Via Tom Lee, I learn that Pirate Bay is responsible for half of all BitTorrent traffic. I suspect that this isn't helpful in convincing anyone that BitTorrent technology has substantial non-infringing uses (though it certainly does), or -- perhaps more importantly -- that the entire "piracy" conceptualization of copyright infringement is badly flawed.
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IP Fact of the Day
05 Jul 2007 05:35 pm
Comments (25)
Rather than going after terrorists, I think a substantial portion of American special ops forces should go after pirates.
If we launch a hellfire missile at one out of every thousand pirating IP addresses worldwide, we'll substantially deter casual piracy.
Following the lead of Thomas Jefferson in the First Barbary War, we can attack Swedish cities if necessary. The Swedes pretty mch have it coming, as we'll all aware.
Besides bolstering the content industries, this will also have the side benefit of focusing the neocons' interest away from China.
2 things about the articles(s):
1. Shutting down pirate bay is not a big deal. If one wants to, one could start up a google group and upload the torrents to there and it would still be just as good.
2. Shutting down trackers is more important, but it's not nearly as important as it would've been several years ago. All of the standard bittorrent clients right now can work without a tracker. So even if they shut down all of the trackers, bittorent could still be run.
"So even if they shut down all of the trackers, bittorent could still be run."
All the more reason to launch hellfire missiles at the IP addresses of random peers.
And even if the trackers are shut down, we can still attack Swedish cities to send a message.
They don't make pirates like they used to.
"one could start up a google group and upload the torrents to there and it would still be just as good."
Excepting, of course, that Google isn't based out of Sweden, and thus would shut down the offending group if it became popular.
We'll only have to bomb Stockholm and Malmo. We won't have to bomb Mountain View.
It's time for some serious payback on the Vikings.
Also, I want to register my disgust at Matthew for ignoring the Swedish menace.
He has time for endless posts on the NBA, but not time for a single post advocating airstrikes against Linköping, Västerås, Örebro, or Jönköping.
Don't you think the Pirate Bay will be more difficult to shut down once the Swedes get nuclear weapons?
Not a downloader (I make enough money to not have to, as well I have VERY selective tastes), but thou who gets rich by selling massive amounts of cultural goods, marketing everything as must have, shouldn't be shocked when people actually try to have everything.
However, my workplace has a few downloaders. And from talking to them, I could tell media companies how to put a dent in downloading and make sure they get paid. (But in a lot of cases, they might be better with the status quo. And if that's the case, so be it.)
Movies:DVD/Theater simultaneous release. The movie downloaders hate the theater experience, but want to see the movies because they are heavily advertised. Thusly, downloading is their only option.
TV:Downloading is a Tivo. Simple as that. I work with people who work nights. If they were watching a serialized show, but their shift is changed (very common this day and age), then the option is either to record/download or not watch it. So people download it if they don't have Tivo.
The networks should get together and come up with an easy to use, high quality BT based application that would allow people to schedule downloading of TV content with ads automatically. Simple as that. Something that got every episode of The Office to my computer so I could watch when I got home, without having to wait for slow streaming on crappy internet connections.
Music:P2P is a replacement for radio. It's self-programmed ad-free radio. Full stop. In order to facilitate this, to make it legal...the subscription services are a very good idea but came too late, by being first downright impossible, then harder to use when filling your MP3 player.
So there's the problem. Piracy happens because legal routes are simply unavailable, slower, and less convienent to use. So make them available, faster and ultra-easy to use.
Issue solved.
"Piracy happens because legal routes are simply unavailable, slower, and less convienent to use."
Actually, piracy happens because it's a free way to get pricey entertainment goods with little chance of paying any penalty, as you explain quite ably in your opening sentence.
I'm sure the movie studios will find it a revelation that you think eliminating the theatrical window is in their best interests. Personally, I think it's in your best interests if you give me half of your bank account. If you do so, I promise not to rob your house. See? It's win-win.
You're both right. It's true that some people will always steal what they want. As the success of iTunes has demonstrated, however, if you design a system that has the kind of convenience and ease of use of file sharing, coupled with a reasonable price point, many people will choose the legal option (and as Petey said, not because of any particular threat of penalty).
Of course, in the scheme of things, iTunes is not particularly successful.
As a college student, I have many thousands of dollars worth of pirated music/movies/games on my computer. About 20% of this I would have paid for legally if internet piracy did not exist. The majority of the stuff, however, I would never have dreamed of shelling out money for.
I'm sure there are some really smart people out there with revolutionary copyright schemes that will fix everything, but personally I'm clueless as to how to go about shutting down the internet black market in a cost efficient manner.
personally I'm clueless as to how to go about shutting down the internet black market in a cost efficient manner.
You can't shut it down, period. There are too many people who are too smart with too much time on their hands who really, really want digital media for free. What is important to note is that the public notion of illegal file sharing-- Napster-style P2P engines and now BitTorrent-- are only the most well-known vehicles for file sharing. People truly involved in the scene tend to have a dim view of those kinds of techs. Even if you could eradicate those methods, there would still be a vast network of file sharing going on in mirc, newsgroups and other "private" vehicles. (Of course, getting rid of the simplest, most beginner-friendly methods would be a huge success for IP people.)
The story I like the best is a technology first used on an Eminem CD (and presumably costing a lot of money and work to produce), designed to prevent ripping the CD. It was a matter of hours before people posted a workaround online, where you simply drew on the outside edge of the CD with a magic marker.
"Of course, in the scheme of things, iTunes is not particularly successful."
Yup. I don't think iTunes has made much of a dent in music piracy.
"personally I'm clueless as to how to go about shutting down the internet black market in a cost efficient manner."
As with many such things, the key is punishing enough random offenders as to cause a deterrent to others.
Folks are somewhat reluctant to speed or cheat on their taxes for fear of the penalty should they get unlucky enough to get caught.
If you fileshare, your IP address is available. Finding your real address and dispatching a JDAM your way is trivial. Hitting one out of a thousand pirates with smart bombs will put the fear of god in everyone else.
Plus, bombing Sweden would be kinda fun. Someone needs to pay for lutefisk.
"People truly involved in the scene tend to have a dim view of those kinds of techs. Even if you could eradicate those methods, there would still be a vast network of file sharing going on in mirc, newsgroups and other "private" vehicles. (Of course, getting rid of the simplest, most beginner-friendly methods would be a huge success for IP people.)"
As with all things of this kind, the trick is not achieving 100% compliance.
If a bunch of folks are sharing John Zorn tracks on darknets run from their Linux boxes, no one cares. It's slowing casual piracy that is the trick.
If you fileshare, your IP address is available.
IP blocking, it's true, is of limited use or effectiveness. IP filtering, on the other hand-- where a regularly updated list of confirmed or suspected "bad" IPs (read: controlled by the man) are prevented from uploading or downloading to your client-- is significantly more successful. Combined with protocol obfuscation (so file sharing is indistinguishable from regular web traffic to your ISP) and a few other assorted security measures can significantly reduce the risk of getting caught. Or, even better, using "private" (individual peer to individual peer) transfers like mirc. These things all take a little bit of self-education and smarts, though, and most people are stupid.
Of course, as with sex, the only truly safe thing is abstinence, which is the path I personally take (I don't want to get sued and I get all morally queasy).
If a bunch of folks are sharing John Zorn tracks on darknets run from their Linux boxes, no one cares. It's slowing casual piracy that is the trick.
Exactly so.
Hitting one out of a thousand pirates with smart bombs will put the fear of god in everyone else.
Ok, THAT would work :D.
(Though conceivably some sort of mass rebellion against the government would then occur. I dunno, might be a downside.)
"Yup. I don't think iTunes has made much of a dent in music piracy."
That's not the point is it? It's whether iTunes has provided the music companies with revenue to make up (some of) what they lose from falling CD sales. It's like the student who has thousands of dollars of stuff on his computer, 20% of which he would have paid for and 80% of which is crap. He's not causing the labels a loss of 80% of thousands of dollars. He's causing them, at most, a loss of 20% of thousands of dollars, since that's what he might have paid them otherwise. But of course he probably wouldn't have paid them even that much.
This is why slowing casual piracy might be worthwhile but isn't or shouldn't be the ultimate goal of the RIAA. It should be to make it more attractive for people to give media companies their money in exchange for content than to pirate it. Unfortunately, the RIAA only seems to be interesting in making piracy more difficult, not in making law-abidingness easy.
BTW, I don't fileshare, because I'm old, and too lazy to figure it out (even though I am a computer programmer).
"BTW, I don't fileshare, because I'm old, and too lazy"
Given what you've written here, I suspect it's because you're too stupid.
"It's like the student who has thousands of dollars of stuff on his computer, 20% of which he would have paid for and 80% of which is crap. He's not causing the labels a loss of 80% of thousands of dollars. He's causing them, at most, a loss of 20% of thousands of dollars, since that's what he might have paid them otherwise. But of course he probably wouldn't have paid them even that much."
But, of course, the crucial fact is that he would have paid them more in the absence of piracy, which is why the music companies have lower revenue than they did a decade ago.
"This is why slowing casual piracy might be worthwhile but isn't or shouldn't be the ultimate goal of the RIAA. It should be to make it more attractive for people to give media companies their money in exchange for content than to pirate it."
iTunes is reasonably attractive, but free is far more attractive.
Why pay to build up a collection when you can just harvest your friends' collection?
"Unfortunately, the RIAA only seems to be interesting in making piracy more difficult, not in making law-abidingness easy."
Actually, the RIAA has blown it precisely by not making piracy more difficult.
When the history of the music industry is written, the great mistake will be their not having made the leap to abandon using a non-protected format once the threat of piracy was clear in the late 90's.
They would have faced a short-term hit if they'd stopped releasing CD's to force a new format, but they'd have saved their business.
"Unfortunately, the RIAA only seems to be interesting in making piracy more difficult, not in making law-abidingness easy."
And just to add, between Amazon and iTunes, it's never been easier to buy your music. It's stupendously easy to be law-abiding, if you're willing to pay for the product.
Petey:Amazon/iTunes are replacements for purchasing music, not for sampling it. P2P is a replacement for radio.
The success of Napster was less about getting music for free...we all could do that via the radio...and it was more about controlling the radio. P2P by and large competition for radio. I'm not sure if you ever used Napster, but here's the workflow that lead to its popularity:
You search for a band you like, pick someone who has the songs you like then you look at their collection. You go through their list, picking out songs at random to try them. You're looking for new stuff. Like something? Download others by that band. If you really like them people would go out to their local used CD shop and pick up a used copy of their CDs.
It was that community radio aspect that made Napster...and the RIAA offered no alternative to that. They still don't. Currently, outside of P2P, you have both Last.fm and Pandora that offer similar services in different ways.
Changing the format for new releases wouldn't have done it, because the damage to the industry is that there is decades of music out there competing with the latest and greatest. How can you put the genie back in the bottle? You really can't.
The fact that they try to put the genie back in the bottle by strangling the public domain, quite frankly, is enough for me to cry no tears for them.
BTW, on the movie thing, you're right. Simultaneous release would cut the legs out of the sweet double dip they currently get to do. So they're marketing something, but not releasing it in a format that people obviously want. That's their decision (and not even a bad one, to be honest).
Shutting down trackers is more important, but it's not nearly as important as it would've been several years ago. All of the standard bittorrent clients right now can work without a tracker. So even if they shut down all of the trackers, bittorent could still be run.
I'm way late to this thread, but I can say if they shut down the trackers, BitTorrent would run FAR less efficiently, which might make piracy less attractive.
I'm not sure why there hasn't been a larger push to crack down on the Pirate Bay and other indexing sites. Such sites are basically advertising stolen goods. What exactly is the legal reasoning that allows them to continue doing so?
I don't think anyone really thinks of IP Infringers as actual swashbuckling pirates, which is why the 'piracy' term isn't that annoying. Calling it "theft" on the other hand is wrong and thus offensive.
Piracy would exist even if it were more difficult than legally purchasing media.
I went to college a little while back, before this revolution in file sharing software. Heck, I remember when mIRC was the piracy tool of choice. Getting something off of mIRC was VASTLY more difficult than just buying it.
Except that mIRC was free.
Its not about convenience, sampling, anything. Its about free. That's why people pirate stuff. Because its free. Pretending its all ideological, or that media companies have brought it on themselves, is a bunch of crap. People pirate stuff because they don't feel like paying for it.
You might convince me that the occasional emailed mp3 is about innocently sharing samples of favorite music with your friends.
But give me a break, I know how things work. Nobody buys into the idea that its about anything other than free except for 1) people who don't understand file sharing, and 2) people who are willfully dissembling.
Petey,
I think you are seriously wrong about the chance the music industry had at stopping piracy. The fundamental problem with music is that it is a low data format. No matter what kind of medium you use to distribute it, there will be a vulnerability somewhere in the data pathway where very simple technology can be used to extract the unprotected data. It might have taken longer to build in popularity so maybe that would have helped, but under your hit the industry would have taken an immediate hit in revenue anyhow.
The interesting question to ask in my opinion is not what will happen to the recording industry. Who cares about those schmucks anyhow? The real concern is whether this will impact the quality of musical production in the long run. If you're a big fan of uber-popular boy bands I suppose it probably will. Otherwise, I'm not so sure.
Comments closed July 19, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
sharethefiles, man, sharethefiles.
ps Italics are in with the kids.
Posted by Freddie | July 5, 2007 5:56 PM