BitTorrent To RIAA: You're 'Barking Up the Wrong Tree'

An anonymous reader writes: The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) sent a letter to BitTorrent last week asking the company to help stop copyright infringement of its members' content. Brad Buckles, RIAA's executive vice president of anti-piracy, asked BitTorrent CEO Eric Klinker to "live up to" comments made by former chief content officer Matt Mason. Two quotes by Mason stand out in particular: "We don't endorse piracy," and "If you're using BitTorrent for piracy, then you're doing it wrong." Both of these remain accurate, but the RIAA wants to see BitTorrent do more. VentureBeat contacted BitTorrent to get their stance on the letter, and the company said, "Our position is that they are barking up the wrong tree, as it seems they were with their approach to CBS last week. ... We do not host, promote, or facilitate copyright infringing content and the protocol, which is in the public domain, is a legal technology.".

Comments

Dumb as a bag of rocks

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't endorse murder...that's my view.
That doesn't mean society or any company can expect me to go vigilante and try catching murderers. In fact if I did that I'd probably be arrested.

It's not within my power to prevent everything *I* find offensive or immoral.
Also, not everything I find morally repugnant is a shared world view. There are no moral absolutes.

Also, who thought going after a file transfer protocol was a good idea? It's a fucking file transfer protocol. It's job is to get files from A to B - it doesn't care if they're MP3s, DOCs or JPGs. It doesn't care if they're MPGs full of donkey porn. It'd be like demanding car manufacturers try to stop cars being used as getaway cars: How the hell do you detect that?? It's all just driving to the car.

Re:Bittorrent "members"...?

[knightghost]

They aren't clueless. They are evil.

Re:Ha hA!

[youngatheart]

The first time I used the bittorrent protocol, I used it to get a copy of Debian. I'd never heard of it before, but I read up on it and was impressed how potentially useful it could be. Software updates were the obvious first thing that sprang to my mind (as I work with a program that gets a lot of updates, all from a host that was more or less flat lining every time the updates came out.) When I found out people were using it for copyright infringement, I was shocked since, by it's nature, the protocol shares the IPs of everyone sharing the file.

I recalled there was some company that was using it for software updates so I googled for it, and not only found that, but some other rather significant users of bittorrent protocol:

• Blizzard Entertainment uses its own BitTorrent client to download World of Warcraft, Starcraft II, and Diablo III.
• Facebook and Twitter both use BitTorrent internally to move files around.
• The Internet Archive recommends people use BitTorrent to download its content, as it’s the fastest method and allows the non-profit organization to save on bandwidth costs.
• Linux ISO distribution, as I first discovered it, is a big use.
• The UK government released several large data sets showing how public money was being spent.

Then there's NASA, and BitTorrent Sync and all the legal music and videos Bittorrent Inc puts out. P2P file sharing just makes sense for so many things, I'm still surprised people associate it with copyright infringement. I think the real key to understanding that association is all the media coverage of the *AA battles against Napster, Limewire, Mopheus and The Pirate Bay. I suspect there would be a lot less infringement if the public wasn't constantly hearing news about how people are getting content without paying.

What I find most newsworthy is that Microsoft is using P2P to distribute updates now. Maybe the makers of the software I work with will finally get the hint.