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BitTorrent Legit Service Launches
The launch of the BitTorrent Entertainment Network came out today; there's the AP write-up, which is decent enough but the interview with Bram about it is more interesting. Tangentially, the the education of lawmakers on video DRM is an interesting countweight to all this.
Is there anything about the uTorrent aquisition? I havn't downloaded the new version because I am paranoid.
I'd be interested to hear what people think of the new BitTorrent DNA 2.0, which apparently uses QOS to dial itself down in the presence of VOIP, etc. But it also apparently won't be open-sourced, and will be proprietary to the Mainline client.
And I'm not a big fan of all the snarky comments, myself.
A lot of linux distros distribute ISOs via bit torrent. I'm not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure that's legal under the GPL. As for non-GPL stuff, what about legaltorrents.com? Legal uses of bit-torrent aren't new.
From TFA:
BitTorrent's content is protected by Windows Media DRM and will only play back using Windows Media Player.
Is there a DRM alternative that is suitable on all platforms?
Somewhat crippling ToS from the site (you must download and watch movies/TV shows before 30 days, can only watch it for 24 hours after first playing); and the kicker: $3.99 for rentals. Imo at least the charge should be half that. There is no distibution cost other than keeping the tracker/site up, and you can only watch it for a day! If I watched even 3 movies a month, it'd cost less to just go through netflix, and I could keep them as long as I wanted.
However, it is still good to see BT somewhat more in the public eye. Maybe it'll catch on and more people will realize that they're being ripped off.
When I saw this announcement, I went to the site and saw they they had a few movies I wanted to see. Not such a bad selection, and even some free stuff! Hell I'd pay for it if its a reasonable price, I thought.
I clicked on a movie to see how much it would cost to download and watch. $3.99 to "Rent". Oh shit, I thought to myself. Rent. That means, DRM. I looked at the bottom of the page:
Well. Funny, I don't USE windows. Hm, guess I'm not part of their target demographic. Oh well, I'll just head over to isohunt then, or walk down to the movie store and get something older. I'm a little disappointed, but
I don't see any: Stargate (SG-1 or Atlantis), House M.D., the only Star Trek is movie 7,no American Idol episodes..
So when can I buy the crap I actually want?
"This title is available only to residents of the United States."
Get fucked Brad. This is the internet.
I can see it now... $4 to rent a reduced-quality movie for 24 hours, with DRM. Geeks everywhere will demand the studio masters to be downloadable without DRM for a nickel a pop (and even that may be too costly for some).
The files are Windows-only. What a disaster.
Are they distributing in high definition, or at least DVD quality? Or is this yet another "advancement" where all they do is lower the quality?
Too bad we can't use them here in Canada because Rogers decided it will throttle all Bittorrent traffic (1/2 kb/s up and down if you're lucky). Of course there were workarounds but Rogers eventually shut those down. Perhaps news of a "legitimate" download service will convince them to change their mind.
Switch to DSL you say? Unfortunately Bell/Tek-savvy do not currently offer service into my area so i'm SOL. I'd love to hear any (Bitcomet port 1720/1755 workarounds) right about now.
Finally the big studios are getting with the program and embracing new technology ... OHNOES!! Have you seen the usage requirements/restrictions? Once again they have shot themselves in the foot.
Instead of giving the people what they want, they are following down the same stupid path as always. At least some good will come of this...
Now the average person who wasn't really familiar with BitTorrent can learn how and what it is used for from this site and then go to another site and download it for free. Thanks for the lesson BitTorrent.com !
Can someone say www.allofmovie.com soon ?
Everybody can become a programmer but very few people are the offspring of Aaron (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron) and bear the Cohen modal haplotype (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cohen_Modal_Haplotyp e)
What a waste!
Now that BitTorrent owns uTorrent, doens't it make sense for them to now restrict uTorrent from downloading copyrighted material? How long before Warner Bros, etc demand that Bit Torrent put the reins on uTorrent?
Looks like it's time to develop another Bit Torrent client.
I live in Spain and here it's absolutely legal to download or upload copyrighted material without paying. What is punished is to make profit of it, but if you download, let's say, the movie 300, which hasn't been released on the cinemas yet, well, that's absolutely legal (i'm not joking). And we're ready to fight back if any politician here wants to change this.
So, when you say 'legit' p2p, what do you mean? do you mean legit in the USA, UK, or where?
$3 per movie and I still have to use my outbound bandwidth? I can rent movies from the local rental shop for cheaper than that and still have the option to watch them on the living room DVD player. Between 50 and 75 cents seems like a more reasonable price point, particularly if I'm helping to cover their distribution costs.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
What they instead do is use BitTorrent for the most part and then supply with HTTP whenever the transfer rate drops.
So yes, legal use of BitTorrent isn't new. But it's always nice to see more. Bram did use to advertise BT as "not filesharing (presumable referring to the anarchic concept), but file distribution".
I download
Take off every 'ZIG' !!
All the movies available for download are old... we're talking like already-past-VOD-old, which is about 2-3 months older than DVD release. As in these movies have all been on DVD for 4 or more months.
When are the movie execs going to realize that PPV and PTD (pay to download) are only going to really take off when you can download the movie the same day it comes out on DVD?
Downloading and/or VOD means less distributions costs for distributor, faster and cheaper movie for customers. If they decreased the number of DVDs produced, and released VOD and downloads at the same time, they would likely see higher sales and profits,and the customers would be more happy too.
He only needs hard work and determination, it does not matter that he is of obscure origin. Meanwhile the Levys and Cohens of the world, despite their distinguisehed lineages choose mundane professions such as medical doctors, lawyers, architects, rocket or nuclear scientists and so on. Really sad.
Levy Cohen, not a Rabbi
http://www.bittorrent.com/feedback and the service
feedback@bittorrent.com
Realistically, how else do you propose to sell stuff over a P2P network?
This comes up every time there's a thread about the new "legit" BitTorrent service. I don't think it's possible. If this service attracts enough attention, the DRM is going to be bypassed. I doubt it's even going to be that hard, because the nature of P2P services makes end-to-end DRM impossible. So not only do you have the inherent flaws in the DRM system you choose, but you also have an inherent incompatibility between the DRM (which makes every user's file different) and P2P distribution, which depends on many users wanting files that are bit-for-bit identical with each other.
There's no good way to do both. They can layer on the encryption but it's nothing but turd polish; the data that's coming down the wire from the other clients has to be encrypted on a non-per-user basis (perhaps a per-file basis), and then the application of the per-user DRM needs to be done in the client. Which means the layer of encryption that presumably protected it in transit needs to be removed. So if you can play spot-the-key, and grab the per-file key as the client program decrypts it in preparation for applying the per-user DRM encryption, you can get a key that lets everyone decrypt the file.
In short, you cannot sell content via a service like this. Not going to happen in the long run, I think. What you probably could do, is sell access to the network, where the value is in the subscription to the content and not in the content itself per se. (Of course the movie studios would hate that, since they want to think of each movie "copy" sold as a revenue source.)
Looking forward, the future of services is to market the services and the access, rather than the content. Digitization and the resulting ease of copying makes it nearly impossible to sell pieces of information as distinct products, like aspirin tablets, in the same way that the content producers have grown used to. The game is up, it's just not going to work any more; they're fighting against inherent problems with DRM, inherent problems with P2P distribution, and inherent problems with the nonconservative nature of information.
However, what you can sell, is the access to a large repository or service which lets you access a lot of information in an organized and reliable manner. That represents a value to the customer, above and beyond just getting ahold of the movies/books/articles/whatever themselves. If a customer just wants to watch a single movie, say Pirates of the Caribbean, they can just go download a pirated copy. They are always going to be able to go and download a pirated copy. As long as the studios and "legit" alternatives mess around with DRM, it is always going to be easier for them to go download a pirated copy. However, what the studios could sell, would be instantaneous access to all the films ever made by Hollywood in the past century. Doing that -- putting together the database, organizing everything, providing a method of distribution, etc. -- is a value that's separate from the movies themselves, and the organization and logistics aren't readily copied. That wouldn't even require DRM; it wouldn't be practical for an end-user to copy more than a tiny fraction of the available material, so there's no risk. It's like a cable company and your VCR: the amount of content you can tape is never going to compete with the amount of content that's being pushed down to you all the time (I'd need to have 600+ VCRs running continuously in order to capture what Comcast pushes to me). Without DRM, you can use P2P to distribute without layers of useless encryption. To monetize it, you sell access to the network (the network is managed by a central server that tells clients where seeds and other clients are -- you don't pay, it doesn't tell you).
People don't want to buy content, they want to buy access to streams of content; they don't want to buy data, they want access to repositories of data that contain more stuff than t
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I hate DRM ruins everything. Next we will have to pay for Rum and Planks.
"Luck is a tag given by the mediocre to account for the accomplishments of genius." -Heinlein
Mark Cuban started things off and Bram Cohen responded. Bram's problem is that he mischaracterizes Cuban's argument when he makes his case. For example, right in the title of his blog entry, Bram claims Mark predicts the downfall of Bittorrent. Mark never said anything like that! And in fact Mark responds to Bram's false accusations in his own blog . How many billionaire CEOs would you see doing this? Of course people will keep accusing Mark of being a self-centered, power hungry megolomaniac. That may or may not be true. However, we can provably show what someone did or did not say in a blog and in this instance, Bram is way off.
I love Bram to death for what he's given to us for free and I don't know if he's deliberately mischaracterizing this criticism or perhaps temporarily misunderstood what Mark was getting at, but this constant spinning of his is kind of lame.
schlub - a clumsy and stupid guy
schmuck - a jerk (I think)
Any realistic DRM scheme for downloads must involve encryption with a customer-specific key. Otherwise I can just copy the file. But that kind of encryption makes it impossible to give everyone the same file. I take that back; the player could be locked-down and refuse to play things unless it receives authorization from a remote server. That seems like it'd be far easier to break, though.
For rented items, I'm willing to accept time- and device-restrictions. If I rent a DVD from NetFlix, I don't expect to play it on anything but a DVD player. I expect to pay no more than I would at a video store or DVD-rental-by-mail service for a similar product for a similar rental period.
The advantages of a well-done digital rental service are that when ordering, I can
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Contrary to popular belief, Internet broadband is not limitless or even abundant. Companies that sell you 'unlimited' connections for $100 / month are grossly overselling,, it only works if the customers use, on avg. less than %10 of that. (This is why there is such a push to destroy net Neutrality, *someone* has to subsidize the underpriced connections now that more and more people are downloading GIGS per month.) Using bit-torrent to distribute paid-for material is grossly abusing an already broken system.. If this business model actually takes off, ISP's will have no choice but to scrap the unmetered Internet entirely,, (And really, I think, that might be best overall). Who then will be foolish enough to contribute bandwidth they are actually paying for to seed torrents that someone is is getting paid for?
Another US only service.
Nothing more to add.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Now taking bets to see how long it takes to crack the DRM. $3.99, I should be able to own downloaded material for that price!
Relocating to San Francisco / Palo Alto... Hire me?
I'm pretty sure media player version 6.4 is available to run on linux but not a higher version. Again linux users are lead down the non-drm traveled path which is of coarse, the naturaul path. If i was to pay for digital content the following must be met. I'm not paying for commercials, i'm not paying for drm, and i'm not paying for time limited &/or quality limited content either. Also, I'd prefer a straight download off of their ftp server over bittorrent(unless the bandwidth is fast). I bet you could get 2/3-3/3 to pay for "legitmate" content if it was done right vs. the 1/3 they estimate will pay using drm.
Since DRM has been proven insecure over and over again, it is simply a matter of time before your R&D is completely subverted by pirates who will just re-encode/recapture your media and release it with no DRM for distribution. Hell most DRM laden crap is just that, crap. Low quality etc. As many have said before, pirates are after the highest quality rips not the garbage, so *shrug* it's a 50:50 proposition honestly. Put the money into keeping shit most pirates wouldn't touch, semi-offlimits (to the customer) or releasing something without all the money in the DRM (which the recording industry won't touch, because they've drank the DRM cool-aid) that the customer can actually use.
Since when does watching a show on my computer, portable media device of laptop have to require a license for each device? If the media outlets think that the average consumer will swallow that pill they've got another thing coming. Instead of creating a ubiquitous platform for their media they've developed a thousand little niches that all waste so much time and effort in DRM it's only their insane margins that keep them making a profit.
"That's odd because your rental wants sound kinda like a media distribution drone's wants."
Yup. If I'm renting it, it's usually because I or my family wants to watch it once and it's not on TV this week.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Finally there's a way of getting DRMed WMV files to me that costs the content distributor less! Thank God, now they can afford enough ammo to hunt the poor with.
I've been trying to figure this out, too. I'm wondering if you could use broadcast encryption, similar to AACS.
their plan was to go for the 13-26 bracket that watches media on their computers.
I think their market research should be hanged right about now.
this is a crucial business error, one, from which they will never recover.
they have to make it better than free!
here, pay $2.99 to download a DRMed WMV file that won't work on your Linux distro or your mac.
Lesson #1. don't exclude mac or Linux.
HOW FUCKING STUPID ARE YOU MPAA?
big media is doomed to endure internet downloading and third-world piracy, until they DO get it!
I'm sorry, but a dvdrip for free is better ANY DAY than a $2.99 DRM WMV file.
MPAA, RIAA take your DRM and shove it up your ASS, you fucking content czars!
They're using their grammar skills there.
The title is confusing. Let's stop that mixing of genres for once.
Torrent sites are just as "legit" as this new commercial site. Torrent is a technology, sites offer links to trackers, torrent applications are just applications. NONE of them are "un-legit".
People who rip and provide files using this technology are not.
4 Dollars to download a crippled file? You have to be kidding me!
For 4 dollars I can rent 2 movies on my local non-blockbuster video rental store and keep them for a week. Or I can rip them and keep them for however long I want.
This price is ridiculous. I was expecting 1 or 2 dollars at most.
OH, and it doesn't work with anything besides Windows. Did anyone think this through before launching this site? Do they just want it to fail so they can say "We told you it wouldn't work!"
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
Why do they need to be different files? I encrypt the file one way to start out. It's either secure that way or its not. If it's secure when I give it to the first person, how is it any less secure when I give it to the next? There's a monoculture argument, but I would say that it's irrelevant because in this environment anyone who cracks the file is going to post the .avi, not the key. If you read the interview with him, it's windows DRM and Windows Media Player querries the Bittorrent.com server when it tries to play the file and asks for the decryption key. There's no reason for it not to get the same key back every time, ergo there is no reason for the file not to be the same every time. The only time you have different files is if you tie the encryption (And the key) to the user's computer in some unique way, as a method to prevent transfer. But since it's tied to a given media player, the media player does all that work for them (or so I gather).
Relax I just want some peanuts.
Sure, but even if a release group grabbed all the content, it would be difficult for them to duplicate the service.
The value provided in a hypothetical P2P service offered by the movie theaters is greater than just the content that it provides. It's about having all that content right there, waiting for you, with a predictable quality, all nicely sorted and reviewed, perhaps recommended to you by a nice Amazon or NetFlix-like smart system.
The value is in the service, in the aggregation, organization, and presentation of the data, not in the data itself.
Think of it like a newsfeed or wire service. You can get most of the same information elsewhere, but what you pay for is the constant feed of new information, that's tailored to your needs, in a consistent format and with some guarantee (hopefully) of minimum quality.
The movie studios are sitting on top of a gold mine in their back catalogs. Even though the value of each movie in the catalog might be low, and might not get many downloads, they would be able to advertise to customers that they'd have access to a vast repository of movies (anyone remember that commercial for one of the big telcos -- I think it was Lucent -- where a guy is standing in a seedy hotel talking to the clerk, and asks what they have on cable, and the clerk says 'every movie ever made'?) without screwing around with shady overseas sites or downloading a film only to find out afterwards that it's a shitty screener, or has foreign subtitles, etc. That service would have value, which people would pay to subscribe to, particularly if the movies themselves didn't have DRM and there wasn't an obvious lock-in. People would pay, and keep paying, for the same reason they pay for NetFlix and the Internet in general -- once you've drunk from a really fat pipe and seen what it's like to have instant access to vast amounts of info, it's tough to ever go back.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
The value provided in a hypothetical P2P service offered by the movie studios is greater than just the content that it provides.
The theaters obviously don't own the back-catalog, so their ability to offer such a service would be minimal. (Although, some theaters are owned by studios, but that's not what I was getting at.)
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
1: put up group releases.
2: sell group releases as "rentals" making sure to not give them any credit or compensation.
3: pass on a few bucks to the companies so they don't sue your ass out of existence.
4: profit!
And yet, the videos still can't be burned to DVD-Video. No one wants a movie/episode that can't burn to dvd so they can watch it on their tvs. The only people who wouldn't care is those who have HTPCs hooked up to their televisions.
This service is completely useless for the majority of people. It will go belly up.
\
Google would just want a sample of your sperm or ova ... with their algorithms, you know they'd be able to do a better job of mate selection than you would anyway.
I download Slackware Linux and OpenOffice.org using bittorrent. Both are copyrighted and both are already available legitimately for free-as-in-beer.
I wish people would use the term "copyrighted" correctly.
Stick Men
I started this thread and I am a Jew myself and I dont see anything antisemitic here. Is it forbidden to make a joke or what?. Maybe I am an antisemitic Jew myself!
On the subject of paying for downloading tv episodes/movies, a couple of years ago I heard about this site called http://www.cinemanow.com/ because at one time you could pay to download the season 3 episodes of ReBoot (which the DVDs are now long out of print) but it would've cost $160 to download the 16 episodes at $10 each, and the quality is nowhere near that of the DVDs.
CinemaNow does have quite a bit of content to download, some of it free as it's subsidies by advertising just like normal tv, but most of the content is pretty obscure (read: too terrible for normal tv, but I spotted a few titles that MST3K had ripped into)
hack slash, who has all of ReBoot on pressed DVD (hence his nickname), but half of it is dubbed in Russian
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
Not that safe. I'd consider myself a potential customer (except I'm in Australia so I'm out of luck), but watching movies on a PC (by myself) sucks. I'd much rather watch it on my large-screen TV in the living room, with real surround sound - but I still want the convenience of downloading the movie.
It's not that hard to do. I ran (long) DVI->HDMI and S/PDIF cables to my amp, and it works great - so long as the DRM is satisfied with ordinary XP and DVI out, no HDCP. Another option is cat5 or wifi to an Xbox 360 acting as a Media Center Extender - does their DRM allow that? Limited to 720p, but for downloads, that's probably acceptable (given that Australians are stuck with download quotas).
If it doesn't - oh well, back to DVDs and the old-style DRM-free BitTorrent network :-/
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Chill out. Dude was trying to figure out how they do the DRM, and you turn it into a bitch-fest about how you think DRM sucks. Geez. Do that shit on some relevant thread, not this one. Dingleberry.
The story is flamebait. Any P2P has legit and illegitimate uses, and clearly the poster has never heard of Democracy TV.
It's OK Bender, there's no such thing as 2.