BitTorrent Legit Service Launches

The launch of the BitTorrent Entertainment Network came out today; there's the AP write-up, which is decent enough but the interview with Bram about it is more interesting. Tangentially, the the education of lawmakers on video DRM is an interesting countweight to all this.

New BT network is proprietary, apparently

Disclaimer: I'm pimping my own story [pcmag.com] on PC Magazine.

I'd be interested to hear what people think of the new BitTorrent DNA 2.0, which apparently uses QOS to dial itself down in the presence of VOIP, etc. But it also apparently won't be open-sourced, and will be proprietary to the Mainline client.

And I'm not a big fan of all the snarky comments, myself.

There wasn't legitimate bittorrent before?

A lot of linux distros distribute ISOs via bit torrent. I'm not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure that's legal under the GPL. As for non-GPL stuff, what about legaltorrents.com? Legal uses of bit-torrent aren't new.

Re:There wasn't legitimate bittorrent before?

"Copyrights are not a legitimate property right."

That's funny. There's this 200+ year old document that people like you accuse President Bush of trashing yet you seem toconveniently forget that intellectual property rights were included even before amendments were proposed. There are even older documents in Europe which grant intellectual property rights as well. Perhaps you should familiarize yourself with these before making such a bold claim that is simply not true. You may not like them but it doesn't make them illegitimate. I don't like that I can't punch people like you in the face, perhaps I can ignore that law and claim it's an illegitimate restraint of human nature and primal urges to beat the crap out of the weaker of the species.

Re:There wasn't legitimate bittorrent before?

There's this 200+ year old document that people like you accuse President Bush of trashing yet you seem toconveniently forget that intellectual property rights were included even before amendments were proposed.

There's a world of difference between what "intellectual property" means in that 200+ year old document and what "intellectual property" means today.

Re:There wasn't legitimate bittorrent before?

...you seem toconveniently [sic] forget that intellectual property rights were included even before amendments were proposed.

Perhaps you stop and reread the Constitution before making such a sloppy argument. The Constitution allows Congress "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries". Note that Congress isn't required to enact copyrights and patents; it merely has the ability to do so under the Constitution, with a very specific purpose: promoting "the Progress of Science and useful Arts". Copyrights and patents, in other words, are an attempt at social engineering, one which Congress can enact or withdraw at its leisure. They are also transient ("for limited times") whereas real property rights are permanent, passing from one generation to the next until the property is finally consumed or abandoned by its owner -- even presuming such ever occurs.

In contract, regular property rights are barely mentioned in the Constitution, because they were already thoroughly established in the Common Law; real property rights formed a background so obvious to the Constitution's authors that they saw no need to make them explicit; copyrights and patents had to be mentioned precisely because they were not part of that background. Congress can revoke them on a whim because they exist purely by Congressional decree. There are some (badly worded and poorly interpreted) clauses which Congress can abuse to violate traditional property rights under very specific circumstances, but as such rights do not originate with Congress it would take more than a simple decree to eliminate them entirely. (It would probably take a major Constitutional amendment, a change in the very nature of the government itself.)

WMP only???

From TFA:
BitTorrent's content is protected by Windows Media DRM and will only play back using Windows Media Player.

Is there a DRM alternative that is suitable on all platforms?

Selling content in the modern world.

Realistically, how else do you propose to sell stuff over a P2P network?

This comes up every time there's a thread about the new "legit" BitTorrent service. I don't think it's possible. If this service attracts enough attention, the DRM is going to be bypassed. I doubt it's even going to be that hard, because the nature of P2P services makes end-to-end DRM impossible. So not only do you have the inherent flaws in the DRM system you choose, but you also have an inherent incompatibility between the DRM (which makes every user's file different) and P2P distribution, which depends on many users wanting files that are bit-for-bit identical with each other.

There's no good way to do both. They can layer on the encryption but it's nothing but turd polish; the data that's coming down the wire from the other clients has to be encrypted on a non-per-user basis (perhaps a per-file basis), and then the application of the per-user DRM needs to be done in the client. Which means the layer of encryption that presumably protected it in transit needs to be removed. So if you can play spot-the-key, and grab the per-file key as the client program decrypts it in preparation for applying the per-user DRM encryption, you can get a key that lets everyone decrypt the file.

In short, you cannot sell content via a service like this. Not going to happen in the long run, I think. What you probably could do, is sell access to the network, where the value is in the subscription to the content and not in the content itself per se. (Of course the movie studios would hate that, since they want to think of each movie "copy" sold as a revenue source.)

Looking forward, the future of services is to market the services and the access, rather than the content. Digitization and the resulting ease of copying makes it nearly impossible to sell pieces of information as distinct products, like aspirin tablets, in the same way that the content producers have grown used to. The game is up, it's just not going to work any more; they're fighting against inherent problems with DRM, inherent problems with P2P distribution, and inherent problems with the nonconservative nature of information.

However, what you can sell, is the access to a large repository or service which lets you access a lot of information in an organized and reliable manner. That represents a value to the customer, above and beyond just getting ahold of the movies/books/articles/whatever themselves. If a customer just wants to watch a single movie, say Pirates of the Caribbean, they can just go download a pirated copy. They are always going to be able to go and download a pirated copy. As long as the studios and "legit" alternatives mess around with DRM, it is always going to be easier for them to go download a pirated copy. However, what the studios could sell, would be instantaneous access to all the films ever made by Hollywood in the past century. Doing that -- putting together the database, organizing everything, providing a method of distribution, etc. -- is a value that's separate from the movies themselves, and the organization and logistics aren't readily copied. That wouldn't even require DRM; it wouldn't be practical for an end-user to copy more than a tiny fraction of the available material, so there's no risk. It's like a cable company and your VCR: the amount of content you can tape is never going to compete with the amount of content that's being pushed down to you all the time (I'd need to have 600+ VCRs running continuously in order to capture what Comcast pushes to me). Without DRM, you can use P2P to distribute without layers of useless encryption. To monetize it, you sell access to the network (the network is managed by a central server that tells clients where seeds and other clients are -- you don't pay, it doesn't tell you).

People don't want to buy content, they want to buy access to streams of content; they don't want to buy data, they want access to repositories of data that contain more stuff than t

ToS

Somewhat crippling ToS from the site (you must download and watch movies/TV shows before 30 days, can only watch it for 24 hours after first playing); and the kicker: $3.99 for rentals. Imo at least the charge should be half that. There is no distibution cost other than keeping the tracker/site up, and you can only watch it for a day! If I watched even 3 movies a month, it'd cost less to just go through netflix, and I could keep them as long as I wanted.

However, it is still good to see BT somewhat more in the public eye. Maybe it'll catch on and more people will realize that they're being ripped off.

So I watched the Oscars last night...

So I watched a few parts of the Oscars last night. I always find it a bit frustrating, because I don't ever find the time to go see many new movies in the theater, so when the Oscars roll around they are always talking about tons of movies I haven't seen yet. On the other hand, it makes me write down a few titles so I can plan on looking them up later.

When I saw this announcement, I went to the site and saw they they had a few movies I wanted to see. Not such a bad selection, and even some free stuff! Hell I'd pay for it if its a reasonable price, I thought.

I clicked on a movie to see how much it would cost to download and watch. $3.99 to "Rent". Oh shit, I thought to myself. Rent. That means, DRM. I looked at the bottom of the page:

Usage Rights
You may watch this on one computer. You have 30 days from the transaction to download the file and 24 hours to watch it after you first click play. See full terms of service.

System Requirements
It looks like your system doesn't meet the Minimum System Requirements. You can still purchase this title here, but please note that you may only watch it on a Windows XP computer meeting the requirements.

Well. Funny, I don't USE windows. Hm, guess I'm not part of their target demographic. Oh well, I'll just head over to isohunt then, or walk down to the movie store and get something older. I'm a little disappointed, but .. not really surprised.

Re:So I watched the Oscars last night...

How many people want to watch movies on their computer? A relatively small number.

How many of customers of this service want to watch movies on their computer? Pretty safe bet to say 100%.

How many of them have a problem with using either an Apple based solution or a Windows-only solution?

Macs have about 4% market share overall, linux around 3%. (from some quick googling). Though I'd say its a safe bet that the kind of people who want to watch movies on their computers are more likely to be running osx/linux (also consider setups like mythTV boxes). So maybe 10% of their possible market? more?

Either way, the issue isn't quite as insignificant as you tried to make it seem.

Limited selection?

I don't see any: Stargate (SG-1 or Atlantis), House M.D., the only Star Trek is movie 7,no American Idol episodes..

So when can I buy the crap I actually want?

Re:Limited selection?

You actually want American Idol?

Consider it a service for them not having it!

I predict dissapointment

I can see it now... $4 to rent a reduced-quality movie for 24 hours, with DRM. Geeks everywhere will demand the studio masters to be downloadable without DRM for a nickel a pop (and even that may be too costly for some).

Re:I predict dissapointment

Without either confirming or denying my geekiness...Why would you predict anything less than disappointment?

Without having tried the service, I'm guessing that for the same amount of money ($4) and less time, I could drive (or bike) to the video store, rent a DVD and get home and be watching it in less time than it would take to download - if this was a new release I would have 48 hours to watch - if it was not a new release I would have a week to watch it.

Oh yeah - I could watch it on any TV to which I could hook up a $30 DVD player.

If I watched 5 movies per month, a blockbuster online subscription would be much cheaper and allow me to watch many more movies for the same effort (pointing and clicking) and would not require my to have a broadband internet access at my house (which I do have, but many don't).

I highly doubt that the quality of the downloadable movies is higher than that of a DVD, and I would expect that it is actually inferior to the quality of a DVD.

I am supposed to be happy with paying the same amount of money for a lower quality less convenient option than I already have?

I think a nickel a pop would be a bit too cheap for what they are offering, but I think that $1/download would probably still be too costly for what you get.

This service is totally useless

The files are Windows-only. What a disaster.

Quality?

Are they distributing in high definition, or at least DVD quality? Or is this yet another "advancement" where all they do is lower the quality?

OH wow movie downloads via bittorent!

Too bad we can't use them here in Canada because Rogers decided it will throttle all Bittorrent traffic (1/2 kb/s up and down if you're lucky). Of course there were workarounds but Rogers eventually shut those down. Perhaps news of a "legitimate" download service will convince them to change their mind.

Switch to DSL you say? Unfortunately Bell/Tek-savvy do not currently offer service into my area so i'm SOL. I'd love to hear any (Bitcomet port 1720/1755 workarounds) right about now.

Teach a person how to fish...

Finally the big studios are getting with the program and embracing new technology ... OHNOES!! Have you seen the usage requirements/restrictions? Once again they have shot themselves in the foot.

Instead of giving the people what they want, they are following down the same stupid path as always. At least some good will come of this...

Now the average person who wasn't really familiar with BitTorrent can learn how and what it is used for from this site and then go to another site and download it for free. Thanks for the lesson BitTorrent.com !

Can someone say www.allofmovie.com soon ?

And what about uTorrent?

Now that BitTorrent owns uTorrent, doens't it make sense for them to now restrict uTorrent from downloading copyrighted material? How long before Warner Bros, etc demand that Bit Torrent put the reins on uTorrent?

Looks like it's time to develop another Bit Torrent client.

Legit? Legit where?

I live in Spain and here it's absolutely legal to download or upload copyrighted material without paying. What is punished is to make profit of it, but if you download, let's say, the movie 300, which hasn't been released on the cinemas yet, well, that's absolutely legal (i'm not joking). And we're ready to fight back if any politician here wants to change this.

So, when you say 'legit' p2p, what do you mean? do you mean legit in the USA, UK, or where?

It's too expensive

$3 per movie and I still have to use my outbound bandwidth? I can rent movies from the local rental shop for cheaper than that and still have the option to watch them on the living room DVD player. Between 50 and 75 cents seems like a more reasonable price point, particularly if I'm helping to cover their distribution costs.

Looks lame so far

All the movies available for download are old... we're talking like already-past-VOD-old, which is about 2-3 months older than DVD release. As in these movies have all been on DVD for 4 or more months.

When are the movie execs going to realize that PPV and PTD (pay to download) are only going to really take off when you can download the movie the same day it comes out on DVD?

Downloading and/or VOD means less distributions costs for distributor, faster and cheaper movie for customers. If they decreased the number of DVDs produced, and released VOD and downloads at the same time, they would likely see higher sales and profits,and the customers would be more happy too.

Bouncing around the Mark Cuban question...

Well I guess we can welcome Bram to the ranks of "slick talking" company executives (only he's not very slick). His snipe about Cuban is an extension of an ongoing argument (well...a couple of comments) between the two on Bittorrent, its cost, and legit traffic.

Mark Cuban started things off [blogmaverick.com] and Bram Cohen responded [livejournal.com]. Bram's problem is that he mischaracterizes Cuban's argument when he makes his case. For example, right in the title of his blog entry, Bram claims Mark predicts the downfall of Bittorrent. Mark never said anything like that! And in fact Mark responds to Bram's false accusations in his own blog [livejournal.com] . How many billionaire CEOs would you see doing this? Of course people will keep accusing Mark of being a self-centered, power hungry megolomaniac. That may or may not be true. However, we can provably show what someone did or did not say in a blog and in this instance, Bram is way off.

I love Bram to death for what he's given to us for free and I don't know if he's deliberately mischaracterizing this criticism or perhaps temporarily misunderstood what Mark was getting at, but this constant spinning of his is kind of lame.

How the hell do you do DRM and bittorrent together

Any realistic DRM scheme for downloads must involve encryption with a customer-specific key. Otherwise I can just copy the file. But that kind of encryption makes it impossible to give everyone the same file. I take that back; the player could be locked-down and refuse to play things unless it receives authorization from a remote server. That seems like it'd be far easier to break, though.

What I want in digital downloads

For "purchased" items I want a perpetual-use, use-anywhere, one-use-at-a-time, as-many-copies-as-I-need, no-DRM, honor-system "like a book" license, "enforced" only by a customized copy that can be traced back to me if it gets spread around the world. I expect to pay no more than I would at a video store or mail-order for a DVD.

For rented items, I'm willing to accept time- and device-restrictions. If I rent a DVD from NetFlix, I don't expect to play it on anything but a DVD player. I expect to pay no more than I would at a video store or DVD-rental-by-mail service for a similar product for a similar rental period.

The advantages of a well-done digital rental service are that when ordering, I can

• Specify the destination device, e.g. "Windows Media Player" or some other device that may or may not exist yet
  
• Specify the rental time limit to begin watching, e.g. 30 days after payment
  
• Specify the rental time limit to finish watching, e.g. 24 hours after first playback or 30 days after payment
  
• Extend my rental without downloading the whole thing all over again
  
• Specify if I'm willing to watch commercials before, after or during the media and if those commercials will be in the form of breaks, border ads, or product-placement ads. If I want to pay more for a "no commercials" option I can do that too. Of course I can also provide marketing information in exchange for further discounts, coupons for other products, etc.
  

The Falacy of Unlimited Broadband

Contrary to popular belief, Internet broadband is not limitless or even abundant. Companies that sell you 'unlimited' connections for $100 / month are grossly overselling,, it only works if the customers use, on avg. less than %10 of that. (This is why there is such a push to destroy net Neutrality, *someone* has to subsidize the underpriced connections now that more and more people are downloading GIGS per month.) Using bit-torrent to distribute paid-for material is grossly abusing an already broken system.. If this business model actually takes off, ISP's will have no choice but to scrap the unmetered Internet entirely,, (And really, I think, that might be best overall). Who then will be foolish enough to contribute bandwidth they are actually paying for to seed torrents that someone is is getting paid for?

US only

Another US only service.

Nothing more to add.
 

place your bets...

Now taking bets to see how long it takes to crack the DRM. $3.99, I should be able to own downloaded material for that price!

Great!

Finally there's a way of getting DRMed WMV files to me that costs the content distributor less! Thank God, now they can afford enough ammo to hunt the poor with.

Their plan was...

their plan was to go for the 13-26 bracket that watches media on their computers.
I think their market research should be hanged right about now.
this is a crucial business error, one, from which they will never recover.
they have to make it better than free!
here, pay $2.99 to download a DRMed WMV file that won't work on your Linux distro or your mac.
Lesson #1. don't exclude mac or Linux.

HOW FUCKING STUPID ARE YOU MPAA?

big media is doomed to endure internet downloading and third-world piracy, until they DO get it!
I'm sorry, but a dvdrip for free is better ANY DAY than a $2.99 DRM WMV file.
MPAA, RIAA take your DRM and shove it up your ASS, you fucking content czars!

What legit?

The title is confusing. Let's stop that mixing of genres for once.
Torrent sites are just as "legit" as this new commercial site. Torrent is a technology, sites offer links to trackers, torrent applications are just applications. NONE of them are "un-legit".
People who rip and provide files using this technology are not.

This is ridiculous!

4 Dollars to download a crippled file? You have to be kidding me!

For 4 dollars I can rent 2 movies on my local non-blockbuster video rental store and keep them for a week. Or I can rip them and keep them for however long I want.

This price is ridiculous. I was expecting 1 or 2 dollars at most.

OH, and it doesn't work with anything besides Windows. Did anyone think this through before launching this site? Do they just want it to fail so they can say "We told you it wouldn't work!"

the way it works

1: put up group releases.

2: sell group releases as "rentals" making sure to not give them any credit or compensation.

3: pass on a few bucks to the companies so they don't sue your ass out of existence.

4: profit!

and yet

And yet, the videos still can't be burned to DVD-Video. No one wants a movie/episode that can't burn to dvd so they can watch it on their tvs. The only people who wouldn't care is those who have HTPCs hooked up to their televisions.

This service is completely useless for the majority of people. It will go belly up.

CinemaNow

On the subject of paying for downloading tv episodes/movies, a couple of years ago I heard about this site called http://www.cinemanow.com/ [cinemanow.com] because at one time you could pay to download the season 3 episodes of ReBoot (which the DVDs are now long out of print) but it would've cost $160 to download the 16 episodes at $10 each, and the quality is nowhere near that of the DVDs.

CinemaNow does have quite a bit of content to download, some of it free as it's subsidies by advertising just like normal tv, but most of the content is pretty obscure (read: too terrible for normal tv, but I spotted a few titles that MST3K had ripped into)

hack slash, who has all of ReBoot on pressed DVD (hence his nickname), but half of it is dubbed in Russian

Story is flamebait

The story is flamebait. Any P2P has legit and illegitimate uses, and clearly the poster has never heard of Democracy TV.