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P2P Population Growing Again
An anonymous reader writes "Slyck news is reporting that the file-sharing population has recovered from its mid-year plateau and is once again growing. At 9.45 million users, it is only slightly below its greatest height of 9.6 million users in August. Keep in mind however; these numbers do not represent the population of the BitTorrent community, which would surely add many millions more."
Isn't that like doing a survey of search engines and not including Google?
And Narnia. If they actually released some good movies this summer, we might have seen higher P2P usage then, too.
--LWM
Keep in mind however; these numbers do not represent the population of the BitTorrent community, which would surely add many millions more."
Damn right they don't. MPAA and RIAA don't quite know how to tackle that one. Kazaa et al are small potatoes compared to the really good, private, Bittorrent trackers.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
TFA mentions that the survey was done by Big Champagne, and if i remember correctly, apps such as Peer Guardian, etc, typically block Big Champagne's IP ranges. So this could potentially misrepresent numbers of real-world P2P users. Not sure if that has been factored in, but if not, the reported numbers will definitely be on the conservative side.
There is a case to be made, I think, that if certain ports were disabled for home users a serious dent could be made in this P2P population -- not to mention the great deal of bandwidth freed up for more serious Internet activity.
O RLY?
"In fact, some Bittorrent clients are pick alternate ports at random during startup to help avoid ISP filtering.
I would recommend a high port range, like 59052-59059, and also be sure you have those ports forwarded if you own a router. I've done this with Azureus, ABC, and Bitcomet and could leech and seed fine."
link
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Of course - not everyone can use torrents. Here in Santa Barbara, Cox Cable filters out bittorrent traffic by examining the packet headers. You can't get around it by changing the port for example. Really sucks - I can't even patch WoW without it taking 2 hours unless I find a direct download.
Legit download sales have fallen, CD sales have fallen and P2P users have increased. Hmmmm let me see If I actually want to pay for music I can choose to have either a file which may or may not work with my mp3 player or A DRM'd malware infested CD that may or may not play on my CD player. /me bashes Carrey Sherman over the head with a clue!
DRM and financial persecutions encourage music piracy.
I wonder if we are now seeing the beginning of the end of the music cartels as tech savy teens begin to question the moral ethics of buying music and supporting such corrupt entities.
An industry which treats both the content creators and the fans with contempt should not survive. I'm surprised they've lasted this long.
It is one of those things that most people don't feel like it is a crime and there is nothing MPAA and RIAA can do. No amount of lawsuits, no amount of sappy ads before every movie in the theatres showing poor set designers that are now starving because those pirates stole the bread from their kid's table, is going to change that. Because people don't think it is such a big crime to share and download mp3 files and movies.
I am not saying whether it is good or bad, or that it is right to download music from P2P without paying for it - all I am saying is that most people don't see it as such a bad thing. As it turns out the order and peace and quiet in a most societies is not kept by police or any forceful tactics, but by the fact that the majority of the citizens like it that way. For example if tomorrow morning everyone got it into their heads that pillaging, vandalism, looting and killing each other is perfectly "ok" there will not be enough police or lawyers or soldiers to stop everyone acting in that manner.
I think the same goes for illegal file sharing, the majority of people don't see it as a particularly bad thing and they will continue to do it. In fact what people finally see is how Sony/BMG, Universal, EMI and friends have been screwing everyone all these years by selling crappy music for $15-$20 a disk. The artists weren't getting the money - it was all going into building vacation homes and buying Ferrari's for the executives of those production companies.
Now someone might say that the laws in our supposedly democratic society clearly reflect the attitudes and the will of the majority of people, so how come downloading is still illegal. I think it is because the laws today are created by those who have large amounts of accumulated wealth and can sponsor and lobby the Congress to make it pass whatever they want. Also, when is the last time any of us contacted our local Congressman and petitioned him for anything?
I think the best the recording companies can do is to bite the bullet and re-structure their business accepting that the old days when they could make billions by selling overpriced crap are coming to an end.
At one time the majority of people believed that slavery was acceptable. Ethics shouldn't be dictated by the whims of the majority, but instead on rational thought. So, if you believe there is nothing wrong with violating copyright in downloading music, justify your opinion with a reasonable explanation. Don't just say it's ok because everyone is doing it.
A logical argument always starts with some assumptions. If you want to argue ethics you always start with your beliefs. However what you believe is no way tied to some universal truth. There is no "ethical truth" or what Kant called the categorical imperative.
The reason slavery is unacceptable today is because the vast majority of the world believes that it is wrong. The ideas of personal freedom and free-will have spread around the world. That is why is it unlawful. It is not because we discovered some truth about slavery similar to the way people recognized the Earth rotates around the Sun.
Slavery might return one day when people's attitudes change. You may claim that it is unethical and they would say it is not. Both views stand on similar ground. However people may one day think the Sun rotates around the Earth but it will not change the actual truth.
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend