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BitTorrent Partners with TV and Movie Companies
An anonymous reader writes "BitTorrent Inc just announced that they teamed up with several TV and Movie companies. The new list of partners includes 20th Century Fox, Paramount PicturesG4, Kadokawa Pictures USA, Lionsgate, MTV Networks (Comedy Central, MTV and more), Palm Pictures and Starz Media.
These deals will add a great deal of content to the BitTorrent video store, including popular movies like Mission: Impossible III and X-Men The Last Stand and popular TV-show such as "Prison Break" and "South Park""
If the videos are in Linux friendly and non-DRM'd-to-hell format I will be a customer. Can anyone find some solid facts on the details?
i for one, aint seeding SHIT that i gotta pay for...
The MPAA are working with BitTorrent Inc (a US company) to move their content away from illegal copies to a commercial business case.
The RIAA are working against AllofMP3 (a RU company) to move their business away from legally selling material to a non-existant case.
Something's a bit twisted about that.
biopowered.co.uk - catalytically cracking triglycerides for home automotive use since 2008. Just say no to big oil!
Yes, we do.
The announcement has nothing on the details which determine if the service will be useful: DRM, resolution, regional accessibility and so on. Wake me when they publish the specs.
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
- 'K' in Men in Black.
That's the joy of free software and open protocol, no matter what the creator wants the software to be, its fate is in the community's hands now. Vide the protocol encryption matter, now a de facto standard in the biggest players in the field (utorrent, azureus and bitcomet).
I really didn't know there was a BitTorrent Corporation, I didn't know that they were trying to be all legitimate and everything, but I don't think I'll use their store, buy their content or even really notice that they're doing anything. I'm using uTorrent (and formerly ABC after I switched from Azureus) and visiting a small list of torrent sites semi-regularly and generally going about my business. Does this effect the average user like me in any way?
I'm also curious, if Peerguardian or the like has blocked ports to any of these companies, would this affect their new BitTorrent service? I haven't really looked at the block lists in Peerguardian but I'm pretty sure some movie companies are in there. Are they trying to backdoor their way around block lists or are they really planning on distributing their content on open networks? Just curious.
including popular movies like Mission: Impossible III and X-Men The Last Stand and popular TV-show such as "Prison Break" and "South Park""
But I already get those from Bittorrent...
***Go read a book, already. (Just don't expect to do it electronically, because in the 21st Century nobody makes a decent e-book reader.)***
That frustrates me in ways the human brain cannot comprehend. We can send you to the moon, replace your eye so you can see, but we cannot develop a simple little 100 dollar black box that reads ebooks in an ergonomic and easy-to-read way.
Living With a Nerd
...have a bittorrent link to bittorrent.com, the site seems to be slashdotted.
I know absolutely next to nothing about its technical details, but since the service is MPAA sanctioned, I can guarantee that it will not be DRM-free. There's no possible way.
I've been thinking though about how you could do DRM on bittorrent-delivered files, and it seems like a problem. Bittorrent only works because you have many people distributing the same file; if each client's copy is encrypted with a personal key (which is the only way to keep people from redistributing them) then P2P won't work.
I suspect that they try to dodge this problem by using a client program that's really, really ugly -- lots of obfuscation, use of keys stored on remote servers, encryption of everything that's written to disk, etc. I assume that all peer nodes are authenticated against a central database as well, and that their communication is encrypted or at least obfuscated (and naturally, the whole thing will be a 'Trade Secret').
There's really not going to be anything good about this service, except as a technical challenge to hackers. Maybe there are some recently-unemployed programmers in Russia who'd like to give it a go?
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Is it illegal to download/upload television shows that are broadcasted over-the-air on free networks like ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, CW? Seems to me that it shouldn't be. I have access to those shows for free, so I should be able to get them in another format for free as well.
Will they have "Happy Days?" Because I'd love to buy that episode where Fonzie jumps over a shark on waterskis from Bittorrent.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
So go do it rather than complain about it.
-dave
/., where "Apple and Google provide Iran with nukes" will be refuted with "But Microsoft is a convicted monopolist"
I think that it's time to start thinking of BitTorrent the company and bittorrent the protocol as two totally separate entities. The BitTorrent (corporate) movie service will probably use some sort of bittorrent-type P2P sharing technology at its core (the better to save on bandwidth costs and increase their profit margin -- why pay for hosting when your users can do it for you?), it will probably not interact with the bittorrent networks used by Azureus and uTorrent. I can't imagine that they would -- anything that allowed you to download "Happy Feet.asf ($9.99 - Click to Purchase)" right next to "Happy Feet.dvdrip.LoL.avi" is probably going to be seen by the MPAA as legitimizing or at least enabling the latter.
In terms of what a BitTorrent movie player would be like, I think it'll be Peer to Peer in the same way that Skype is: it uses your computer and its network connection as part of the service's infrastructure without any real input from you, transparently. I further suspect that BitTorrent (corporate) clients will only interact with other BitTorrent (corporate) clients, and there will be some sort of central authentication server to keep you from injecting an unsecured (read: DRM-free) client program into it.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I would, but I'm not 3v1L l33t enough:(
Living With a Nerd
I have only one question:
Will I be able to play the files?
I'm deliberately not saying what platform I'm on or which media player I'm using, because, if I need a specific media player or platform, the answer to the question is "no".
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
I already download all that now off bittorrent. In fact I get most of it in HD from the piratebay store and the isohunt store in better quality than what they are offering on the official bittorrent store.
Why should I pay to get an inferior product? (inferior in both resolution and filetype)
If they want to make a go at it and entice people, they need to do two things. 1- make it full HD res and SD res at the highest quality possible, make it a filetype that will play on most anything, and finally create RSS fees of each TV show so plugins for media center PC's can be created to automatically grab the newest episodes.
But it will never EVER happen. they only want to release really low quality versions with incredibly strange DRM attached.
I'd buy it on my terms so I can watch it on my mediaportal and on my Nokia770 when I am on the road.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
You mean I can pay for the movie I'm downloading AND provide the seller with the bandwidth to do it? What a fantastic opportunity for consumers to share the crippling costs that hollywood is enduring!
As far as I can tell, this allows them to sell you a product while reducing the load on their servers and thus reducing the cost. In the meantime, it pushes the load onto the consumers' system because of the P2P nature of the distribution. Ok, great, where does it benefit the consumer? Will lower expenses result in lower costs?
I like that they are being creative, but if they use consumer bandwidth to reduce their expenses, they need to give the consumer something in return. Karma for sharing that gives a discount on future content, perhaps?
... more convenient (= quicker and cheaper) for me to go to the local video store and buy or rent the DVD.
So where's the incentive for me for downloading it via bitorrent and letting MPAA profit from using my bandwidth ?
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
Then why do you assume that it's easy enough and should have been done by now?
It's not simply lets write some software, it's a hardware issue, which is much more complicated. What constitutes ergonomic and easy-to-read? The size of a PDA? The size of a sheet of paper? Of a standard paper-back book? Color or black and white? Fixed form factor or something that rolls up to make it easy to store.
Look at the eInk stuff, it's cutting edge, just out, not yet perfected, yet you assume that there should be enough consumer demand and manufacturing capacity for it to be used in a $100 product?
-dave
/., where "Apple and Google provide Iran with nukes" will be refuted with "But Microsoft is a convicted monopolist"
...when we have a perfectly good tummy to eat our South Park from with the likes of southparkx.net? South Park seems to be an anomaly with regard to downloading TV shows in that Comedy Central allow us to do it, or they at least turn a blind eye, since Matt and Trey don't have a problem with South Park being distributed on the interweb.
I doubt this extends to DVD rips but I've certainly been able to get a hold of the latest South Park episodes a few hours after they're shown on Comedy Central over the past few seasons (admittedly I sometimes have to put up with a short clip of some crappy music by the encoder's band but it's a small price to pay) and I haven't heard about the sites in question being threatened by the network or the MPAA.
This seems to be a sensible approach as there will be many fans who'll gladly shell out for the DVD box sets when they're released even though they've got a reasonable TV rip.
Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It's what separates us from the animals... except the weasel."
This is because nobody has yet found a way to make an inexpensive handheld display that has anything approaching the resolution, reflectivity, and contrast ratio of ink on paper; not to mention the battery life.
To simulate a paper book you'd need something that had a contrast ratio of about 80:1, an ISO brightness (reflectivity at 457nm held at 45deg incident) of 80-90, and a resolution of somewhere around 300 dpi, which means a 2400x3000 pixel display for 8"x10".
I think it might just be that making an ebook reader that can compete with a technology that we've perfected over the last 1,000-plus years, is harder than putting a person on the moon or making an artificial eye.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
If I'm buying a movie why do I also have to buy bandwidth to distribute it to other purchasers? These movies had best be very cheap or the ordeal won't be worth all the trouble. I very much resented Blizzard for forcing its paying customers to VERY SLOWLY distribute patches over a totally non-configurable proprietary BT client while other games provide max downrate HTTP/FTP distribution.
I don't think of reading an eBook like a normal book (i.e. on paper or something like paper) It is, after all, an ELECTRONIC BOOK.
When I think of an eBook reader being perfected, this is what I envision.
Something the size of those old apple PDA's...roughly about the size of a small paperback. 512mb of internal flash memory with a CF card port. Adjustable brightness and contrast on the screen, adjustable font size, standard times new roman font, the ability to read the major ebook formats.
Why is that so difficult?
Living With a Nerd
It doesn't matter - the thing BT is NOT mentioning is that they're forcing Brent out of the company
Speaking in the theoretical, let's say some company has significant content they wish to sell in a downloadable way, and want to have people able to download at 500 KB/s consistently.
If they use HTTP or some other similar strategy, they will have to pay for whatever connection/infrastructure that can support 500 KB/s * num of concurrent clients. To acheive that, the price they need to charge per their business case is 15 dollars a month.
Now with Bittorrent (or something like it), they can skimp a little on their infrastructure (though not too much, they need to be good seeds). Also, they can cheaply and easily implement load-sharing in a distributed fashion with seeds from various sites. Anyway, let's say to give that 500 KB/s rate to the same concurrent connections, they only have to invest 70% of the cost of the traditional method. In exchange for customers permitting their (for most people) unused upstream, they can offer the service at 4 bucks/month cheaper. Though not obvious, this is in a roundabout way like 4$/month compensation.
If you had a choice between a torrent-like service and HTTP service, the former costing 11$/month and the latter 15$/month, would you still choose to spend more money on the principle of not having your upstream used for their profit?
The problem with it is that companies are tempted to cut back too drastically on costs and give poor service. Download a popular linux distribution via torrent and you will see that bittorrent can be a very powerful/speedy strategy if someone invests in good number/quality of seed connections.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Getting to the moon needs 300 year old maths, good seals, some stuff that burns really hot really quickly and some decent materials. And the task had an entire national agency working on it for almost ten years. I'm not surprised that a decent ebook reader is harder.
The reason ebooks have not caught on, and never will, is that nobody wants them.
Oh wait, that's not it. Turns out tons of people want them. What nobody wants is to pay $350 for the reader, $30 for a book (a higher cost than the dead tree version), and then get told when, where, and how many times they can and can't read the book they would own if they bought the dead tree version, but only have a very limited license to with the ebook version.
That probably explains why Bram Cohen is (probably) parting company with BitTorrent, Inc...
And yet they can make a small device only a couple inches by a couple inches in which has more computing power than the old systems of yore that took up entire rooms. Oh, and did I mention that using an extensive network of shiny things orbiting our planet (that we put there, by the way) I can actually use this device and speak into it, and someone in germany can hear what I say with little enough delay that I can actually have a full blown conversation?
.pdf files is unbelievably simple (and barely more in TOTAL production cost) by comparison.
.PDF files, why can they not strip out all that extra crap and make something that ONLY reads .pdf files?
Please. I may not be well versed enough in hardware to know HOW to do it, but I DO know that integrating a little screen with some simple hardware that can read
I mean...if they can make a pocketPC that fits in the palm of my hand and can do MORE than just read simple
Why can't they just put a little 486 proc with 4 megs of ram into a teeny plastic box with a screen? I mean, if the PS2 can fit into the "Slim" case...
Living With a Nerd
They distribute an encrypted version of the file. This file is what's transferred and seeded, etc.
Upon downloading the file, you use a program to unlock it. The program would interact with a web-service. It would charge your credit card, give you a username/password, and it would decrypt the file and merge in your unique signature. You'd never see the key that's used to decrypt the file. It's never stored on your PC and it's encrypted itself with SSL during the key-retrieval.
I'm not suggesting this is how it would work, but I *am* a software developer and this would be how I would probably approach the problem. Loading a file with "thousands of keys" doesn't really jive with how encryption actually works. An encrypted file doesn't store ANY keys, let alone thousands of them.
It would be trivial for a DVD-Jon-type to create a piece of softwarwe that can capture the symmetric key that is returned through the web transaction and break that file ... permanently. For every potential user...
And of course, the "thousands of keys" technique is still predicated on a single symmetric key protecting the file... that's the only one you care about breaking, where you focus your efforts is just different.
Bittorrent can't be used as a sustainable business model to profitably distribute DRM content. Those VCs are going find out they made a mistake sooner or later.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Just saying.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Battery life? Different interface? Screen resolution? Storage? File types? Connectivity? Should it be paperback size? Slimmer, or keep it chunky? Does it want turning pages, or constant scrolling? Should fonts be resizeable (Which defeats the point of PDF)? How are bookmarks added and stored? Do people need annotation capability? Should the display be e-ink or LCD?
That's why it's not just a matter of putting a 486 with 4MiB RAM (Would need some permanent storage in there as well) into a box with a screen. A good device needs a market, and I know that I don't want to have to wrestle with an awkward device to read a good novel.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
Did you expect me to lay out some kind of blueprint? Don't be an ass, you know what I was getting at. With all the advances in technology and with everything that we as humans have created, we can't do this? We can make laptops, some even small enough to fit into a shirt pocket (which are infinitely more complicated) but we can't make this?
Living With a Nerd
Because that's not what I, or others, envision as the perfect eBook.
-dave
/., where "Apple and Google provide Iran with nukes" will be refuted with "But Microsoft is a convicted monopolist"
SSL hasn't been cracked in 10 years and I'm sure it's not for lack of trying.
This is like saying "A dvd john type could just break AES encryption"
Please. Let's try to have at least a minor understanding of the subject matter before espousing our opinions as facts?
Whatever, it's still a step in the right direction. Gotta start somewhere, right? So why is it the readers that ARE out there cost more than a decent palm pilot (which, ironically, double as Ebook readers), have VERY little memory, horrid battery times, and early versions of DRM? Is it really so hard to just develop something GOOD? You know, something people might actually use?
Living With a Nerd
DRM and SSL encryption are completely different things.
SSL encryption is to allow A to send data to B without C being able to copy it.
DRM is to let A to send data to B without B being able to copy it.
Except that *by definition* B has to be able to read it. If he can read it, he can copy it.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Einstein)
You don't seem to understand. Therefore, I am not going to explain it to you. Go back and re-read what I wrote. The idea is that when you buy the file (after its downloaded) a client application retreives (thru SSL) a private key that's used to decrypt the file you downloaded from BT. The client app decrypts the file, destroys the private key, and merges your client certificate into a predefined space in the binary file, aka DRM.
If you get payed for seeding, it might be possible to get all the movies and TV you want for free. If you average out all the share ratios of everyone who uses any particular torrent, you'll always get exactly 1. From my experience, the large majority of people won't bother sharing too much, meaning they pay the standard price for their file. The people who share above and beyond the call of duty pay less, some of whom might even get the file for free and have more credit to spend on other content. for example: You buy a Mission Impossible 3 .torrent file for $5. $0.50 of that goes to the people who seed the file to you, the rest to the various people responsible for making the movie. You accumulate a share ration of 1, meaning that the movie actually only cost you $4.50.
Some other guy gets the same file for the same price, but after he's finished downloading continues to seed. He gets an impressive share ratio of 10. The movie ends up costing him nothing, but the people who made the movie still make money from his purchase.
Obviously i just used arbitrary numbers and the reality probably won't be quite that sweet. However, it's still a win-win situation if you forget about DRM and proprietary software.
Those who want free content get free content, those who couldn't care less and are happy with relatively cheap content get just that.
Those who still want to get everything for free without seeding forever can just visit the old pirate bay.
sudo killall humans
The client app decrypts the file...
And THAT'S where you strike. The only catch is that not only do you have a free-and-clear copy, but so does anybody else (the key is easier to distribute than the now-un-DRM movie itself). In a non P2P model, the content provider can limit the spread of a key that breaks an official file by using seperate per-file encrpytion keys for each registered user.
No amount of mucking about with SSL or PKI will fix that problem.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
So I download a file that's encrypted, and you give me the private key over SSL. Yes, no one can intercept the private key when you give it to me.
Of course if I then choose to distribute the private key anyone anyone can decrypt the original file and play it themselves. As soon as one person breaks the client app to save the private keys, the whole DRM scheme is broken.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Einstein)
While BitTorrent is a twoderful thing (better than onederful *ahem*) everyone is aware that at least for most residential account users - it's in violation of your TOS? You know, that clause that states you will not run a server?
And as soon as someone cracks the PGP client app then PGP is useless to.
The thing is, it's much easier said than done.
Don't be naive.
"This statement is meaningless, and suggests a lack of understanding about this subject. The security of PGP doesn't depend on the algorithm being secret."
Actually, your post is meaningless and suggests a lack of comprehension and a desire to jump to conclusions.
Try this: read my post and instead of asking "how could this be wrong?" ask "how could this be right?"
All you need to do to break PGP is to crack the client application. I'll stand by this. You're so smart, you figure it. But it has nothing to do with not 'keeping the algo secret.' Try again.
I can recall when the RIAA/MPAA was cracking down on P2P services, proponents of these services argued that they were beneficial for distributing perfectly legitimate files and media (As a distribution channel, for example, for unsigned bands trying to be heard). It wasn't a very compelling argument, at least to the media companies, and they stayed on track in their attempt to demonize P2P services.
And why shouldn't they? The services did nothing that could make them any money. In most cases, P2P did little more then, in their eyes, lose them money threw theft. In cases where the services were offering perfectly legitimate files, all P2P could do is threaten their pre-existing distribution channels, costing them money due to competition.
But if the media companies employ torrents as a means to distribute their wares, they really can't paint the service as being evil. Sure, they'll always try to vilify media pirates, but now they'll be unable to point their finger at torrents and claim that the distribution service is used exclusivly for trafficking pirated materials.
The Internet is generally stupid
Huh?
The PGP client app is just a program that does some math. The math is public key encryption. "Cracking" a PGP client app doesn't invalidate the underlaying math but could comprimse the security of those using the cracked app. Attacking an app doesn't always mean you're attacking the math. For example the Buffer overflow in PGP Outlook Encryption Plug-In
If the govt becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law, it invites man to become his own law, it invites anarchy
The level of technology needed for a useful ebook reader is quite available.
The reason why we don't have ebooks is very simple: DRM.
"I reckon you should publish that before making your magic unbreakable DRM that's completely resistant to inspection using a virtual machine. Consider it a public service. Then do the DRM thing and become super rich."
I was waiting for you to slip into such hyperbolic drivel that you releived yourself of all credibility. I knew it would only be a matter of time, and I was right.
I'm not going to go 15 rounds with an A.C. who, apparently, lacks basic reading comprihension skills. The fact is that I never suggested most of the things that you attributed to me. It's like you read 10 random words from each of my posts and assembled them in you head to mean what you WANTED them to mean.
Why not just cut a chunk of the video file out, critical data that will make the file unplayable without, and a nontrivial amount so it can't be reconstructed.
Take that data, encrypt it with the victim's assigned key, and distribute the video in 2 parts. The encrypted part is personally downloaded, while the bulk data is torrented. Then you just have a special plugin for windows media player or something else that reads both file streams and reconstructs on the fly, never recreating the real file.
20megs out of a 600meg movie would be trivial for them to serve to people and they'd still get the benefit of 600megs torrented.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!
I have been downloading movies and TV show via Bit Torrent for years now!
P.S.,
This is what part of the alphabet would look like if Q and R were eliminated.
This must be some kind of pay-per-download thing? I wasn't aware of this particular incarnation of bit torrent. The thing is - bit torrent isn't the best for commercial applications in my mind. Stealing software and movies, or downloading legitimate open source projects or whatever - sure. But if I'm paying for something, I want a fast connection to your server dammit. It's like selling products online and then offering only 23rd-class USPS shipping.
or else!
No.
With PGP, I supply it with the key and the cipher text, it gives me the decrypted data.
In the DRM example, I provide the application with a key and the cipher text, the application then shows me the content but refuses to give me the decrypted data.
In the PGP case I can't break the app - it does everything I ask of it anyway.
In the DRM example, all I have to do is persuade the application to return me the decrypted data and there are lots of ways of doing that, e.g. writing a video driver that streams the output to disk, writing a sound driver that streams the sound to disk, disassembling the application and modifying it to copy the data.
The difference, is PGP is trying to keep the data secret from people who don't have the keys, the DRM is trying to keep the data secret from people who do have the keys.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Einstein)
You really don't understand crypto, do you.
You can't "crack" PGP anymore than you can "crack" DHM key exchange, or "crack" finding a trivial solution for factoring large composite numbers, or find a weakness in SHA-1.
If any of those things were possible, not only would PGP be broken, BUT SO WOULD SSL.
Face it. DRM that isn't assisted by resin-blobbed cryptohardware is intractable, especially when using irresponsbile, single-symmetric key encoding schemes. Bittorrent and DRM are NOT a good mix, which is my initial point.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON