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

[matazar]

Not to mention seed boxes that can be purchased for cheap. Why waste your home upstream, when you can use a 100mbit connection to download and easily transfer it to your home computer with ssh/scp/sftp.

Those companies must love seeing news like this. There's always another way..

Re:Perhaps it's not that Bittorrent traffic fell

[WrongSizeGlass]

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

Or US Internet traffic is growing - something the ISP's & cell carriers are crying about on a regular basis. If the overall usage goes up, stagnant BitTorrent traffic rates - or if the BT rates are growing at a slower rate as compared to overall US usage - will look like it declined.

Re:Perhaps it's not that Bittorrent traffic fell

[Anonymous Coward]

Or paying for and watching streaming media without needing a digital copy...rather than legal actions, it might be the fact that such options are more available in the US...

Re:Perhaps it's not that Bittorrent traffic fell

[Opportunist]

*sigh* So let them enjoy their news and hush.

Loose lips have been the reason they caught on with P2P in the first place. Why gloat, just enjoy.

Re:Perhaps it's not that Bittorrent traffic fell

[poity]

But think about the logic of that for a moment.

If what the summary says is true -- that expanded legal alternatives have contributed majorly to the decrease in torrent traffic -- then it means that the argument that most piracy is the result of the content industry's sluggishness in adopting new business models rings true. However, if what you claim is true instead, then it means the former argument is wrong, and that piracy continues despite the industry's efforts to evolve and meet customers' desires.

So, if the article is right, then it is clear evidence to the industry that evolving their business model will have a positive impact, whereas if you are right, then the industry has even more evidence that changing their business model has no effect.

Re:Perhaps it's not that Bittorrent traffic fell

[Pseudonym Authority]

They get taken down to much. If you are after fresh material, IRC DCC bots are the best way to get it (at least for things like Anime and TV shows).

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.

all time low?

[Anonymous Coward]

ha! the "all time low" for bittorrent should be 0.00%, you know, back before bittorrent was invented. saying "all time low" is an odd expression for something that started at zero.

Netflix, not "legal actions"

[TheEyes]

Filesharing lawsuits and six-strikes laws never did anything to stem the tide of piracy. What's been causing the fall of Bittorrent as a share of internet bandwidth in the US is the rise of legal streaming sites (Netflix, Hulu, etc), alternatives which don't exist in most of the rest of the world.

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.

Is actual usage falling?

[hkmwbz]

So, is actual BT usage going down, or is something else simply growing much faster?

Actually, the article states:

it's clear there's little to no growth in BitTorrent use

But:

These numbers don't take into account that absolute traffic has increased

So what does that mean? How did they conclude that there's little to no growth if the numbers don't even take a very important fact like absolute traffic growth into account? Just wild guessing?

And little to no growth doesn't mean decline. It means it's stable. So it's not really accurate to claim that "BitTorrent Traffic Falls In the U.S."

Maybe one will have to read the full report, and it's all there. But I don't think the linked article supports the assertion that BitTorrent traffic is falling in the US. At worst, it's growing slower than other services.

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

seedbox.

[Anonymous Coward]

I and many people I know have been getting seed boxes. I think more torrent traffic is just becoming encrypted.

We've DOWNLOADED all the MOVIES

[billstewart]

The reason BitTorrent traffic is falling is that everybody's downloaded all the old movies already. So now we're just getting the new ones, not catching up on backlog.

Re:We've DOWNLOADED all the MOVIES

[Anonymous Coward]

But my hard drive just failed and I was too poor to buy a backup. Dammit now I have to download them all again- and this time in 1080p HD.

Re:New movies aren't even WORTH downloading

[guru42101]

My opinion is that most new stuff hasn't even been worth downloading. Several of the "blockbuster" movies that I've downloaded I deleted within 15 minutes. For other people I think Netflix and Redbox are an acceptable alternative as well.