Slashdot Mirror
BitTorrent Video Download Store Falls Flat
seriously writes "We've all heard about BitTorrent going legit this week with legal movie and TV show downloads. Ars Technica took a look at the service to see how usable it was and ran into a few snags, including not being able to download or even open the video files on some computers. However, the ones that they did manage to open varied a lot in quality. Overall, they blame DRM: 'Without knowing whether browser compatibility and dysfunctional video files are a rare occurrence or not, it's hard to say whether BitTorrent's service is a good one overall. Our initial experiences have been disappointing and frustrating, and guess what the culprit is once again? DRM. Why the DRM failed to work on 50% of our purchases is not clear, but whatever the cause, it's simply unacceptable.'"
Our initial experiences have been disappointing and frustrating, and guess what the culprit is once again? DRM. Why the DRM failed to work on 50% of our purchases is not clear, but whatever the cause, it's simply unacceptable.'
Once again proving the point that DRM is nothing but punishment for being a paying customer.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
The industry will learn one day that DRM is not a viable business model, it just gets on peoples chimes....
you must be new here
Why the DRM failed to work on 50% of our purchases is not clear
The more we can download all of our media, the less need there is for a giant distibution company. I don't think the big players want legal, easy, inexpensive media downloads.
We are all just people.
You know, AT is a popular site, especially among slashdot readers.
I read the article before it appeared here. Obviously someone else did because they posted it to slashdot.
I'm not saying the OP read the article, but this article appeared on Ars Technica before it appeared here. This isn't some story that slashdot broke.
That old line hey, gets em every time.
Jonathanjk.com
Um, maybe its because most DRM works only by virtually destroying a user's PC? When DRM makers finally agree on a standard (for better or for worse) THEN we'll start seeing progress (on the part of DRM breaking 'hackers').
DRM is clearly anti-consumer. The only way that it's possibly going to get accepted is by collaberation between supposedly competing groups within the entertainment industry. In other words a cartel. Now that probably is actually illegal; it definitely should be. The fact that they can get away with it by buying some politicians and by controlling the media (which they often own) doesn't make it any less criminal.
Let's not confuse "adding DRM" with "going legitimate" please.
After HD DVDs and Blu-ray discs being locked out of people who didn't buy DHCP-enabled monitors, video cards and an encrypted video path to view them... This is not even a surprise to me.
In the end, the easiest thing for a consumer to do will be to just open up The Pirate Bay and type the name of a movie they want. It's sure to work wherever they want, provided they have the codec to play it. And if they don't, they can convert it to MPEG-2, or any other such standard.
Consumers do not want to buy a separate version of their music for their iPod, their Zune, their Gigabeat, their [insert name of portable Flash/USB player here], etc. They don't want to spend hundreds upon hundreds of dollars on new technology to hear what they want, either. Audio CDs have worked for nearly two decades. This goes for video as well. The *AA's need to realise that.
Then again, it's what Apple and Microsoft want: to lock people into their player, so that they must buy another if it breaks. Interoperability would just make every player equal... Oh no, we have to actually think of new features for our players instead of just relying on lock-in to bring us sales! What should we do?!
P.S.: Many stories on Slashdot seem to revolve around DRM lately. I have an impression of déjà vu...
"Why the DRM failed to work on 50% of our purchases is not clear, but whatever the cause, it's simply unacceptable.'""
.... "simply unacceptable"
Why? If failed because it is defective by design. It failed because they (whomever "they" are) don't have control over all the various bits and pieces. It failed because DRM deliberately breaks things, on purpose. DRM fails, unless you have complete and utter control over all aspects of distribution/playback, and simply put, they don't have control over people's PCs. Nor will they ever.
And, it is simply unacceptable. But rather than look at the real problem (DRM), they are blaming the distribution protocol (BT).
One last point: The whole "whatever the cause" is turning a blind eye to the real issue, which is DRM cannot work on systems (not just computers) that they don't control. PERIOD.
I just wish the industry technocrats would just look at the obvious. DRM doesn't increase (or maintain) control, it decreases satisfaction in the customer, which makes it
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Overall, they blame DRM
OK, I'll get flamed to death, but oh well. To make a statement like that is silly. That's like trying a new piece of software and then condemning all software in that category because one failed. Apple has shown that properly written DRM can have a minimal impact on the "user experience". Just because the DRM mechanism used by BitTorrent sucks, I guess the naysayers feel the urge to exclaim, "It was the DRM" (visions of MP and Death with outstretched fingers). In reality, it was BitTorrents DRM, and hugely important distinction. We cry and moan when one flaw in OSS causes critics to then paint all OSS with the same brush, but we are so quick to do the same when it suits us. But hey, I guess that means that we're only human.
The content industry has already admitted DRM has nothing to do with piracy and everything to do with forcing the consumer to pay for the same content, over and over again. It should come as no surprise then, that the downloaded content failed to work (so that the sucker^H^H^H^H^H^H consumer will be compelled to pay for the same content, again.)
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
He didn't have to read the whole article to post that... he just copied what was in the story above. And that certainly takes less than a minute.
I should hope that, being an article published by AT, that it would appear there before here.. Can you say "aggregator"?
Aikon-
Wow. What a crock of shit. I wanted to see what exactly these movies they offered, and well.. They speak for themselves.
In the Sci-Fi category.
4d Man "rent"
A Clockwork Orange "rent"
Alice in Wonderland Broadway production "rent"
Buncha "Alien" movies. "all rent"
Animatrix "own"
Yuck. I wouldnt even download this garbage from Thepiratebay.com , and they're free. I also looked at other sections that piqued my interest, and the similar veneer of crap was about them all.
Why should I pay for a "rental" or a "own" when there are plenty of websites that provide it for free, along with more rights than I would gain with "bittorrent.com" ?
Answer that, and you solve the majority of piracy. And shutting those sites down is not an acceptable answer, as the USA interests are not shared globally.
So bittorrent offers films to rent. I can't see a way this can be implemented without DRM. Otherwise you haven't rented it, you now own the file
/. crowd then support it?
So, is the argument that we shouldn't be able to rent a film using our computer or is it just a complaint that they use a poorly implemented Microsoft DRM that isn't compatible across platforms. If, say, Real who already offer applications on each platform were to make some DRM that works on *nix, OS X and Windows would the
I can't see how services like this can be delivered without some way to restrict viewing after a period of time. Is there another option I'm missing?
I think I had the same problem - his Windows Media settings were wrong. In order to use the DRM you have to "Allow scripts" in the DRM settings. I bought and downloaded it on Linux, played it in Windows WMP10.
I would have been up in arms as well - but I noticed the yellow banner which told me to enable scripts.
The movie I tried (Broken Arrow) worked and the quality was fine. I consider it about the same as a movie ticket - but I do wish they'd allow more than 1 day to watch the movie after you start watching it(yes, I know you have 30 days to begin watching it - but I wanted to check to make sure it worked first). If I were buying the video I would have been much more annoyed with the DRM - but since it was a rental I wasn't too irked.
Download time was 1 hour (255 KBytes/second average download)
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
Let's see... The majority of people who actually know and care about bittorrent are already getting their downloads for FREE and without DRM. I can't imagine why this would be off to a bad start.
What about it? BOOTP is a network protocol from which DHCP orignated.
I've figured out the ????!
1. Make really large files full of random numbers and pretend they're movies
2. Market the hell out of some fictional movies.
3. Sell the files and tell people they can't view them because of the DRM
4. Profit!
Note that I haven't actually to pay for the cost of making a movie here. It's sheer genius!
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
I see you're covering ground patrol this week.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
Seriously, guys, if you want to stop copying, just watermark the videos before download and I'll be happy to buy them. I'm not going to share them so that's fine, but I need to be able to work with them. Put my name and home phone number in there, I really don't care.
You've got to get over your Control-Freak needs to tell people where, when, and how they can use their media (DRM) so you can get on with making a profit by actually selling huge amounts of it.
Once you give up on the idea of selling me Back to the Future 25 different times over the next half century this is all going to work out well for you.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
DRM is attempting to solve an ethical issue via technological means. Kind of like using trigger locks on revolvers and pistols to stop someone from killing people...
The only sad thing is that it takes the creators of such futile technologies approximately a decade of losing face before they give in to decreased or no revenue, and/or outright failure of such technologies.
'A lie if repeated often enough, becomes the truth.' - Goebbels
Whats with that phrase, 'get on peoples chimes'. Im seeing it everywhere since about two weeks ago. Is this some sort of guerrilla doorbell marketting campagne?
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
I hate using bittorrent. Setting up port forwarding, setting up a static ip so the ports stay fowarding, finding a tracker with a good number of seeds, and then it's still slower than direct downloading, and all the uploading freezes my connection so I can't browse the web at normal speeds. Of course it's a lot easier on a website's bandwidth, so I understand if they want to use that for free files, but there's no way in fuck I'd use bittorrent to get a file I paid for.
"What is Internet Explorer 7? Are you saying we can't access the normal internet?" - I love tech support. Really.
If I go into a newly opened restaurant, give my order and seven hours later I would still be waiting for my food, I would NOT give that restaurant another chance.
You seem to have an amazingly silly idea of how you sell things. In the real world you get your stuff in order and THEN launch. I know I know, this the computer industry, home of the patch and beta release, but regular stores like McDonalds do NOT work that way.
Why on earth you label a regular business with Microsoft or for that matter an IT company is beyond me.
You can rest assure that when McD launches a new hamburger they will have at least done some testing to see that the majority of customers are in fact able to digest it. They also do not attempt to stop you from feeding that burger to your dog, splitting a cola with your friends or use the ice cubes to cool your overheated radiator.
If the article is accurate then it is extremely bad, but expected, news for the site. Crippling DRM, inability to just take the customers money (imagine if McD refused to sell you food because it thought you were from the wrong country) and just plain not being able to match up with the ease of downloading the same stuff for free.
I could have gotten all the stuff he payed for, for less and play it without WiMP. Oh and used the money for snacks and drinks.
You know the funny thing? It is not that I am cheap, I got money to burn, and never had a trouble renting or buying stuff before. Just that it has gotten so much easier to just fire up a torrent.
Frankly this looks the same as when napster went legit. Too little, too late.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Is there any chance bittorrent is doing this to make a mockery of DRM and send subliminal messages to just download the (illegal) torrent instead?
It failed because people shouldn't have to pay to use their bandwidth to get something that is crippled.
Why would anyone sponsor the big movie companies with their bandwidth, storage and cpu power? I fail to see why anyone would want to do that without receiving a piece of the action, i.e. monetary compensation. This is just a plot by the movie companies to be able to sell movies and have the users pay for the infrastructure.
The network protocol doesn't matter as much as the content's artistic & technical quality and format's ease of use (read drm+closed).
Next Week:
*New SMB video download service*
no content, DRMed, poor quality: lame.
HDCP - High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection, a form of Digital Rights Management (DRM) to control digital audio and video content
Don't subscribers get the stories earlier?
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Why are they bothering to sell files over bittorrent?
Bittorrent is by definition a "Peer-to-Peer" protocol.
--- There are no peers ---
There are only the clients and the source.
Hence it would be infinitely simpler to just use a perfectly ordinary HTTP (or whatever), download service from the source to the client, client--server.
Bittorent is perfect for downloading the latest ultra-popular freshly pirated movie, or downloading all six Slackware 11 isos at high speed (as there were so many peers after it was released), but using Bittorent to download a file from a point source, when there are probably negligble other seed/leech sources is simply counterintuitive, and ultimately a suboptimal use of the protocol.
Its no surprise that download speeds may be rubbish, that's a quirk of the protocol (and a function of its probable non-popularity).
As for the DRM, any half-baked excuse for an almost sentient attempt at a life form with more than working brain cell and with its head not buried in the sand (or in its wallet), could tell that DRM simply doesn't work, and merely annoys the user. This has been discussed to death over the last few years in great detail, and if even enormous companies like Apple can twig and get the hint by making their legally obligatory DRM as unobtrusive and transparent as possible (they partially succeded), then these "five movie studios" can do so too...
Overall I judge this as a method of "testing the waters", rather than a serious attempt at making money, or providing a service. Ultimately the conclusion is inevitably negative.
There is no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy licking your face - Ben Williams
>>This isn't some story that slashdot broke.
I'll break your face if you ever post here again.
Where?
Here?
Why should I buy something with DRM at low quality when I can get it, free of cost and DRM, at a higher quality? It's still easier to download "illegally" than to purchase. Make it easier for me to buy the downloads and use them, and I guarantee you that I will buy them. I already buy them on DVDs and CDs at the store because they don't have DRM and I can use them when and how I like. It isn't about money, it's about convenience. I'm a paying customer. Make me want to buy your product, make me an offer I can't refuse, make it more convenient for me to purchase downloads than to obtain them illegally, and I will do so.
Let's be honest now, has Slashdot ever really "broke" a story? When you are a site that primarily links to other news sites, I wouldn't expect it to happen very often...(if at all) Not that there's anything wrong with that.
I think I am forgetting something...
Oh yeah, "You must be new here"
"But this one goes to 11!"
>>Here?
Yes.
As long as you're using Windows and IE, Netflix's Watch Now offering is superb. It's worked 100% of the time for me. Though I'm no fan of DRM, Netflix took Microsoft's DRM and built something superb. If you want to see what it looks like, you can watch this video
OK, I'll try not to do it again.
I am a part time fitness instructor who buys a lot of singles from iTunes. I currently have over 500 "DRM infected songs". I have no problem copying the files from my Mac to my Windows XP laptop over a home network, backing up the files, copying them to my iPod and copying them off at work, burning a CD, using the songs as background music for the title sequences when making a DVD, using them with KeyNote or basically any other app that can embed Quicktime. The only time DRM has been a slight hinderance is when I need to edit the song with Audacity or do DJ style mixing with MixMeister. Then I have to use a CDRW to burn and rip. While DRM might be bad, shoddy programming is even worse.
The stories they do "break" mostly turn out to be hoaxes, slashvertisements, or stuff that's just plain wrong (eg, see the 10x faster sorting technique story from a couple days ago). /. is better off posting roland piqueel, apple, and google testimonials.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Possibly the odd book review. And I suppose that you could consider it similar to breaking a story if the original story was on some obscure blog of limited popularity.
Does anyone know if BitTorrent makes it difficult to put content onto a DVD-player readable DVD?
There is just no way that you are the pine-scented air.
kthx
Um -- when was BitTorrent not legit?
ROFL, jonny just owned you turdboy.
Well, of course.
/.'s history worth mentioning, though, was 9/11.
I do think one huge event in
With the way that the internet was brought to its knees that day, Slashdot was the most reliable, up-to-the-minute source of information I could find.
DHCP-enabled monitor
does that require a gigabit lan? or it just for SNMP traps? that'd be cool the set a trap for when the boss turn his off, then I'd know its safe to leave early!
- Disclaimer: Information in this post deemed reliable but not guaranteed.
So I decided to go legit. Been working on a windows laptop lately so the OS restriction wasn't stopping me from enjoying the brave world of new media downloads.
.torrent. I started downloading the movie with the Bittorrent client and was getting reasonable service. (100 KB/s from each of two bittorrent.com servers and 20 KB/s from a real peer. Not the beautiful image of piece of the file flying to me from all over the net, but I was getting what I wanted and it was during the first few hours of the service going live.)
My friends told me that Little Miss Sunshine was a wonderful heartwarming film. Sounded like a perfect mood lifter. So I headed over to Bittorrent.com, signed myself up and with little hassle got myself a nice link to a
The problems started when I tried to play the movie. I launched the downloaded file in windows media player 11, and immediately hit a roadblock. There were some messages to respond to, perhaps signing in with my BT.com username + pw, then a message stating that I had a limit of 2 machines to try this on. Click OK. Number goes to on. Sure. Giving me an extra. OK. Then I get the message the the good folks at ARS got about WMP "encountering a problem." Cancel and retrying gets me nowhere, so I try the "Web help" option" which turns out to be a page about updating the sound drivers. I try windows update - nothing there. I try the freshest drivers from the sound card manufacturer. I still get the same message. I Google the error code. Many links later I get one helpful tidbit from a support forum (non-MN) to downgrade to WPM 10. Desparate I go for it. I use add/remove to downgrade to WMP 9, my previously installed version. I try to play the movie just to see what will happen even though I know BT.com tells me to use 10 or 11. Now I get a message telling me that I'm out of licenses. I guess I'm out $3.99, too.
Having paid for the movie, I decide to download it the old fashioned way. It took the pressure of having to watch it in 24 hours off, which is nice since I'm pretty busy and might like to watch it over a couple of nights. The download took a bit longer, but it worked. The movie played when I hit play. I was touched by the experiences of the quirky people. I had no headaches fiddling with driver updates, support forums, WMP downgrades, time-limited and disappearing licenses. I'll probably delete the file soon, as I don't watch too many films twice. Kind of like a rental. I just wish they would make it easier for me to pay them. I mean what do I do for my next rental? Do I go to BT.com, pay ignore their DRM torrent and find my own? Seems kind of silly. If I'm paying I'd like to get the higher download speeds. (YYMV, but my "community torrents" go slower that the one I got from BT.com.) This method would also work for when I switch back to Linux.
Any suggestions? I do believe in paying the artist - enough so that I'm willing to pay the media giant that stands between us.
-Jon
>>ROFL, jonny just owned you turdboy.
I'll break your face if you ever post here again.
loosechange911.com
First, I think that "BitTorrent" is a bad name for a legal download service, since Torrent is a another word for 'free movies/shows'. They should have named the service differently. :).
Second, the fact that they rely on user's codecs is an error, since various codec packs can create a real mess on the computer and many users simply don't understand *why* they have to install codecs in order to be able to play X or Y.
Third, you have to select/purchase the movie from the web-browser, download it with bittorrent and watch it with a media player. At least 3 applications are involved, which is somewhat distracting and annoying.
Projects like democracy player (http://www.getdemocracy.com/) are much more integrated and don't require you to switch from app to app to whatch a movie.
In my view, the best app which does everything right is LiberTV (http://www.libertv.ro/), which is a romanian service, and should launch internationally soon (http://www.libertv.tv/).
The downloads go several megabytes per second, no codecs needed (except for quicktime for some videos) and you can start watching the movie in several seconds, because files are split into smaller parts before being transfered with a bittorrent-like protocol. So users have a 'click and watch' attitude towards the app, not 'click, install, launch, switch, download, switch, play, crash, try again, damn DRM!'
Internet Superhero :P
So many people have gotten so fired up about being anti-DRM that I have to wonder if they've thought through a possible beneficial potential to functional and unbreakable DRM. First of all, I'm not saying any DRM that will ever be created that will be unbreakable, but let's assume for a moment that via quantum encryption or something it does happen.
Now, understand that the ??AA (RIAA, MPAA, whatever) wish virtual products to be treated as if and to function as if they were physical objects. You can't give a copy of your car to your friend who gives a copy of the car to two other friends, and so on. That's the same way they want digital media to work too. So, let's say that via the magic of unbreakable DRM they are able to make things work that way. The way to turn their desire to treat digital media as physical media into their own worst enemy lies with...libraries.
Take your average library. They buy 10 copies of the newest Stephen King book. These 10 copies service the reading desires of, say, 5000 people. The 5000 people obviously cannot have the books in their possession all at once, as there are only 10 copies, which is all that library could afford to purchase. This is, however, quite inefficient. But we could enhance this efficiency enormously by combining library resources into one 'Global Library', and by using unbreakable (or practically unbreakable) DRM.
Here's the scenario I envision. A Global Librarian sees that Phish just got back together and released a new album. They purchase 1000 copies of the album. Someone wants to hear song #5 on that album so the 'available copies' count for that particular song is decreased by 1, and the library patron is sent the song. When he's done listening to it, the 'available copies' counter is increased by 1 again, thus allowing another patron to access that song...immediately. So, given this mammoth increase in loaning efficiency over physical media, how many customers could those 1000 copies service? Depending on how many people in the world want to listen to a particular song RIGHT NOW, it might not take many copies to service the needs/desires of the entire planetary population for any specific title. No more selling 5 million copies of a CD, because in all likelihood there will never be a time when 5 million people want to listen to (or watch, or read) the same thing AT THE SAME TIME.
Newer and more popular songs/movies/books would obviously require more copies to handle the load, at least without introducing wait times. The funding for this could come from the funding already given to libraries. Instead of EVERY library having to purchase 10 copies of the new Stephen King book, it could be that using this more efficient method of library loaning (backed up by unbreakable encryption) might only require 5000 copies total...FOR THE WHOLE WORLD.
There are other ways to increase efficiency too. For example, you get the new Stephen King book and read it for a while, and then decide to go to bed. After X minutes of inactivity (no pages being turned, or whatever criteria that works best), then that book is virtually 'returned' to the library automatically, for other patrons to use while you're sleeping or making dinner or having sex or whatever.
Even better, these products, being digital, won't ever degrade or need to be replaced. And once a particular title weathers the 'popularity storm', with the Global Library using its monetary resources to buy copies to handle the initial load as necessary, then after that it's quite likely that no one would ever need to buy that title again, because you'd be past the demand spike, and the available copies would exceed the planetary population's demand.
This is still the simple library loaner concept, just updated for the 21st century. It would never fly without extremely strong DRM, but if we ever achieve that, why *wouldn't* we implement this? And what effect would an extraordinarily efficient library loaning system have on the media industries? I mean, they'd basically never sell more than 50,000 copies of anything ever again, in all likelihood. Is there any song currently playing that has 50,000 people on this planet listening to it AT THE SAME TIME? Doubtful.
If you cant get good DL speed on Bittorrent then your either doing something wrong or using a public tracker with a crappy seeder and people who stop the torrent the second it completes and dont share at all (Bittorrent wasnt made to work that way and cant).
... meaning ports forwarded properly and firewalls / routers configured correctly.
... Adjust tcp settings MTU and RWIN and raise XP's default MAX_HALF_OPEN connections.
The MAIN thing is to make SURE your 'CONNECTABLE'
Next is to tweak your computer to get the most out of your ISP's internet connection
If you've done all that and still cant get good speed then you either have a crappy isp (that throttles torrent speeds) or are using a crappy public tracker.
In a good tracker that enforces ratios your internet pipe should be TOTALLY MAXED OUT almost always (which yes will cause browsing problems unless you set some limits on your upload speed to 80% of your MAX Upload)
If you cant configure it to work properly then you probably shouldnt be using it to begin with. =P
(can we PLEASE make people get a license to prove they know how to use a computer before they buy one?)
I have a suggestion: contact BT customer support and they'll help you resolve this. It's a well-understood WMP settings issue with a simple fix.
I know how to configure a piece of software thank you. I know about all the ports I have to open for bit torrent. Even without a firewall enabled, I still have problems. Its not me.
Its either the ISP and/or shitty trackers. I really wish people who have good luck with bit torrent would stop assuming everyone experience low performance is an idiot. Clearly I can do something right since WoW works fine for patching.
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone