Slashdot Mirror
HBO Attacking BitTorrent
DIY News writes "HBO is actively poisoning the BitTorrent downloads of the new show Rome. In addition to an older tactic of offering bogus downloads that never complete, HBO is now obstructing the downloads offered by other people. HBO runs peers that tell the tracker they have all the chunks of the show, but then send garbage data when a downloader requests a chunk. While the bogus peers can be detected, it will take much longer to download shows."
Rome is actively poisoning my HBO. What a craptacular waste of programming.
Its raining men!
Closed registration torrent sites will be able to weed out the poisoners.
I'll only pirate Showtime shows!!! Yeah, that'll teach em.
Pay for content! You are all hippie theives.
These people would have been owned and disconnected within hours of this being discovered. With the changing of the guard, so too does the changing of morality.
How we know is more important than what we know.
So why can't the client once it realizes that the data is false stop downloading from that source?
Abusus non tollit usum. /There I said it!
Most modern Bittorrent clients will recognize that a peer is spewing garbage chunks, and snub them. Usually the trigger to snub is as little as 3 bad chunks.
So the whole idea that this will significantly increase download times is complete BullShit!
A Fatal OE Exception has occurred, Sig will now reboot.
azereus has this nifty little feature that blocks the IP of any client that sends more than 2 or 3 corrupt blocks of info.
rome wasn't built in a few shows
"Lead my skeptic sight."
they (media sentry really) also sends a C&D letter to your bandwidth provider (say, time warner cable). Which really get's annoying. While I no longer d/l HBO shows online, I'm still debating if I even want to continue my HBO HD subscription (currently leaning towards no)
svefg cbfg
Good for HBO. They have every right to protect their legitimate revenue stream. If we think we can send whatever sequence bytes we want over the p2p networks, I say we extend the same freedom to the fine people at HBO.
At the same time, this is also good for p2p software. I'm sure it will only result in better algorithms for dealing with tainted peers.
I use torrents instead of the TiVo I don't own. I've got fully legit paid for HBO but lately I've been too busy to watch Rome so I've just been d/l-ing them. I wonder how that falls under fair-use?
Your CPU is not doing anything else, at least do something.
Rome wasn't downloaded in a day either, I guess.
Good things take time, so I guess Bit Torrent users will just have to wait a little longer for legitimate video files to become available if they desperately want to see this show.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
HBO is not attacking BitTorrent the program, they're attacking people misusing BitTorrent to share copyrighted material illegally.
It might be worth noting that I was using Azureus and running PeerGuardian at the time of the download.
I'm running Azureus on a different computer now.
In Bittornado, and possibly other clients, there's an option you can check that will ban peers that do this.
prefs -> check [Kick/ban clients that send you bad data]
After at least one failed hash check, the client won't eat any more poison, so to speak.
Okay, I understand why they'd want to do it, or at least some initial reasoning: People are infringing on our copyright (Arrrr!), so we should try to stop them. Thing is, how does this help them at all? Do they really think that people are going to try to download the first episode, realize that it's really difficult, so they'll pay for HBO and start mid-series? Is that their game plan here? I just can't imagine this working. What they've really done is only two things.
1: They've pissed people off, some who may simply download out of spite now, and
2: They're stopping potential customers from seeing their show. I don't have HBO (not sure I can get it here anyway, but let's say I can). So what if I download and episode, realize that I really like it, and want to sign up? Well, they've stopped me from doing that, or at least tried.
So yeah, I just can't imagine how this helps them at all. Of course, I may be way off here, so bring on the torches if you're into that sort of thing.
CC Licensed Serialized Story and Podcast: Ingenioustries
the IP's seem to all be in the range 70.85.*.* fyi. It trival to block them makeing the bt client time out on trying to connect and thus a clean torrent. Further they only send bad data, they do not download.
Yes I do have HBO legally, and I am pissed about this.
You say it like HBO is doing something Evil. I would agree, if they were messing up the protocol, across the board, but, from the article, they are doing this to downloads of their copyrighted material (specificaly, the show ROME).
Perhaps "HBO using technology to counter Copyright Infringment". I mean, really, downloading Rome cant be particularly leagal. It is theirs. Surely this is a good thing. I mean, entities have to be able to protect their property. Argue what you will about the terms of copyright (I would agree they are ridiculous). But this is somone trying to protect something which is currently making them money. And they arent suing anyone, either (yet). I for one, hope they can find a technological way to stop people from using BitTorrent to illeagly download theiri intellectual property, as I tend to prefer those solutions to the far nastier ones that are available (see the RIAA).
I hate to break it to you, they have the copyright to the show. They have full license to distribute the show in any way they see fit. They see fit in distributing the show as a garbled mess over Bittorrent. If you don't like their distributation method, that's YOUR problem. Find another way to watch their show.
Burn Hollywood Burn
That's pretty cute, the use of "obstructing" in the summary. Usually when I hear the word obstructing it is in phrases like "obstructing justice." Obstructing is usually something the criminals do. The word has picked up a pretty negative connotation.
But here, we have HBO obstructing the downloading of their copyrighted material. HBO is obstructing copyright violation. Would you say that a lock obstructs breaking and entering? Or that self defense obstructs assault? Perhaps good server administration obstructs the stealing of private data. Of course you wouldn't say that. It sounds silly. So why is HBO obstructing downloads?
It'll take much longer to download shows oh noes!!!11onetwoten. Guess it's time to queue more shows so I don't run out of things to watch.
..*
Like it matters. Downloaders, at least the ones I know, rarely download "1" thing and let that sit. They usually keep downloading crap overlapping the finishing time. If they can't wait to see a movie for example, for me anyway, I would've gone to the theatre to see it (episode 3), if I am downloading, it already mean I am not in a hurry.
*opens firefox's download history and click some more
Therefore HBO has solved its own problem. They want to impede viewership, and I shall cooperate with them.
It appears that they have forgotten that there's a 500 channel universe out there and a thing called "word of mouth."
Enjoy your show HBO, you're the only ones who'll want to watch it.
The baby's fine -- please stop sending business cards.
are understandable since Rome is their big subscription pitch for the moment. If they can frustrate DLers enough to pay for a subscription, buy or rent the dvd, then they can profit. While many opinionated slashdotters will scoff and say people should boycott HBO, fact of the matter is most people's convictions aren't so strong that they will throw away the time invested in watching the earlier episode. On a positive note, the fact that HBO has some sense of what is going on technologically means that they are that much closer to offering download services of their own.
Groups can release stuff on bittorrent and sign their work digitally. So you would simply get a groups signed catalog and get signed stuff from that. No worrying about accidental poisonin of wrong files by vigilantes and totalitarian governments out to censor. The system will be reputation based, sort of how it was better to get a warez from a reputable group like Razor or APC etc. back in the day. And you knew Phrozen Crew or UCF cracks would work properly.
Reputation of groups should by out of band such as word of mouth, not by the vouching crap people are proposing which requires too much bandwidth, susceptible to astroturing, and other crap.
I suppose infrastructue doesnt exist ot implement pseudonymity/anonymity yet. It's an intractable problem after all.
Easy solution. Dedicate a website to Rome trackers that actually contain other things (like fan-created things). Name them like HBO Rome Episode One.torrent, etc, etc. HBO will ejaculate half their money into lawyers and it'll go down like a burning ship
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
its HBO
To be fair, HBO is very likely planning a DVD release of the entire first season of Rome at the end of the year. HBO probably hopes that you would the purchase the set rather than go thru the hassle of a slower torrent.
2: They're stopping potential customers from seeing their show. I don't have HBO (not sure I can get it here anyway, but let's say I can). So what if I download and episode, realize that I really like it, and want to sign up? Well, they've stopped me from doing that, or at least tried.
Why don't these sites have a notice saying that these entities and types of users are not permitted to access the tracker what so ever with the intent of causing harm. Then when they do, technically they have then entered the system unauthorized which, if im remember correctly, is a federal offense.....
I currently use Newzbin.com to search for episodes... then I download using Xnews... if you have a decent newsserver you should be able to get the episodes rather quickly and for a lengthy period of time. (I actually pay for alibis.com and so I think they have like a 3 month retention policy)
Since in my area of the world we are restricted to 10GB upload and download BT just isn't feasible for me... but I actually prefer newsgroups anyways as it downloads quite fast and I'm sure it's there when I see it.
Addbo
Whatever they do, we'll find a way to circumvent it anyhow! They're just pissing us off, and the thing is, you piss too many of us off, we'll eventually bring them down more than what was already happening in the first place! Catch 22 if you ask me!
http://www.gibby.net.au
Outrage!
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
As I recall it started to get obvious a couple of weeks ago. Rome's a great series I couldn't see without P2P groups. MediaSentry released a 95+% complete fake of the next week's episode onto the networks a week early in order to try and entrap sharers. I tested that release by repairing the 95% downloaded file and it was indeed just silent black video fill-in. Peerguardian lit up like a christmas tree during (and for days after) the download.
I'm curious as to how they can chase people for sharing a file devoid of any content or copyrighted materials like that.
Anyway, it's really not a problem for people that use blocklists and blocklist managing tools such as PeerGuardian.
Now here's a note for the HBO readers. I will pay for your content. I'll buy DVD's of this series and all the other quality TV shows I can only currently acquire 'illegally'. I will also be quite happy to see a little watermark advertisement in place of corporate branding in the corner of the screen. That's some premium ad space you're wasting there - you know this quality material will spread like a virus. And on top of that it's an additional incentive to buy the non-watermarked content when you make it available. Come on, please do get with the programme. Believe it or not we actually want companies that make quality entertainment to succeed in their efforts almost as much as the company executives themselves. The old distribution model is dead. Believe it or not, and scary though it may be, this is actually good news for all of us.
I'm currently overseas and unable to watch HBO, so I've been downloading these shows. It takes about 6 hours to finish one, and I've got all 5. When I download my weekly Battlestar Galactica fix, it usually takes 2-3 hours to finish the same size file. So there is a significant speed decrease. However, it doesn't deter me at all from getting the file, I just watch it on Monday evening instead of Sunday morning. Big deal.
Seriously. I don't think we have any right to copyrighted material. I loathe it when the RIAAs and MPAAs of the world try to curtail copyright infringement by threatening my actual rights. But this doesn't seem to fit that bill. I see no real harm in this, as the "collateral damage" is minimal.
Wouldn't that make HBO in violation of the DMCA by hacking the protocol?
Furthermore, according to the BitTorrent license, shouldn't they release the source of their derivative work?
First of all, the quality torrent is the rare torrent. Quality is the exception to the rule when it comes to torrents. I'm sick and tired of things being compressed to crap for the sake of bandwidth, or being stuffed inside some .exe with a crapload of spyware and God knows what else. I'm also sick and tired of having to wait two weeks for something to download, and finding I've only downloaded maybe 3GB, when I've uploaded 90. Fuck that. I'm sticking to the Use. Sure, a lot of it came originally from some torrent, but at least it filters out the crap, and it never takes more than a few hours to download something of quality.
Game the game! Perhaps this will help the rest of the "entertainment industry" (HBO is one of the few actually entertaining networks these days) understand that there is no way to prevent "piracy" via technical means. There is always a way around any technical "problem" (in this case, BT). By practicing this sort of act, it seems that at least some people at HBO will come to understand this. The only way to win the game, is to provide an easier, BETTER alternative. iTunes is proving this, for example. No, it doesn't stop MP3 trading, but it makes money DESPITE illegal file trading.
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
I think HBO uses level3. Since I have cogent I should be ok, right?
So you mean to tell me that people actually pay for HBO? I think HBO is just trying to stop anyone that is intelligent from really finding out what crap they put out on their channels... If the news gets out, they will lose a lot of customers that simply haven't noticed yet.
Hopefully, this news will alert the subscribers that have been too lazy to quit paying for HBO to stop paying for it right now.
Sure, they have a couple of good shows, but you have to pay for 6 channels 24/7 instead of just the 1.5 hours per week that you really want to watch... fsck that billing method.
See, they have lost more revenue, after all this torrent news, I might pay for downloads so I could watch only the programming that interests me, but I'll not pay for anything from HBO from now on, not even a download... WOW, their tactics are working already
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Now that they're actively uploading on a peer to peer network, let's sue them! Oh, but then they can claim it was fake files, thereby allowing all future victims of litigation to claim the same thing. I've never figured out why peer to peer software developers don't just put some kind of thing to prevent this in their EULAs because then A) People don't get sued into oblivion or B) Software EULAs are invalidated.
Rome IMDB Entry
Whilst this does not particularly concern me, when the Sopranos return I think there will be plenty of people who are unhappy with this practice. I
I know that here in Australia Channel Nine's patronage of this show is pathetic. Often showing one episode and then breaking for many weeks. Downloads become our only option. This of course after probably close to a year of waiting after its screened in the US (they are really slow).
As long as they make a backup copy, I'm fine with it.
So if HBO is poisioning the torrent data, then those people that have ROME data that get a C&D from the HBO Laywers could argue in fact the data wasn't the show, but garbage fetched from a trashbot?
How about a new business model? I'd pay $1 per show to download a real file of the quality of the shows I've seen on the net. You know, the DivX files. Sure in their minds it's worth a $99 box set, but lets be honest... how many millions of people would plunk $1 to download error free, hassle free an episode? Maybe tolerate 2 ads before the video plays. No DRM.
It would then not be worth the trouble to even bother with torrents.
TVoverIP is coming.
Southeastern Virginia REPRESENT!
An assesment no doubt inspired by <A HREF="http://www.archive.org/details/PiracyIsGood" >Mark Pesce</A>. All TV Executives need to watch this presentation.
Car thieves are miffed because auto makers are now installing locks on all cars.
...or...
If you're going to be a thief, don't complain when someone tries to stop you from stealing their stuff. Anyone who complains about this is an immature idiot. HBO spends 10 million dollars to develop, produce, and advertise a show on their premium networks. To recoup the costs, they charge subscribers money. For those that don't wish to subscribe, they sell DVDs in a couple of months, so that you can either buy the DVDs or get them off Netflix or from some other video rental source. HBO makes 20 million dollars from this process. HBO goes on to keep their people employed and continue to make television series and movies.
HBO spends 10 million dollars, and everybody steals their content without reimbursing HBO for any of their costs. 10,000 people lose their jobs because HBO declares bankruptcy.
I know this is an extreme case, but I'm tired of all the whining because a company (or even a person) who produces something that you think is valuable enough to at least steal would like to make some money off of it. Yes, I know they're rich, but if you don't like that, stop buying their product. Why exactly should networks, studios, software developers, or anyone else provide anything of value if there's no benefit to them, i.e. no way to make a living?
I'm a software developer, and if my company doesn't get paid for something, I get laid off.
Grow up people.
I notice that the use of terminology etc reflects and general focus indicates that HBO is doing a bad thing. Really, though, they're getting smarter about fighting those who would distribute their content, to which there will probably eventually be a retaliatory solution (perhaps triple-chunking of some non-corrupt bits, if two people send a correct chunk and one sends a different chunk, person #3 can be banned). Still, we use terms such as 'poisoning' to describe such a method, and call it an attack on bittorrent (which it isn't, just against the unauthorized episodes).
Kettle, meet pot. Personally I'm glad that HBO is finding more intellectual ways of dealing with this scenario as opposed to suing downloaders.
at least hbo isnt sueing kids. but most modern bittorrent clients whont even be effected by garabge data. bitlord shows you the amount of garbage data sent and droped it doesent even make it to your file. at least they tryed lol but most moders bit clients will ban them so it whont efect very many maybe the few running old clients or something.
How is it the same thing? Depriving someone of physical property is not the same thing of making copies of arrangements of electrons.
This is copyright infringement, not shoplifting, burglary, or theft.
I like Rome and am paying to see it (along with other HBO shows). I want to commend HBO for using the technology to fight piracy because they aren't using RIAA scare tactics and aren't trying to stop the transmission of other files.
They did this with six feet under as well.
The posts about clients that automatically kick peers with bad data are off base, because they flood the network with tons of bogus clients. You keep kicking, and they keep feeding you bad data.
Their peers are also extremely aggressive in their offers of pieces of the data. Real peers are trying to trade pieces for stuff they need, and most people in the swarm have limited bandwith. But the hostile peers offer stuff to everyone, push it out through fat pipes, and crowd out the legitimate peers.
The attack depends on being able to hit the swarm from lots of different IP addresses -- that's how they get around autokicks from modern clients. So it's easier for them to hit public trackers than it is for them to hit private trackers that track ratios.
But at the same time, the keys that get embedded in URLs on a lot of closed community sites are a kludge. I think that they could probably use a single client that was behaving reasonably to harvest peer data from the tracker, and pass it to the attacking nodes who could initiate connections. I don't know if they've been doing that or not.
I think we're going to need something like kerberos for torrents -- peers would have to provide tickets to one another before connections could be made.
All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health...
what have the Romans ever done for us?
...
There is not one of us who would not gladly suffer death to rid this country of the Romans once and for all.
...
Bloody Romans! Can't take a joke!
The Admin and the Engineer
Given most seem to have no moral issues downloading copywritten material and the government has been fairly useless on the issue it's probably their strongest defense is to make it enough of a headache downloading that people give up on the practise. It's pure self defense. If people use the downloads for the couple of HBO programs that they do want to see and avoid paying for the service HBO will cease to exist. They ain't backed by the government folks and they don't run paid commercials. I pay for the service so it's unfair for others to avoid paying and threaten the existence of the service. If some one was standing at the fire exit of a theater and letting in large numbers of people to see the movie free would you have a problem with this? It's not fair to the paying customers and if most people in the theater aren't paying the theaters and filmmakers will go broke. Not all filmmakers are rich. As a direct result of foreign piracy and dying foreign markets my last film lost money. I can't aford to make another. There is a downside and it is hurting people. Mostly the independents who can't fight back.
Rome wasn't BitTorrented in a day.
144l. ph34r my 133t l3g4l 5k1lz!
I am sure if anyone has a problem with getting the show though BT they can always use the mule :P
GO THE MULE!
"The most dangerous creation of any society is that man who has nothing to lose." - James Baldwin, American author
When you leave your name and IP address in the letter, doesn't it defeat the purpose of posting AC?
Dear "Media Sentry"
I don't know what the fuck you are talking about. Fuck you mister.
1) Your analysis is based on bad assumptions so your result is way off. 2) You're a sick bastard for fucking a horse.
What do you mean, "depriving someone of physical property"?
The people who run the bookstore are only interested in the books as items to be sold, not as interesting articles in themselves.
I've got a degree in history. But, up here in Canada it is illegal or impossib;e to legally subscribe to HBO. I've been downloading every single episode and I'll buy the goddamn DVD as soon as it is released. What the fuck do they think they're doing, and surely they realise that they are only shooting themselves with this.
Pah, I'd rather watch a show on the post Sullan restoration government anyways.
Tom
Cause the vast majority of people who watch HBO don't give a shit if they're poisoning torrents or not. That's something that a very small community of people get their panties all in a bunch over. The ratings of their programming will be unaffected by any actions they'd take to prevent copyright infringements; rather, they'll be decided primarily on whether or not people find the programming they present to be entertaining and compelling.
When will media companies get it.
I am more than willing to pay for shows - but make them available to me in the following ways/manner:
1) Don't artificially hold back on releases (Australia sometimes does not get shows for 6-12 months)
2) Make it available to watch on MY time scale
3) Not Streaming Only - DRM it if you think that will help, but P2P shows that it wont.
4) Don't over price it. AUD $1-$2 per show episode is acceptable - distribution could be achieved via P2P.
When will these fools get it?
Do the following really mean anything? SCSA MCP CCSA CCNA
--I'm not actually after an answer!
this explains so much. I thought I had just downloaded a really crappy new HBO show of the bit torrent network, but now I realize that I must have gotten the "junk data."
This is just evolution of a strategy the WB has been using for years where they broadcast junk data to prevent people from videotaping their programming.
ôó
T1 line = $500/month
Poisoning Rome BitTorrent seed, and slowing down theft = $0
Logging all the file traders stealing your Copyrighted content = Priceless
/^([Ss]ame [Bb]at (time, |channel.)){2}$/
I started watching Rome after a friend got an unsolicited DVD from HBO in his mail that had the first episode of Rome. I really liked it and wanted to get into the series, but it's the kind of show where you have to watch the episodes in order. So I had no choice but to download the first five episodes from my commerical usenet feed :)
I did however watch the sixth episode "regularly" on HBO, so I guess their tactic gained them a viewer. Then I immediately downloaded that episode so I could have a complete collection. Next Sunday, I'll probably be on my couch watching the seventh episode as it airs. And then I'll download it, too.
I'm not sure what the moral of this post is. Perhaps that "pirates" and legitimate customers are more closely intertwined than the simplistic among us would like to admit.
The people who run the bookstore are only interested in the books as items to be sold, not as interesting articles in themselves.
I didn't say anything about interesting articles. In fact, I didn't say anything about the books other than them being physical property.
Good for them. I would do the same. You would do the same.
Bandwidth that could be used for good bit torrent usage, like downloading linux ISOs and video casts. I'm assuming HBO is mucking about with those.
Dear HBO, I love your programming. But cable TV is way too expensive? Won't you please offer your shows for download via BitTorrent for $20/mo? I'd pay it. A lot of other people would too, if it meant legal torrents. So why not evolve rather than viciously trying to protect your antequated push model of content distribution?
Outrage!
How dare anyone criticize HBO for taking the law into its own hands?
Maybe Amazon should just start hacking web sites they believe are violating their one-click-shopping patent. Microsoft could stop suing little web sites for trademark violation and just shut them down with massive denial of service attacks. Paramount could stop sending cease-and-desist letters and, instead, close down Star Trek fan fiction websites by downloading so much that the owners couldn't afford the bandwidth charges.
If you feel like you're being discriminated against at work, don't go to HR: just sabotage the work of the person you believe is discriminating against you. If you see neighborhood kids cutting across your yard, just put punji sticks throughout your yard. You're a victim, so you're above the law, whether it's the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act or laws against booby traps.
Let's stop all of this stupid "due process" thing and just go to vigilante justice, booby traps, and corporate bullying. Yay!
I'd sue myself if I was caught torrenting this tripe.
The people who are actually downloading the show Rome deserve the garbage data they're getting.
I don't know where you get your legal advice. Anonymous Lawyer?
Rome sucks, it's by far their worst show in 10 years.
I use Torrents to download legal things like linux isos and video clips and copylefted music like mine.
I also use it to download the occasional missed episode that I can't tivo.
how exactly does the license work for stuff you send out over the free air waves work?
"we're beaming this into outerspace, but you can't download it from the internet because we could theoretically charge you for it. We don't want to do that because we can't quite figure out a business model that involves what people want."
CBS, NBC, ABC, FOX, UPN, WB, HBO, SHO: offer for download for a nominal fee, $1.50 or so, HD episodes with DD sound of your shows on your website in a reasonable format (not Real Media) with decent high quality compression, and I guarantee people will use it. I would consider downloading a complete season for $1.50 an episode.
They're using their grammar skills there.
I downloaded ep1, peaked into it, and deleted it. They should go on poison it. Nobody wants that show anyway. crap crap, double crap.
"Freiheit ist immer auch die Freiheit des Andersdenkenden" - Rosa Luxemburg, 1871 - 1919
It's a sad state of things when comments like this aren't rated higher.
Remember folks, slashdot doesn't have a -1 "disagree" moderation!
That which costs little is less valued. Just imagine if the same thing had happened to the Firefly DVDs. We probably would not have the gift of Serenity. That being said, I have no reservations about downloading crap that I would not have paid for in the first place.
I just downloaded Rome off of Bittorrent, promoted the series on my blog because it was good, and was about to sign up HBO for my new place because of it. Take that as you will; it's just a datapoint.
And to be honest, if I were HBO, I'd be doing something 10 times as nasty to people (like myself) stealing from me (HBO).
Anyway, go see Rome, it's really good.
Why isn't there a clause in BitTorrent saying that if you deliberately upload fake/poisoned material, you are in violation of its terms of service and now must pay $50,000 or something? The RIAA can get away with ridiculous fines for software piracy, can't the P2P program owners levy ridiculous fines against people trying to prevent piracy?
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 SU CK IT MP AA
I'm aware of some very very large server connected to extremely high speed connections who's sole job is to stream damaged versions of popular music specifically to currupt as many torrent sites as possible.
I actually like this approach. There's something of the payback built into it.
What a waste of time though, over just getting a decent business model that pays the artists, provides value to the consumer, and gets the media business out of the plastic and paper shipping business.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
Romanes eunt domus!
I seem to recall that the armies of Rome encountered a lot of asymmetric warfare as few disgruntled barbarians could actually put up a fight against them. That included the cowardly poisoning of wells. I guess history repeats itself... Except, it's the other way around?
So if you took a two week vacation, it's OK if I break into your house or apartment and crash for two weeks as long as I leave it in the condition you left it.
Ditto if I do that to your parents when they take a vacation. Maybe I'll leave a few bucks for gas, etc. OK?
Which law?
Booby traps are (usually) illegal. Posting false information online is not. I'm unsure, what you mean by "corporate bullying", but it, most likely, is not illegal either.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
They started doing this with the last season of Six Feet Under and Entourage. Switching to Azureus fixed it.
By using the service they are promoting BitTorrent, not attacking it.
You see, they've accepted that BitTorrent is a legal program (otherwise they wouldn't use it, right) and are instead attempting to attack the illegal users of the product with misinformation.
IE the BATTLE of the P2P program is OVER!
Long live P2P! HBO believes in it!
This not legal?
Instead of suing, instead of attacking people, they simply subvert the standard and lie to copyright-breaking users.
While I do agree that HBO ought to simply provide a $ per show cost and sell it as unencumbered files online. If anything, doing this is ethical compared to the droves subverting copyright (which they have permission to use).
MOVE ON. NOTHING TO SEE HERE.
Huh? That doesn't make sense. Stealing books OR downloading movies online is NOTHING like breaking into someone's premises. Now you're talking about three totally different, unrelated things.
Please, consult a dictionary ASAP.
Last time I checked, my BT client watches for bogus peers and bans anyone who sends too much garbage. I think it's something low like 10 packets or so. HBO is just wasting bandwidth like a mothercluck, because the junk packets fail the hash check and are dropped automatically. Yes, it wastes time, but it doesn't corrupt the file unlike Kazaa spoofs.
;)
It's a double-edged sword really. If the programming were better I might actually want to get the extra channels, but on the other hand if their programming turns to even worse puke, people won't bother sharing the videos. Tough decision
-Billco, Fnarg.com
And hence, I pointed out that he made an uninformed statement by doing so.
I heard about BSG from a friend. I went and bought the miniseries. My wife and I both love the show.
Here's the rub. We don't have cable. We canceled it last year because we were out of town so much and just never turned it back on.
I downloaded all of season 1 and we watched it. We just bought the Season 1 box set. We also bought the soundtrack cd. We're doing the same thing with Season 2 and waiting for the box set.
I can't justify spending 60 bucks a month on cable to watch one show that I like. I'm begging Sci-Fi Network to create a way for me to pay to download the episodes. I would even sit through the commercials if they were a part of the download. Just gotta be able to play it on Linux since that's what my media center is.
If I were a television programmer I would rail against the cable companies for all they're worth to break my channel into a ala cart package. It might create more veiwers. If I'm a cable company, it's revenue that I wouldn't be seeing anyway.
I heard about Carnivale on slashdot because Ronald Moore wrote several episodes. I downloaded the first season to see what it was all about. I loved the show (even if it was a bit slow at times). I bought the first season DVD and download season 2 episodes when I find out that HBO has cancelled the damn show!
Let me say this. I'm not going to pay for cable. It's a waste of money for 3 channels that we want (sci-fi, BBC and A&E - my wife loves Poirot).
And while I'm posting this anon, it's not worth tracking me down with lawyers. I don't have the shows I've downloaded anymore. Once we watch an episode we delete it.
This is the kind of fight I can respect. The wholesale purchase of legislation results in massive collateral damage and unintended consequences. This kind of fight leads to advances in information science. Regardless of how you feel about the copyright expansion and enforcement battle, you've got to love a spirited fight.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Stealing is stealing. You p2p criminals are the ones trying to make artifical distinctions. I'm trying to show that playing that game doesn't get you off the hook.
People make a living off writing, acting, producing, editing, and marketing intellectual property. They depend on sales from their self-selected audience of interested customers. If the audience doesn't like their work and decides not to buy it, that's tough, they didn't do a good enough job. But if the audience decides to steal their work instead of buying it, the model breaks down. People lose their jobs, creative output goes down (or becomes more mediocre), and society loses in the end. We get more frustrated creatives heading off to law school.
Right you are! They've just started an arms race, is all, and one they can't win, if they'd only studied a little evolutionary biology instead of entertainment law or how to get ahead by giving head. Nature teaches there are always more hungry parasites than fat hosts, and the only long-term winning strategy for a potential host is to reach a cooperative agreement with the parasites, co-opt them, draw them into defending you or servicing you in exchange for the blood they suck.
Should I be sued for enfringement... (doubtful seeing as the IP I used was owed by a FREE access point), nonetheless, I will be purchasing the DVD and would be MORE than happy to download a legal copy (including commercials, & advertisements). Currently however I don't stay at home long enough to watch the shows my Tivo records. I am currently NOT a subscriber to HBO. Sorry, but an extra $20/month is far too much for me to pay for 2 days worth of tv per month. It might be a wise idea however if HBO Inc. Uploaded a "preview" of the next show to come, or better yet, upload a FULL show (full of advertisements) and track the number of downloaders for their advertisers intrests. (Just no viagra commercials, I get enough of that in my e-mail). To help you in your search, my mac address is 00:00:00:00:00:0F, and my netbios hostname is "ThinkPad". Enjoy! :-)
Let's do some math:
Now lets see, HBO has at least four decent series, and I'll let you do the math. I think $4/download for each hour long series they do would compensate them more than enough.
It's time media companies adapt and grow up.
- Nolan Eakins
let them poison their shows. It's *THEIR* copyright, isn't it?
They're not doing anything "evil". Just let us download legal stuff in peace.
There is still the concept of innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. You know, a trial by a jury of your peers. I would imagine they'd have a very difficult job trying to prove something like that. 2.4k worth of data? That is hardly evidence. Who says it wasn't an accident doing that specific bittorrent?
I've had bad experiences on the web clicking on stuff I never meant to, such as a simple mouse click on a given link. With Internet speeds getting very high, well, enough said when trying to stop the download or page load. (I guess that is a good thing for those wanting to spread maleware and the like.)
Check all incoming chunks against a hash, and request that hash value from all peers. Original hash values are stored in the original torrent. Ignore the clients that don't match the hash values.
Thwarting piracy is impossible. You need to adapt. Embrace the Internet.
When will companies begin to realize that they're fighting a losing battle? All these whole-hearted efforts with half-assed results are like taking half a bottle of antibiotics. That which does not kill P2P only makes it stronger. P2P isn't going away -- ever -- and it's pretty well invulnerable to legislation until the day that one government rules the world.
Maybe we need to revise copyright and media ownership rather than grasping for something that's effectively intangible? It's not the popular idea but it's the only viable one.
this really doesnt piss me off. the resson being is that i have HBO anyway with my cable package. i use my time warner DVR to record rome evrery week and watch it after it is aired. what would really piss me off and make me download it to watch is if they decided to delete my show ( like the new tivo) without me consenting.
you reallly should subscribe to HBO, its not that expensive and they have awesome programming. Entourage, movies, rome, comeback, sopranos (re-runs). HBO rocks.. i would pay for the programming any day.
sadly, the only people suffering here because of this "poisioning" is the people tha subscribe, and dont have a DVR to record what they missed. sometimes even if you buy it it justifies downloading.
it would be just as illegal to destroy HBO's physical property but no one is suggesting anything of the kind.
copying does not equate to destroying property.
Science : Proprietary , Knowledge : Open Source
But there was a time when HBO showed movies. Several "movie" channels actually showed movies 24 hours a day with only previews for movies between them. Then HBO started showing a lot of crap like Rome and this new channel came along called... "The MOVIE Channel (TMC)" and they showed movies- just movies. One month they showed almost 500 unique movies (including the old Boston Blackies!). I know it's hard to believe these days but it's true!
... GET THIS... MTV only showed music videos 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Get out of town!
And
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
As long as they don't do it to Deadwood, I don't care.
our written thoughts are gifts to our future selves
..need more Plebs
?
that this may simply be a clevers means of viral advertising for a shitty show?
You can download all their crappy movies from real networks for 9.99 a month or something. So it is being done, but hardly very popular I would think.
Here's why:
1) With a chunk size of 256KB, typical for a 350MB show, only 75MB of bandwidth would be wasted in your scenario. Hardly a major slowdown
2) Blacklists such as PeerGuardian will quickly block the HBO IP addresses, and users of such blacklists won't be affected at all
3) Decentralized tracking helps against this since peers wouldn't report bad peers when queried.
They're going about this all wrong. What they should be doing is acting as peers with none of the file. If you flood a swarm with 100 malicious BitTorrent clients, you could do a lot of damage to swarm capacity. Here's what I'd do:
1) Have each client connect to AS MANY peers as possible. All that will allow them to connect. Lie to the tracker about whatever is needed to get connected to as many peers as possible
2) Actively seek to download chunks from other peers, but never upload
3) Report, to each peer, that the client now has available the chunk it just downloaded. This makes it impossible for a peer to detect bad nodes based on the fact that they never increase in progress even though they are downloading
The goal of this is to waste as much upstream bandwidth as possible so that others suffer. While their current methods can affect some people, anybody who has a PeerGuardian type plugin is totally unaffected, and those that don't aren't affected much. If those clients are actively seeking to suck up the swarm's upload capacity, they affect everyone, PeerGuardian or not.
The only trick is to try to get around the tit-for-tat rule. Yes, I know there is no such rule, however in practice it works out; clients are much more likely to upload to you if YOU are uploading to THEM. One possible way around this might be to upload real legitimate data to everyone possible. A peer sending data at 1KB/s for brief periods every few minutes isn't going to help much, but it could potentially suck up a lot more bandwidth.
Don't get me wrong, I think HBO is fucking stupid to be doing this. I was just looking at it as an interesting mental puzzle.
This is why I love my OnDemand service with Time Warner, is that I can start and stop it anytime I want.
This is good. It will force the protocol to adapt. Think of all the legitimate users of bittorrent who gain all of these improvements made necessary by the copyright infringers.
More like lose your Internet access. It happened to me once with Adelphia. I am stuck on dial-up now since I have no other broadband options.
I love HBO's new Rome series as well, but I don't have a Tivo or VCR. And if I want to watch them again......
So, I watch and then grab it off Bittorrent incase I want to watch it again.
If you want sex and violence in togas, might I suggest Suetonius' Lives of the Caesars? I don't get HBO, so it works for me, and while it's not the most accurate book in the world, it's mostly good and reads well. Good translations (Graves and Edwards) are cheap; the original Latin and maybe some older translations are floating around on the Internet. Enjoy the actual Romans if you don't get HBO.
People outside the US eg Australia, can't get HBO, or even the Sci Fi channel for that matter. I'd love to be able to download shows, for $2-$3 per episode (what the stations currently get per user in advertising). I'm eagerely awaiting the results of the BBC's trial with the hope they open it up to users outside to Britain for a paid fee. It can take 1-2 years for shows from the US to get to us here, and when they do arrive the stations chop out "non-essential" bits of the show to fit more ads in. They also show the shows out of order, and mix old and new episodes. Channel 9 here in Australia lost many viewers by interjecting a "best of" section in the middle of the last season of friends. If I could order US cable or Satelite here I would as ours sucks, there are 2 two cable companies but both show exactly the same shows and are hugely expensive.
I want to see: "HBO spends 10 million dollars, and everybody steals their content without reimbursing HBO for any of their costs. 10,000 people lose their jobs because HBO declares bankruptcy." With all the copyright infrigement of the world, its not going to happen anytime soon. People sill watch the TV, then its aired, with all the sponsor paid content, on their cable subscribed channels, etc.
:)
;) And they would get a huge pr bonus for "getting it".
Those who download are most likely the enthusiasts who have already seen the show but couldn't or weren't willing to tape them at first as they weren't sure it was that good. Or, those who don't have any means of watching HBO current programming anytime soon (people not living in USA, etc.), which in many cases fall outside the draconian corporate of america rulings (ie: try to sue foreigners all you want).
From the technical point of view this is hardly news, in fact its beyond boring. "ppl doing massive poisoning, bleh". Bittorrent is highly resistant to poisoning, this is not your average p2p protocol. The most you can do is to fool people into wrong torrents (reading user comments about a torrent is often good enough), but there is nothing they can do about the good ones; short of collecting IP addreses and having fun sending C&D letters to russia and sweden.
I can't wait to see a respective Piratebay legal threats HBO letter
In short this is the same old and tired "lets fight what we don't understand" instead of learning how can this technology actually benefit them. As with much p2p trading, more to our sadness, the usual effect is the opposite. Instead of losses, they get lots of popularity for free advertising and distribution of their shows, which end driving up sales of related merchandise or higher quality dvds, soundtracks, etc.
They should, instead, offer official bittorrent downloads, and show ads in their tracker and posibly a couple of regular tv ads in the video itself; perhaps offering syndicated releasing using rss+torrent as a part of the experience.
With this, hardly people would need to release their own "illegal" encodes unless their quality was really bad
It doesn't matter if they don't "get it" now, im sure time will force them to rethink this whole going against your own supporters policy. Even if it takes the old dinosaurs to go.
As it is, p2p is only going to improve, not lessen. The more they attack it, the more robust and anonymous it will become. They can keep fighting machines as luddites did, or they can study how this new situation can benefit us all.
In any case p2p sharing is not going to decrease anytime soon. More and more generations are simply getting used to it, you can't just keep fighting everyone forever, things will change and they will have to accept and adapt or disappear.
Artix
Your Linux, your init.
How long before they start sending data that has the correct hash? Just how strong ARE the hashes used by Bittorrent?
I recall a story of a math stutent getting a cease-and-desist letter, and losing his campus connection because of a file named 'matrix.xls'.
Don't forget 4'33, an audio track that is 273 seconds of silence, and well protected by copyright.
Honestly, if HBO gives every appearance of releasing 'Rome' to public networks, by having someone in their employ distributing a file that purports to be such, are they not in fact authorizing it's release?
That is, if you were to put out a sign next to a plate of free nearly-expired cheese, saying 'Free Cheese', and there happened to be another plate of fresh cheese that you intended to sell for profit that was unlabeled next to it; would you have any legitimate claim that someone who took cheese from the wrong, but indistinguishable plate, was stealing?
i respect HBO for taking this approach to fighting the piracy of their property. go for them. yeahhh HBO cyber-weenies... granted, the folks over at sky-1, and sci-fi figured out how heavily pirated their battlestar galactica recreation was, and had the brainstorm to make it legitimately available (in limited quantity, and only certain episodes) on their website... it's amazing, instead of the major drop spike in viewers all of these piracy groups say dissemination of episodes over the internet would cause, they saw a massive upspike, as word of mouth, and trading eps caused people to want to watch their show... look, it's just one of many ways to embrace the new digital age of communication, and syndication... HBO has every right to be pissed off about people taking something they don't want to give away for free (remember, HBO doesn't have commercials, but you do have to pay for it to watch it at home in the first place, above and beyond most cable/satellite base plans) i wish HBO's answer indeed was to offer it to us on a free basis, but i can not argue their right not to... nor their right to take legal, and legitimate action to combat it. in fact, i applaud their method of combatting this threat to their bottom line in the manner they have chosen to. they are not taking it to the court room (it's already been hashed out there plenty, it's a matter of adding their name to a list of complaintents....) but rather to fight it head on, and realistically. they aren't trying to shut down the bit torrent source code, or program. but rather they are fighting the specific people trying to bootleg, or pirate their property. next to no money spent fighting it, and they feel better. excellent.
they'll also log the IPs of clients that download the "bad" data from them, for later use in legal warning letters. Saves them connecting to the trackers on a regular basis.
... it's all good.)
Yes, you can block most of the bad peers. Yes, you can improve the throughput that way no end. But there are other tricks they can use -- for instance, they could say to their employees, "If you want a $200 bonus, take this executable home and run it on your broadband-connected computer for the next couple of weeks, without turning off the computer overnight. Then bring us back a small file that it'll generate, and we'll see that you get the money in your next pay packet."
And as far as I'm concerned, it's a very clever way of fighting back. This is the first shot, ladies and gentlemen; grab the popcorn, it's going to be fun to watch. (For the record: I'm in full agreement with HBO's actions here. They have the right to do this, and they aren't harming anybody who isn't involved
I'd pay $5-10 a month to HBO if I could access all their content online -- I'm addicted to Real Time and I love Deadwood. However, I'm not going to pay the extra $20 for digital cable, which is full of shit content and shittier commercials, in order to pay $10 for something I want.
HBO didn't start poisoning torrents with "Rome". It started with season 5 of "Six Feet Under". I live in Australia, where SFU is shown - eventually - on free-to-air television, but it's shown months after my friends watch it in the US, so I tend to grab the episodes off the torrent as they're shown on HBO. With the beginning of series 5, I noted that I was getting 2x the hash errors than I was receiving good chunks. I knew that it must be HBO "poisoning" the torrent.
Whether it's good or bad, it's certainly within their capabilities to do so. The danger for HBO is that it is forcing BT clients to evolve in interesting ways to avoid this kind of manipulation. SafePeer anyone?
The raw, honest truth is that anything that is broadcast - via airwaves or cable - is up for grabs. HBO doesn't yet understand that the real money is to be made in licensing - DVDs, soundtracks, decorative "Rome" wall hangings, what have you. That's where they'll need to earn back the $100M they spent on the series, because it's growing increasingly impossible to force people to watch something through a proscribed channel once it has been broadcast through _any_ channel.
Amazon.com sells HBO's original shows on DVD. Instead of stealing it, go ahead and buy the DVDs. That's what I do. You do not have the rights to access a recent work of art if the creator of it does not grant it. i.e. You do not get HBO, or your HBO license does not allow you to time-shift the show. Since HBO doesn't have advertising, the only sources of revenue come from paying subscribers and, to a much smaller extent, those of us who purchase the shows on DVD.
If you want to download a movie, go grab Star Wreck: In The Pirkinning. The creators of it allow anyone to download their movie and watch it at any time.
If people keep up with the attitude that they are "entitled" to others' work of art and continue to use BitTorrent and other file-sharing software to obtain it, this will create more regulation, lawsuits, and laws which would eventually stifle file-sharing and stop legitimate distribution of movies - i.e. Star Wreck.
I actually have no desire to watch this perverse show. However, since HBO is actively trying to block people from downloading it, I've changed my mind. It's now my goal to have it downloaded by this weekend. Everyone knows that's the oldest marketing trick in the book. Make something hard to get so that people want it even more.
Does God treat us as servants or friends? Check my homepage.
Fine, people trying to kill Bittorrent altogether because some people use it for copyright infringement is bad. But for christs sake, HBO puts a ton of money into those episodes and it deserves to get paid for them. It's illegal and immoral to download them, and I think it's perfectly fine to attack transfers of obviously copyrighted material.
How do you justify it morally? On a very small scale, filling in an episode you haven't seen, sure, no big deal. Massive redistribution of an entire series is obviously going to harm HBO, whose only crime was creating something which people like to watch. Do you think that HBO is some soulless bunch of corporate assholes who deserve to get screwed? Where do you draw the line between small artists and these corporate assholes? HBO hires the best screenwriters, directors, actors, and technical people in the business, and the result is the show that you like to watch. Do you think you're benefiting anyone by downloading it for free en masse?
What do you think will happen if no one enforces their legitimate copyright, and everyone has push-button access to free copies of Rome. Fast-forward to a time when most houses in America would have the ability to watch freely downloaded episodes on their TV, as an alternative to subscribing to HBO. Do you think HBO will make money? Do you think they will continue to make high-budget shows when their subscriber base shrinks? Their most likely source of income is incoporating ads into the scripts in a way which is impossible to skip, like references to how well Tide gets their togas cleaned. Is that better than paying for HBO?
The technology isn't wrong. But don't go bullshitting yourself thinking that downloading copyrighted material anonymously and in large quantities is somehow justifiable.
What do you think will happen if no one enforces their legitimate copyright, and everyone (not just technophiles) has push-button access to free copies of Rome on their TV, indistinguishable from the original? Do you think HBO will make money? Do you think they will continue to make high-budget shows when their subscriber base shrinks because no one has the incentive to subscribe?
Their most likely source of income would be incoporating ads into the scripts in a way which is impossible to skip, like references to how well Tide gets their togas cleaned. Is that better than paying for HBO?
The technology isn't wrong. But don't go bullshitting yourself thinking that downloading copyrighted material anonymously and in large quantities is somehow justifiable.
Most P2P applications already have anti-poisoning mechanisms, anyways - like E-Mule. They just use md5 hashes (ie checksums) on segments of a file, say every one-tenth of the file. If the data is bad, it gets thrown out.
This happened way before unscrupulous corporations got clever. Files get corrupt all the time in transmission for lots of reason, be it client-side or network.
Bottomline - nice try, HBO, but you are just wasting everyone's time and bandwidth, including yours.
Actually... I say, Go ahead and do this HBO... I'll aplaud them! they haven't sued anyone... all they are doing is trying to prevent people from sharing copywrited works! This is perfect, and this is what the MPAA should do... not sue people...XD
to do anything worth their while. Maybe in the short run they'll discourage some of the downloads, which is good for them. But in the long run, let's consider the likely possibilities:
1. Bittorrent is a great distributed protocol to distribute content. It can be modified to instantly block ips that provide bad data. This may slow down the protocol overall a bit, but it should be quite possible and it WILL prevent these "geniuses" from f'ing up the authentic data from the original uploader.
2. As they are doing this, many people around the world are connecting to the www and finding out how to download content.
Perhaps instead of petty attempts such as this, they will figure out a way to distribute their content effectively and cheaply while still making enough profits. People shouldn't have to be charitable to these companies by not downloading. Yes, I know they need money to make content, many people, especially outside the US, do not feel morally bad to be downloading their content.
I don't care about this as 'Rome' is rubbish....but what it probably means they'll be doing it for season 3 of 'Deadwood', too, which IS a tragedy.
I'm sure one could draw a historical parallel between lead poisoning & bad hashes, if one were less lazy than I.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
If you're going to be a thief, don't complain when someone tries to stop you from stealing their stuff. Anyone who complains about this is an immature idiot.
No, there's still a reason to be worried about this, even if you're a staunch supporter of copyright. This tactic can be applied to any torrent. Today it's HBO interfering with illegal downloads of the show they're trying to sell to subscribers, but tomorrow it could be Microsoft/SCO interfering with legitimate downloads of Linux ISOs, or the MPAA interfering with some independent director who's chose to distribute his film over the internet. Eventually, BitTorrent client authors will have to solve the problem.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
No matter whether HBO's reasons are legitimate, they are actually just executing a simple denial of service attack on BitTorrent, one that can be handled by blocking a range of IP adddresses. As long as people need to do that manually, it will keep many people from downloading, but this particular attack is easy to detect and prevent automatically.
What a bunch of assholes!
Now if they produced shows that didn't SUCK I might give a shit.
What HBO is doing is what every business should be doing instead of taking the RIAA's route.
That's called "vigilante justice", and there are laws against it. Maybe HBO's particular denial of service attack on BitTorrent is both harmless and specific in this case, but the next attempt at vigilante justice may end up shutting down the OpenSuSE distribution as a side effect.
HBO's actions amount to computer hacking and denial of service, and they should be treated as such by the legal system. On the other hand, if HBO wishes to claim copyright infringement, they should bring legal cases; nobody other than a court of law can determine whether copyright infringement has taken place.
No kidding... it's hard for some people to even consider the fact that HBO IS IN THE RIGHT!
The issue is not whether HBO is (formally) in the right--they probably are. The issue is that whether HBO is in the right, as well as the remedies, are a matter for a court of law to determine. We don't want a world in which companies decide for themselves whether they are in the right and then decide for themselves how to enforce the rights they themselves have determined they have.
I'm getting soooo sick of this sense of self-entitlement... "give me everything for free" attitude.
Many companies have that attitude, and they have the lobbying power to get their free handouts. Laws like the DMCA and the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act are such an egregious violation of the fundamental social contract behind copyright laws that, ethically, these companies don't have a leg to stand on as far as I'm concerned.
In Capitalist America,
Supermarket produce, slice YOU!
You do have a super savers card don't cha? sweetchops
why is it acceptable for a company/person to take the law into their own hands when it's copyright, but not when i catch someone breaking into my car and i give them a beating? thats what the real outrage here is. these movie studio's think just because it's their precious copyrighted works, they are some how justified in anything and everything they do.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
This is because HBO is one of the first networks to start distributing their shows via iTMS after the release of the iPod video in October. Where else do you think they got the smarts for corrupting bittorent?*
*This is totally made up
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
Definately insightful.
Like everyone else, by paying for it - or getting into the AU Market.
Do you really think I LIKE going to all the effort of getting my favourite TV shows of BT.
NO - I'd much prefer to just sit down and watch them on the TV.
But no - rather than make it POSSIBLE for me to watch it legit, they continue to make it harder for me to watch it at all.
GRRRR ARRGGHH!!
Which reminds me - I have to go and see Serenity at the cinema where I can PAY to watch it.
EMail: 0110001101100010010000000110001101110010 0110000101111010011011100110000101110010 0010111001100011011011110110
I downloaded the first six Prison Break episodes, after watching the first, I was hooked, so I watched the rest. After that, I was excited to watch the next one so I did the unexpected... I WATCHED IT MONDAY NIGHT @ 9PM ON FOX! Wow, if it weren't for those torrents then Fox would be without a viewer! HBO should smarten up. The same thing happened with me and Sopranos, after a few episode downloads off the net, I was hooked and watching it on the tube.
"you sonofabitch i didn't know!"
Which law?
The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (as amended 1994 and 1996).
Posting false information online is not.
1. If it's false, then it's not information. Information is, by definition, true.
2. It is illegal when it is an attempt to defraud, which this is. It is fraudulently offering something that the user wants, taking the user's time and bandwidth, and not delivering the promised article -- a recorded television program.
3. It is also illegal when it's part of a denial of service attack -- and that's what this is. HBO is using large numbers of IP addresses in the scheme to deny Bittorrent users access to files that they wish to download. They are offering bogus downloads that never complete. They are also, according to the article, "obstructing the downloads offered by other people." They do this by running peers that tell the tracker they have all of the chunks of the show, but that then send garbage data when a downloader requests a chunk. The downloading client can detect that it's garbage and will try another peer for the chunk, but the end result is that it takes much much longer to download shows.
Let's put it into meatspace to make it more familiar: Suppose that I advertised a free motorcycle on craigslist and you drove 100 miles to my house to get it. When you arrive, I hand you a bad of coffee grounds, rotted vegetables, soiled napkins, and miscellaneous garbage. Are you saying that you think that the false posting promising a free motorcycle is legal?
If one wanted to counter this attack (which we don't because we're law abiding citizens, aren't we, but let's consider it as a theoretical possibility) the answer is to download (and share back by uploading).
The more you download (and share back by uploading), the lower the ratio of "attackers" to (il)legitimate [but protocol correct] uploaders/downloaders and the attack gets diluted.
Bittorrent scales, but centralised attacks/enforcement doesnt.
...Rome is broadcast for free by the BBC. I forgot to tape it and was going to download it (I mainly use p2p as a post-hoc VCR).
Guess we here just got stiffed, but I certainly see HBO's point.
Justin.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
Well then HBO for gods sake please, pretty please, *let me pay you guys*!!
HBO rules, I would gladly pay for watching The Wire, Bill Maher and Penn and teller`s bullshit...(showtime) But as it stands my European IP isn`t even good enough to get on the showtime website! Let alone paying for HBO. I can get the sopranos, but only two seasons late... and I haven't seen a six feet under for a couple of seasons now.
Ofcourse living Europe I can:
Now ofcourse I can get all emotional about this but there is a cool thing about using azureus. It has room for crazy plugins that do stupid useless things like displaying the flags of the countries that the client I share with come from. The thing is based on geolocation (Like I assume the showtime site is).... So it is even less scientific than a slashdot poll. The funny thing is that most of these clients apear to be from European countries, especially the ones where people tend to know a bit of english. Say Denmark, the UK, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, Poland and Germany.
It makes perfect sense that HBO original series would appeal more to European audiences than American shows that lack at least two things, acting, and seven English words that Europeans still know but American apparently stopped using... wait, thats eight things, but still.
I couldn't care less about this show rome, watched first 3 episodes and decided that it simply wasn't for me. But im gonna shit a brick if they decide to go after Real Time With Bill Maher. Thats quality entertainment and its not available anywhere outside US. (That I know of, feel free to enlighten me).
Isn't this where a program like peer guardian along with decent IP list comes in. I'd never run BT without it.
"Veni, Vidi, Vici"...roughly translated into modern English reads:
"I came, I saw, I 0wned your BitTorrent tracker"
Of course, after watching a few episodes Rome, I've learned that in Ancient Rome they actually spoke English anyway. Who started this Latin rumor?
"While the bogus peers can be detected, it will take much longer to download shows."
As the old saying goes, Rome wasn't downloaded in one day.
Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated up.
But the obvious answer: The majority of downloaders will be people who want the content without paying for it. Hence, people who do not have on-demand access to the content and therefore have no fair use rights to it.
There's something weird here. Normally, the court system is where you go for redress of wrongs. HBO feels wronged, but is not going through the courts. So how do we view their response? I do not see it as vigilante justice, as that is generally associated with mob mentality. This is a purposefully chosen course of action, by a large corporation, and it was publicly visible (at least for those who read slashdot). So, I think it is appropriate to react to HBO's decision as one does to any other publicly visible action by a large corporation.
In this case, it seems like a mean thing to do, both because they are interrupting other's activities and because they could have provided what the people wanted if they (HBO) wanted to. So, it makes me think poorly of HBO. Since HBO didn't go through the courts, I don't really feel like I have to think about the laws at all.
Playing pornographics games during the day is evil! Play at night!
Software and entertainment companies are more profitable than any other industry. So don't compare a cheese with movie DVDs or music CDs.
My city: Barcelona.
Pfft. HBO own the Sopranos and this is all they got. What a bunch of pussies. They should get Tony to sort things.
I pay for my HBO... a metric fuckton of pesos for the occasional new movie and couple of the cool original shows. (Unfortunately 80% of the overall programming just sucks ass and still I keep paying.) I will continue to download any HBO shows I like and not feel guilty about it because of one reason only. An exchange has been made. My money for HBO's programming. What I have purchased is the right to be able to watch, rewatch and remember the shows which I have paid for. It is now my mental property, information to store in my brain. I am not selling it for profit, or even giving it away to friends or relatives. I am just ensuring that I will always be able to remember and rewatch the the media for which I have given up a portion life to pay for. I will of course choose to download these shows for free as opposed to the alternative, buying a DVD which contains entertainment that I have already paid for.
Dear HBO,
Your attempt at stopping movie downloads by spamming p2p networks will fail miserably. Those pesky "internet movie thiefs" are use to dealing with unscrupulous groups like you, who for some strange reason, feel you have the right to congest the finite amount of network bandwidth and make things worse for everyone. Another similiar "business" that spams networks is the asshole who sends millions of emails a day asking people to buy his viagra and penis enlargers.
But don't take my word for it, I just added your administrator's e-mail address to a dozen gay porn mailing lists.
At least Universal have said they will come to the party with online offerings. People want to be able to download movies. People WILL download movies. HBO can A)sit on their ass B) Take vigilante style tactics of poisoning downloads or C) Offer a viable online alternative to illegal downloads. The music industry eventually woke up and now stores like iTunes is doing quite well, although the RIAA are still being pricks...
The Swedish legislation does not approve of downloading of illegally published copyrighted material. That little loophole was closed as of July 1st 2005.
This is already implemented in azureus CVS. Enjoy the show guys.
We got sick of it and cancelled our cable. We still get a few local stations for news. We rent or buy only the DVDs we want to see. The kids get videos of cartoons for as cheap as 99 cents, and they get to see the *good* cartoons, without commercials. It's cheaper in the long run, more convenient, and HBO has made a habit of releasing their original series complete on DVD, which is the only way to make sense of the entirety of "Carnivale", for instance.
As for HBO, shame on them; they host Bill Maher, and I wonder what he's had to say about this.
Does BitTorrent use MD5 or SHA1 for computing hashes? How computationally feasible would it be for an organisation on the scale of Time Warner to poison torrents with bogus chunks whose hashes check out correctly? (Could they do it with a few powerful machines? What about a SETI@Home-style distributed-computing application running in the background on all corporate desktops?) If they did that, downloaders would not find out that the file was bogus until they downloaded the whole thing; such a tactic could render BitTorrent unusable for poisoned shows.
...or rather the folks I live with do, so technically I have every right to watch HBO or tivo it for later viewing. (I actually used BeyondTV, before it was BeyondTV. Highly recommend it.) Downloading the episodes makes more sense to me than setting up a recording--less fuss, better quality than the .wmas I used to save and watch.
If I didn't have HBO, I'd download the programs anyway.
. . .and stuck it on my check.
Cheekers are useless for catching this sort of mistake.
KFG
I have a friend who uses DHT ONLY (no trackers) in conjunction with Peergaurdian.
I asked him if he's had any problems downloading rome...no problems thus far
What what what?!?!?!
WHERE? WHEN?
More info, please - I haven't seen Rome on my tv guide at all, and I'm in the uk. I've had to download it so far.
What channel? BBC1? BBC2? BBC3? BBC4? MUST KNOW NOW!
Have checked BBC.CO.UK for showtimes - no such programme, they say.
Are you having me on? I figure that they would've advertised it, at least. I have seen no adverts.
As title says. Anybody who thinks PeerGuardian will help protect them from these things is sadly mistaken. Wake up people, the companies looking for copyright infringements aren't stupid, why would they use IP-address ranges registered under the company name for this? I've even seen the IP-address of company websites in PG blocklists. Where's the point in that? It would be dead easy for them [the companies] to ask employees to do this stuff from home (and there is no doubt in my mind that they do), and you wouldn't know shit about which IP is "dangerous". If that doesn't cut it, they could order a John Doe DSL-connection to their office, and boom, you still don't know that the IP-address belongs to them.
Through advertising ? Local sponsorships ?
Isn't part of the point of HBO that you don't get interruptions in the movies ? Or grossly overplayed product placements ?
"The free cheese whets my appetite and makes me more inclined to buy a half pound of the stuff for later."
the problem here is that people are downloading the entire show, not just a 10 minute clip of it.
the other problem is that HBO is a $10 a month service. people have no incentive to pay for HBO's content if they can just download their the torrents of all of HBO's shows.
as much as we don't like corperations for their anti-piracy measures, this IS piracy and downloading Rome episodes IS illegal and this is way more obvious, costly piracy unlike music piracy. where music is overpriced and doesn't take all that much time to make, for $10 a month getting dozens of shows and hundreds of movies to watch a month is a pretty low price for what you get, really HBO isn't ripping you off like the music industry does.
sometimes i think that slashdotters are willing to excuse piracy for reasons like corperations are evil, it's your right to pirate stuff, they didn't offer the content at a decent price, or they have restrictive DRM, etc, but the fact is that having all these things isn't illegal and if you don't like it then dont buy their products, and it doesn't give you the right to blatantly pirate their stuff.
if people keep pirating TV shows then someday the broadcast flag will pass in congress. people can't abuse their ability to tape shows for PERSONAL use, because the more TV show bittorents get popular, the more popular the idea of restrictive DRM will be on television sets.
There was recently a multi-part series about Rome on BBC - but I'm fairly certain it has nothing to do with the HBO series. It seemed to be focused on things like what girls in Rome had to do to be popular and to earn enough money to eat (i.e. basically prostitution). I saw a bit of one or two of the episodes, and the quality of the show was certainly nothing like a proper HBO-quality series - I haven't seen the HBO one yet, but I'm sure they are two different things.
This should be obvious anyways, because UK channels are always about 2-3 years behind HBO (and most other US channels/shows) in reruns - i.e. I think we are still getting some Sex and the City episodes for the first time here.
Not only does it give HBO some control back, but it also seeds innovation by giving the world another problem to work around. It's a lot better than sitting on your ass calling your lawyers to sue children *coughRIAA*cough with the sole purpose being because you want to be able to wipe your ass with 100s' instead of 20s'.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Simple: Lets poisen all of HBO's pet celebs!!!
You feel sleepy. Close your eyes. The opinions stated above are yours. You cannot imagine why you ever felt otherwise.
for at least the last 3 or 4 years, a company called overpeer has been doing this for hire in the music industry. labels would pay them a fee, and they would get a few hundred (or thousand) hosts on all of the p2p networks that claimed:
:) they used to have a large presence in some of the northeast datacenters, but since they got aquired by loudeye, they seem to have moved some gear around.
- high bitrates
- high bandwidth
- full artist catalogs
except all of they files they offered had been re-sampled like 10x, so the music was equivalent to about 24kbps...
Please cease and desist from infringing my patents in the area of "mechanisms to facilitate business". Or you'll be sleeping with the fishes. That's an offer you can't refuse.
This is a duel to the death, the winner will take the spoils of Rome and glory in its excesses.
If the fight continues more than a couple of hours, we will send in the Lions to finish the job.
If you refuse to fight, you are already defeated.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Does that mean I can sue the goatse trolls?
Im not sure how many peers they got, but doesnt most advanced Bittorrent clients (like Azureus) ban the peer if they send too much corrupt data?
Why not introduce a rating system into the BT protocol? If a peers sends garbage to my client several times, my client will complain to the tracker. If enough different peers complain about a certain seeder, it will get some kind of mark, so other clients can decide whether to use this doubtful source. Of course this system could be used by HBO/... to discredit valid seeders, but they would have to create giant bot nets.
Life is just nature's way of keeping meat fresh.
do as Romans do.
When you visit the HBO HQ, poison an HBO exec.
Support the FairTax
This is the method that we all said we would prefer. I don't understand why people are all up in arms over this; would it be better if they were throwing lawsuits around instead of beating people at their own game? Really, I prefer this way anyway, and it has the fringe benefit of getting people get to try to design better protocols. This keeps sounds more and more preferable to lawsuits.
/Rome/ wasn't broadcast, so it doesn't count. HBO is a somewhat pricy subscription based cable TV network, so their content never hit the air in any form of open format. This is like throwing DVD rips up on a BT tracker and wondering why whoever bankrolled the movie is a little peeved.
Besides all of that, I really don't have a problem with people downloading broadcast TV shows. I honestly think the legal system shouldn't have a problem with it either, since it was broadcast and all. Now, the courts probably would take issue, seeing to how the industry bought so many wonderful laws. But that isn't the point.
The problem here is that
The fact that someone compared DLing a TV-show with free cheese-samples, in a somewhat (but definitely not entirely) valid way, doesn't mean you should continue to use it.
First off. Media: digitizable, zero-cost reproducable, non tangeable goods. Cheese: actual, physical, unreproducable goods. Now copying something that inherently reproducable costs noone nothing. Stealing physical goods will result in expenses for the producer or store.
Please stop equating these to fundamental different things. Foe.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
It seems that Curb Your Enthusiasm (another HBO show) is recieving the same treatment.
But, the scheme is not that effective, once you learn to look out for it. If there's just one seed, and a bunch (hundreds) of clients, all with the same downloaded percentage, don't bother trying, it's a fake.
What HBO is doing is similar to defending yourself against a mugging. You legally need not wait for the police to take action. They are not going against someone who has downloaded, they are disrupting the illegal actions of someone who is downloading. They are also doing it without any collateral damage.
This is very similar to banks putting purple ink bombs in the sacks of money robbers demand. Only the money is destroyed, making it useless to the robber. If the robber is cheezed, tuff.
Yes it is funny. What I find and don't seem to understand is that those who believe that people have come to accept a product/service to be made available at zero cost. It is one thing to say that one would only pay a fair price for something but such a fair price is not being offered hence the need to pilfer/steal/pirate etc. Nobody ever gets a good deal in life at the very best one hopes one can get a fair deal and as such neither the likes of HBO or society at large is getting a fair deal from one another. Until we can come to terms about having that fair deal we shall always circumvent any rules/laws/values/ethics etc to get what we believe is fair.
Diplomacy is "When you tell a person to go to Hell and they look forward to the Visit".
The HBO complaint is that people are downloading and sharing bits and bytes of their Rome. This sharing is a violation of copyright law. But HBO is facilitating the distribution of the show by participating in the distribution of the show on BitTorrent. Even if some of the data is corrupt, they are still participating in the act.
so.... HBO wants to fight with all the 1337 HaX0r armies out there? Ok, I'll be the referee.
...
HBO, on your marks.
1337 HaX0r armies, on your marks.
HAJIME!!!
Whatever the ethical and fiscal considerations of filesharing, comparing digital duplication of information to the theft of physical items is so absurd that intelligent people shut off the rest of your argument the moment you do it; it's like comparing politicians to Hitler, a drama queen exercise with little relation to reality.
Incontinentia Buttocks. (We're all Python fans...)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
What exactly is the point of this? Does HBO think that people are going to subscribe to their service if they are unable to get Rome for free over BitTorrent? Will this really result in more dollars for HBO or just fewer viewers?
// This is not a sig.
And it's really odd, because this attitude was clearly exposed in the wake of Katrina. This attitude now prevails in the US and I can't seem to understand why. I believe it's all part of the liberal slant of our educational institutions. Pride and entitlement feelings are killing our way of life.
This seems like any other denial of service attack to the BT users.
This is vigilantism. I am not even a BT user, but how is this different from a DoS attack on a web server or any other portion of machines connected? From the descriptions of the fragments, and slow downloads, it seems disruptive. No matter if you have an issue with someone's activities, a DoS attack is still not a valid way to tread.
But what do I know..
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
We're stuck in the dilemma that it costs just as much to make one copy as to make /transmit X thousand copies. (That's why upload speeds stink. They don't trust us and, so far, they're right.)
When the media "products" are properly enabled to protect themselves by being state full, we'll be done with this foolishness. Until then, we're in an adversarial situation.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
With the kinds of files I want, there should never be a bust. I don't want content from big dumb companies that don't want me to have it. They can rot.
I welcome anything that can protect those downloads from accidental DoS by those same big dumb companies. Unfortunately, there is no real cure for their anti-social behavior.
I resent the network congestion HBO's stupid tactics will cause. People who want their shows will get them anyway and they will share them with their friends. All HBO's DoS will do is cost everyone in between more bandwith. That's all fine and good with them as they try to outlaw p2p publishing in general. I resent that even more. They don't care if their stupid DoS software floods networks or accidently nails my legitimate files.
HBO, you suck.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
....I continue to get HBO (and all the rest of the movie channels) even tho I cancelled my premium cable package over a year ago.
Go figure.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Brest Bleu? Camember? Port Salut? Danish Bimbo cheese? Japanese Sage Darby? Or ever chedar, though there's not much call for it 'round here. -Mr. Wenslydale
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
and when they release season two of Carnivale, i'll do just that. problem is they're never going to do it.
The judge was an idiot or bought. MP3.com offered a legitimate service much like any other ripping software. They only difference was centralization of resources to save everyone time and trouble. Considering that a republication that violates copyright will one day be seen as equally absurd as carrying around dozens of CDs to play music one CD at a time.
Laws should follow morals rather than morals following laws. Absurd decisions don't make something right. What you and I believe is right makes it so. Common sense really does make the law and that's why big dumb companies spend billions of dollars trying to convince you that you have no interest in anything but consumption.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Cry more, noob. I'm sure HBO will love you for it.
If you lived in a civilised country, that would be cheque
;0)
HBO is attacking the internet itself. They are trying to attack a few people but they are going to harm everyone else and seem not to care. Movie downloads are huge already. What HBO is doing by injecting garbage makes those downloads many times as large. That's shit that gets in the way of legitimate traffic that has nothing to do with HBO and their crappy little TV shows. I don't even want to think about accidents where their program automagically DoS's a file that just happens to have the wrong name. This is clearly anti-social behavior.
Filling the network with garbage is an outrage. It's going to cost ISPs money and it's going to slow things down for everyone.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Note: I am the previous AC :(
The only thing I can find is a press release from the BBC saying that they're working with HBO on 'Rome' and that the programme will be on BBC2 in the autumn of this year. No more detail, sadly
I'd love to get the BBC2 channel that 'aug24' gets!
Pissing off your customers seems to work for the RIAA, so why not.
If its been broadcasted over the wire/air, then they should just shut their face.
Whats next, a 'timeout' for shows recorded on your PVR so you cant watch your show a month later? ( yes, that part was sarcasm )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
At least they have Latin sprinkled in there. An occasional 'salve' or 'vale', numerous mentions of dominus dominaque. And it's nice to be able to read the graffiti on the walls when my wife has no clue.
hie ntdetails&id=419202&query=sopranos e ntdetails&id=234569&query=sopranos e ntdetails&id=88525&query=sopranos e ntdetails&id=108367&query=sopranos e ntdetails&id=353776&query=sopranos
ever wanted to watch LL 5 series of the sopranos ? well now you can!!!
season 1 : http://www.torrentspy.com/directory.asp?mode=torr
season 2 : http://www.torrentspy.com/directory.asp?mode=torr
season 3 : http://www.torrentspy.com/directory.asp?mode=torr
season 4 : http://www.torrentspy.com/directory.asp?mode=torr
season 5 : http://www.torrentspy.com/directory.asp?mode=torr
I don't have an issue with this personally. It' not like you can't get the shows. However, HBO has a right to defend themselves and this is a far more effective way to do it than suing people! We can't get HBO in Canada so torrents are important, but since HBO is the only remaining decent station in the 600 channel universe I think it's importnat to support them as well. Quality programming(see their warehouse full of emmys) and no commercials... Why aren't the rest of the 'cable' channels like HBO?
WURD!!
it would be just as illegal to destroy HBO's physical property but no one is suggesting anything of the kind.
copying does not equate to destroying property.
But bits aren't property...isn't that how the argument goes? You all can't have it both ways....
So HBO is going after people who are downloading the episodes. HBO, who transmits the show over cable to anyone that might have a VCR who can record the show, and yet downloading is of the devil. Its pretty much the same thing. You will always have a few people who don't subscribe to HBO but still catch the episodes on tape from a friend. Now its more open for more people to see it, and these people will possibly get HBO if they don't already. Possibly even tune in and watch it at broadcast.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Instead of paying people to poison and corrupt the p2p networks (which only slows the problem and doesn't stop it) just SELL THE SHOW ONLINE. That's right, you can MAKE MONEY by having the show on the internet, maybe even using one of the new secure p2p clients for distribution. I would gladly pay $2-3 to download an episode of your show the week ( or the day ) it is released. That's about 10-15 dollars a month for HBO, about the same price as a month's subscription to HBO, but I can watch the shows whenever I want and not have to buy a PVR or wade through the crap movies they usually play.
It worked with iTunes, it can work with you. Repeat after me: THIS SERVICE EXISTS. You can't make it go away by brute force or legislation. Either sell it, or people will take it.
I'm not sure if you think this will sap the $80/season DVD sales--if so, just release the episodes at good, but less than DVD, quality. That plus the bonus features plus non-tech savvy users will still sell plenty of DVD's.
I won't buy anything excessivly DRM'd. I won't buy a "play-once" format video. I won't buy anything with my DNA sequence encoded in the file. People will still distribute illegal copies whether they're the ones you make or not.
Just. Sell. It. To. Me. It's an untapped market waiting for a pioneer.
Death and danger are my various breads and various butters.
They can poison their own show as much as they want to - they hold the copyright on it. But when they poison software that doesn't belong to them, aren't they they replacing parts of the software and claiming it to be the software, and are thus guilty of copyright infringement?
We need renegade hackers to destroy the HBO servers.
Heck, these people, fighting the scammers for fun and profit are, probably, in the wrong too, in your opinion. They are wasting the scammers' time with transactions (downloads?) "that never finishe" and denying them access to people, they want to access.
Distributing these files is illegal. Can I not leave fake jewelry in my house to distract the thieves? First, it would probably be legal -- if against CraigList's rules. But this is not about a "free motorcycle" -- this is about a free stolen motorcycle. The downloaders are well aware, the stuff they are after, can not be offered legally.If CraigsList becomes used to trade/give away stolen property, child porn, unlicensed weaponry, than yes, "poisoning" its database with baits would be not only acceptable, but a good thing...
One thing is obvious -- you simply don't feel that there is anything wrong with what HBO is fighting. You are smart enough to not attempt to defend these people's actions directly, so -- like a good attorney -- you attack the prosecution instead. "Your honor, the officer was not wearing the standard issue uniform belt that day, therefore the items he collected on the scene can not be used as evidence."
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
While it's impossible to keep anyone from making a copy of any file for a friend, people tend to have a higher treshhold of doing so if they've paid for the file. That is, should HBO open up a subscriber service (say, $10 a month), and allow subscribers to download the latest episode(s) without extra charge, those subscribers won't be as keen to share the files they get, as when they'd have gotten them off the torrent.
In this instance, there'd not even be any need for DRM. I'd gladly pay 10$ for four episodes a month of a show I like, if it's provided on a fast line, as high quality avi.. Think about it.
BitTorrent has become too mainstream. Was fun while it lasted. But it's back to Usenet, FTP and IRC for me.
It's rather funny. I live in Canada and can't get Rome or any other good tv series in HD quality. The only place for me to get it is online. I could purchase HBO but rome is the only show i would watch. Its the same thing as the record company.. 20$ for a cd with 1 good song. Honestly if HBO offered a pay to download HD version i would probably buy it and like them for it. Now however they are just pissing me off and making sure i never subscribe to their channel by scanning my computer and trying to flood me so i cannot complete my download of Episode 6.
:)
Music and television have been made popular by broadcast formats which you cannot control what the end user does with this information. A few smart people sharing and downloading is not going to put an end to your making of millions so quit wasting resources on combating "piracy" just because ceo's actually know what that means now cause their kid is doing it..
I love Rome. I didn't subscribe to HBO before Rome; I only had Showtime. So the main reason I got HBO was to watch this series. Since I've had HBO I've been pleasantly surprised by how much I watch it. At least for me, HBO has been worth paying the extra money.
If I take a block of cheese without paying, are there fewer blocks of cheese on the shelf for the next customer? Now, if I download a TV show without paying, are there fewer copies of that TV show online for the next guy?
Indirectly, yes. Because the more people who take the content without paying for, the less demand there is for the creator's services, and the less revenue they can command. Less revenue means less capacity for producing great content (in HBO's case, things like Deadwood, Rome, The Sopranos - all great shows). Erode the incentive for people to actually subscribe to their service, and you erode their ability (and incentive) to provide that service. Yes: devaluing the product does impact the supply, sometimes terminally.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I think HBO should come out with a new show, called "The West Whig", set in 1849. It could be about Zachary Taylor, the bonus would be that no matter how much it sucked, it could run for only one season, and at the end the president dies of accute milk and cherries poisoning... Which is a fitting end for most presidents... That and pretzel choking.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
This really is a *very* good idea.
I think one argument that supports it is that most users who are offered a reasonably-priced high-quality pain-free download will choose that over torrents, while those users who are determined not to pay are by definition not part of the market.
Even if HBO were to baulk at the idea of downloading mpegs of their shows they could offer streams. It works for baseball.
I pay for HBO, and with the technology the way it is today, I should be able to choose my medium. If I want to download it, because that is more convenient for me, then why shouldn't I be able to. I have paid for the content. HBO should take the next step in allowing me to download the video, as long as I have an account with them or with my cable/satellite company. I have thought that this should be the way for all content I can get off of the TV.
The biggest problem is the bandwith needed by a company to provide this type of download service. I don't think we are really there yet. I priced out a model a few years ago, and even at premium prices this was way too expensive to implement. Bit Torrent, though it works well for free content, is too hard to control who has access to content and who does not. OnDemand is the first step in this arena, and though I don't have OnDemand I have used it quite a bit, and the biggest problem is that there is limited content. I am sure that this is some sort of bandwidth, or storage issue on the part of the vendors. Rest assured, I am sure that downloading tv content to your computer is on it's way.
I was wondering why that CYE torrent at Unreal Torrents wouldn't complete.
you misunderstood my post.
i wasn't suggesting what you think i was.
bits by themselves aren't property but hard drives are. and destroying physical property like hard drives is illegal and by the same token, threatening HBO's headquarters is as well.
that's what i meant by HBO's physical property.
Science : Proprietary , Knowledge : Open Source
BT works by both downloading and uploading of parts of the file at the same time. So they are losing the right to complain about copyright infringement by adding their trackers, and effectively saying, "here it is, come and get it".
They should be prosecuted !
Maybe the DEA ought to start "poisoning" the drugs they confiscate, and then go and sell them on the streets. (Yeah I know thats slightly more literal, but 2 wrongs don't make a right [but 3 lefts do])
I hate posting just "mod parent up" - but that's a good one going unnoticed I'd say.
Naturally, file "sharers" prefer that HBO would just engage in a technical arms-race like they're doing now. On strictly technical grounds, HBO will likely lose. However, from an ideological perspective, what HBO is doing (DOS attacking people) is wrong and illegal. I haven't kept up on the penalties, but I think these days launching a DOS attack carries more severe penalties than non-profit copyright infringement.
Two wrongs don't make a right.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
HBO should host old episodes on bittorrent so it can gain new converts. It seems the application is not so great for archived shows, you basically have to "follow the swarm".
Actually it would be more useful if the show could be downloaded without having to use bittorrent, come to think of it. Just convert all those IPs they are using to serving instead of disturbing.
if you don't think HBO is into all things masturbatory, clearly you're turning it off by 10pm. :-)
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
More whining back and forth from both camps - it should be obvious by now that both sides know its against current law and one side don't care. And never will. Now if its just a minority it will pass - but if its the majority who feel this why the producers should wake the hell up, realise the world has changed and find new ways to make money.
This perhaps
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I really like the way HBO is handling this. Suing everyone in sight was their other option, but posioning gets the point across they don't want people stealing their shows with out putting every college kid in the poor house. Its fun to see someone fight technology with technology too.
DTV used to ECM people, which effected (hopefully) only those who stole programming, much cooler than their later strategy of suing everyone, inclusing people who never even owned a dish. Don't get me started on the extortion aspects of their settlement offers..
Maybe we should take HBOs sugestion while they're playing nice..
Interesting... By this logic, it is illegal for a person getting mugged to fight back -- because his actions would certainly qualify as an attempt to harm the attacker. And harming others (intentionally!) is quite illegal, is not it?
No, the law makes an exception for self-defense when you are in danger of bodily harm. But you can't shoot some guy in the back if he robs your convenience store. Property and human life are handled differently by the law.
Distributing these files is illegal.
Then it's a matter for law enforcement and the courts. It's illegal for people to speed, but you can't shoot out the tires of every car that you believe to be speeding.
Besides, you claim that it's "illegal", but some court might decide it's fair use. That's what happened when the studios sued Sony because the beta VCRs could record television programs. That's why HBO has no legal right to take matters into their own hands.
Can I not leave fake jewelry in my house to distract the thieves?
Sure you can, but the Bittorrent servers aren't the property of HBO the way that your home is your property.
One thing is obvious -- you simply don't feel that there is anything wrong with what HBO is fighting.
No, you're incorrect. But nice try at trying to insult me and question my motives.
I don't want a situation where everyone who feels that their copyright is being infringed takes to denial of service attacks, hacking servers, etc. Maybe you believe that the Scientologists should be able to do that when they believe that their copyright is being infringed? Scary thought.
...They would have the box set of Rome on DVD available as early as January 2006 for Region 1 sales. That way, people who don't have access to HBO can get the complete Season 1 shortly after its first run on the network. Besides, HBO has made a huge amount of money on DVD season sets, mostly because HBO well knows that many people out there don't have access to HBO broadcasts for various reasons but do have access to a DVD player.
I'm not going to get Showtime just to watch Stargate but I guarantee I'll watch when it gets syndicated. I think Showtime has a good plan with this; they have a show with decent brand recognition, and there is no reason the show has to be about the specific characters. The "Law and Order" franchise has shown that if there is good writing and direction that a show can stay viable in spite of actor changes.
"Lack of technical competence coupled with the arrogance of power, as usual, leads to no good end."
6-12 months, 3 years (Smallville), or never!
Not Free SF Reader
use the main distribution of bittorrent, and this problem goes away
Mod parent and GP up if you would. Good points.
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
That's why HBO has no legal right to take matters into their own hands.
:)
;)
They don't, but I'd rather see them fighting on this turf than the legislative/politician procurement level. They can't compete with a planetfull of hackers. On this turf it's more equally matched, so to speak.
(Should'a been one of Clarke's laws (or maybe Heinleins) - "No matter how good you are at designing something, somebody else can improve on it. "
I don't like the implications of what HBO is doing, either. But to some degree, it's better than the alternative
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
The video on demand sounds like a great invention but I've never seen it before. I live in Canada and I don't think such a thing is offered here yet, at least not in the backwoods area I'm currently in. The channels I get aren't HBO precisely, they're resellers of HBO content.
The only PVR I can get with my service costs $600, which is far more than I'd be willing to spend. The competing service has one for $300 so I'm sure the price will eventually drop sufficiently that everyone has one but so far. But, where I live, that just hasn't happened yet.
Seems to me that HBO could get around their whole detection system to make blacklists. Since HBO actually has the torrents, they could make garbage data with the correct checksums. Thus, they could eventually corrupt the other torrents out there.
People would have to put up guaranteed fresh ones to avoid gradual deterioration.
Detection would be much more difficult as it would require reviewing the file, manually finding the garbage, and the correlating that part of the file with a particular server.
HBO could also do other things like keep clients hooked on their servers, but serve the data very slowly.
I imagine most detection systems will be prone to failure. A voluntary system like torrents has limited defenses against active mitigation.
My comment was in response to the line why does remembering the good ole days suddenly change people memories into a whistful wonderful time when the reality was quite different. If you listen to most of what the Republicans say, it's about the "good ole days", and how good they were. In reality, the only things that they want to return to is a place where everyone has to learn the Bible every Sunday; and women, blacks, gays, and anyone else they don't like don't have any rights. To them, those were the good ole days.
No, because you'd leave your scummy skin cells, hair, bad breath, fart gases, and other such joys, so it would not be exactly as you left it.
.avi?
That is, unless you are only embodied electronically, like, say, an
Not Free SF Reader
HBO is not giving you a free download, as in your cheese analogy.
.wmv and other formats. People love to download good adult movies for free from bittorrent sites like http://xiando.com/ and they also love to pay for such movies at very cheap pay-sites. The system could easily be applied to mainstream shows.
:)
You are right. HBO are not http://xiando.com/ and are not giving away (adult) movies for free. This is why xiando > HBO.
HBO is fighting illegal distribution of their material. They do give you a free taste of the show in their advertising. That is the level they feel comfortable giving out.
They are also giving away the show free on the normal airwaves. They seem fairly comfortable with that. BitTorrent distribution would cost them about $100/month pr. 6mbit seed, if they were to set that up themselves. The current situation, however, is that other people seem to be willing to pay for such seeds. HBO are getting a pile of free viewers extra at virtuall no cost. And they are, for some reason, angry about that increased revenue potential.
HBO could post their own shows with advertisements and make huge profit. Instead they are stupid and act like children.
You downloading the show is like going to the dairy section and opening / eating whatever cheese you want. They should do like XM and let you get an online account if you pay for the service and download / stream content when you can't watch otherwise.
There is no good alternative way to download TV shows. Streaming is no alternative. All kinds of streaming solutions suck compared to divx/bittorrent. Most of them don't even work with Linux. Show me a equally good alternative to "dirty pirate" bittorrent sites for downloading TV shows? There is none regardless of how much you are willing to pay.
You pay for the stuff, why not get internet access as well? If enough people go that way, maybe you can even charge for access online instead of offering it free to your current subscribers...
People are willing to pay for any solution with the same quality. Adult sites allow you to download the movies in
There is no free site with say a few TV-episodes and links to pay-sites where you can pay $5 to download all the episodes of that show. HBO are idiots. They should allow me to push a few of each episode of all their shows and provide a $5 paysite where people can sign up and download all the episodes in the divx quality format people are used.
Thank you for reading all of this. May I just add that adult movies are good for you!?
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
Use a BT client that performs Hash-Checking.. AZUREUS IS NOT ONE OF THEM.. use mainline bittorrent or bitcomet
I don't like the implications of what HBO is doing, either. But to some degree, it's better than the alternative ;)
I disagree. If this kind of thing continues, even free speech is threatened. Imagine what happens if the Church of Scientology started DDoS attacks against every web site that posted anti-scientology information (instead of claiming copyright over quoted documents). What if Apple decides to start DDoS attacks against sites that tell people how to run OS-X86 on generic PCs? What if Microsoft decided to start poisoning torrents with Lindows ISO downloads?
At least with the current system of legislation and court cases, there is some judicial oversight.
HBO does not broadcast. They are cable-only. You have to subscribe to a cable company or sat provider, then pay extra for HBO content.
I see your point if they were broadcasting, yes they should set up some sort of online distribution for everyone. They don't broadcast crap free to the world, so if you are distributing their material, you probably paid them and are in breach of contract.