BitTorrent Traffic Falls In the U.S.

First time accepted submitter CAKAS writes "After legal actions taken by several industry outfits, BitTorrent traffic has fallen in the United States to the all time low of 12.7 percent of internet traffic. However, this trend seems to be unique to the U.S. — In other parts of the world, like Europe and Asia, BitTorrent traffic continues to rise. 'According to Sandvine, the absence of legal alternatives is one of the reasons for these high P2P traffic shares.' In the U.S. legal content delivery has flourished and provided customers easy access to content. This seems to suggest that due to these alternatives, people are less willing to pirate and pay the publishers for entertainment." (Calling it an "all-time low" seems a stretch, when talking about something released in 2001.)

Comments

Perhaps it's not that Bittorrent traffic fell

[Feanorian]

Maybe Americans are getting smart and using VPN's and proxies :D

Re:Perhaps it's not that Bittorrent traffic fell

[Opportunist]

Comments on /. are not really the problem. Making something public knowledge certainly is, though.

As much as I was an advocate of "educating the masses" in my early geek days, I'm no longer a proponent of the idea of bringing our great new ideas and developments to them. Hate to say it, but we should simply keep it to ourselves.

Think back of the early days of P2P and general content swapping. Did the MPAA care? Did they hunt you down like rabid dogs? Nah. It was a nuisance, but a petty one. Much like blackboxing was in the good ol' days. Sure, a few people did it and they got away with it, but nobody cared enough to prosecute it. The damage was small and the few that did it were not worth the effort.

Think it would have been the same if it had been the widespread sport of Joe Randomboxer? Think AT&T would have been as lenient as they were? Think again.

It's a matter of magnitude. It's simply damage vs. cost to avoid damage for them. Keep the damage low and they don't care about you. Ramp it up and suddenly you're in their sights.

Yes, there are new ways of exchanging information and hiding it from the prying eye. But I'm no longer willing to share it with the masses. Call me an elitist bastard, so be it, but unless I can see some benefit in it, or rather, more benefit than harm, I see no reason to share that information with them.

Re:Netflix, not "legal actions"

[neros1x]

Isn't it funny? Record companies swore that DRM-free mp3s would destroy their industry, and the MPAA fought for years to keep movies offline. The rest of the world argues, "People will pay for content that is easily available and user-friendly." Now we have the proof. I feel vindicated, somehow.

Re:TL:DR

[AngryDeuce]

The thing I don't understand with Netflix is why the fucking PS3/360/Wii clients are so godawful. Why the hell do they not just give you a goddamned alphabetical list of everything they stream? Because it would be too easy for people to find what they really want to watch?

I refuse to watch Netflix on my Windows PC because fuck silverlight in it's stupid ass, but the arbitrary beshittedness of the console clients has me utterly perplexed because I can think of no reason why they would release a client like that in the first place. It's ridiculous that I have to use a 3rd party site to browse their offerings like someone that isn't only interested in shows related to the last goddamned thing they watched or some ridiculously specific categories ("Ooh, let's browse the 'heartwarming family films from the 80's' category, that's bound to have a wide selection to choose from for streaming!").

Different conclusion:

[nurb432]

1 - Nothing released recently is worth getting..
2 - Proxies/darknets