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Wil Wheaton: BitTorrent Isn't Only For Piracy
itwbennett writes "Geek advocate Wil Wheaton has written a blog post on the (legal) usefulness of BitTorrent, saying that the speed of his recent download of Ubuntu 12.04 should serve as a reminder that BitTorrent fills an important niche. Wheaton compares blocking BitTorrent to closing freeways because bank robbers could get away."
Don't get me wrong, I think the actions of big media are way out of line and it angers me greatly to see the damage being done to law and society in general to protect a dying business model for a few more years..
That said, the analogy used in the summary isn't quite right. Yes, bittorrent has a lot of great legitimate uses, but we are deluding outselves if we think legal bittorrent usage is the majority of bittorrent traffic, or even a large portion of it. I get that extreme statements like this are necessary to balance out the extreme statements made by the other side (that song you downloaded cost us 500 million, etc..) .. but I still don't like it :(
I'd imagine that the BitTorrent traffic due to sharing of works without the copyright holder's consent dwarfs the legal traffic. So blocking or throttling BitTorrent is more like controlling access to lock picks and drug paraphernalia (which also have legal uses).
As a die-hard geek/maker it pains me to have access to tools restricted, but this is hardly an oddity of the digital age.
It seems like network owners have the right to shape their traffic, and Will has a right to take his business to ISPs that don't do it.
Drawing that sort of parallel actually harms the case for BitTorrent. It is so ridiculously extreme that no-one could take it seriously and it damages credibility. How often does a bank robber drive along a freeway? How often are illegal files downloaded on torrents? Is there really a valid comparrison here? It just gives the other side more ammunition.
I remember when a new Knoppix launched. My boss asked me to get it and I did. Asked him if I could seed it over the weekend to help out and he said sure, it was summer and usage was low. Sent out like 1.5 TB of data over the course of 2.5 days.
Can we collectively stop using Ubuntu/Linux downloads as an argument point to extoll the virtues of bittorrent? Lets use an example that people are familiar with. No one outside the tiny geek subculture downloads these things or knows what they are.
Remember, you're trying to win them over, not preach to the converted.
With the car analogy already provided..This is a true Slashnerd!
~~"Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong." ~~Dennis Miller
Now he will be shunned ( black listed ) by the very people that he makes a living from, the 'industry'.
I commend him for speaking out with some sanity, but i do hope he just didn't destroy his future in the process.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Um, yes it is.
With a mirror, I'm limited to the bandwidth the mirror can/will deliver me. That might saturate my connection, it might not.
With bittorrent, I'm limited to the bandwidth I have.
The other half of the problem is ISPs blocking bittorrent just to reduce traffic and supply less service. Fighting "piracy" is just a convenient excuse.
We know it has other uses, it's use however is downloading stuff we shouldn't. It's a silly argument. The only time Ubuntu really push Bittorrent downloads in on release day.
The early-day-P2P solutions like Napster and AIMster all failed because they did such a good job of sorting illegal uploads, the legal uses were hard to find. Protocols like Bittorrent care not whether the file is legal or not... they just blindly pass the data. There are many good free-to-stream podcasts that need the help of BT users in order to get their show out. Hollywood would love to find a way to keep their stuff out while the legal stuff still moves... but right now the best solution they have is an all-out shoutdown.
I'm LostCluster but I lost my password to that user. Hey Slashdot, how about helping me get it back!
He should point out the commercial uses. Blizzard uses it to deploy patches. Facebook uses it to deploy new code across its datacenters. And of course its the best way to get a newly released Linux distro at reasonable speeds.
Bittorrent doesn't "fill a niche". It's an incredible tool and amazingly under-used.
Some of these Linux ISOs are owned by HBO, MGM, Fox, and Universal.
The last Linux ISO I downloaded was Avengers R6 release.
he didn't need bittorrent, all he had to do was go to a mirror site that didn't have bandwidth issues. Bittorrent can be usefull but speed is not one of the things it excels at.
It depends on the peers in the swarm (local peer discovery), and how well your set up can handle multiple connections. Using automated block lists to prevent people from poisoning the protocol also makes a big difference.
I rarely get speeds off BT that are less than 3 - 5 times the max I've ever pulled off a single HTTP pipe. It is significantly faster than any other transfer protocol I have used. It can also be turd slow given the right circumstances, but if you can connect to a hundred or so legit peers... whoooooweeeeeeiii it's fast.
Fanboy Status: Apache Flex, C#, Eclipse, KDE, Pirate Party, Ron Paul, Slackware, Windows 7
Bittorrent should be embraced by content producers, not pushed away in to a corner.
It can reduce the need for huge servers. It can allow for caching networks to go even further with very little cost.
The system itself could be improved on a bit, but it works.
A good example is the awful cases where there is 1 seed and thousands of peers.
Most cases it tries to send it to everyone at once (in a swarm). That is retarded. Don't give me the whole "peers are equal" nonsense.
Having at least 1 more seed makes the whole system significantly better.
2 and it is better. Seeding to 20? The hell is the point in that? It is unlikely any 2 random people would just not seed even for the rest of a half day.
5, even better.
Super seeding, while okay, is still a bit hackish at best. It needs actual support.
Shut up wesley!
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
Most of the games I've played lately use some type of peer-to-peer file sharing for updates. So I guess the entire gaming industry should be outlawed! BF3 = terrorism
I second this. I downloaded Ubuntu 12.04 CDs and DVDs the day it was released, and I was able to easily find an ftp mirror that saturated my 40mbit connection.
Just to give some benchmarks, I usually pull a blue ray in about 45 minutes to an hour tops.
Fanboy Status: Apache Flex, C#, Eclipse, KDE, Pirate Party, Ron Paul, Slackware, Windows 7
Shut up, Wesley!
He tasks me. He tasks me and I shall have him! I'll chase him 'round the moons of Nibia and 'round the Antares Maelstrom and 'round Perdition's flames before I give him up!
Its also how Blizzard distributes its games. Its nothing new, and quite effective.
he didn't need bittorrent, all he had to do was go to a mirror site that didn't have bandwidth issues.
What should happen is Ubuntu should provide a meta-link so you don't even have to look up the mirrors. You even get proper hash checking like bt.
The problem with bit torrent it is way too easy for governments, RIAA/MPAA, ..etc to monitor swarms by participating in the entire distribution network they extract everything they need to push for more and more rediculous measures to censor and reduce privacy on the network.
Great for downloading ISOs of linux distributions however as a platform for exchanging information privacy is what you give up. It is just too trivial for anyone to sit in a swarm and record what all of the peers are doing over time.
Various governments and individuals do exactly this on a massive scale for various reasons. Anytime you download something from pirate bay or whatever assume multiple central record of your and everyone elses activity are being kept and aggregated. This does not require others to intercept anything or otherwise be in the data path. This is a significant problem because everytime someone downloads something copyrighted the rest of the network pays by having to deal with pushing back against media lobbies.
Sadly it seems like places that would most benefit from Bittorrent are the least likely to use it. My favorite example was a big document that was fairly recently released publicly, I don't recall what it was on. But there was major press interest, major public interest, and you just knew that the Library of Congress website (or whatever agency it was that was hosting it) was just going to implode under the strain. Impressively the website didn't completely go down, it just sat there serving a 100+ MB pdf at about 100 bytes per second. With all that interest, all those people trying to download the same public document at the same time it would have been perfect for Bittorrent. Sadly I think it is too closely entangled with piracy in the minds of politicians, so it is very unlikely that it will ever be put to such a use.
Remember how LimeWire billed itself as a "sharing tool" that you could use to share things such as "recipes" with your friends?
The problem is that you need a real example (that doesn't involve piracy) otherwise you'll be laughed at by your own users.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Because they can unleash 30 rounds in a second !! Yes, it means mythbusters won't be able to shoot at trees no more, but it's a small think compared to some nutcase norwegian shooting up and killing 100s because he can pop in another 30-rnd magazine and kill more and more and more !!
So, I say to Hwhill Hwwheaton, go stop a few bank robberies there in LaLa land and know first hand what it is your think you are talking about !!
Who is Wil Wheaton? People still read blogs? What is bittorrent? What is Ubuntu?
Give me a minute.. Oh yea! Wasn't he that guy that had a very minor part in a a show that went off the air almost 20 years ago?
It's really quite simple. There used to be a saying "If you listen to radio without hearing the commercials, that's like stealing the music."
Every time that you install Linux, that's the same as stealing from Microsoft.
Seriously, it's in the Bible somewhere - Thou Shalt render unto Microsoft (or Apple) what is Microsoft's (or Apples).
Three Squirrels
Itwbennett, don't summarize an article by paraphrasing one analogy the author admits is poor.
welcome to 5 years ago.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
But never faster then your max bandwidth. Something some people don't understand.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Over and above the claim that torrents helped pirates, there was the claim that it was a bandwidth-hog.
Well, it aint so! Jim Gettys researched it, and found what the network vendors were seeing was ... bufferbloat! See https://gettys.wordpress.com/2012/05/14/the-next-nightmare-is-coming/
davecb@spamcop.net
<troll>
Using Bittorrent to download Linux isn't a convincing argument. Every download of Linux is a purchase of Windows that never happened. It is a measurable harm to companies like Microsoft and even though it isn't technically piracy, the net harm to humanity is the same.
</troll>
And I don't need a freeway to quickly get to where I'm going, I can just hop in a private helicopter.
But it's significantly cheaper and more efficient to build a freeway for many people to use than supply a private helicopter for everyone.
except that about one car out of three on the bittorrent superhighway is a getaway car...
No, wrong, with bittorrent you are limited by other peers.
I'm one of the main seeders of one architecture's current build of a few different distros of Linux. (No, not saying which architecture or which distros, don't feel like being DDoSed...)
I'd say 80-90% of my BitTorrent .torrent file volume is "legit", and about 99% of my traffic.
Software and port control will not prevent stealing of software. It won't even slow it down. The medium is not the problem. The weapon used is not the problem. Block a port and another will be used. Block all ports and another protocol will be developed.
But never faster then your max bandwidth. Something some people don't understand.
But still usually 2-3 times faster than http downloads, Something some people don't understand. I would assume most people do understand that bittorrent does not magically make their internet connection faster. Funny story, was at a college that allocated bandwidth by time. First come, first served. Bittorrent was literally 100x faster than http. Yes I did use the word 'literally' correctly.
WTF is a "geek advocate"?
When demand is insanely high for something, BT rules over everything else. Its true that I've never gotten faster than about 90% of the speed of a very fast single site, but thats a site I'm the only one visiting. When there are millions trying to get from that site, BT is the way.
And us here with a 50mbit connection had to use BT to get decent speeds.
On the other hand, a direct transfer is never faster than the most congested link between you and the server. If you have a reasonably fast connection, the bottleneck is often not your connection. Downloading from multiple peers that are likely taking different paths to reach you lets you reach an high overall speed even if all the peers are congested.
irrelevant.. Will Wheaton's download screenshot shows him downloading at 1.75MB/sec over bittorrent. 1.75MB = 14-18mbit/sec. I downloaded at 2-3x that over ftp, and there were plenty of fast mirrors available.
Several years ago he might have had a point.. but Ubuntu has one of the best selections of mirrors available.. many of them on 10gbit or at least 1gbit connections. At least for Ubuntu, bittorrent really is NOT required.
It's amazing that Wil Wheaton has made this discovery!
It's surprising that no one else discovered that BitTorrent could be used for other things, in all these years it's been around.
It's weird though I guess, that he'd have such good download speed on Ubuntu, if he was the first to discover that Ubuntu could be transferred with bittorrent. Or maybe he was the first to discover that copying Ubuntu wasn't piracy. Anyway, good job with the science! It sucks that you were passed over for a Nobel prize for your work with nanites, but surely they'll give you one for this!
someone teach them to read, so they can make more money to give to the starving artists' producer.
Is it just me or does "Wheaton Wil" sound like a suitable Ubuntu version codename? Karmic Kirk, Picky Picard, Jaded Janeway, Suspicious Sisko... Quixotic Q, Whiny Wesley?
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
P2P should be renamed the popularity protocol. Why? Because it's only it's most effective when something is popular. For example I have a file that never get's past 95 % even though I've tried months.And of course because of P2P mind-share no one's offering the file by those older standards like FTP or Usenet.
Just recently I was downloading some free software that was available either through bittorrent or via a server. The server was transferring at around 50 kilobytes per second. That seemed awfully slow. So I switched to the torrent and was able to download at over 2 megabytes per second. For anyone without a fast server and unlimited bandwidth bittorrent is a godsend. The fact that it is mostly used for copyright infringement does not make it any less useful as a file transfer protocol. Banning the protocol itself is ridiculous and harmful. I have noticed quite a few servers that seem to intentionally limit bandwidth. Bittorrent is only limited by the upload speed of your peers.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
I am aware this is a discussion of the current legal uses of Bittorrent, I offer an off perspective to the idea of embracing the free P2P distribution channels.
We need more legal digital distribution avenues. Period.
The huge media corporations are screaming bloody murder but they refuse to back down on things like DRM and content regions. If they were to embrace the "free bandwidth" that Bittorrent provides they would not be crying about record breaking profits in years.
What if there were a service for those of us falling through the cracks who _honestly_ want to pay for the things they download "illegally." A service where I could purchase a license to obtain a specific media by any avenue I choose to pursue (aka. Bittorrent, Gnutella network, In the back alley, etc).
If a company (or media conglomerate) were to open up shop online. Its role would be to sell customers a license to view the content and provide you with a bill of sale (that I would hope would hold up in Court if the situation were to arise), thereby authorizing you to obtain the media via P2P. Overhead for the business would be _very_ minimal, as your customers are also the content distributors and could probably sell licenses at insanely low prices. For example: $5 full CD album, $5-10 full length movie and profit themselves $1-$2.50 after transaction costs, etc. With over 500 Million people in North America, I am sure even capturing less than 1% could make it a worth while business model.
I would be interested in such a service if it existed. As all other options seems to be out of reach for me. I am sure there are others out there who feel the same.
I _want_ to pay for the media I download, but it has to be reasonable and not encumbered with DRM. Not everyones situation is the same but my situation is so: No movie rental stores in town (since Blockbuster Canada went under, as well Rogers Video closed many of its locations). Purchasing a movie is usually fruitless endeavour as you are still bombarded with ads you can't skip and lets face it, optical media is going the way of the do do bird. Living in Canada, I don't have access to Hulu and Netflix is very limited (I also don't have the right hardware or software configuration to use it, but that's just me). Amazon Instant Video doesn't exist in Canada.
Regarding the business model and potential profits... 528,000,000 million people in North America. Lets say 0.05% (around 264,000 people) of that market were to participate in such a service. If those 264,000 people are willing to spend $15-$20/month on media (like I am), they could potentially gross $3,960,000+ to $5,280,000+ per month. In perspective it is not a lot of money considering how much media companies make, but why not at least attempt to collect my money? Instead of calling me a pirate, embrace the free distribution channel of P2P.
The ability to to "buy a license, download wherever" at very reasonable cost (remember distribution cost is literally nothing, the "pirates" are doing the work for you) in lieu of living in fear of being sued into oblivion I really think such a system could flourish.
Any thoughts by the more enlightened? I am not a lawyer, just a man who is frustrated with his current options to consume media.
Email, IRC, HTTP, HTTPS, NNTP and DNS all need to be banned, as they can be used to distribute illegal content!
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Ouch, why did he have to tell about the freeways
- how will I get to work now?
he didn't need bittorrent, all he had to do was go to a mirror site that didn't have bandwidth issues. Bittorrent can be usefull but speed is not one of the things it excels at.
Why is he modded down? Aaargh! Using torrent for downloading a Linux distro is way overengineering the problem. The image servers are usually behind quite fat pipes and you can easily find one that saturates your connection.
We've automated BitTorrent to do deploys at Twitter. Works really really well. Way more efficient to have all the web frontends seed to each other than to scp the whole app thousands of times. Here's a blog post about it, including a link to the code: http://engineering.twitter.com/2010/07/murder-fast-datacenter-code-deploys.html
Not a bad analogy Will but how about comparing blocking bittorrent to closing freeways because people who take photographs of bank notes might get away.
The amount of illegal traffic does not change the nature of the medium: bittorrent is there to share data. That does not make it illegal, and even if 99% of the transferred data are illegally transferred, it still does not make bittorrent illegal.
A human can easily learn the notes of a song. The person can then be used to 'transfer' the notes to another destination. Is the human's abilitity to transfer information illegal? it is not.
Your computer's motherboard is also a network of electrical signals, where pirated material flows through. Does that make electronics illegal?
Saying that a transfer medium or protocol is illegal because the data moved through it are illegal is extremely stupid, and that is what Wheaton is saying.
The Legal alternatives (BBC iplayer, 4OD ect) are often a poor attempt with only a few recent shows avalible, bad indexing and searching. My friends and I dont mind adverts before the video however some services put them in the middle when there isnot supposed to be an advert (mid-speech) and these adverts are unskipable. I am often confused about how business minds say that websites arent profitable in terms of advertising and always question its real worth, yet in there next breath they use untargeted irrelivant advertising in newspapers, magazines and TV ads as well as product placement in TV and films. I dont see why the TV providers dont just upload their content for free online (with past episodes) with a 5 mins of targeted adverts (relating to the show or film) at the start or end of the program. This way the advertisements would be more effective, we get free content and im sure the show itself would become more profitable. the downsides are that we have some ad's (that we could ignore like we do with TV) and the TV channels can be cut out of the picture, no more middle man. Also situations like Fox cancel's FireFly would be rarer too as show stats and profitability wouuld be transparent. With the argument about music, it is widley known that musicians make more money from music tours and merchandise than they do with album sales. To furthur express this point, some musicians dont mind people downloading there music because it makes them more likely to go to a live show or buy merchandise. While a TV show dosent go on tour with live shows, they do sell merchandise (or some do anyway ie big bang theory). This could easily be included with an online streaming or downloading facility (adverts while you download perhaps) with links to buy merchandise. This way everryone around the world can enjoy the same content at the same time,for free (like we want), yet still have plenty of oppurtunities to fee us annoying advertisements and sell us crap like they want. WHAT IS THE BIG DEAL AND WHY DONT THEY BOTHER TO TRY HARDER, welcome to the 21st century TV providers.
Not criminal.
Or are you OK with the police breaking down your door, taking your stuff and hauling you out in handcuffs because I've filed a lawsuit against you for defamation?
I don't doubt that bittorrent is useful for smaller distros (I know that is true)... but Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian--the big distros.. rarely have problems with their mirrors around release time anymore. So my post really only applies to Will using Ubuntu. If he said linuX-gamers or something, I probably wouldn't even have posted.
Canonical use s3 ( or at least, they did when i looked, maybe this changed, or maybe I got the detail wrong ), and so they pay for each download. Nothing serious, and I think Mark can afford the money for now, but since they try to be profitable since years, maybe trying to push people on BT would be in their interest, and so in the interest of their community of users.
*cough*Usenet*cough*
Last night, 1.3gb file from TPB, starts slow, speeds up after 10 minutes, last 1gb comes through at 33mbit (my max limit). This is not unusual for Bittorrent.
Usenet, which I can no longer afford, 33mbit start to finish.
I know the overhead is different, and I know that PAR2 checks and uncompressing RARs take just as long as the download, but it still beats anything I've used ever. This even includes private FTP servers.
HTTP pipes can be maxed out using multiple connections. I used to try 15-20 if the server accepted them. Download managers were the best tools in my toolbox.
I'm getting 60mbit any day now. Whoooooweeeeeeiii, as you say.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
Seems to have been already proposed, but not implemented :
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/metalink
Not sure why they do not do it. Fedora provide it since a few years, so does Opensuse, so while I know that's a feature geared for power users, so not really the market aimed by Canonical, even a distribution for newbie like Ubuntu could benefit from it, and that do not seems to be very complex to do.
I stand corrected, seems Ubuntu did finally catch up with Fedora :
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Metalink
Try out the new wil wheaton linux distro! It's called smarmy douchebag.
yes... like how a lock-pick is also potentially handy as a paperweight..
Wish more people that had more influence than I do would speak out about these things. Thanks!
where 80 percent (number pulled entirely out my arse, btw) of freeways is used for getaway-drives, he would be right, yes.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
It's not officially supported it appears, which is even more stupid.
I think all linux (or possibly all software downloads) should be managed by Mirror Brain or similar. I guess its a bandwidth overhead but meta-links should be standard practice for large files and thus integrated into the browser.
If the robbery is big enough, and the thieves still in the area, police WILL roadblock freeways....dumbass.
I don't watch much TV. The few shows I do watch, I'm more likely to watch online at my convenience, as I'm usually busy having a life during Prime Time viewing hours. When I was into watching '24' they would show a 30-second online ad at the regular commercial breaks. Guaranteed I watched every one of them, because where am I going to go in 30 seconds? If I actually had to go to the bathroom or the kitchen, I'd pause the show meaning I'd still end up watching the ads.
The point is that the advertisers *easily* got more bang for their buck by making me watch 30s of ads at every break online, than giving me 2-3 mins to leave the room for regular broadcast commercial breaks. i should still be able to download the shows for my convenience *especially* if the ads are now essentially unavoidable (not skippable), and the advertisers (hence the media companies) would get far more value than clinging to old business models.
When all of your wishes have been granted, many of your dreams will be destroyed - Marilyn Manson
How are bank robbers compared to bittorrent? Does police have to throttle highways because they are full of bank robbers affecting other types of traffic? I'm curious where Wil lives, either their highways are really small or he is living in Crime DC.
Wheaton compares blocking BitTorrent to closing freeways because bank robbers could get away.
Taking that argument a bit farther, how about saying anyone should be able to own fully automatic machine guns and grenade launchers someone once used a similar weapon to defend himself against an assault.
The thing I don't understand is why doesn't the broadcast industry recognize the custom advertising opportunities inherent in downloading? They should have me fill out a survey, let them know my interests, and then insert ads custom chosen just for me. I'd be more likely to watch them, more likely to buy the products, etc. In return, I get to download and watch what would literally by a show for ME.
--- Generation X: The first generation to have SIG lines inferior to their parents... ---
Look. They claim missing ads revenue, but do they really?
How many of the ads are actually something you would buy?
Maxipads? No, not me. New Cars? Hell no, i don't drive.
Taco Bell/Burger King/Most any fast food place. Ain't none near me, and oddly enough, i live on the edge of downtown seattle, go figure that one out.
I'd say at least 1 out of every 500 ads (guessing here) are relevant to me. And since I'm not an a typical person I'm sure more are relevant to others.
What do I actually watch on TV? Sports. I download everything else. Not only to I get to skip the stupid ass ads, I get a better quality show then if i had watched it on the Comcast cable I have (HDTV). Yes, 720p shows look like crap most the time on Comcast cable because they are compressing the streams down so much, that you get video artifacts when people move. Try watching The Ultimate Fighter or a UFC match on Fuel or Fox on Comcast, you think your watching a super crappy SD recording of it.
So, here's the deal.
Advertisers are going to pay the money for the fucking ads no matter what. You get a show that is a big hit, like i guess, American Idol. Advertisers are still going to pay for adds at that spot. Don't matter how many people download the show later to watch it, it already air and the advertisers already paid for that.
Any bitching is the Corporate Greed Cycle that is trying to get as much as it can, before we finally shut them down. (legally, I would think).
Be seeing you...
I don't doubt that bittorrent is useful for smaller distros (I know that is true)... but Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian--the big distros.. rarely have problems with their mirrors around release time anymore. So my post really only applies to Will using Ubuntu. If he said linuX-gamers or something, I probably wouldn't even have posted.
Sure, but given the effficency of bittorrent it is riduclious that Ubuntu would spend money to provide fast FTP servers. That money would be better spent on doing something actually productive.
Which is almost always larger than the bandwidth you have.
Precisely. Rather than being throttled by the slowest link in the internet between you and the server with the file, you effectively become throttled only by the speed of the internet connection your ISP is giving you. In other words, Bittorrent is the closest you can come to truly utilizing the pipe your ISP gives you.
This is why ISPs hate it. :-)
.
This got me to dream...
What if commercials were removed from TV shows, and in their spot your TV turned into a browser that either limited you to the sites of the sponsors, or started you at a home where the sponsors had icons but you could also just go surf the web (maybe with the browser sponsored by Microsoft or Google, for example, or with a home page of Bing or DDG). After 5 minutes of browsing, or checking your email, the browser closes (with a countdown in the upper right corner) and you return to the show. Maybe Apple could see you were on a Windows computer and say "Would you like to see how much easier this would be on an Apple?" Or a monitor provider convinces you that you should buy a bigger monitor by showing you what you are missing, etc.
I am sure there would be much to fine tune with this, but at least it would be a 21st century approach to a 21st century problem.
I come here for the love
IT certainly can be depending on the popularity of the item. I'm not arguing that, just that Many, many , many times I have seen people claiming downloads faster then their max bandwidth. Including people who should no better.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Illegal downloading is more like littering. Adds a bit of cost as the highway patrol (or inmates) have to go pick it up once a year but otherwise is a non-issue...unless people start tossing couches onto the Interstate. So the fine should be of the same order of magnitude as the one for littering, which is about $400 a pop where I live.
I come here for the love
irrelevant.. Will Wheaton's download screenshot shows him downloading at 1.75MB/sec over bittorrent. 1.75MB = 14-18mbit/sec. I downloaded at 2-3x that over ftp, and there were plenty of fast mirrors available.
Several years ago he might have had a point.. but Ubuntu has one of the best selections of mirrors available.. many of them on 10gbit or at least 1gbit connections. At least for Ubuntu, bittorrent really is NOT required.
The download rate was for a give instant in time. Good job making wild assumptions, though. Have fun starting your FTP download over again if it gets interrupted. Good luck supporting several simultaneous downloaders over FTP too.
The compromise is getting there...check out Ultraviolet. You can download, stream, and do about anything you want with your movies. Just need the selection to get bigger.
torrents are the technical solution to the /. effect. It prevents a small yet emerging company/idea/software from being flooded off the web if they go viral, as every additional downloader is an uploader, shifting the burden of sharing large files.
You really don't know much about ftp do you? 1) ftp supports resuming downloads.. most clients do to.. use wget... 2) a 10gbit connection can support more than one ftp download
I'm sure mark pays for some of the servers.. but most of them aren't paid. Argonne National Labs, I'm sure doesn't get a payment for mirroring things for example.
And the money wasn't the argument Wil made.. it was only about the speed.
Ubuntu uses S3 for Ubuntu One (their online backup service). The mirrors are provided by third-parties (mostly universities, a couple of DoE labs, etc).
I was just thinking about that last night, when I downloaded Libre office for my new windows install. I opted for the torrent because it's a lot faster than the regular download. Good stuff.
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Seems that way.
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If the entertainment industry really cared about making money, they would hire me at a six figure salary (a pittance) for a year, and I would happily show them how to use the web effectively. As of now, I have received no phone calls. All I can deduce from this strange occurrence is that they must want to go out of business at the hands of a dying business model, rather than hire a professional who understands internet marketing and web based solutions.
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Where are you getting this information from?
I believe it was RIAA v. Diamond Multimedia. RIAA's argument was that noncommercial private home reproduction of copyrighted sound recordings onto a home computer and an MP3 player was copyright infringement because it didn't meet the technicalities of the Audio Home Recording Act, including Serial Copy Management System and DART Fund royalty payments. The judge ruled in favor of Diamond nonetheless.
Si Reos uti, tunc oportet interficiam
"If criminals use it, then we must destroy it"
or just
Reos uti (criminals use it)
Actually, the fairly populair Spotify uses P2P protocols to distrubute (part of) the content to users as well.
So, ironically, if you block P2P protocols you'll more than double the price of Spotify and people will stop using it even though Spotify is one of a few working solutions of the music industry.
New things are always on the horizon