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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.".
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.
If I run Chrome am I a Chrome member? What about Notepad? Can I be a member of that too?
These people are completely clueless.
blizzard uses it to push out patches and game downloads. so can steam if i remember correctly
there are a number of legit uses for it that get used all the time. I believe microsoft is even using it for win 10 updates (opt in)
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
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. ;)
It's Slashdot so let's pretend that no one here plays World of Warcraft (update done using Bittorrent protocol) or any other big game using that protocol for update distribution...
And let's pretend that no one here uses Linux which uses Bittorrent to distribute the ISO as it allows both faster transferts and less charge on the distribution's servers.
Many people use bittorrent for legal purposes... but sometimes, they don't even know that they are using 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.
I just torrent over Tor.
many exit nodes block torrent traffic and the tor project itself says it may not be safe to torrent over tor
https://blog.torproject.org/bl...
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
And because this is Slashdot, let's all pretend people use Bittorrent for things besides piracy.
...I actually do torrent linux distros... occasionally virtual machine images.
And I haven't downloaded any movies/music over bit torrent for years now. Most of the time you can find them via http stream or download.
Netflix Hulu Amazon prime if all else fails search video linking sites for a stream be sure to have enough script blockers to keep the malaware away. Don't feel secure doing that use tor as well it will be slower but even less likely to be caught. want it to watch later use a video downloader (or just hard link to the file in your temp directory on nix systems (haven't tried windows) )
If you really must torrent though try using something like tribler and set to use anonymous download(it is a beta feature but probably better than nothing like vanilla bit torrent).
I do wish though that the pirates would all move to something like freenet or i2p or tribler. decentralized anonymous and censorship resistant they would be the perfect tools but no many don't even offer magnet links.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
When you respond with a deflection like this, I think you're actually supporting the notion that their letter merits deflection in the first place. This supports the theory that "the truth doesn't matter so long as we pay expensive lawyers to express our viewpoint forcefully," which is the apparent theory behind their "bullying people with lawyers" m.o. Personally, I think that bullying people with lawyers is the exact moral equivalent to bullying people with firearms, and from a practical standpoint, in either situation the person who has less firepower is almost always the one who loses in the immediate sense. Unfortunately, the society within which I live does little to punish those who use lawyers as a means to bully other people. The truth is, they have no grounds for complaint, and that truth should matter. This is why my comment regarding the letter was dismissive rather than deflective.
Most of us (the people who belong here) torrent gigabytes of Linux ISOs regularly while you are trying to figure out what a torrent actually is.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
If RIAA really wanted to they should go after TCP/IP, I hear virtually all online piracy uses it.
don't go give them any ideas. I don't want to regret getting rid of the token ring nix or the IPX gear tossed when cleaning out my parts box
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
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:
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.
Microsoft is using its own version of P2P that is much like bittorrent, but apparently not actually bittorent. I am quite interested in learning more about it, but all I've been able to find so far is that it is likely based on Avalanche.
Don't torrent over Tor
Torrent file-sharing applications have been observed to ignore proxy settings and make direct connections even when they are told to use Tor. Even if your torrent application connects only through Tor, you will often send out your real IP address in the tracker GET request, because that's how torrents work. Not only do you deanonymize your torrent traffic and your other simultaneous Tor web traffic this way, you also slow down the entire Tor network for everyone else.
https://www.torproject.org/dow...
-- My Weblog.
For once the RIAA actually gets it. They aren't claiming that BitTorrent (the protocol) is illegal or that it doesn't have legitimate uses.
Instead, they very specifically said that of the illegal file sharing happening over BItTorrent, the majority of it is coming from uTorrent, the client published by BItTorrent (the company).
They're clearly looking hoping the company will implement filtering to combat piracy (likely knowing full well that they'll kill the company in the process). This tactic has worked against other companies in the past who published software that was used more for piracy than legitimate uses (MetaMachine and eDonkey anyone?). Don't go after the technology - go after the company supporting the technology.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
... any RIAA crap. i use Magnatune.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars