BitTorrent Becomes Ever More Legit

lily_bt writes "BitTorrent just signed a deal with 4 entertainment distributors to add more than 1,600 titles to its video library. From 'SuperSize Me' to The Three Stooges to Bollywood films, BitTorrent wants to offer the most comprehensive service when it launches its pay service. The best part is that this content will be made available by subscription." From the article: "Once distrustful of peer-to-peer technologies, Hollywood studios appear more willing to partner with companies such as BitTorrent and video-sharing site Guba.com, which last month partnered with Warner Bros. to distribute movie titles. BitTorrent, widely used to both legally and illegally swap copies of copyright movies, has been aiming to turn its technology into a tool used for legal services."

Coupla points

[tygerstripes]

1. Finally Hollywood have worked out how to take advantage of technology (instead of the other way around). This may, I suspect, actually get some people into legally downloading copyrighted content. Maybe.

2. How much is this gonna cost? Unless it's significantly cheaper than purchasing a DVD, I doubt it'll take the world by storm - there is a certain trust in the DVD format. No mention of prices in TFA - any clues?

3...

BitTorrent is building a video store from which customers can download movies at speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second, according to the company.
1 Gigabit? That's a bit of an outrageous claim, isn't it? Obviously, BitTorrent speed increases with current download demand, but hang on: 1 Gigabit???. Who has that kind of connection speed, exactly?

Still, it really is encouraging to see major distributors at last display recognition of the fact that these tools and programs are not criminal; they can be put to both lawful and illegal use, and harnessing them is far more productive than trying to suppress them.

Re:Great, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Until the RIAA and MPAA are disbanded, I won't be trusting either industry - and I'll be doing my level best to avoid buying their products, even if that means my not having any movies or music at all.

I second you on that. I have actually and drastically reduced the number of movies seen and music heard. Nor I waste my time to download them on P2P network. Simply I prefer to spend my time and money to other activities. There are plenty of things to do in one's life to not get bored.. though there are some people who are endlessly bored and boring. Yet, independent movies and bands have still a great value.

Now all we need...

[CastrTroy]

Now all we need is to get the ISPs to stop blocking Bittorrent. That's the only thing I run that actually makes it worth getting high speed, and to get it to work, I not only have to change the port it runs on, I have to change it to a specific port that for some reason they don't check. I think that Bittorrent's biggest adversary will be ISPs who insist on blocking it, or make it a pain to configure in order to cut down on the users' "unlimited" bandwidth.

DRMed to the dirt

[vi9er]

Just checked out guba.com. In Firefox, they tell me that i have to be running IE, and have windows media 9 or higher, "Which support the Windows Media Digital Rights Management System as required by our premium content providers. We will add other DRM support as soon as it becomes available and approved by major premium content providers" CrapTastic!

I dont want subscription

[DuncanE]

Can I be honest and say I dont like the subscription model?

I can already get that quite nicely via NetFlix etc. I want to be able to pay 2 (maybe 5) bucks and download the movie NOW. I dont mind if I have watch it within a week or even within 24 hours before the DRM kicks in, but I dont want to have to pay when I dont use.

Movies on demand. Thats what we want.

Net Neutrality

[quokkapox]

This method of distributing large files which require a lot of bandwidth does an end run around the telcos who are trying to charge large sites extra money, without the need for specific "Net Neutrality" legislation.

If YouTube were able to distribute their video content (at least the most popular ones) via p2p, they wouldn't need such a large pipe if they're only seeding and running a tracker-like service. The p2p user base will share amongst themselves (which is more efficient anyway for the ISPs). If someone else on my own ISP's network has the video already, I don't need to stream it directly from YouTube or Google, when I can get most of it from my neighbor.

De minimis is dead

[tepples]

Yet, independent movies and bands have still a great value.

How can one make an independent documentary film if it costs $10,000 to license four seconds of copyrighted TV show that happened to be showing on the television set in one of the documentary subject's room? How can an independent band publish an album if it runs the risk of accidentally tripping over someone's copyrighted melody [slashdot.org]?

Re:why?

[Lumpy]

No actually, I cant stand the low quality rips on bittorrent, so I simply buy the DVD and then violate the DRM and copyright laws with extreme violence on my pc to turn it into a mp4 files. It's quite a bloodbath when I do that at home. Sometimes if I cant ge to that netflix I rented I'll rip that too for my archos and watch it later on the road. (OMG! THE HORROR! I am the cause of the downfall of freedom!)

AS for TV shows, yes I still get some off bittorrent, the networks can go pound sand as far as I am concerned as it is no different than borrowing a friends Tape of the show. their claim that it bites into DVD sales of that show is completely bogus. Nobody wants to archive the copy with the network channel ID in the corner, the commercial breaks, and the damn blipvert popup ad's at the bottom.

Re:How is bittorrent a business model?

[spyrochaete]

One of my biggest turnoffs from World of Warcraft [blogspot.com] is the patching system. You have to run an external client to download mandatory patches. A quick glance reveals that this is a bittorrent client that cannot be configured.

I tried WoW twice - once during beta and once again recently. In the beta the BT client maxed my bandwidth 100% - maximum uprate and downrate - for a 4.5GB file. The heavy load made my made my modem reset every 20 or 30 seconds and it took me days of dedicated transferring to download the game. When I tried it again a couple of weeks ago they'd eased up somewhat, allowing a maximum downrate accompanied by 20KB/s uprate. When I installed the client it detected that I had an old version and it downloaded the old patches very quickly. However, when a new patch came out (about 160MB) it took over 5 hours to download! Considering I get over 600KB/s down from my ISP it should only have taken a couple of minutes! And, of course, I couldn't play the game until I patched.

I find this really despicable. Not only do you have to pay $15/m for the game, you also have to pay with your own bandwidth. By comparison, Guild Wars, a game with no monthly fees, offers direct downloads (HTTP or FTP I guess) that always come in at top speed. Even Anarchy Online, a free MMORPG with optional for-pay expansions, offers free HTTP downloads for patches.

I seem to recall the Real online music store, if it still exists, doing something similar. Music purchasers would automatically upload songs to other purchasers while the client was running. Customers with faster uprates uploaded more, but saw no share of Real's cost savings.

Few ISPs offer unlimited bandwidth these days. In the case of the WoW beta I sacrificed an additional 2.5GB (over 50%) bandwidth to download the installer. This is really unprofessional in theory, but wouldn't be so bad in practise if it at least worked as reliably as HTTP download.

Roadblock

[spykemail]

After reading everyone's comments I've come to the opinion that they're going to hit a big roadblock with this. The people most interested in this type of distribution model are the exact same people least interested in putting up with restrictive digital rights management, especially of the Microsoft variety.

It's almost like these companies don't do any market research at all :(. I, for example, would love to lay the DVD (and all physical distribution formats) to rest in favor of files downloaded over the internet (hint: I already have). It's cooler, it SHOULD be cheaper, files don't get scratched every time I touch them, and I plan to have a computer screen bigger than my TV screen anyway. But there's simply _NO_ way I'm going to pay money for something that requires a Microsoft product to work. I'd rather climb up a skyscraper, wrap one end of a chain of Windows 98 CDs around my neck, tie the other end to a lightning rod, and jump off. I'm also not going to put up with a proprietary DRM of any kind.

If someone can develop and popularize an open source standard DRM format that has REASONABLE (or at least adjustable - so that I can choose to buy things with less restrictions) restrictions call me.

Helps Net Neutrality

[tlabetti]

I think bittorent's deals can eventually help Net Neutrality. If big content providers are successful using bittorent to distribute their properties then they will start to cry foul when bittorent traffic is relegated to the slow speed tier. The content providers such as Warner have properties that the ISPs want (TV shows/on demand movies etc...) and thus they can push the ISPs to keep bittorent traffic untouched.

The more the big content providers find ways of distributing content directly to the consumer the more interested they will become in telling ISPs to stay out of the gatekeeper business.

Its the right formula for Hollywood ..

[torpor]

a) .. its the cheapest way for Hollywood to distribute its films: use their end-customers' bandwidth.
b) .. the tracking available, and 'general concensus' style marketing details that can be gleaned from a torrent, are Super Sexy to Hollywood market scientists
c) .. tie it in with 'the new Media' ideal that is finally out of the "passé" years in the Hollywood cognescenti, and it means the dream can now be delivered: we own you

Consider this. Whatever is running on your computer, is 'owning your computer'. Hollywood understands now that the torrent protocol means that, by granting access to sexy media files, media producers can be using your resources in payment (i.e. 'occupying the attention of you/your computer'). Hollywood always has been, and always will be, interested primarily in Time Spent At Attention, because this is one step closer to Give Us Money.

What, you didn't think torrent was Spyware?

Re:Subscription

[Anonymous Coward]

The way this is done is actually quite simple: The data is encrypted with one key. Now you have one big piece of data which can be freely distributed and one small piece of data which you need to control tightly. Access to the key is equivalent to access to the movie. From the perspective of the DRM architect, the key has become a proxy for the movie file. In principle you can now use any DRM scheme to control access to the key. I know it looks horribly unsafe, because they can't take the file from you when your subscription ends and if you have the key once, how would they take that from you? Examine the situation closely. It is exactly how every other DRM scheme works too. The trick is to never surrender the key to an untrusted system. The security of DRM schemes stands or falls with key handling. That's why there's going to be a "trusted platform module" in your next PC.

Re:OMG

[nutshell42]

They are pulling a Napster! This time without being sued first...

Could be because the movie industry is in almost every respect a bit less evil and a bit less stupid than the music industry. Perhaps because they have the music industry as a bad example on how not to do it.