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BitTorrent Use Up 24% Since November
dingalig writes "It looks as though the MPAA's fight against The Pirate Bay and other BitTorrent sites isn't going very well. Ars Technica reports that BitTorrent traffic is up by 24% since before the holidays. 'BitTorrent traffic spiked over the December holidays. After a peaking at almost 12.5 million downloaders on the 200 most popular files, traffic dropped at the beginning of January — about the time that school started up again. But one figure that will prove alarming to the content creation industry is that the numbers are higher now than they used to be. "The baseline has been elevated," notes [BigChampagne CEO Eric] Garland. "Not only did the spike happen, but the bar was raised."'"
Sounds like people started downloading more films when the TV shows started running out.
I'm guessing this has more to do with the fact that when there's nothing on TV to watch, people are more likely to download a film.
MPAA should sue the WGA
With all the publicity TPB et al has gotten with those ridiculous actions of MPAA, BitTorrent is now a mainstream. The same thing happened with Napster and the same thing would happen with private torrent sites when MPAA starts attacking them.
I don't trust any statistic that I didn't make up myself.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
The current authoritarian tactics are an obvious failure, and are causing substantial collateral damage to innocent victims of miss-targeted enforcement efforts. The solution isn't more of the same, but rather to accommodate human nature and evolving technology.
The only reason why P2P file sharing is a problem is because copyrights have been extended into perpetual special privileges. Copyrights were only needed in the first place due to the limitations of physical media and the brick and mortar distribution system. Both of those are now obsolete - as are the artificial market distortions justified by their limitations.
Just as the Internet offers a far more efficient distribution system, it also offers the ability to shorten the time require for a creator to recover fair value for his work before releasing (some) rights to the public domain. A modified dutch auction over the Internet provides the means for artists to be fully compensated at the moment they finish their creation. Once the artist has received fair value for a recorded performance, there isn't any need to attempt to control how consumers choose to use that recording. The P2P file sharing that today is called piracy, and used to justify ever more abusive intrusions into the rights of all people in order to enforce unnecessary copyright restrictions, becomes highly valuable viral promotion and distribution that benefits the artist.
Remember that the artist has already been cut of meaningful earnings from the reproduction and sale of recordings by the typical "all rights" contract terms imposed by the legacy record labels. Only a tiny percentage of artists earn a living from royalties on their recordings. For most artists, the primary benefit of selling records is just the publicity - they still make most of their money from live performances. File sharing and "word of mouth" on the Internet are much more effective promotion than the paid advertising of the legacy labels.
You seem to be implying that depriving someone of something doesn't make them a victim as long as it doesn't leave them struggling to survive. Which is of course complete and utter bullshit.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
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I'll throttle my client back a bit.
--- We are not in the 8th dimension. We are over New Jersey.
It's like victimizing royalty by taking away land they aren't using so that commoners can hunt for food. Sure then they might not have quite so much bounty going to waste but then who cares? I'm not going to spend my time, energy, and money defending them.
Being civilized means respecting the rights of others to life and liberty - it doesn't mean giving others the right to be rich. I have no problem with people being rich but I feel no need to defend their wealth. I don't believe that being rich makes them more productive so from my point of view it's better if they have to continue struggling for their wealth by doing useful things like producing more music, movies, and other cultural resources. Sitting on their ass enjoying their wealth isn't really a boon for humanity although most of us wouldn't mind being able to do so.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Or maybe he's implying, correctly, that sharing digital information for free does not deprive anyone of anything, let alone make them penniless.