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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....
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
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 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?
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?
i wouldn't worry about potential ads, drm, etc... there are other, more innovative clients out there...
Get your torrents...
will know how to get the stuff for free anyways. Let them make their millions from average joe.
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?
Huh? Bittorrent is trackable - the person seeding/hosting the .torrent is not anonymous. It is also probably the most popular method for downloading Linux ISO images. The Gnutella network is used for piracy and little else, but Bittorrent is a pretty poor choice for such use.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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!
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.
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>
It's a better technology overall, and I'd pay for BT downloads for the sheer factor of supporting something better and smarter. Of course, given a choice between BT and a traditional download, BT ought to be a little cheaper because, as you said, you're paying for some of the distribution costs.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
'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.)
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
Actually, I did.
I'm not saying that what they give you (cash) is worthless - far from it, but many people get excited by the idea that because they've got a VC on-board means they must have a good idea; it's not that easy.
VC's generally know only one thing: what other investments other VCs have made that paid off. Consequently they chase the "next big thing". That's what made the .com bubble: VC's chasing the few success stories and pumping huge amounts of cash into things because they looked good. Anyone with any sense wouldn't have touched many of these ideas with a barge-pole.
VC's are gamblers, pure and simple. They study the odds and the conditions, sure, but at the end of the day, it's not their money and they really don't care as long as the odd gamble comes home big, which is why they always want such a huge slice of the companies they back.
As to taking risks, no. VC's never risk anything. They generally use other people's money. Very very few VC's I met were risking even their own money on their office space. They are usually spending pension-fund money. Which, sadly, is another reason they really don't need to know anything about what they're doing.
As I said: getting a VC on-board means you're good at talking to VCs, nothing more. The money they give you may well get you over hurdles that you would have floundered at before but their expertise and the people they put on your board to "guide" you basically are just ballast and ideally you want to get them off to a golf-course somewhere rather than interfering with your company. They generally do know about golf, so if your company is related to golf or golf supplies, you might find them of some help, but otherwise take the money and ignore everything else they say. If they knew anything about business, they'd be in business.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
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.