BSA Reacts to 'New' BitTorrent 326
An anonymous reader writes "It seems the Business Software Alliance isn't afraid of the new, tracker-less BitTorrent beta. While it concedes it will have to 'regroup', Tarun Sawney, BSA Asia anti-piracy director, said BitTorrent files could still be identified. 'BSA has traditionally sought the assistance of those hosting the actual pirated files. With or without the tracker sites, someone still hosts the infringing files.'"
Fry the BSA members in the Electric Chair (Score:3, Insightful)
All the CEOs who fund the BSA should be tried for treason, and if convicted, placed in the electric chair, and electrocuted to death. And do the same for their lapdog politicians who give them this power.
Re:Copyright? (Score:3, Insightful)
Trackerless BitTorrent will never work (Score:1, Insightful)
There's been plenty of legal use, I've downloaded slackware ISO's, funny spoofs of warez groups from Sony's www.welcometothescene.com website, and I download updates to my legally owned copy of X-Plane using BitTorrent.
On those downloads, I've never got less than 200-300k/sec, and I had no problem connecting to the official, legal, and stable tracker.
This whole trackerless bullshit (new BT beta as well as "new" distributed tracking in Azureus, was created for ONE purpose only - to distribute ILLEGAL content.
Legal trackers don't go down. How many times did you try to download Slackware 10.1 ISOs and the tracker was down? Never. But if you go look at your favorite torrent pirate site, how many torrents on there are hosted off some dweeb's DSL line at home? Probably 50% or more. What happens when BSA/MPAA/RIAA/*AA comes in and takes away his PC? Tracker goes down, oh noes, piracy cannot continue.
So this "solution" to a non-existent problem will simply promote piracy using BitTorrent, and sway it from the original goal of distributing large amounts of data.
But the real problem starts is when everyone (read: my ISP, their upstream provider, etc) will be told by BSA/MPAA/etc that "BitTorrent in any shape or form is illegal". They will shape down my downloads, and i'll be downloading slackware 11.0 ISOs at 5k/sec. THAT would bother me, and piss me off, espeecially because I couldn't give two shits about pirated american TV shows, and a few dweebs that do, would be ruining a good software/data distribution method for ALL of us.
Re:Fry the BSA members in the Electric Chair (Score:5, Insightful)
Democracy would fix this just fine. Except for the fact that neither communism nor corporationism don't have anything in common with democracy.
Re:Shared responsibility (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it your contention that by making only a part of a work available that you and your friends aren't infringing on a copyright? A "small but verifiably authentic" part of a file is content infringement just as much as a significant portion of a book would be.
Re:Copyright? (Score:3, Insightful)
Brad
Re:Fry the BSA members in the Electric Chair (Score:5, Insightful)
Software and other content developers trying to protect themselves from pirates is hardly Feudal serfdom.
It's more possible than ever to collect movies, music, and software (that you never paid for) than ever before. Expect corporations to overreact to that theft as much as possible and for equity imbalances to result.
If you were as vocal about protecting the rights of content producers as you are about protecting the rights of "the people", maybe there would be more balance in the situation.
Those of us in the middle are willing to pay for what we use and ask to be paid for what we create. As usual, you warring factions at the extremes make it difficult for the more reasonable people to just live their lives in peace. Nice job.
Re:Correct (Score:2, Insightful)
It makes the system more fault-tolerant.
Re:Trackerless BitTorrent will never work (Score:5, Insightful)
Blaiming Technology is fruitless. (Score:5, Insightful)
Things like Price. $100 and up is a lot of money for the average home user. Money that can be used for car payments, paying Rent/Mortgage. And paying $100 on a product you don't even know you really want or will use for only a couple of months can be a big waist. $25-$85 is the normal sweet spot for what people are willing to pay for most software.
Things like convenience. Going to the store and finding the product that you need now. Or going online and filling out all your personal information and getting placed on the stupid mailing lists and then paying for the product. Or go and get a pirated version with no questions asked.
Finally no real good reason to buy. When you buy the programs at the store you no longer get useful documentations like the good old day you just get the media and sales stuff on other programs the company makes or install directions in 1000 languages. I wish every program came with a manual the explains all the features in it, and a real paper manual not a PDF or html documentation where it is more difficult to flip to some page and find a cool feature.
Stop blaiming people who make the tools that make our lives easier the companies to think about making our lives easer,
Re:Fry the BSA members in the Electric Chair (Score:5, Insightful)
It is not possible for every activity to result in somebody getting paid. Neither is this a reasonable goal.
There were no "content producers" for most of human history, yet people made music, works of art, and so on. It will be different, neither better nor worse, if the world returns to a state where people are not paid for making digital recordings.
Too Simple (Score:5, Insightful)
So I suspect that you're wrong. By making publishing easier still, more will be able to put stuff up on their site that they couldn't before. True, most people lacking in resources will in this context be pirates, so the proportion of illegal use will go up, but that is a side-effect of enabling your average Joe to publish where they couldn't before, meaning that the quantity of legitimate use will also go up.
Re:Two dilemmas (Score:2, Insightful)
> But what if you and your 500,000 friends stand in
> line and each hold a letter and each will show it
> to people for $12/500,000 per letter. Are you
> infringing on the copyright?
Wouldn't that be you and 25 friends? I mean, I missed the part where there are 500,000 letters in the english language
Re:Trackerless BitTorrent will never work (Score:2, Insightful)
Taking Down Torrent Sites Doesn't Work (Score:3, Insightful)
The anti-piracy people should look to solve their problem a different way. Why are people pirating things? Maybe it's because of the price. People certainly don't get a thrill out of piracy in the same way that people do other illegal things. Stop making moves $10 to go to, stop making someone pay $1/song, stop over-charging and blaming increasing charges on piracy when that is a complete lie. It's time to attack the problem elsewhere - not in those sharing the files.
Re:Fry the BSA members in the Electric Chair (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Taking Down Torrent Sites Doesn't Work (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:So what? (Score:1, Insightful)
Yeah, BitTorrent anonyminity should be a non issue, except there are so many people out there who abuse it to make illegal copies of games/music/movies. When that happens, it becomes a big issue, expecially for those holding copyrights.
Re:Taking Down Torrent Sites Doesn't Work (Score:4, Insightful)
I remember when the excuse was that paying $18 for an album or $3 for a single was too much and unfair, but if only, (IF ONLY!) some benevolent content distribution god were to swoop down from the Heavens and offer music for a reasonable price like, say, $1 a song, it would grind piracy to a halt because everyone downloading illegal songs is doing it in protest of outrageous prices.
I also remember 20 years ago when we would make bootleg copies of G.I. Joe cartoons (2 20 minute episodes to a tape if I remember correctly) from the VHS rental place because official copies started at $58, roughly the price nowdays of DVD season set (and in some cases, 2 seasons and up.)
$20 too much to pay if you want to see a movie in the theatre? Then wait 6 months and the DVD will be available in Walmart for that much and on Amazon for less. VHS tapes used to start with a street date of over $100 so Blockbuster and others could have a safe rental window before the general public could purchase the movie at an affordable price but DVD (which is easier to pirate. No fancy TV capture cards or miles of coaxial to worry about, just software you can get from download.com) shattered that creating a $20 street price the day it's released.
No matter what the cost is, someone is going to come along and say that's too much, I won't pay! Someone else is going to say why would I pay that when I could get it for free. A third someone else is going to say that price is fair for what I get, I have no problem paying.
I haven't made any elaborate spreadsheets of movie prices throughout the years, but but over-all, we're talking about a 60 percent decrease in product price (lets not get into the math of accumulating season sets back then... $58 for 2 episodes times 10 or 20...) and that is without factoring in inflation. How much is a 1985 $20 worth in 2005?
So I guess with all that said I agree with you that "increasing charges" is a lie, just not in the way you seem to feel.
Re:Shared responsibility (Score:5, Insightful)
The analogy fails because you invoked the idea that I and my friends are selling parts of the book for a dollar. We are not selling anything; as a matter of fact, we pay for the bandwidth, tho that is irrelevant. What if we sat on the corner and let passers-by read our portions? Are we stealing then? The who **AA argument rests on the fallacy that just because it's electronic, the old traditions and laws should be junked. Frankly, they're using this to give themselves rights under law they always wanted, but never could get. They're using the newness of the technology to redefine copyright as ownership, which is NOT what copyright is about. Not to mention that the new copyrights are now eternal, which breaks the original deal the constitution's writers had in mind, which is: make cash for a bit, then the work goes into the public domain forever to enrich all. The deal was broken, so all bets are off. Change the copyright laws so that copyrights expire in twenty years after publication, and then we can talk. Right now, copyright=ownership for eternity. A free marketplace for ideas can't exist like this.
Re:I2P (Score:3, Insightful)
Quick solution: don't use threaded connections. Use NIO instead. I will look in to this.
Luring people to I2P now is not useful for development
I2P is an open source project. "Luring" people is essential for its growth. If I2P core team did not want outside input they should close the project until a future time. This is unlikely their belief since they are posting bounties and requesting peer review to reach version 1.
But for now, don't join it yet, and don't announce it here.
Sorry. Already joined. I even download the source and starting to fiddle. I just can't help myself. As for official posting, you can do a slashdot search where I2P has been mentioned several times in the past. Thats how I found out about it to begin with.
Re:Sharing is Sharing, Stealing is Stealing (Score:2, Insightful)
So, then government has to assume the role of preserving these people's profession, no matter what technology has done to make their busniess model obsolete? Perhaps these content DISTRIBUTION companies should investigate seriously how the Internet can be used to distribute their goods. If "Sith" was available electronically, many of us who watched it illegally in the past 24 hours would have paid. Was downloading it and watching it wrong? Yes, probably, but I have little remorse. The fact is, content creation has not ever been a lucrative business. Content must be sold, performed, or distrbibuted to make money from it. If I pick up a guitar, and strum out a tune so good that angels would weep to hear it, I have not made any money by doing so. DaVinci, paiting the Mona Lisa did not suddenly become rich as he put down his brush, the canvas had to be sold. My point is, the business you are defending is the distribution busness, the record labels, TV netowrks and syndicators, and movie distribution houses. I think that the "rampant" piracy of thier client's creations is due to thier shortsided, hidebound, outdated business model. They might be able to make even more money by making the content available to the public in a timely, convenient manner. Perhaps you should turn in your car, because it is putting the buggywhip manufaturers out of business.
Frankly, my biggest beef with movies is people. I can't stand to go to a movie house, especially a crowded one, because people behave like animals. Why I should rearrange my day to fit the showtime, buy a $8 ticket, then get gouged at the concession so that I can have something to drink, only to have to put up with someone's single-digit-aged child being disruptive and kicking my seat all trough a PG-13 or R rated feature is beyond me. And this is the experience they want to protect by not releasing the content on any other channel.
I can watch movies at home, on my wide-screen HD set in 5.1 sound and be quite stisfied with the experience.
Re:Sharing is Sharing, Stealing is Stealing (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm not defending their business wholesale, I'm defending their expectation to come to a fair market. I don't give a h00t about their business model. If they have a broken business model, a fair market is the best hope of replacing it with a better alternative. You are basically arguing that "piracy" isn't stealing... because they didn't make what they're selling? So if I walk into a Wal-Mart and take something out without paying, it's not stealing because Wal-Mart didn't make it? hahahahahahahahahah.
You know, you're right. I don't like the visceral experience of going to a Wal-Mart to shop. Therefore, I'm going to go to the shipping docks, where all the actual goods are (that Wal-Mart bought from the actual producers), and take them directly from there, without even asking the original producers what they think about that.
And the biggest problem in this analogy is that the Wal-Mart shopping experience isn't enjoyable... not me stealing goods from the shipping docks, you know, like the mob does.
Awesome.
It's really not surprising that this kind of action puts the media distribution companies on the defensive. "We're gonna steal your stuff until you give it to us for free. And you should thank us for our words of wisdom."
Awesome, Awesome, Awesome.
All of their strategic stupidity pales in comparison to an argument like this. This kind of behaviour manages to put huge, grotesque art exploitation business in the right. All of us get to watch a war over expensive protected movies instead of giving our time and attention to making better, legit alternatives. w00t.
BTW, if you could even begin to churn through all the free movies, music and texts available on the internet, your argument would have a lot more weight. But since we live in an age of amazing free media, it sounds like a fat man complaining he hasn't had enough to eat.
Re:File Parts (Score:4, Insightful)
Is "talking about" a "piece" of a book considered copyright infringement?
I was thinking a while ago that Azureus should be modified so that less than 5% of your outgoing traffic will go to the same peer. It would be tough to argue that you have given away "copies" of the song/program to anyone....
Friedmud
Re:Fry the BSA members in the Electric Chair (Score:3, Insightful)
Why is it in my interests to make theaters better? There will always one thats too cold or too hot or the fact that I must leave the movie find a manager, complain and then have the manager return and disrupt things again to address the situation.
None of this is an issue in my own house! I never said that I wasn't willing to pay for content. The issue is that the MPAA and is not willing to provide that service because they will not be able to maintain their profits. And as such the market is finding a way to provide that service. Legality and morallity have no bearing on the situation. The demand exists it will be filled by someone and as is apparent the cost of providing said service is nil.
The cost of a music has dropped to, what, $5 a month for unlimited music or less then $.99 a song on walmart.com? And its continuing down. Last I checked there is still plenty of musicians out there performing and making a living. Why is it this low, because the distributers know that if they don't charge that low people will find other ways to get what they want.
As for distribution under $1000 I'm seein news reports all over about how many copies of Star Wars that are being downloaded from the internet. I don't see anyone fronting money to distrbute it.
Do not take my work, which cost me time and money to produce, and fail to compensate me what I feel I'm owed for MY content and complain to me because it fits your desires
Why is this so difficult? No one is saying you have to work for free. Just distribute the content in the form the consumer demands. People want music over the internet instantly and as Yahoo and ITunes proves they are willing to pay for it. Its still possible to get music for free, naspster didn't disappear it just evolved. But the hassle of using the other methods is no longer worth the cost. People want Movies and TV shows instantly over the internet as well. You see dwindling profits, I see market oppertunity.
You can feel what you are owed for your content all you want, the market will still decide what worth regardless of your feelings.
Yes I can. It's my content, not yours. I can offer it for whatever I want. I may not sell much of it at a certain price, but that's my right to choose, not yours.
And don't bitch when people arn't willing to pay your price. If you are not happy with the money you earn do something else or offer you content at a lower price so you sell more and then, and here is the point you are missing, make more money by getting more willing buyers. If you are still not making enough to live on then thats just too bad! Lots of movies flop, and lots of tv shows are canceled, why are you so special?
You equate producer to distributor
Theres a reason for that that you continually miss. The current producers are not getting the level of profits they once did because a new distribution method has been created and people like the new form of distribution, the issue is the the producers do not and are unwilling to use it. The problem is not consumers. Its the producers unwillingness to use the new distribution model because they will not earn as much... guess what Too Bad!