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The Internet Archive Starts Seeding Over a Million Torrents
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."
The *AAs start suing the Internet Archive.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
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?
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)
"ephemeral or dodgy items that disappear from view in a short time."
Do these guys even know what pirating is like? Have they even seen it? Most of the time pirated stuff is more reliably available, in a faster time, and often of a higher quality than you can buy legally.
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
Forgoiong a discussion on whether or not the "entertainment" in question actually promotes Progress or is useful, it does seem to say that after a certain period of time that "entertainment" will no longer be protected by an "exclusive Right." Certainly you don't have a problem with the Constitution, do you?
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Take away the profit and you take away the reason to create new content to share. It's not a popular argument but it's a realistic one. Share copyrighted material and eventually the copyright holders stop producing new content. Not because they are being mean or greedy but eventually they run out of resources. It's not even an argument. If it costs a 100 million to make a movie and there's no profit as in you take a loss, how long until you stop making movies? Yes I know fan movies will save us all but are you honestly pirating fan movies or "The avengers"? This is a fight we all will loose. I know being realistic makes me a troll and I promised myself to stay out of this loosing battle but as a movie fan and some one that works in the industry I see the end coming and no one will be happy with the final outcome. I loose my way of life and everyone finds themselves pirating old movies. The pirates winning means no new movies. That's the reality of what we are facing.
Thats a lot torrents to seed, i assume they arent just running a tracker.
What sort of setup do they have, what bittorrent software do they use ?
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.
as my ISP actively interferes with p2p traffic..
It's shocking that a once responsible organisation takes it upon itself to blur the distinct in the public mind of the role played by torrents in the distribution of files. Much effort and money has been expended to educate the public and their political representitive as to the true negative impact of this technology on the economic welfare of the managers of content creators.
This wrong minded attempt to compete directly with current content with alternatives that are outside the control of the industry leaders shows the miss use of public moneys in an othrwise open market and I feel certain that come review of that funding influent will be brought to bear that will effect either that funding or the management structure.
Other key words: feedom, open markets, children, economy, health, security
... for instance, here are audio recordings of Asimov's Foundation Trilogy:
http://archive.org/details/IsaacAsimov-TheFoundationTrilogy
_This_ is what the civilian Internet was intended for: spreading information and culture.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
I had trouble getting to the hotlist, I was finally able to reach the page and Coral too. Here are the 2 cached pages:
http://bt1.archive.org.nyud.net/hotlist.php
http://bt2.archive.org.nyud.net/hotlist.php
I wish we had a law saying that you can obtain something for free if the copyright holders refuse to sell it to you. This would keep a lot of this horrible litigation from ever occurring.
So instead of refusing to sell, they can just set the price for dealers/distributors to be absurdly high - it's still available for sale. Example: for extended periods, Disney could set the wholesale price of a licensed copy of a particular movie on DVD/BR to about $200million. Then, for a limited time, the wholesale price could drop to $20, so retailers can sell it for about $30 or so. Problem solved, and largely indistinguishable from the present, where Disney simply refuses to sell particular movies for extended periods to maintain their pricing power.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
There was a dutch version of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. As a naive kid I inquired how it could be obtained. The NOS would very happy to supply the copyrighted material. All I would have to do was pay a sound engineer to make the copies. The price was... well... rather high doesn't do it justice.
But it is available... for a price...
You can probably get any movie you want to. For a couple of million.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The content industry doesn't have the business model of making a sustained profit, they have the business model of making MORE AND MORE AND MORE MONEY! If the content industry was run by the supermarkets, your example would work. But it is not. It is run by people who make wallstreet bankers look wholesome and they want ever more cash from you.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
How many of us have useless machines that we can convert to Torrent Mirrors for our local community library?
...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.
I only have so many terabytes and megabits per second, which of these torrents should I help preserve? Anything? I mean they're pretty well-preserved already I think, and totally legit so it's not like anyone's trying to get rid of them...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
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."
In other words, the EFF is working towards legitimizing BitTorrent so that illegal uses can continue unabated.
Huh? How did you pull that message out of the statement you just quoted?
You can change it to say anything you want.
No, only elected legislators can do that, and guess who controls who gets to run for office.
So in other words, instead of the public domain, you're proposing putting works into the eminent domain. How would you go about calculating the "just compensation" for a Fifth Amendment taking?
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.
Ever try to download something from amazon with linux? They dont make it easy
Are you referring to the lack of official DVD and BD playback software shipped with GNU/Linux distributions?
Because it showed up not available on Amazon either.
I think the GP was wanting something without waiting a few days for it to ship.
I don't think there is a DVD/BD player shipped with Windows 7 either...? At least, I've not found one in fifteen months of looking...
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
I don't think there is a DVD/BD player shipped with Windows 7 either
Are you talking about the Starter or Home Premium edition of Windows 7? Because this page implies that Windows 7 Home Premium includes DVD playback software. And I thought BD-ROM drives (and PCs including one) included a BD player app, just as DVD-ROM drives (and PCs including one) included a DVD player app until Windows Vista Home Premium and Windows 7 Home Premium made DVD playback a standard Windows feature.