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BitTorrent Becomes Ever More Legit
lily_bt writes "BitTorrent just signed a deal with 4 entertainment distributors to add more than 1,600 titles to its video library. From 'SuperSize Me' to The Three Stooges to Bollywood films, BitTorrent wants to offer the most comprehensive service when it launches its pay service. The best part is that this content will be made available by subscription." From the article: "Once distrustful of peer-to-peer technologies, Hollywood studios appear more willing to partner with companies such as BitTorrent and video-sharing site Guba.com, which last month partnered with Warner Bros. to distribute movie titles. BitTorrent, widely used to both legally and illegally swap copies of copyright movies, has been aiming to turn its technology into a tool used for legal services."
The more legit BitTorrent makes itself look the better. As long as I can get quasi-legal fansubs I'm happy.
Haiku for you!
They are pulling a Napster! This time without being sued first...
...why should I suddenly trust them now?
Every step they've made so far has been in the worst possible faith. I fully expect this to be another step in the same vein. What's their motive this time? Will the distributed content be so crippled and overpriced as to ensure failure and attempt to strong-arm yet more draconian laws?
Until the RIAA and MPAA are disbanded, I won't be trusting either industry - and I'll be doing my level best to avoid buying their products, even if that means my not having any movies or music at all.
The best part is that this content will be made available by subscription.
Let me guess, it'll be in WMV format, you won't be allowed to burn it to DVD and if you terminate your subscription you'll lose access to any movies you've downloaded so far (Assuming, that is, that you're actually allowed to keep them for longer than 24 hours).
I thought bittorrent was the technology of filesharing where everyone sends parts of the whole file. Sure there is the tracking file that enables it, but isn't this essentially using everyone elses bandwidth for thier profit?
It just doesn't make sense to me why anyone would pay for this.
"Pay us a fee, you can get movies, but you have to share the bandwidth you've already paid for?"
... in Spain too ?
If these files which I can legally recieve over bittorrent are DRM'ed -or- require me to maintain my subscription to keep watching them, then fughetaboutit. I'm keeping my money, thanks.
No one has managed to place effectice restrictions on HTTP activities because the protocol is too noisy with legitimate activity. Might this now be the same in the future with BitTorrent?
Think of the Children; Sleep with your Sister
In my experiences, BitTorrent is horribly slow unless you open up inbound ports through your firewall to your workstation. This isn't feasible in a corporate environment and I would normally be fine with that since I'm not going to be downloading movies at work, but many people are starting to only offer BitTorrent links for legitimate downloads. The first time I came across it was the Mandriva Club last year.
2. How much is this gonna cost? Unless it's significantly cheaper than purchasing a DVD, I doubt it'll take the world by storm - there is a certain trust in the DVD format. No mention of prices in TFA - any clues?
3...
Meta will eat itself
Now all we need is to get the ISPs to stop blocking Bittorrent. That's the only thing I run that actually makes it worth getting high speed, and to get it to work, I not only have to change the port it runs on, I have to change it to a specific port that for some reason they don't check. I think that Bittorrent's biggest adversary will be ISPs who insist on blocking it, or make it a pain to configure in order to cut down on the users' "unlimited" bandwidth.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Part of the P2P model is that we (the customer) do the majority of the distribution work. Will BitTorrent suitably compensate us for our work, say by giving us substantial savings over other methods of buying the films? Or will they try to get a free lunch out of us so to speak?
I a parallel would be if the local pizza company offered to sell you a pizza for half price, but only if you delivered a pizza to another customer whilst you're at it.
Don't take the above poster too seriously. He doesn't.
The best part is that this content will be made available by subscription.
s/best/worst
From 'SuperSize Me' to The Three Stooges to Bollywood films, BitTorrent wants to offer the most comprehensive service when it launches its pay service.
all of those and more are already available on bittorrent. Hell there is already HD Rips of most content available via BT.
How do they expect to compete with the illigit stuff? I can either download and play the illigit items on anything I own or pay for the content and only play it on the windows machine with the approved player?
no thanks. Offer it without DRM so I can play it on my archos, mythbox, and other items that are not approved or I am not buying.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The article does a really bad job of emphasizing the difference between Bittorrent the download protocol/technology, and BitTorrent, the CA-based company.
It's kind of like what would happen if Yahoo! had named itself "HTTP" back in the early 90s.
What's basically happening here is that a company (BitTorrent) is marketing a service which (I think) uses the bittorrent protocol to share DRMed movies, as part of a subscription service.
From a technical standpoint, this has as much to do with the Pirate Bay's use of BT as Apple's iTunes does with AllOfMP3.com, since they both use HTTP. Which is to say, basically none.
However, from an economic/political standpoint, this could be a good thing depending on how you look at it. Because BitTorrent, Inc. is the 'public face' of the BT protocol, whatever it does reflects on the perception of bittorrrent generally. If it's perceived as being legitimate, then it dampens the kneejerk "bittorrent == piracy" reaction, even though the majority of the traffic using that protocol on the network at any given time may be illegitimate or pirated. This perception is important, since it may be what drives ISPs and others to filter, block, or ratelimit packets on their network. As in many aspects of life, what people perceive to be the truth is far more important than what's actually the case.
I would wager that at some point, as BitTorrent, Inc. tries to clean up its image, that it will probably try to keep other file-sharing systems from using it's name and trademark -- Azureus will have to be a "distributed peer-to-peer simultaneous transfer client" instead of a "Bittorrent client."
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
So hopefully they mean what they say and they'll actually support more than just windows and ie soon.
Just checked out guba.com. In Firefox, they tell me that i have to be running IE, and have windows media 9 or higher, "Which support the Windows Media Digital Rights Management System as required by our premium content providers. We will add other DRM support as soon as it becomes available and approved by major premium content providers" CrapTastic!
Can I be honest and say I dont like the subscription model?
I can already get that quite nicely via NetFlix etc. I want to be able to pay 2 (maybe 5) bucks and download the movie NOW. I dont mind if I have watch it within a week or even within 24 hours before the DRM kicks in, but I dont want to have to pay when I dont use.
Movies on demand. Thats what we want.
"Trust me. This system is way cheaper."
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
This method of distributing large files which require a lot of bandwidth does an end run around the telcos who are trying to charge large sites extra money, without the need for specific "Net Neutrality" legislation.
If YouTube were able to distribute their video content (at least the most popular ones) via p2p, they wouldn't need such a large pipe if they're only seeding and running a tracker-like service. The p2p user base will share amongst themselves (which is more efficient anyway for the ISPs). If someone else on my own ISP's network has the video already, I don't need to stream it directly from YouTube or Google, when I can get most of it from my neighbor.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
How can one make an independent documentary film if it costs $10,000 to license four seconds of copyrighted TV show that happened to be showing on the television set in one of the documentary subject's room? How can an independent band publish an album if it runs the risk of accidentally tripping over someone's copyrighted melody?
After reading everyone's comments I've come to the opinion that they're going to hit a big roadblock with this. The people most interested in this type of distribution model are the exact same people least interested in putting up with restrictive digital rights management, especially of the Microsoft variety.
:(. I, for example, would love to lay the DVD (and all physical distribution formats) to rest in favor of files downloaded over the internet (hint: I already have). It's cooler, it SHOULD be cheaper, files don't get scratched every time I touch them, and I plan to have a computer screen bigger than my TV screen anyway. But there's simply _NO_ way I'm going to pay money for something that requires a Microsoft product to work. I'd rather climb up a skyscraper, wrap one end of a chain of Windows 98 CDs around my neck, tie the other end to a lightning rod, and jump off. I'm also not going to put up with a proprietary DRM of any kind.
It's almost like these companies don't do any market research at all
If someone can develop and popularize an open source standard DRM format that has REASONABLE (or at least adjustable - so that I can choose to buy things with less restrictions) restrictions call me.
Haiku for you!
I think bittorent's deals can eventually help Net Neutrality. If big content providers are successful using bittorent to distribute their properties then they will start to cry foul when bittorent traffic is relegated to the slow speed tier. The content providers such as Warner have properties that the ISPs want (TV shows/on demand movies etc...) and thus they can push the ISPs to keep bittorent traffic untouched.
The more the big content providers find ways of distributing content directly to the consumer the more interested they will become in telling ISPs to stay out of the gatekeeper business.
Given that BitTorrent's number one usage is downloading pirated movies and music, this is a drop in the bucket. And it's not that Hollywood or the RIAA are distrustful of P2P in general, they're distrustful of people using P2P to send around media they own the copyright to.
Good first step, and I don't agree with the people complaining about DRM on the movies...in the world we live in, where people will take anything not nailed down, it's kind of a necessity.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
The best part is that this content will be made available by subscription.
Best for who, exactly? Presumably the movie companies, not the customers. This way you get to keep on giving money for the subscription, and when you finally decide to stop, you have no products to show for it.
I for one will consider downloading albums and films legally just as soon as a method of selling them second hand legitimately appears. Until then, I'll stick to tangible formats which still give me that right.
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Consider this. Whatever is running on your computer, is 'owning your computer'. Hollywood understands now that the torrent protocol means that, by granting access to sexy media files, media producers can be using your resources in payment (i.e. 'occupying the attention of you/your computer'). Hollywood always has been, and always will be, interested primarily in Time Spent At Attention, because this is one step closer to Give Us Money.
What, you didn't think torrent was Spyware?
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Lets hope they are not paying attention. You just told them that you cannot function without buying their product. That means they can do anything they want, and you will still buy it. Given your statment about coding, I assume that you do this for a living? If so, you just told the RIAA that you cannot earn a living without their product. Why in the world would they sell their product for a fair price, and treat you with any respect if you cannot do without it?
You've put yourself in the position of a haroin addict, and told the only dealer in town, just how bad your addiction is. Don't take this as an insult, because you certainly have a right to buy what products you want, but it is people like you that makes sure consumers have absolutly no leverage in negotiating a fair deal. The RIAA will take 1 of you over 5 of me, because they can charge you 6 times as much as me.