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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.
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
Perhaps you stop and reread the Constitution before making such a sloppy argument. The Constitution allows Congress "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". Note that Congress isn't required to enact copyrights and patents; it merely has the ability to do so under the Constitution, with a very specific purpose: promoting "the Progress of Science and useful Arts". Copyrights and patents, in other words, are an attempt at social engineering, one which Congress can enact or withdraw at its leisure. They are also transient ("for limited times") whereas real property rights are permanent, passing from one generation to the next until the property is finally consumed or abandoned by its owner -- even presuming such ever occurs.
In contract, regular property rights are barely mentioned in the Constitution, because they were already thoroughly established in the Common Law; real property rights formed a background so obvious to the Constitution's authors that they saw no need to make them explicit; copyrights and patents had to be mentioned precisely because they were not part of that background. Congress can revoke them on a whim because they exist purely by Congressional decree. There are some (badly worded and poorly interpreted) clauses which Congress can abuse to violate traditional property rights under very specific circumstances, but as such rights do not originate with Congress it would take more than a simple decree to eliminate them entirely. (It would probably take a major Constitutional amendment, a change in the very nature of the government itself.)
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
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.
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.