Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

The Internet Archive Starts Seeding Over a Million Torrents

Posted by Soulskill on from the adding-a-dose-of-legitimacy dept.

An anonymous reader writes with news that The Internet Archive has started seeding about 1,400,000 torrents. In addition to over a million books, the Archive is seeding thousands and thousands of films, music tracks, and live concerts. John Gilmore of the EFF said, "The Archive is helping people to understand that BitTorrent isn't just for ephemeral or dodgy items that disappear from view in a short time. BitTorrent is a great way to get and share large files that are permanently available from libraries like the Internet Archive." Brewster Kahle, founder of the Archive, told TorrentFreak, "I hope this is greeted by the BitTorrent community, as we are loving what they have built and are very glad we can populate the BitTorrent universe with library and archive materials. There is a great opportunity for symbiosis between the Libraries and Archives world and the BitTorrent communities."

10 of 180 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Next move by webmistressrachel · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Actually it provides plausible denial for encrypted torrent traffic. Breaking the encryption for purposes other than download is being complicit. It puts and end to the Star I AA's case, finally!

    --
    This tagline was transcoded to result in at least one smirk. If you experience failure to smirk, please consult your Gen
  2. How about Freenet? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Could the Internet Archive ever validate Freenet in the same way? Show that it can be used for fault tolerant archiving of static data, and not just subversive/illegal speech?

  3. SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Oh, wait, you don't want to?

    Fine, I'll ask the Russians instead. They always have what I want, in the best format possible, for free.

    This is what enrages me the most today. Everyone is busy off complaining about piracy and bullshit, when they're not making their products readily available in a format I can actually use. I've lost count how many times I've walked into BestBuy holding a bundle of $20 bills only to be turned away because they don't stock something. The last time I went there it was for a Disney movie for the kids- only to be told point blank by the salesman who went into the back looking for the Bluray disk that Disney had stopped producing them (this was a year old movie- hell, we had it in theatres up until about 4 months ago) so that they could re-release it again in a special edition in a few months and charge full pop once more.

    I've gone into more music stores then I can remember looking for CDs of good music (none of this modern day auto-tuned bullshit or the crap where there's some white boy rapping through a telephone effect patch to hard-panned deep beats), and I almost never find what I'm looking for. Then I land up having to either buy the CD from Europe or direct from the band and waiting ~4 weeks for it to show up in the mail- and I've still got to go prod the Russians for a nice FLAC copy to listen to in the meantime.

    Hell, there's been TV series I would HAPPILY pay for to watch and enjoy with my family if I could actually get them on DVD or BR. But no, because of licensing-this-and-licensing-that, once again I'm being denied the ability to PAY FOR my entertainment by the VERY SAME people who sit around bitching and complaining about piracy all day long.

    About half a year ago I got a letter from my ISP basically complaining about the fact that I'd been downloading stuff and someone else was angry about it. It was funny at the time because had I been able to get what I was looking for locally- or even off the internet and mailed to me- I wouldn't have pirated the stuff. After searching the internet for a few hours and finding nothing, I turned to my usual set of trackers and had the thing downloaded in 2 hours. It still makes me chuckle to think that someone out there was peeved enough about me downloading their product to actually complain to my ISP about it, even though their product was made of unobtanium *anywhere*.

    If these people don't want to take my money when I'm literally holding it out to them, arms outstretched, begging them to take it- and all I get in response is a resounding "NO.", I have no sympathy for any of them. The fact that BT is still going stronger then ever today is awesome. Maybe one day the corporate fuckheads of the world will wake up and figure things out, and start taking my money in a sane manner so that both parties can benefit from the exchange.

    -AC (for obvious reasons)

    1. Re:SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      This is a shining example of misapplication of copyright. When copyright was originally implemented, there was only one way to publish something: you printed it, bound it, and published it as a book (which people were then free to resell). It was never intended to allow the copyrighter to control *how* the work was distributed, because the question didn't arise.

      Now, copyright has the unfortunate side-effect that the copyrighter can control the form in which a work is published, where it's available, etc. This is actually fairly simple to remedy: allow anyone to publish the work, provided that they provide (say) 50% of revenue to the person who holds the copyright.

    2. Re:SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY! by Tastecicles · · Score: 3, Interesting

      High five to Parent! I'm also a creator, and happily post under my handle because I like a little recognition every now and again.

      What really bugs me is the fact that when I release stuff into the Public Domain these days I have to coat it with a generous helping of licenses that tell people they can basically do what they want with the content - in my opinion, this is a natural right, not something that can be taken with one litigious hand and grudgingly *sold* back with the other. This I believe distracts the consumer from the real message of the content: the aesthetic value of whatever medium the content happens to take. How do I make my money then, I hear some naysayers ask... simple really: I let my public domain work speak for itself and get paid through commissioned work (which, because I already have a brand. I don't mind transferring ownership of that work to the client because the idea is theirs, I just point the camera or hit the "record" button and capture their content for them. Art as a service).

      --
      Operation Guillotine is in effect.
  4. Torrents should be used for software updates by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    A really good use for torrents would be software updates.

    If a big software company (say, Adobe or Microsoft) would seed their patch releases as torrents, it would instantly bring torrents into the general public mindshare as a legitimate downloading tool. More importantly for the companies involved, it would also save them vast amounts of bandwidth (especially for the bigger files).

    For a company like Adobe or MS, what's not to like about that? They don't even need to worry about the piracy danger, because with patches, anyone who can use it would already have the software installed.

  5. Re:And where does all this content come from? by Card · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Ever heard of Hollywood accounting?

    Hollywood accounting (also known as Hollywood bookkeeping) refers to the opaque accounting methods used by the film, video and television industry to budget and record profits for film projects. Expenditures can be inflated to reduce or eliminate the reported profit of the project thereby reducing the amount which the corporation must pay in royalties or other profit-sharing agreements, as these are based on the net profit.

    How it works

    An example is the Warner Bros. television series Babylon 5 created by J. Michael Straczynski. The series, which was profitable in each of its five seasons from 1993–1998, has garnered more than US$1 billion for Warner Bros., most recently US$500 million in DVD sales alone. But in the last profit statement given to Straczynski, Warner Bros. claimed the property was $80 million in debt. "Basically," says Straczynski, "by the terms of my contract, if a set on a WB movie burns down in Botswana, they can charge it against B5's profits."

  6. Cue the DMCA takedown notices in... by Tastecicles · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ...5... 4... 3... 2...

    I kid. I've used IA a lot. Their movie archive is awesome, I've discovered some real gems on there, and even managed to make a living making and selling compilations (yes, you can actually do that legally with the material on there, and a lot of other people do!)

    --
    Operation Guillotine is in effect.
  7. Re:Next move by Tastecicles · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "To no man shall be sold or denied natural justice."

    One of the core principles of the oldest written constitutional document in existence: Magna Carta.

    If you have to bankrupt yourself to fight a lawsuit then you're not doing it right.

    --
    Operation Guillotine is in effect.
  8. Intellectual property tax by tepples · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If copyrights are property, why aren't they taxed like property? Each owner of copyright in a work published more than x years ago would need to declare a self-assessed value of the copyright and pay a tax every few years based on a percentage of that value. Anyone else could put the work into the public domain by paying the copyright's full value to a government agency, which would perform a Fifth Amendment taking of the work's copyright.