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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.
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."
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.
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?
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.
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
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.
shh...
don't talk about usenet.
You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. - Winston Churchill
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
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.
Wait, you're serious? ROFLMFAO!!!!!!!
Yeah, HBO is going to fire someone for preventing the free dissemination of their copyrighted material over the internet. Yeah, sure. Especially a cost effective, directly focused counter to what would otherwise be settled by $300 Per Hour legal departments who might or might not sue the right person. Um-hum.
What HBO is doing is what every business should be doing instead of taking the RIAA's route. HBO is not restricting your right to make copies at home, they are not restricting your archiving of those copies, or even sharing them with your family/close friends. They are not suing BitTorrent, they are not demanding that all P2P software be banned, they are pro-actively preventing the illegal distribution of their material in an incredibly low impact manner. Bravo, HBO.
No kidding... it's hard for some people to even consider the fact that HBO IS IN THE RIGHT!
People are illegally distributing a copyrighted movie, and are BITCHING that HBO is stopping them, by knowing more about the "hackers" game than the "hackers" do.
Go HBO! More power to you, IMO.
I'm getting soooo sick of this sense of self-entitlement... "give me everything for free" attitude.
$0.02 (CDN)
And they are pro-actively helping the P2P community by giving them incentive to design and implement better, more secure, less easily polluted P2P networks, protocols and tools. Bravo, HBO!
If one were really obnoxious, one could send fan mail to Mr. Weaver, but I don't know why one would.
I am not a crackpot.
"So what if I download and episode, realize that I really like it, and want to sign up?"
Sheyeah, right.
This would put you in that same class of people who download albums off of P2P so that they can listen to the whole thing before buying a copy. While there might be a small percentage of people who do that (certainly not anybody I know -- all of my friends who use P2P do so to save money), it's abundantly clear that most people do things like downloading "Rome" so they don't have to pay HBO to watch it.
"So yeah, I just can't imagine how this helps them at all."
As an aside, the ironic thing is that your post is presently 4, insightful, despite the fact that you used "I can't imagine" twice in your post and even titled it "Don't get it." That's a lack of insight.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
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.
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.
"Oh wait, do HBO do The West Wing?"
Thanks, but we got "What a bunch of assholes" the first time around; no need for redundancy.
In Soviet Russia, Chuck Norris will still kick your ass.
I'm sure the executives at HBO are thinking the same thing about people who have the ability to pay for HBO yet won't.
I, for one, applaud their pseudo-solution to piracy of their show. This action, though not very nice, is a direct result of people trying to jack them of their creativity. While I haven't seen the show, I can comment that the steps they are taking do not interfere with legitimate downloads, nor are they suing everyone in sight.
Those of you bitching about your slow downloads must realize that someone pays for this, and HBO is trying to make sure that if they have to foot the bill, you won't get your downloads easily.
"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?
Now if they produced shows that didn't SUCK I might give a shit.
Apparently all those people downloading episodes of Rome seem to think it's worth something. If the show was really crappy nobody would care that HBO is poisoning torrents that nobody cares about, and we wouldn't be discussing this.
i ate crayons when i was a kid and now i have two braincells and the blue ones taste nicer
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.
I'm sure the executives at HBO are thinking the same thing about people who have the ability to pay for HBO yet won't.
They are probably thinking "Premium cable was a lot easier when all you had to worry about was Captain Midnight."
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...
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.
When you taped their show with your VCR you could do exactly what with it? give or loan your tape to someone else? Spend far more time than it was worth making a copy of your tape to give or loan to someone else? There was a limit to the "so called" damage you could do. I say "so called" because honestly, your shared tape of a show on HBO was little more than a small, free sample to anyone you gave it to. At best it was an extended commercial for HBO and their wares.
Now you go online and the entire season will be there to be downloaded. Given time and enough fans the whole run of the show would be available online if HBO didn't do something about it. Why bother paying for HBO if you can get the one or more shows you want to watch online for free?
You can't compare the taping of television shows twenty years ago to the ridiculous level of leeching that takes place today. As Samuel L. Jackson said so well in Pulp Fiction it "ain't the same fuckin' ballpark, it ain't the same league, it ain't even the same fuckin' sport."
And most of all every single person who tries to draw the comparison knows it perfectly well.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.