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.

Comments

There wasn't legitimate bittorrent before?

[i kan reed]

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.

Re:There wasn't legitimate bittorrent before?

[BlazeMiskulin]

Article I
Section. 8.

The Congress shall have Power to... ...promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

i.e., "Intellectual Property"

Re:There wasn't legitimate bittorrent before?

[Digital Vomit]

There's this 200+ year old document that people like you accuse President Bush of trashing yet you seem toconveniently forget that intellectual property rights were included even before amendments were proposed.

There's a world of difference between what "intellectual property" means in that 200+ year old document and what "intellectual property" means today.

So I watched the Oscars last night...

[radarsat1]

So I watched a few parts of the Oscars last night. I always find it a bit frustrating, because I don't ever find the time to go see many new movies in the theater, so when the Oscars roll around they are always talking about tons of movies I haven't seen yet. On the other hand, it makes me write down a few titles so I can plan on looking them up later.

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:

Usage Rights
You may watch this on one computer. You have 30 days from the transaction to download the file and 24 hours to watch it after you first click play. See full terms of service.

System Requirements
It looks like your system doesn't meet the Minimum System Requirements. You can still purchase this title here, but please note that you may only watch it on a Windows XP computer meeting the requirements.

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 .. not really surprised.

Re:So I watched the Oscars last night...

[Random Destruction]

How many people want to watch movies on their computer? A relatively small number.

How many of customers of this service want to watch movies on their computer? Pretty safe bet to say 100%.

How many of them have a problem with using either an Apple based solution or a Windows-only solution?

Macs have about 4% market share overall, linux around 3%. (from some quick googling). Though I'd say its a safe bet that the kind of people who want to watch movies on their computers are more likely to be running osx/linux (also consider setups like mythTV boxes). So maybe 10% of their possible market? more?

Either way, the issue isn't quite as insignificant as you tried to make it seem.

Re:WMP only???

[FredDC]

IANAL, but where I live, Belgium, there is a law against such a practice. It is illegal to sell things which need another specific thing to be used. I think I'm gonna take a deeper look into this and perhaps contact some consumer groups because according to me DRM implemted like that is illegal over here... And most likely in other places as well.