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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.'"
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 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.
Seems a good Idea to me.
When TV was commercialized it was paid for with commercials. Bittorrent, like TV is a broadcast medium. It's hard to charge for access to torrents, and someone has to pay for content (either with time or money).
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.
Would you prefer a subscription model?
When you're talking about online content, the only means that a provider has to make money are from you directly or from advertising (or perhaps some combination of the two). Otherwise you're either ripping off their hard work, or expecting them to work for free for your entertainment.
Yes yes, the DMCA and record/movie execs are evil - but rather than rationalizing copyright infringment to yourself, why not just a good old fashioned boycott if you really want said execs to re-evaluate their buisness model?
Since BT is ALREADY free on both sides, where are the dollars coming from? If we were talking a grant to develop better versions I could see it, but venture people usually want a return on their investment.
So again, who's paying? Especially given the, ah... nature of the existing BT audience?
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
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.
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
No, it's actually the opposite (which does help demonstrate that copying isn't theft, even if it's infringement).
See, in a pyramid scheme, the Guy A starts with nothing.
A^2 gives him X.
A^3 gives him X and and A gives A^2 f(X).
A^4 gives him X and and A gives A^2 f(f(X)) and A gives A^3 f(X).
A^5 gives him X and and A gives A^2 f(f(f(X))) and A gives A^3 f(f(X)) and A gives A^4 f(X).
Where f(X) is > X.
As long as it keeps growing, Guy A will be able to meet his obligations. Once growth slows down (Social Security), the system fails.
BitTorrent is the exact opposite.
Guy A starts with X.
Guy A gives A^2 X.
Guy A gives A^3 f1(X) and A^2 gives A^3 f2(X).
Guy A gives A^4 f1(X) and A^2 gives A^4 f2(X) and A^3 gives A^4 f3(x).
Where fn(X) X and sum f1..n(x) = X.
Pyramid schemes just shift content around, BitTorrent rapidly progates new copies of content.
I think I spent way too much time writing this out.
Never confuse volume with power.
Since BT is ALREADY free on both sides, where are the dollars coming from?
Content with ads, and sites where you pay to get the tracker.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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.
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)
the grandparent was not talking about the semantics of seeding one file. he was simply stating that if he was appointed as a seeder, he would have access to all the content (because he's serving it), not someone else, so everyone else would be trying to catch up to all of his content (presumably spread out through other torrents) but they would never be able to have more than him.
Exactly. I paid for the linux kernel by submitting a patch. Many people have paid far more time than me. I paid for the most recent version of Mac OS with money. I paid for both.
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.
4. Market bit torrent to the cable companies.
A bit torrent implementation on existing digital PVR cable boxes could allow the cable companies to offer much more content than exists today on pay-per-view.
70% of statistics are made up.
The ads don't pay for the content you download, though; that is, the money from the ads doesn't pay the copyright holder, it pays Mr. Navin and Mr. Cohen. Movie studios will still charge you separately to download the movie, they'll just use BitTorrent to serve it. So basically, you pay for the movie, watch ads while it downloads, and are constrained by whatever crippling DRM is applied to the content.
I'm not pro-piracy, but that doesn't sound like a very tempting offer.
Slashdot: News for nerds. Stuff tha-- MICRO$OFT IS THE DEVIL!!1
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.