Comment by dgallagher | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dgallagher | Hacker News Reader

The giant elephant in the room is being overlooked: Advertisements have a lifespan measured in months, weeks, or days. Television content can stay relevant for decades.

Imagine it's the year 1997. Aliens from the planet GNU have gone back in time and provided us with bittorrent, and technology making dial-up modems a million times faster (but they still drop their connection if your mom picks up the phone). You just torrented and watched the latest Seinfeld episode, "The Muffin Tops", and have forever changed your muffin-eating habits.

While watching, you saw ads for Apple's "Think Different" campaign, McDonald's Arch Deluxe, and that "Da Da Da" Volkswagen commercial (which is now stuck in your head). You go out and buy the car, buy a Mac, and buy a Big Mac because the Arch Deluxe tastes like crap.

In 2007 you watch The Muffin Tops again. The old ads from 1997 are still embedded in the file. Apple's ad seems weird since the logo is all rainbows. You drive to McDonald's to get an Arche Deluxe because now you're an adult and it'll taste good, but they don't have it anymore, so you cry and drive home to sign a petition website to bring it back. Nobody ever reads it. Along the way your Volkswagen breaks down and you remember how that terribly sounding ad tricked you into buying such an unreliable piece of junk. You get a lift from the aliens, but they charge you one anal probe for the ride. Now you hate Apple, hate McDonalds, hate Volkswagen, and hate that the aliens didn't have the common decency to at least warm up their metal tools before use. Ouch.

Except this same scenario happened if you recorded off TV; or used a DVR like Tivo.

Now imagine the benefits of a torrent option where they have the option of updating the ads every 6-12 months; and releasing fresh torrents (or even better they use your IP Geo info when you fetch the torrent and have region-specific torrent offerings with different ads in them.)

Maybe if its a legit source, you're more likely to download it when you need it from the trusted source, instead of hoarding the file for 10 years, swapping it with friends through other means, etc.

Bonus for increased likelihood that you're swarming with people closer to you instead of slower connections on the other side of the globe

Orrrr, even better, the container they send the show in dynamically changes the ads based on what advertisers are trying to sell.

That would also make it drastically easier for the playing software to skip them entirely though.

Having two versions that only differ in the ads would also make it very easy to take only the common (non-ad) content and throw away the rest.

Considering that there is DRM software, and that it's largely accepted for at least some content (PC games), it's a wonder that there's no digital format where a DRM software plays the content you downloaded after playing some relevant ads to you. (Kind of like crunchyroll, or youtube, but with bittorrent distribution like vuze).

Saying that, if vuze or bittorrent.com implemented that scheme, would there be enough of of an indie films community that would supply the first round of content to such an app? And - would people prefer this to youtube or crunchyroll if they can get the same content without installing a bittorrent program?

Yes, but to do that you'd have to download two versions then throw some special software at them - or someone else would have to do this then supply a new torrent without them, which would mean you weren't getting it from an official source any more. Whereas if your movie has embedded directives saying "get some ads from ads.hbo.com to fill in 6:25 to 7:45", it seems pretty trivial to have the player software respond to that as "skip straight from 6:25 to 7:45".

As for the DRM software thing - that does solve that problem, but to me it is a deal killer. Yes, I would probably download TV from the "official" torrent with ads if it's just a movie, but if it's some DRM-laden mess that has to be played through their proprietary player, no way. Also, there would seem to be very little chance of getting a Linux version of the DRM software which would be a practical deal-killer for me even if I got past the conceptual issue.

How hard would it be for someone to download both versions, do the diffs, and create the instructions, get torrent X, and play from 0:30 to 6:25, skip straight to 7:45, etc?

The differencing task would be the perfect app for the new unlimited inbound bandwidth at linode. :)

Why not just provide streaming versions for free, and insert new ads whenever they feel like it. It could even be like a website where a Person could find lots of different streaming video programs. I would use that in a heartbeat.

That already exists. It's called Hulu.

Not available in Australia though.

Not available in Europe either. But then I guess such a torrent solution would be ip limited to the US as well...

The American networks aren't exactly set up to sell advertising to all of the other 192 countries in the world...

Sure, there are a few global brands that might buy in anyway, but the advertising would be less targeted and there would be less competition for the same slots, so rates would be significantly lower while costs would stay the same (or even be higher.)

All this is ignoring the myriad existing deals that the networks have with peers in other contries offering exclusive region-wide access to certain content. Working around this would be possible, but would result in numerous IP blocks anyway.

Then there's the other elephant; No one wants to watch traditional advertising anymore. We've seen the alternative (pay per view, dvr skipping, and pirated content) and we like it too much.

Be creative.

They can easily release news, commentary and talk shows programs on the Internet, including as torrents, because their value decays exponentially once they're aired.

I don't think it'd go to that extreme. Sure, the ads would be outdated, but the brands are still there.

You're still exposed to the Apple brand, and are reminded that they've been (hypothetically) awesome since 1997 and beyond. You're still exposed to McDonald's and might head out for a Big Mac (I suspect that'll stay on forever).

Maybe Volkswagens will get better in ten year's time ;-)

Or you get get inundated with ads from the next Pets.com...

The problem is that no one is going to pay for you watching their ads in 10 years.

Ads are also really crafted at society at that given time. I heard a quote from a history professor who said he could teach American history using only Coca-Cola ads.

If that's the case, that's not really a problem. You get high ad exposure at the time of each episode's release, as many people will want to keep up with the show within the first few years of its airing. You're paying for their eyes.

Anyone watching it 10 years down the line is just icing on the cake for you, but that's not what you'd pay for in such a model.

Solution - create new cuts of the torrents with updated ads every month.

Provide fast(ish) servers, so the new torrents will download faster.

Remove all links to the old torrents.

Torrents don't work like that. Once someone has downloaded the old version and leave it to seed, it is accessible and can still be downloaded with the right link.

No, the best idea will be to insert those ads dynamically when you download the torrent.

How would that work? They dynamically make a new version each time someone wants to download it from the "official source"? Would this be the same version over the entire day? The entire week? What if I wanted to download an old episode of Seinfeld, would I get current ads, or ads from 1996? Would the "official source" still have to be able to upload each episode? If not, you run the risk of having multiple versions of current shows (this week's ads and last week's ads) in the wild. And you lose the ability to have people who downloaded it last week help with distribution.

I think that the best solution is to have a container that automatically inserts ads at the appropriate times. In this case though, the task will be making sure someone doesn't just remove the ads from the container. This is a similar problem with DVRs, but since this would all be automated, there is a greater risk.

Yes, the idea is to insert ads dynamically when you download them. The issue is that the specific ads parts must be not distributed on third party places, they are only in servers related to the ad system.

With Bittorrent some parts of the file can change and still people can seed the unchanged parts. So having multiple versions in the wild is less of a problem.

Reminds me of listening to old radio dramas, the actors or announcer often do the adverts themselves during the breaks. Nothing like wanting to go out and buy some Palmolive or make sure I'm honoring my sugar rations.

This sounds like Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting. Nice writing!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com