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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."
...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?"
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
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.
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."
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.
This leads to an amusing possibility: the MPAA/RIAA suing ISPs for blocking BitTorrent.
Forward, retransmit, or republish anything I say here. Just don't misquote me.
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.