Microsoft Funded Startup Aims to Kill BitTorrent Traffic
torrentfreak.com
torrentfreak.com
In one corner of the ring we have the content industry which seems to care far more about chasing pirates than with making life nice for the people who will actually pay them. Customers who play by the rules are "rewarded" with region coding, DRM, and lots of arbitrary restrictions.
In the other corner are people who feel entitled to consume an arbitrary amount of music/movies without paying the creators anything. When confronted with with the moral/economic questionability of this approach, they have an extensive set of indignant rationalizations prepared; some of these are true but irrelevant to helping content creators get paid ("record companies are dinosaurs"), some of these are wishful thinking ("they can make money in other ways"), all of these are fronts for the fact that they just like getting things for free.
In another corner are governments and law enforcement which are gung-ho about legislating against piracy and prosecuting it, without understanding or properly considering the ramifications (see SOPA).
The good guys are: people who will pay a reasonable fee or watch a small/reasonable amount of advertising to consume the content they like, content creators who release their stuff in a convenient way without requiring an absurd amount of control, tech companies that are providing media services that strike a balance between creators and consumers (DRM-free Amazon, Google Play, Apple iTunes is getting better but is still pretty locked down).
May the good guys eventually win.
Yes, there are some people who feel entitled to consume an arbitrary amount of music/movies without paying for it. But this is not "a corner", it is not the norm for people who "pirate" or "share". The average person who downloads movies off of bit torrent is someone who does so as part of a larger set of media consuming behaviors which includes paying for cable, buying movies on disc, and seeing movies in theaters. Also, current evidence tends to lead toward the conclusion that engaging in "piracy" on balance results in more support for artists, not less.
On the whole I very much agree with Jonathan Coulton's stance on piracy (http://www.jonathancoulton.com/2012/01/21/megaupload/), make good stuff and make it easy to buy it. I've never seen a case where that has failed to reward the artists.
Didn't say it was. Actually I didn't use the word "piracy" at all (except in reference to the content industry and their perception of what "piracy" is). You're preaching the party line without reading what I've written.
For example, I have no problem with someone using BitTorrent to download something they already bought once, but that they can't use on a new device because of unreasonable DRM. I only have a problem with people who are not paying creators at all, or justify a large amount of copying because of a small/moderate amount of legitimate purchases.
I also agree that a limited amount of free sharing between friends is totally reasonable.
It's not just about heavy handed law enforcement, or about the excesses of DRM, it's also about sharing. If we eliminate sharing (of music, movies, books, etc.) from the world in an effort to fight "piracy" we will have made a grave mistake. Indeed, I think the rampant levels of impersonal sharing we see today with things like bittorrent are probably better for content creators than more traditional levels enabled by libraries and friends and restricted by physical media forms.
The important point I'm trying to make here is that the idea that everyone who reads a book, watches a movie, or listens to a song needs to have engaged in some economic transaction prior to doing so (through either direct purchase or subjection to advertising) is a wholly wrong and dangerous notion. We can, and do, live in a world where content creators are rewarded bountifully for the work and yet unregulated sharing runs wild and free.
I meant exactly what I said: I am against "people who feel entitled to consume an arbitrary amount of music/movies without paying the creators anything." I didn't say this includes everyone who downloads things over BitTorrent (and I don't believe that it does). I didn't say this includes everyone who sends their friends songs sometimes (and I don't believe that it does). You made this association, not me.
It does include people who say things like "I just discovered BitTorrent, which is great because now I don't have to pay for movies any more." Which as I mentioned in another comment, includes someone I met in real life just yesterday.
> The important point I'm trying to make here is that the idea that everyone who reads a book, watches a movie, or listens to a song needs to have engaged in some economic transaction prior to doing so (through either direct purchase or subjection to advertising) is a wholly wrong and dangerous notion.
Well if we're talking in extremes, it is an equally wrong and dangerous notion that the compensation of creative people should be solely dependent on charity, with no recourse against freeloaders. What do you think would happen to the movie industry if the ticket booth at theaters were replaced with an offering plate?
They're probably less than you think. Many "pirates" pay, and in fact pay more than the average person.
some of these are wishful thinking ("they can make money in other ways")
In the UK, and despite the lower income from album sales, the total income for artists has grown: http://www.hypebot.com/.a/6a00d83451b36c69e2012875f077e8970c...
Likewise, despite whining about piracy, the MPAA has had five years of record profits from 2005 to 2010.
Maybe it's not so wishful thinking?
What evidence do you have for this? Every time I want to believe this is true, I meet someone (IRL) who says something completely blatant like "I just discovered BitTorrent, which is great because now I don't have to pay for movies any more.". (that is a direct quote from someone I met yesterday). Anecdotes aren't data, but where's your non-anecdotal data?
However, our analysis of the Canadian P2P file-sharing subpopulation
suggests that there is a strong positive relationship between P2P
file-sharing and CD purchasing. That is, among Canadians actually
engaged in it, P2P file-sharing increases CD purchasing.
Study by the BI Norwegian School of Management:
Researchers found that those who downloaded "free" music – whether
from lawful or seedy sources – were also 10 times more likely to pay
for music. This would make music pirates the industry's largest
audience for digital sales.
Wisely, the study did not rely on music pirates' honesty. Researchers
asked music buyers to prove that they had proof of purchase.
Secondly, there is actually a media business on the internet that's flourishing with a pure online model: porn. You can get it for free everywhere, yet people keep paying for it (also online) .
I don't feel entitled to anything and I never stole anything from the creators. If they wish to stop producing new stuff, that's fine with me. I have thousand of other ways to enjoy myself, some of which is forgotten public domain content.
It's nice to feel moral outrage about people who "felt entitled", but it doesn't make you money.
The good guys are: people who will pay a reasonable fee or watch a small/reasonable amount of advertising to consume the content they like,
I want convenience and I gladly do pay for said convenience. The problem is the lack of convenient options and lot of missing titles.
We used a number of servers to make a connection to each and every p2p client that distributed this film. Then Pirate Pay sent specific traffic to confuse these clients about the real I.P. addresses of other clients and to make them disconnect from each other.
My guess: the software connects to seeds and floods them with peer-exchange messages containing fake peers. (Essentially it's a DoS attack.) If that's the trick, then disabling PEX would leave a seeder immune.
Further, the swarm could start maintaining a blacklist and throw out the flooders.
Bitcoin is a good start in this direction, hopefully the algorithms will trickle down to more common technologies like BitTorrent.
Not when you ask for waiver, and put such a clause in 'Terms and Conditions', People go ahead and click on 'I agree' anyway.
That's flawed reasoning.
Suppose their technology killed BitTorrent over night. Will it stop piracy? Of course not - we have a myriad of other technologies adept at transferring data from one host to another.
Calling some protocol specific denial of service exploit the 'anti-piracy holy grail' seems out of touch to me.
Piracy is a problem because it requires minimal effort and is far too easy these days, often easier than obtaining the content legitimately. If the copyright holders could just occasionally shutdown whatever the most popular site is at the time, and force people to smaller sites. Far less people would be pirating.
The crux of the problem is that it is incredibly easy to pirate things, and even a token/whack-a-mole effort would dissuade most people.
Look at web-advertising. If browsers came pre-installed with adblock google would have to find a new business model. But such a small thing like not making it the default, has huge effects. Similarly having to find a new public website every month to download things is going to dissuade a big percentage of people.
It isn't. It never was. The problem is the insistence of an industry on their business model in face of a technology that made them obsolete. Their continued, stubborn refusal to accept reality. Their audaciousness to demand that this very technology be regulated to fit their business model again (which is both technically impossible as well as undesirable on a scale of "impediment to the entirety of mankind").
Piracy - or, how it actually should be called, Free (as in Speech) sharing of art, culture and technology - is probably mankind's biggest achievement. And here we are, arguing over an irrelevant industry that thinks it's entitled to a working business model for all eternity, and happens to excel at loudly crying at the shoulders of politicians and lie like a whole regiment of troopers.
We should embrace free and unlimited sharing of what amounts to a non-scarce resource, instead of buckling down to the prolonged sissy fit of a child that doesn't get what it wants anymore. It makes no fucking sense, both economically as well as logically, to limit something that is infinitely available.
I'm positive we'll be past this farce in about a decade, with the pirates ultimately emerging as the victors, because it's impossible to halt progress forever, even for the copyright industry. The more they entrench themselves in their vain fight, the more satisfying it will be to see them crash down.
Just because a product is made of bits instead of atoms doesn't mean the product didn't cost capital to create and require revenue to continue being created.
"I'm positive we'll be past this farce in about a decade" Sure right after we figure out a better system than capitalism for digital goods and get everyone to agree to it.
I find it hugely amusing how people still don't understand basic economics and "cause and effect" on a macro scale.
I don't feel obliged to answer this. Please keep your flame-bait to yourself.
>Just because a product is made of bits instead of atoms doesn't mean the product didn't cost capital to create and require revenue to continue being created.
You're conflating creation with distribution, in addition to a basic sweat of the brow fallacy. Just because you worked doesn't mean you are entitled to payment - else I will hereby demand you to pay me forty two fantastillion dollars for reading my comment, because that's what I value my work done here. See where this is going?
I still don't see how it's in any way reasonable to create artificial monopolies over a good that isn't scarce. Business models come and go with technological progress, and I do not think the copyright industry is the first to be entitled to an exception to the detriment of the rest of mankind.
>Sure right after we figure out a better system than capitalism for digital goods and get everyone to agree to it.
Yep. Such as the emerging service-based information society. :)
You don't say.
>Suppose their technology killed BitTorrent over night. Will it stop piracy? Of course not - we have a myriad of other technologies adept at transferring data from one host to another.
Yes, but it would be a very significant setback. Already the raids on DDL sites have had a large impact on the availability and easy access to pirated material. For example, they made 5 years worth of DDL links unreachable in one night.
In the end, you don't have to kill piracy --you just have to make it inconvenient enough, and most of the people will give up.
Let's verify that claim, shall we?
1. Fact: For the past 10 years the content industry has been doing everything in their power to make file-sharing as inconvenient as possible.
2. Result: http://disruptive-music.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/201...
I'll tell you where your (and their) mistake is. Instead of trying to make "illegal" sharing inconvenient, the focus should be on making "legal" consumption convenient.
When the content is available immediately, everywhere, at good quality, for a reasonable price, then most people have no reason to consider other channels.
The content industry has only themselves to blame for not providing that. Case in point: I'd like to watch avengers, on my flatscreen at home, asap. Chances are PirateBay will make that happen before iTunes, even though I would happily pay $10 for it, if they'd let me.
Their power is very limited, so really all they've been doing is nipping around the edges. Their goal is to expand that power technologically and legally in order to both stop piracy and make absolutely no concessions to consumer convenience, maintaining maximum flexibility in their choices when bringing sights and sounds to market.
All profits being held equal, the studios would prefer to charge $100 million a ticket and have you watch it in a closet in some LA office. The industry creates films that it doesn't care if anybody sees, and creates music that it doesn't care if anybody hears. That's the problem, and that's why we're surrounded by crap.
I'll tell you what kind of convenience I want: if I watch a movie that turns out to be deceptively marketed garbage, I don't want to have paid any more than those two hours of my life for the chance. I also want an easily streamlined, audited, and publicly supported way for me to support the artists that I want to encourage to create more things that I want to see. I don't want to be marketed to, I want to be asked, and I want honest recommendations from people who know my tastes enough to think I may like something.
I don't want glorified distributors being able to hold both the artists and the consumers over the barrel to move a product that doesn't even need to be distributed any more. I don't want my culture to be a patchwork of ownership, like the land became. If I hear a song, I can sing a song.
So, basically, I wouldn't happily pay $10 for The Avengers on my television, and at best that would be a partial solution for the industry IMO.
What you're really demonstrating is that a lot of people simply like things for free. Hopping on the soap box and pontificating how it is everyone else's fault is a ruse that we've seen since the early days of piracy. It is always someone else's fault, and it's always some natural right to have everything for nothing.
That is a very recent invention with spotify and the ilk - and even they still have ways to go.
iTunes may seem superficially convenient, but in reality it is only convenient when you already know what you want. Discovery is non-existent, and that's what many people want. And: It is way too expensive. (There, I said it!)
You may be kicking and screaming after reading this paragraph, but: Reality is that people value movies higher than music. $10 for a film is reasonable to most people. $10 for (most) albums is not. $10/month flat for all music is then again in their comfort zone, as demonstrated by spotify et al.
You can now either take the stance of the music industry; i.e. cry, complain and spend all your money on trying to turn back time to the golden 80s - where consumers had little choice other than pay whatever you asked.
Or you can accept that the era of the middlemen (the "distributors") has ended because consumers don't want to pay for their Yacht's anymore. That the market has decided on two prices (for movies and music respectively), and that you either make do with that, or continue on your path to irrelevancy.
It's hard to compete with $0, which is the price that thieves are willing to pay.
You may be kicking and screaming after reading this paragraph
I'm not in the music industry. I'm not in the movie industry. I would benefit, financially, from piracy by simply engaging in it myself. But, you know, I don't because I can't justify it. I find the arguments that do completely transparent and selfish.
I honestly find these piracy excusing arguments sad for society as a whole: It is the tragedy of the commons, everyone taking a dump in the well simply because they can, making laughable arguments why what they're doing is justified ("If only there was a toilet every 10 feet and someone wiped my arse for me..."). It's hearing a teenager justify why they litter (it's the city's fault and McDonald's fault and their parent's fault and...).
Or you can accept that the era of the middlemen (the "distributors") has ended because consumers don't want to pay for their Yacht's anymore. That the market has decided on two prices (for movies and music respectively), and that you either make do with that, or continue on your path to irrelevancy.
Yachts....another adorable excuse for theft.
This makes me un-sad for society as whole. We become richer from piracy than we could be without.
Martin sells much more books in Russia right now than he would without the TV series, and HBO aren't losing money because they don't want our money anyway.
Even if I accepted that argument, it has perilously little validity for the majority of participants in English language piracy discussions.
You also seem to assume nobody wants to pay for anything that they can get for free.
Neither is true. People want to support their artists, they just want different infrastructure than what is available today.
Personally I have bought multiple physical books on amazon after reading the pirated ebook. I didn't even bother to unbox them after they arrived. It would have been easier for me if the books had been available on amazon as ebooks in first place.
Likewise, when I hear a song that I like (e.g. on youtube or soundcloud) then often I'd spontaneously tip the artist $1, or $5, or just $0.10 - if only I could.
This all may sound foreign to you, but I promise you this is where we are heading. The new platforms emerge as we speak, and slowly replace the old cruft. Evolution at work; your choice is to either adapt or die, it really is as simple as that.
No, it's not a god given right. It's a right given to them by the artists. You know, those "other's that create".
If you have other data then I'd be curious to see it. My impression is that complaints only ever originate from mainstream artists, major labels or lobby-groups.
I have yet to see a small band or indy speak up against the demise of the major labels.
"The majority of artists seems to be very happy with the emerging distribution methods."
So why are we even talking about piracy? Clearly these people are pursuing alternative distribution models, relying upon concerts or whatever, etc. Therefore the torrents are full of legally allowed sharing.
That's right, right? Surely it must be.
Of course that's not reality at all. This bullshit Robin Hood act is yet another adorable piracy defense technique.
That's what I asked you. Who is, really? Sources?
I'll give you one from my side: http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/magazine/16-01/ff_b...
This bullshit Robin Hood
You know what's bullshit? People who can't even form their simplistic world-view into a coherent argument and try to compensate by charging up each of their comments with random insults.
What is your solution to the piracy issue? Tougher laws? 3 Strikes? What do you propose when this doesn't work (for which we have strong indication)?
So you are going to disregard me just like HBO already did. Why should not I?
By the way: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/apr/21/study-finds-pira...
Oh right...piracy isn't theft, right? Physical goods and all. Groan.
There are a world of studies available for consideration. When you see the same study (by the reputable Norwegian School of Business, no less) referenced over, and over, and over again, it is kind of telling.
Oh right...piracy isn't theft, right? Physical goods and all. Groan.
Well, piracy is. "Piracy" isn't, just like rape or murder isn't theft. Good or bad, it's not theft.
Arguments against the copying of private information are.
You can make things free, too, with e.g. ad-supported streaming.
No. It's my natural right to accept what people are voluntarily sharing with me, and to share what I've bought.
Horseshit. It is your right to refuse to purchase things that include sharing clauses you don't like.
The level of discourse on any discussion involving piracy is the bottom of the septic tank, full of some of the most irrationally, short-term entitled nitwits imaginable.
There are countless indy bands and indy film makers who welcome sharing of their product. Why not stick to that?
And start doing what? Buying all the stuff they were just hoarding because it was "free" and they never were able to afford in the first place? I don't think so. If the effort to get stuff increases above the value of the stuff, they'll simply wait until somebody solves the problem and decreases the effort, so the stuff becomes "free" again.
Anything that slows down the reward. Anything that adds uncertainty (trojans, viruses -- I honestly believe that those who pirate executables are generally imbeciles, though it's humorous hearing them try to cast their desperate hopes with realities -- the possibility of a lawsuit appearing).
Why not make legal purchases more convenient instead ?
Like Steam? Origin? iTunes? Amazon? It isn't an either situation, and never has been.
Numbers say, a lot of them did.
Paid digital downloads are growing and legal video streaming rivals bittorrent.
Can you prove that somebody who demanded drm-free mp3s later found the next argument? Do you have some kind of examples, some kind of proof, or are you behaving the same way your opponents do: never quit bitching as your wishes getting fulfilled one by one?
Numbers say the exact opposite: Digital sales have barely touched lost physical media sales. Lots of people who previously purchased their music of course buy it digitally now, no surprise there.
It is the robustness of the argument that demonstrates the legitimacy of the argument. Most pro-piracy spiels are tissue-thin, and only go undemolished because so many others like the comforting notion that what they're doing is somehow good. You see that sort of invented reality even on sites like HN because piracy discussions have a unhealthy draw for those who rely upon easy piracy (this particular topic has no interest for most readers, but for people who rely upon torrents it is a very crucial topic for them to try to spin a reality in)
Then perhaps the digital offerings are not good enough yet?
It is the robustness of the argument [...]
It is also the ratio of polemics to facts.
Your arguments might be better received if you you backed your opinion with a proposal for a solution instead of paragraphs of undirected ranting against the "evil, immoral pirates".
We all understand by now that you insist on reality being unfair.
So, how do you sell fish to the coast city?
Attempting to block the citizen's access to the ocean is demonstrably not working very well.
My proposal is to make our fish cheaper and have it delivered to your door. So convenient that almost nobody bothers to walk to the beach and catch their own anymore. We are not there yet, not even close. I also propose to take the expensive truck-drivers out of the equation, because nowadays we can magically beam our fish to your doorstep at zero cost.
What is yours? Nuke the ocean from orbit to keep the truck-drivers employed?
Why do they feel entitled for the same amount of money regardless?
What makes them think they'll get the same money even if there would not be a single pirate? People experience less new music, people need even less mainstream music, other entertainment ate the pie. Games, TV shows, they all steal from the same pool.
But if both are equally convenient, then the zero cost (piracy) will probably win.
So the big media also have to make piracy inconvenient.
Changing their methods to be more convenient also take huge amounts of money and time. One example: worldwide, simultaneous distribution of a movie, probably needs tons of contracts with resellers, local networks, etc renegotiated. Plus changes in accounting, etc -- whereas fighting piracy just takes some lobbying money, a few crappy DRM add-ons, and lame FBI warning videos...
I din't dispute that music purchases can be made EASY. Or that current piracy methods are or can be hard.
What I said is --and it's mere logic, it cannot be disproven--, that piracy will always have the option to be ONE STEP EASIER, i.e omit the paying step.
People say that you don't have to fight piracy, just make buying easier. And I say that if you don't fight piracy and just let it be, then at best you get, say:
a) a piracy service b) a commercial service
Since we "don't fight piracy", nothing prevents the piracy service to offer whatever the commercial service does, from streaming to high quality lose-less files, to a great UI, to being totally free and even without ads.
But the commercial service must always have the buying step (enter credit card details etc), plus all the legal and logistical necessities.
And this guys are probably going to become the center of DDOS attacks and legal conflicts, making their business model even less profitable.
Searching for [“Vysotsky" Thanks to God, I’m alive] returns some more hits about the film, including some Youtube copy-vios.
Searching for ["Vysotsky" amazon] returns a bunch of out-of-stock items.
Sony - I want to pay for this. I want to give you my money. I want to buy this film. I want to buy many films, especially if they're not mindless blockbusters. You need to learn how to make search engines work and you need to make the official site have some kind of link to sales.
> I want to buy this film.
No, you don't. It is of a very little interest to anyone outside of a Russian demographic circle.
You can say that no-one is interested in Japanese horror or Hong Kong crime or etc etc.
Assuming $50k, that would put it at a cost of approx $1.10 per 'stopped' transfer. With the caveat that they've no idea if the 'stopped' transfers just resumed later on. That seems like wasted money.
Now, it'd be interesting to see what they could do to get nearly fifty thousand extra sales at a similar or proportionate expense.
In other words, where is the "piracy killer" service that is so awesome, I give someone my money and stop pirating? Hulu? Load of crap. Netflix? It's okay, I guess. Steam? Ok, so there's one.
of course they can't! Piracy has one major value to people that engage in piracy: it allows people to acquire content without abiding by the acquisition policy set out by the content distributors. It's "competition" in the same way that it's "competition" when 1 athlete in an Olympic running event is taking steroids and has jet boots on. You can't treat piracy as fair competition.
Most people don't pirate out of a "It's too difficult for me to buy this song via itunes", they pirate because they don't want to spend money. Content distributors can't compete with that, even with services like Netflix and Hulu people still pirate because they don't like adverts. If they are unwilling to pay and unwilling to view adverts what other options are there besides just giving away content for free? People that pirate (in general) want content without compromising on the way they want it, while piracy exists these people will continue to pirate.
But 'fairness' is just a diversion: these copyright trade monopolies are supposed to prevent competition (of distribution), that is their point. That is how they increase one kind of revenue and so supposedly increase production.
When non rights-holders are copying/distributing it is competition de facto -- according only to the basic rules of physics. And it can therefore be an important signal: because what is basically physically possible is what the economy should really be aiming for. If people can distribute informational goods themselves better than the authorised channels, those channels are clearly underachieving according to the real baseline measure.
I can't force you to give me things.
But neither can you stop me from sharing them.
Die Gedanken sind frei.
It's 'fair' for you to have control over your content, as much as it's 'fair' for me to have control over how I can share, remix and improve and the content I bought.
When your right conflicts with my right, then I don't it's fair for you to make it illegal for me to improve and share the content created by your grandparent 90 years ago.
Short version, the world is not as simply black or white as you'd like to believe.
Therefore, ad-supported streaming services exist.
The only reason why ad-supported streaming services aren't the king is because they can't stream every content. That lands us back on availability problem. Copyright holders can not figure it out.
Complaining that customers are demanding is just sour grapes. Customers are always demanding; welcome to capitalism. You either provide what the market wants, or somebody else does.
That's the entire damn problem with piracy. Nobody else is providing them with "what the market wants", someone else is TAKING another businesses product and then distributing it themselves.
I mean sure, if people wanted to watch the latest episode of Game of Thrones but couldn't because it wasn't available to them (or they were unhappy with the terms) and someone else then said "I have a series like Game of Thrones and it's free!" THAT would be "somebody else" providing what the market want, but it isn't.
comparing physical and digital products is never 100% accurate, so forgive me for this, but if a Ferrari dealership charges $100,000 for a car and someone steals one and offers it for free, that isn't "someone else providing what the market wants", it isn't capitalism... it's someone stealing.
Here's what I'm saying: If HBO is offering Game of Thrones on HBO.com to anyone willing to pay $10 (or whatever) for it, and The Pirate Bay is offering it for $0, probably some people are still going to go to The Pirate Bay and get it for $0 instead of paying $10 for it. And that sucks; it would be nice if we could wave a magic wand and make it stop without impacting millions of innocent people, but we can't.
However, if you go to HBO.com and there is no reasonable way for you to insert cash and watch video, far more people are going to end up at The Pirate Bay than would if the show was available on the official website. And that is something we can easily do something about. So isn't it better to adopt the solutions that actually reduce the problem than to sit around complaining how unfair it is while unnecessarily losing a bunch of would-be customers?
Therefore, we are not going to buy your argument.
What if you want some product from USA, and you live on one of countries USA chooses to BULLY for no apparent reason (think Cuba), and you buy the product somewhere and smuggle it home? Is it morally wrong? I will say it isn't.
Therefore, we are not going to buy your argument.
The law is not a moral authority, and attempting to presenting it as such is one of the most disingenuous fallacies in existence.
Something is never wrong because it's against the law. Ideally, something is against the law because it is wrong, but that's not always the case.
When I buy a physical good, such as a Ferrari, there's nobody who can tell me what the fuck I can do with it. For all the seller cares I could drive it repeatedly against the nearest wall, then set it on fire. Same goes for selling it. I do not see myself obliged to answer to any authority on what I can do with my property.
The problem is, copyright law says I have no rights and copyright holders have any rights they want to impose over me. Sorry guys, it's not a good offer.
Such ingenuity is incompatible with the entrenched industry's old-school way of thinking, though. They want it their way, how it's always been.
The consumer is moving at a much faster pace, willing to consume content in different and often more convenient ways. They use the internet, which is global, and want to consume content that is still arbitrarily restricted to national boundaries. This is a demand that has yet to be legitimately satisfied, and thus naturally, the consumer becomes demanding.
Unfortunately, the industry is determined to defend itself from a changing world, instead of embracing it. DRM, unskippable piracy warnings, local content restrictions, etc. are all manifestations of such a practice, and all of which actively punish the legitimate customer.
The internet, and everything it has enabled, is still pretty new. In some ways, this resistance to change isn't surprising, and it's easy to be a commentator on the sidelines. It'd be better to reflect on it with the benefit of hindsight.
Streaming is what people actually want half of the time. It's convenient. But the whole talk is baseless as long as streaming services can't make the same offering pirates do.
Region locking your content, pumping it with unskippable ads and legal threats, releasing it arbitrarily in certain countries... are all practices which serve to alienate the consumer. These are pervasive in the content industry, and you couldn't honestly say they're even trying to compete with piracy with such stubbornness.
If you defend a site like the pirate bay's right to enable the distribution of pirate content, then you are also defending their right to upgrade their service and make it just as good as Steam or Netflix or whatever... all things being equal, you can't compete with free.(the content industry understands this which is why they fight for measures that make piracy less convenient and constantly reminds you that piracy is "wrong".).
For instance:
> but at the end of the day content is content, and must be paid for by consumers or advertisers or you would see a _drastic_ drop in the quantity and quality of content produced.
Why do you assume providing a better service to your customers means handing out content for free? If pirates can provide a better service for free, why are you providing a worse service at all? If anything, you should be giving people their money's worth or better. This is my point: they are doing _nothing_ to drive customers away from piracy. I'm not even talking about lowering costs.
In light of this, I found it hilarious for you to say:
> (the content industry understands this which is why they fight for measures that make piracy less convenient and constantly reminds you that piracy is "wrong".).
It is interesting that in your list of content industry "responses" you forgot to mention the things they do to make legitimately purchasing/enjoying their content less convenient. On the contrary, they have done little to make piracy less convenient. We're talking about stuff that has no effect on their profit margins or business model, that they do anyway.
In that sense and context is where we state "compete", so no, it is not born out of cognitive dissonance. Replace that with desperation and you might be closer. In the end, competing with piracy as a service is only part of the battle. Alternative models for subsidizing content production will have to be embraced eventually, but I'll leave those discussions for a rainy day.
The big content industry maximizes profit, not consumer surplus. When the profit equation changes, you better believe their practices will change. Is it ethical to maximize profit? Probably not, but that doesn't make piracy OK either. The vast majority of the things they do are mildly annoying at best.
Truthfully it's not the piracy that bothers me, just the hypocrisy/cognitive dissonance that I see all the time when piracy is discussed online. You want to pirate photoshop? Go ahead, nobody cares, don't pretend that adobe has greatly wronged you so it's only fair that you use photoshop for free though.
I don't think I've ever heard it said before Gabe Newell either, and he stands to lose a lot from piracy and not much to gain pandering to entitled brats.
These studios should spend their money on competing with torrent networks rather than always trying to destroy them.
Just create a descent media streaming service that makes accessing content easier and faster and most people will probably ditch torrent. To me my time is worth a lot, when I hunt down a movie on the internet it takes my time away and by extension my money(time = money) if the media companies would help me out with this, and offer a service where I could get anything in no time, I would gladly pay them for the time they saved me.
Consider skipping.
The upside of this is that you can easily get 20-30Mbit for $20-30/mo from 3-4 competing ISPs in a relatively large city.
Sites that actually provide competitive service (like ivi.ru) pose much larger threat to piracy.
Case in point? Look at how many times they've tried to shut down Pirate Bay. They just keep re-tooling and continue on.
(A) knowingly causes the transmission of a program, information, code, or command, and as a result of such conduct, intentionally causes damage without authorization, to a protected computer;
My answer to him is the same advice I offer to you: don't try to use technology to solve a social problem. In his case, I know for certain that his daughter has a lot more free time to think of ways to circumvent the restriction, and he has less time to think of, and then implement, new firewalls.
I don't know your situation, but I would be willing to bet a compassionate plea to only torrent during off-peak hours, or to set the upstream throttle on their client would go a lot further than trying to "kill BT".
Of course, having said all of that, controlling bandwidth usage is a slightly different use case than trying to prevent certain content from entering/exiting the network. If you are having a problem with one peer using too many resources, I would think IP throttling would solve that problem (presuming the softer social strategies didn't pan out).
IP throttling isn't specific enough. I don't need to throttle an HTTP download that's going to be done in a few minutes. I just want BT to die on my network, at least when I want the resources free for other use.
/rant
They may not even think that, and this is the old Microsoft strategy of structuring a contract in such a way that they now secretly own all of your technology.
I'm all for the culture spammers getting better at busting p2p, so p2p gets better and subverting the culture spammers.
Torrents by nature work against bad data being received by hash checking each chunk of data. (You can't trust anyone on the internet). Most clients would simply block each "bad" peer after several bad chunks.
People will just tunnel a new internet through the old one based on peer trust and this is instantly no longer an issue.
So the upshot will be that visible torrents will fall, allowing the company to claim success, even while they are making it harder for the people who are paying them to have any clue about the actual situation on the ground.
If there wasn't a slew of technologies waiting in the wings as drop in replacements, this kind of approach would have some success, but there is, so it probably wont.