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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.".
Actually, getting free linux distros to test for fun is my current use of torrent sites. Everything is streaming now anyway. I don't care how they don't get their money, just that they don't get it. ;)
You jest, but it would be a reasonable deflection to say "we've looked into it and our research revealed that most copyright infringement of music and movies is done by users of Windows, while the users of our software account for a much lower percentage of infringments."*
Most pirated movies and music are being used on Windows and isn't that where the real problem is?
Isn't there a major game system that uses the bittorrent protocol for updates? Even Microsoft is using peer-to-peer technology to deliver updates now.
* - I don't actually know that Windows is used for infringements more often than the Bittorrent program, but with all the different bittorrent protocol clients out there and Microsoft's desktop majority, I feel safe making that assumption.