracy and bad and that alone, apart from the huge profit, made me want to do it, I at length decided that it would be morally wrong.
Why am I telling you all of this? To make a point. There IS a lot of money to be made off piracy. And that is why a lot of people are doing it. I never had a thousand-part of the traffic the pirate bay has today, and I still made a lot of advertisement money off mirroring torrents. Technically that money was not made from piracy, only by distributing hash codes and links as one may innocently claim, but in reality it was made off illegal distribution of copyrighted media files. No matter how much you claim "we are only tracking" or "only mirroring torrents" or whatever, torrent sties and torrent search engines and even normal search engines who pick up
The people who run BitTorrent sites and trackers, legal or not, sites do it because IT IS PROFITABLE.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
One thing that I've thought is missing from BitTorrent for a long time that would give it a huge boost over regular download methods is "Updating Trackers".
With Updating Trackers, the host tracker would be updated to include more files. When this is done, the BT client would get a signal saying "Hey, there's more to download!" When this is done, certain things could happen depending on the tracker and the user settings. You could do one of three settings:
1) Ignore it
2) Prompt the user that there are updates; the user then chooses what, if any, of the new files to download
3) Automatically download all new material.
This feature may not be helpful for downloading, say, software, where you really don't want every version of a piece of software released, but it has many other uses.
First, fansubbing. Often times you'll have to visit a site/newsgroup/chatroom often to see if the latest episode is out (many fansub sites use torrents now,) but with Updating Trackers, you could just set it to download all new files, and receive the files as they are created, with no waiting. The legality of fansubs is always a hot debate, but most people agree that many companies wink at it, as fansubs help to create a large mass of fans in America (and other countries) before an Anime is even liscensed there. (For recent examples, see: Naruto.)
Second, "indie" authors. Authors that create large books, and release them a chapter at a time (regardless of the quality of their work,) generally use sites like FanFiction.net to upload to. While not a bad way, if they gather a growing number of fans, the fans can instantly receive new chapters as they are released, to read at their leisure.
I'm sure there are other uses for such a feature that others will come up with. The only downside to Updating Trackers would be that the hits to the parent site would likely decrease somewhat, because people no longer have to go there to download the latest file. This could be useful to some and detremental to others, depending on how they use advertising.
(I hope I'm not talking out my ass; I don't use BT that often, but I don't think that this feature exists.)
Ive been using the bittorrent client for a few years now and not only have I turned MANY people onto it, but it has helped many of those people understand important things about their boxes i.e. firewalls, port forwarding, configuring routers, etc... Bittorrent definently isnt about pirated (god I hate that word) content. Bram Cohen has stated many times that bittorrent was never intended to promot piracy or help the spread of 'copyrighted' information. Its nice to see that the bigwigs are finally pulling their heads out of their butts and seeing the light of day. The future, as they say is here and its jump on the boat or get swept away by the tidle wave that is freely distributed content. I cant imagine too many of us would be unwilling to pay $5 for a dvd quality copy of The latest Blockbuster smash downloaded at high speed and shared legally. (assuming the MPAA EVER releases another blockbuster smash) or even a few bucks for a copy of our favorite album. Greed is gonna screw this all up of course, but this is an excellent idea, at least on paper. If you could get HD Movies in Bin/Cue format for $5 or 10 bucks from MPAAROCKS.COM that unfortunately (since they are forcing us to go in this direction)are drm'ed to only allow 3 or 4 copies to be made or goto PIRATEHAXORMOFOS.XXX.CAM and get some cropped, blurry copy of the same movie for free, which one are you gonna choose? If they play their cards right and not try to make it a cash and grab (like every other venture) they could actually make a pretty impressive profit by releasing high quality media at affordible prices. .... ...
who am I kidding?
That cash is going to buy Bram A LOT of weed!!
--jownz
Bear in mind that because distribution is less expensive, it could be cheaper to distribute movies, and ideally it would be cheaper to buy.
In the real world however, the MPAA will probably charge more for this "privilege" of hosting their data for them.
Ad-supported content has an obvious meaning, but what does "paid content" mean? I ain't gonna pay fer nothin'!
Steam is server-to-peer only. That's the reason the servers fell over when 6 million people hit them for the HL2 release.
I believe Steam 3 includes a cloud distribution model for mods so that they can be released and patched without nuking Valve's servers, but all Valve content will come straight from a content server and not a client.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
I was thinking along the same lines. Here is a business model I think would work.
1. Install a client app. During installation you are asked how much hard drive space you would like to dedicate to media content. The more space you dedicate the greater the incentives. More on this later.
2. When your computer is idle, the client downloads content to your dedicated space. Most of the space would be dedicated to new releases (let's say 60%) The other 40% is dedicated to popular, older movies and movies you may want to watch based on previous downloads. This content (probally protected with DRM) is not your personal collection but a warehouse. You will always be aware of what content is stored on your computer. If you do not approve of something you can remove it (R rated movies, ect.) Content will be refreshed based on popularity and your connection's ability to download new content.
3. You are rewarded based on how much data you seed and other factors. The price for a new release is $4.00 or 4 points. Let's assume the average movie is 2 GB in size. Not DVD quality but very good. You get 1 point for every 2 GB you upload. You get additional points when the dedicated space on your hard drive is filled with content. Let's say you allow 40 GB of content to be stored on your 300 GB drive. You get 1 point for every 5 GB of data stored. You would only get points on the initial space filled. In my system you would get points based on how long your client has been open and uninterupted for 30 minutes or less. Let's say a half point for a 24 hour period. There would be a limit on how many points you get using this method.
Points could be redeemed towards movie viewings, physical goods, and cash. 2,000 points would get you an iPod Nano or you could redeem your points for cash: 10 points = $2.00
I think this system is a good balance. People who do not want to leave their computer on and distribute content can download media without a discount. Users who leave their computers on 24/7 would get rewarded. My computer is on all of the time and is generally idle. I do run SETI @ home when I am away but it really doesn't use all available resources: network and hardware. A system as described above would reward me for the use of my resources. I could still run SETI because that utilizes the CPU and the media app would utilize my cable modem.
Just my thoughts.
Oh, the app would be cross-platform, FOSS, and the media would only allow the bare minimum of DRM in media files to please the media giants. I guess my plan will never happen. Oh well.
'The piracy business is not something anyone can make money on,' says Ashwin Navin
Hardware makers and blank media makers make money on piracy. Some shady characters on ebay do, too.
What we have now is an open protocol which is already effective at moving large amounts of data around. If BitTorrent moves on to incorporate new security, or ads, or anything else, there's no reason we can't go on using what we've already got.
If the inventor of bicycles was given money by the oil companies to implement motors on those bikes, that doesn't mean people couldn't still ride the non-motorized bikes they already had.
Feburary 2, 1979
You'll also get material you want faster and more reliably, because BitTorrent scales its capacity to meet the demand. Without BT, if the studio distributing an interesting movie trailer has to buy a gigabit ethernet connection, and ten thousand people with cable modems jump on it, you're still only going to get 10 kB/s, and you're fairly likely to get an incomplete copy. On the other hand, with BT, they need to have enough bandwidth to keep the tracker working and get the first copy out to the world, but it's a lot less critical.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
But closing your mouth and taking a big gulp usually fixes the problem and eases your mind.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
...does this mean we'll see an end to the "please donate" pop-up on the client's exit?
Bittorrent is trackable - the person seeding/hosting the .torrent is not anonymous.
.torrent file, you need the tracker to still be running, and you need one of the users in the torrent to still be seeding. I can post a Gnutella link on a webpage and expect it to potentially be useful for years -- with BitTorrent, it would take luck for my link to be useful for a month.
No major P2P systems that I am aware of (other than Freenet) provide anonymity for the person who is knowingly causing infringing data to be retransmitted. Gnutella, FastTrack, BitTorrent, whatever.
The difference between BitTorrent and some of the other popular P2P systems out there (Napster, Gnutella, eDonkey, FastTrack) is that with BitTorrent, anyone that can download a file can determine who else is downloading the file. They already know who is sharing the file.
Many (most?) P2P filesharing clients already do automatic resharing by default, and in all systems that I am aware of, it is very easy to link the original file to any reshared instances of that file. Thus, for the overwhelming number of users out there, the privacy difference between BitTorrent and Gnutella/eDonkey/etc is relatively minor. Granted, a user technically adept enough to disable such resharing can achive a slightly greater degree of privacy in the Gnutella/eDonkey/etc systems, whereas in BT the protocol forces your IP address to be non-anonymous to any other downloaders.
In general, existing P2P systems (with the exception of a few systems designed to be more private, such as Freenet) do not provide much by way of anonymity or privacy, especially considering that there are software development firms engaged to track such behavior.
If someone is really concerned about the possibility of running into trouble over their copyright infringement, the most practical solution (other than, obviously, not infringing) is probably to simply maintain a lower profile. IRC, WASTE, etc -- file transfer mechanisms designed to transfer files between small groups of people -- are probably the best bet. Such smaller scale infringment flew under radar for years before the massive and idiot-proof P2P filesharing systems started raising hackles at publishing companies.
Frankly, at the current rates of litigation, the chances of any infringer actually being sued are quite low. The issue is just that there are so *many* people infringing on copyright that, at least in the current state of affairs, concern about being the one-in-a-hundred-thousand that gets caught and is faced with a couple thousand dollars in fines is probably misplaced.
The Gnutella network is used for piracy and little else, but Bittorrent is a pretty poor choice for such use.
Gnutella provides one very important features that BitTorrent does not -- content-based addressing. I can make a link from a web page to a hash of a file, and as long as anyone anywhere on the GnutellaNet has that file, I can download it. BitTorrent is far more primitive when it comes to locating files -- you need that original
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
Sure the VC uploaded $8.75 million to BitTorrent, but he downloaded $4.25 million at the same time until his U/L ratio hit 150%.
posit: download/shared upload, a movie from Mooveetorrent.com at 1.99$ per .torrent file, compared to a megabuxflix release straight download @ 3.99$ (some figures like that anyway, whatever fits). As joe consumer, would you maybe consider it? Not all would of course, but I bet a lot of consumers would sign on to a deal something like that for legit content they were interested in.
you know what you're paying for? the cost of creating and delivering the product, plus a little extra. if bandwidth costs them more to distribute the product, the product is going to cost more accordingly. uploading is acting in your own interest*, and it is supporting the company that you hope can afford to provide you with cool shit in the future.
*assuming you're on a connection where unused bandwidth is "wasted", not paying $/byte.
eBayDig 1s a typo saerch engien
The problem is TV is free so we're not willing to pay for it, or we're somehow convinced ourselves that we're owed the content...
Ad breaks in the content will pay for the service we want.
Advertisments in the client software will pay for the service we want.
As long as they don't stop us from leaving our chairs and going to the toilet whilst the ads are on, or use popups and botherware whilst we're doing using other apps I don't see what the problem is.
It won't take long for some TV execs to realise that iTunes is winning because its better than the illegal service (I put money on it being the guys at the BBC). If they stop you from fast forwarding ads, demand that you click through to get content, or put more ads in than UK tv, people will go back to pirating content. In return they'll get accurate demographics and viewing figures for the first time in history and an instant international audience. Sweet deal huh?
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
Interesting contraceptive method!
cyn, free software and *nix operating systems enthusiast.