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Media The Internet

BitTorrent Use Up 24% Since November 239

Posted by Soulskill from the not-what-they-wanted-to-hear dept.
dingalig writes "It looks as though the MPAA's fight against The Pirate Bay and other BitTorrent sites isn't going very well. Ars Technica reports that BitTorrent traffic is up by 24% since before the holidays. 'BitTorrent traffic spiked over the December holidays. After a peaking at almost 12.5 million downloaders on the 200 most popular files, traffic dropped at the beginning of January — about the time that school started up again. But one figure that will prove alarming to the content creation industry is that the numbers are higher now than they used to be. "The baseline has been elevated," notes [BigChampagne CEO Eric] Garland. "Not only did the spike happen, but the bar was raised."'"
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BitTorrent Use Up 24% Since November More

BitTorrent Use Up 24% Since November

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  • WGA Strike? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by LostMyBeaver ( 1226054 ) on Friday April 18, 2008 @01:17AM (#23114494)
    Sounds like people started downloading more films when the TV shows started running out.

    I'm guessing this has more to do with the fact that when there's nothing on TV to watch, people are more likely to download a film.

    MPAA should sue the WGA

  • Mainstream now... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ArIck ( 203 ) on Friday April 18, 2008 @01:23AM (#23114526)
    With all the publicity TPB et al has gotten with those ridiculous actions of MPAA, BitTorrent is now a mainstream. The same thing happened with Napster and the same thing would happen with private torrent sites when MPAA starts attacking them.

    • Re:Mainstream now... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Chief Wongoller ( 1081431 ) on Friday April 18, 2008 @02:25AM (#23114780)
      Actually, bittorrent is not yet a mainstream, but it will be. An average of 8.2 million downloaders at any one time may seem a lot until you consider that there are nearly 350 million broadband subscribers worldwide (wikkepedia). So only 2.4 percent are downloading at any one time. This percentage can only grow and surely will grow considerably, not because people want stuff for free (but that is nice), but because only bittorent can truly let us watch what we want when we want. Who wants to go back to old tv, that dictates to you when you watch, when watching bittorent files is so more flexible? Not me. I'm really suprised that more people don't use it, but I know as soon as people try it, theyr'e hooked and there's no going back. The tide will be unstoppable and those folk blind to its inevitability are just a bunch of Canutes.

      • Re:Mainstream now... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ArIck ( 203 ) on Friday April 18, 2008 @02:37AM (#23114828)
        BitTorrent is as mainstream as YouTube is. With 100 million views a day at YouTube (wikipedia), it averages to less than 8.2 million at any one time making BT more popular than YouTube.

        And yes I agree with you.... BT could only go up

        • Re:Mainstream now... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Ethanol-fueled ( 1125189 ) * on Friday April 18, 2008 @03:55AM (#23115100) Homepage Journal
          Youtube is just a bunch of crap now. If their execs were smart then they would make deals with the content providers instead of bending over backwards in the face of every takedown notice. They could improve video quality and have a free section and a pay section. They could offer bulk or single-watch streaming packages or bill based on monthly bandwidth. People are willing to pay for a decent, easily accesable solution('Torrent rocks but it's usually far from convenient). People would pay a little extra to not have to have 20 different accounts with 20 different providers. Until somebody comes up with a feasible multimedia streaming or download solution, I'll be firing up the 'Torrent.

          • They could improve video quality and have a free section and a pay section

            This typically evolves into a "pay only" section, where the focus gets drawn away from the "free" zone as it's not paying off, they'll try to milk more money from the user.

            Youtube is just a bunch of crap now.

            I thought the concept behind "youtube" was that the user is the content uploader. Hence it getting as polluted. However there are gems of movies and clips on youtube (in my case, I find some documentaries and lectures well wort

          • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

            by Anonymous Coward
            convenient?

            1 click. gets you to the torrent site.
            1 search gets you the torrent you wanted 90% of the time.
            1 click starts your download.
            wait 15 minutes for an hour long show.
            1 click plays the file.

            Oh yeah thats SO hard and inconvenient. Oh wait. no. its so easy an aol user could do it.

            • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

              by Ethanol-fueled ( 1125189 ) *
              I can see why you're posting as anonymous. Obviously you've never waited a week for that one person who has that one piece you need to finally get online. Maybe it's fast for you because you like the crap that's popular at the moment, like American Idol or America's top *.

              • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

                by Hatta ( 162192 )
                Solution, use torrent sites that enforce ratios. If people have to share back, or lose access to the site, torrents become much better seeded.

                Of course, this requires you to not be a leech. Is that not convenient?

          • Bittorrent via Miro (Score:5, Informative)

            by Burz ( 138833 ) on Friday April 18, 2008 @06:51AM (#23115718) Homepage Journal
            Miro is a video feed aggregator, player, search tool, downloader with torrent support; recently out of beta and has improved a lot.

            The Miro folks [getmiro.org] are even trying to help people distribute their videos via bittorrent, esp. as a way to get full SD and HD shows published at low cost.

            It kind of competes with Youtube, but with better video quality. It even handles feeds from Youtube.
          • You're assuming the content providers even want to make a deal with Youtube. If the content providers really wanted their stuff on Youtube so that people could easily view it, they would have approached Youtube with the idea, instead of just sending out thousands of takedown notices. Instead, they insist on sticking with their dieing business model, of selling their shows to broadcast TV stations.

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Hatta ( 162192 )
            Youtube is just a bunch of crap now.

            Now?
        • I agree with you that BT can only go up, but downloading using Bit Torrent is generally a passive action while watching Youtube is comparably more active. With BT, you find the torrent you want and start it off - minutes to hours to days later it is done. Youtube, however, is generally an active action on your part. Most Youtube videos are short so if you're on their site for say half an hour, you're doing a whole lot more compared to what you're doing with Bit Torrent.

      • Re:Mainstream now... (Score:5, Funny)

        by somersault ( 912633 ) on Friday April 18, 2008 @02:41AM (#23114848) Homepage Journal
        So you're saying that this could be the year of BitTorrent on the desktop?

  • Victimless (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Repton ( 60818 ) on Friday April 18, 2008 @01:26AM (#23114548) Homepage

    "We need to highlight that [copyright infringement] is not a victimless crime and take appropriate actions."

    Anyone know any victims? Artists or creators whose works are widely pirated but who struggle to make a living?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by QuantumG ( 50515 ) *
      Lately I've been downloading Gilligan's Island.

      Only people I'm ripping off are those Time-Warner-Life scumbags who will only sell me the DVDs if I sign up to a "book of the month" style subscription..

    • Re:Victimless (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mollymoo ( 202721 ) * on Friday April 18, 2008 @02:27AM (#23114794) Journal
      You seem to be implying that depriving someone of something doesn't make them a victim as long as it doesn't leave them struggling to survive. Which is of course complete and utter bullshit.

      • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday April 18, 2008 @02:40AM (#23114842)
        Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Hal_Porter ( 817932 )
          Sharing is moral if you own something. Sharing some you don't own and who's owner doesn't want it shared because they want to charge people for using it is not moral.

          How would you feel if technology made it possible for people to share for free something you used to sell to them individually?

          • Re:Victimless (Score:5, Insightful)

            by evanbd ( 210358 ) on Friday April 18, 2008 @04:17AM (#23115174)
            Ideas are owned by society. They are what make up our culture. Sometimes we, as a society, have seen fit to let their creator exercise some limited degree of control over them. That does not mean any one person can own an idea any more than they can own a sunset.

            • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

              by Hal_Porter ( 817932 )
              That's very poetic. But what if you were someone who lived by selling your ideas?

              I'm not - I sell services to people. But I'd like to be someone who sells software. And people that make songs or software or movies do it partly because they want to make money out of it. So if you start taking their stuff and not paying them and you break the law whilst doing so, you shouldn't be too surprised if they sic their lawyers on you.

              • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

                by Hucko ( 998827 )

                I'd love to be able to make money off software too, but for the fact it just seems wrong to charge for something that is infinitely reproducible. For my service and effort, sure. But that decreases on average for every copy made. Give me the ability to transfer >$1AUD with no fees, I'll pay for every song I would then download, 8$ per movie. Few, if any, media files are worth more in the current environment. What, your going to sulk and 'not create'? I'll live.

                Its like garbage, if there are plenty of bi

            • It is what makes up our culture. Sometimes we, as a society, have seen fit to let the laborer execercise some limited degree of control over the fruits of the labor. This does not mean any one person can own their labor, any more than they can own a sunset.

              There, I fixed that for you. Sounds like a crappy way to structure a society... good thing nobody would ever be stupid enough to go for it. Oh wait...

              I write software for a living. If I stop getting paid for it, I'll stop doing it. There won't be a

              • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

                by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
                Comment removed based on user account deletion
              • So the substitution doesn't fit. And confusing labor with the product of labor is disingenuous.

                Both revenues and profits in the entertainment industry continue to increase in the face of rampant copying because it allows people to become exposed to far more material that they had forgotten about or never knew they liked. That's a huge contrast to having our culture rented out to us based on what multinational corps perceive to be trendy and market-able.

                They blew it. Right at the moment when everybody was ab

              • Re:Your labor is owned by society (Score:5, Insightful)

                by evanbd ( 210358 ) on Friday April 18, 2008 @10:07AM (#23117572)

                No, ideas and physical objects are fundamentally different. I see nothing wrong with limited term copyrights -- 20 years, maybe less. Tell me, in what way would your incentive to create software be diminished if you could only hold the copyright for 20 years? Do you have any belief that you can make money from the 20 year old version of your software? If not, why shouldn't it pass into the public domain?

                Ownership of physical objects makes sense because if I take your car, then you no longer have a car. If I copy your software... you still have your software. So there's no fundamental moral argument for the ownership of software. There is, however, a strong practical (not moral or ethical) argument for ownership of limited term copyrights, intended to promote creation of such works.

            • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

              by Anonymous Coward

              Ideas are owned by society.

              If everyone feels that way, why aren't copyright protection and patent laws abolished? The truth is that you are being presumptuous; your idea is a minority viewpoint. That doesn't mean it's an immoral point of view, but you shouldn't presume to have the authority to dictate what "we, as a society" think.

              If your theory of "nobody owns an idea" is indeed ubiquitous, why has it never been codified, while the opposing viewpoint (that inventions and creative works can be "owned", with

              • Re:Victimless (Score:4, Insightful)

                by evanbd ( 210358 ) on Friday April 18, 2008 @10:35AM (#23118118)

                It has been codified. Look at the form of the copyright and patent laws -- they don't grant ownership of the idea at all. Look at the justification in the Constitution -- the premise is that copyright and patent require explicit permission from the constitution to exist at all, since they go *against* the natural way of doing things (ie ideas owned by society). Look at the writing of the founders discussing the matter, and you see the same concept -- patents and copyrights are limited term monopolies, granted because it is useful to do so, not because of any inherent right of ownership.

                The views I espouse form the very core of our copyright and patent systems; they have merely been forgotten by the public, while a very well-funded campaign attempts to dismantle them entirely. Perhaps it has succeeded, and we as a society have changed our minds -- but if that is the case, it needs to be expressed in very forceful terms -- specifically, a constitutional amendment permitting unlimited term copyright.

            • Pretty impressive argument once you have replaced "Film" with "Idea"..

              Films are owned by society. They are what make up our culture. Sometimes we, as a society, have seen fit to let their creator exercise some limited degree of control over them. That does not mean any one person can own a film any more than they can own a sunset.

              This is where I'd usually start talking about what "ownership" means with respect to films and ideas, the incentive to create media, maybe an analogy of patenting ideas to copyrighting digital media.. But I know people just want to hear any sort of justification for their piracy, no matter how weak, so there's not much point.

            • As far as I am concerned, copyright (at least as practiced in US) is not limited. There are songs/writings/movies that have been created before I was born and will remain in the proprietary hands well after I die. And it's not some "limited" restriction - not only I am not allowed to copy them outright, I can't create based on these works (e.g. infringing on a copyrighted character), I can't even sing something like "Happy Birthday" in a public setting. So from my point of view it seems that the control is

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Hucko ( 998827 )
            If I am making a reasonable living, then *shrug*. If I catch them red-handed, i'd apply the five points of the law... but I'm not doing too badly, so I wouldn't bust me gut over it.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by evanbd ( 210358 )

          While I agree with you wholeheartedly, the claim that people are sharing with a few thousand of their closest friends on the internet rings a bit hollow.

          • I don't agree. This has been said before, but it needs to be repeated, and perhaps projected onto the surface of the moon in big red letters. The problem is that the authorities and producers are just dumb and can't accept that technology has changed. The internet is in some respects simply a giant TiVO. That's all. It's simply a public or semi public co-operative mass storage device with multiple backups.

            TV companies can either adapt or die, and there are plenty of ways they can adapt. These are people who

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by MttJocy ( 873799 ) *
          Seams to me that copyright was and is doomed to failure on the simple grounds of human nature, human culture exists exactly because humans enjoy sharing ideas, creativity influences etc that have meaning to them with others this is how influences get spread within a culture and become identifiable attributes of that culture without that aspect of human nature culture and society itself would completely fail to function properly neither can happen if influences and ideas are not shared between the members of
          • Isn't there a difference between sharing idea's, and sharing millions of lines of source code that it took thousands of man-hours to type out, test, fix, test, fix, and market? I mean, sharing ideas is fine. But you can't just pretend that the software just came into being because somebody had an idea. I have lots of ideas for good software. The actual implementation is the hard work that people should be rewarded for. Even most of the open source projects have donation bins and appreciate getting actu

        • Isn't it worse to deprive your friend of something you have, than deprive multinational companies of money they are ripping off authors and are based on twisted laws of copyrights and patents anyway?
          Let's face it, your friends probably aren't deprived of entertainment. Even if they are, there are plenty of lawful avenues to get cheap or free entertainment without resorting to piracy.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by pembo13 ( 770295 )
        I doh know. I disagree. Taxes deprive me of cash. I don't really consider myself a victim to the tax man though.. even though I am paying three taxes (/me grumbles)

      • Re:Victimless (Score:5, Insightful)

        by MikeFM ( 12491 ) on Friday April 18, 2008 @03:05AM (#23114918) Homepage Journal
        It's like victimizing royalty by taking away land they aren't using so that commoners can hunt for food. Sure then they might not have quite so much bounty going to waste but then who cares? I'm not going to spend my time, energy, and money defending them.

        Being civilized means respecting the rights of others to life and liberty - it doesn't mean giving others the right to be rich. I have no problem with people being rich but I feel no need to defend their wealth. I don't believe that being rich makes them more productive so from my point of view it's better if they have to continue struggling for their wealth by doing useful things like producing more music, movies, and other cultural resources. Sitting on their ass enjoying their wealth isn't really a boon for humanity although most of us wouldn't mind being able to do so.

        • Re:Victimless (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Marcus Green ( 34723 ) on Friday April 18, 2008 @05:54AM (#23115484) Homepage
          Why the analogy with Royalty. Why do you think that this only affects rich people. Do you think that only rich people create content? There are millions of people who only make a modest income from creative content that are affected by copyright laws and their enforcement. The emphasis on rich people smacks of resentment.

        • Being civilized means respecting the rights of others to life and liberty [, and respecting their property]

      • Re:Victimless (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Plutonite ( 999141 ) on Friday April 18, 2008 @03:20AM (#23114994)
        Or maybe he's implying, correctly, that sharing digital information for free does not deprive anyone of anything, let alone make them penniless.

      • Re:Victimless (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Yvanhoe ( 564877 ) on Friday April 18, 2008 @03:32AM (#23115024) Journal
        Well the point is more "right now this is illegal but this is sustainable for everyone so why not change the law ?"
    • I know people who used to run indie labels with
      essentially no profit but at least without
      sinking cash steadily into it, but have conceded
      that this is no longer possible these days.
      Does that count?

      Piracy being the cause is of course not provable,
      but pretty likely.
    • Not personally, but Martin Korth from NO$GBA [emubase.de] seems to be getting the raw deal from piracy. He does everything right, with a free version for casual gamers, a cheap version for non-commercial use (which I use, it's a fine piece of software), no DRM, no activation, no required CD-ROMs, only non-invasive watermarks. Yet, apparently, he suffers from large amounts of piracy, if you believe his site. He seems awfully bitter about the whole affair, and he's relying partially on donations to keep NO$GBA running.

      But
  • Well, the proof is clearly in the pudding. If school holidays didn't mark the end of anything decent on the tele I can assure you that the hoards of people wouldn't be racing off to download something better off the net than the horrid renditions of Dickens Christmas Carol being shown on the box.
  • Seems logical, people grabbing some HD content for their HDTVs, combined with a general increase in userbase due to all the adverts the MPAA/RIAA keep running about TPB and bittorrent in general.

  • Prohibitions encourage what is prohibited (Score:5, Insightful)

    by frkbros44 ( 1269342 ) on Friday April 18, 2008 @02:02AM (#23114708) Homepage
    The current authoritarian tactics are an obvious failure, and are causing substantial collateral damage to innocent victims of miss-targeted enforcement efforts. The solution isn't more of the same, but rather to accommodate human nature and evolving technology.

    The only reason why P2P file sharing is a problem is because copyrights have been extended into perpetual special privileges. Copyrights were only needed in the first place due to the limitations of physical media and the brick and mortar distribution system. Both of those are now obsolete - as are the artificial market distortions justified by their limitations.

    Just as the Internet offers a far more efficient distribution system, it also offers the ability to shorten the time require for a creator to recover fair value for his work before releasing (some) rights to the public domain. A modified dutch auction over the Internet provides the means for artists to be fully compensated at the moment they finish their creation. Once the artist has received fair value for a recorded performance, there isn't any need to attempt to control how consumers choose to use that recording. The P2P file sharing that today is called piracy, and used to justify ever more abusive intrusions into the rights of all people in order to enforce unnecessary copyright restrictions, becomes highly valuable viral promotion and distribution that benefits the artist.

    Remember that the artist has already been cut of meaningful earnings from the reproduction and sale of recordings by the typical "all rights" contract terms imposed by the legacy record labels. Only a tiny percentage of artists earn a living from royalties on their recordings. For most artists, the primary benefit of selling records is just the publicity - they still make most of their money from live performances. File sharing and "word of mouth" on the Internet are much more effective promotion than the paid advertising of the legacy labels.

  • Getting the old folks on BitTorrent (Score:3, Interesting)

    by PRlME ( 871868 ) on Friday April 18, 2008 @02:12AM (#23114740)
    My 65 year-old parents recently asked me how they could also watch all the shows & movies that I've been downloading all these years. So being the good son that I am, I set them up with uTorrent, the appropriate bookmarks, VLC, and a tutorial on how to handle everything. They were quite happy. :)

  • Not all trafic is illegal (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 18, 2008 @02:30AM (#23114802)
    Sure - P2P has increased, but more and more software vendors are distributing their software using Bittorrent.

    So saying an increase in P2P traffic is equivalent to a increase of illegal streams in not at all correct. A lot of Linux vendors also use P2P to distribute their distro's. A lot of them are about 4Gb in size, so that would be a nice increase of traffic. Also you will notice an increase of traffic within a few day's when the latest Ubuntu hit the web...

    And it's not only the Open Source vendors that are using this distribution method. More and more Closed Source software makers ar starting to use this distribution channel, simply because it lowers the cost...

    So - saying an increase of P2P traffic is the same as an increase of illegal content is absolutely not true!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by yuna49 ( 905461 )
      Did you even glance at TFA? The graph shows traffic for the 200 most popular torrents listed on major sites like TPB. Even if some Linux distribution is in that 200, which I very seriously doubt, legitimate torrents are hardly driving the growth in the traffic reported there.

      You can continue to tell yourself fantasy stories like this to make you feel better while downloading. The rest of us know that the vast bulk of BT traffic infringes copyrights right and left.

      I use BT to download anime fansubs. I kn

  • Not all torrents are piracy! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MichaelCrawford ( 610140 ) on Friday April 18, 2008 @02:35AM (#23114820) Homepage Journal
    BitTorrent is crucial for the economical distribution of large-filesize media. Many Open Source and Free Software publishers use BitTorrent to distribute their installers. Jamendo [jamendo.com], a distributor of Creative Commons-licensed music, uses both BitTorrent and eMule.

    BitTorrent is also critical to unsigned musicians such as myself who offer downloads of their music [geometricvisions.com] from their websites. P2P allows bandwidth to be contributed by one's fans, whereas direct HTTP downloads can bankrupt a struggling artist if one of their tracks becomes a sudden hit.

    And yes I know there are many music hosting sites such as MySpace. But it's better for musicians to offer downloads from their own sites rather than to use a host.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by MikeFM ( 12491 )
      You should do something with your homepage. If I came to your website looking for new music I'd probably leave before giving it a fair chance. No reason to sell yourself short. Your music is interesting. I wouldn't mind hearing more. Have you tried anything besides the piano?
      • I'm going to need some voice lessons before I do though. If I sing now I croak like a frog. But I was quite a good singer back in the day.

        I'm thinking of also taking up the Marimba. I think it would be fairly easy as the bars are arranged just like piano keys.

        What is it about my homepage that turns you off? I really appreciate your feedback.

        • Ok man, Im gunna be completely honest with you... I love this but I can send you shit I made up that sounds the same as alot of shit and singing isnt necessary but if your trying to make moeny or something I dunno but music is an awesome hobby and i can send you my own shit if you know a good way to do it (its guitar based) and maybe you can gain something from me like i did from you because thats what this internet thing is all about

          ps ignore my bad grammer
          • I'd be happy to listen to your music.

            Email it to michael@geometricvisions.com [mailto]

            I hope to earn money from live performances someday, but I'm determined that my recordings will always be free.

            For now, my aim is to build a base of fans who might buy tickets to my shows someday, and to study piano and music theory so that a few years from now, when I can pass the entrance audition, I can enroll in music school to study musical composition.

            I want to compose symphonies someday!

        • The only thing I could see worth noting is the long scroll page without much content -- just links to other pages.
          1. 1. A page should only one screen (doesn't include the browsers menus and tool bars etc....) worth of information. (There are exceptions such as a lot of text based info which should be broken up roughly every screen anyway.)
          2. 2. A menu system should be universal to all pages, like what you have on the first page.
          3. 3. Whitespace is good, except when you have too much.
          4. 4. It should be obvious
    • so im about to download your stuff... Im form chicago Ive been in a band with marimbas before so we'll see but that website was really confusing as the other replier said. This post is so I'll get back to you

  • AT&T (Score:2, Funny)

    by chuckymonkey ( 1059244 )
    We're raising the bar, your world delivered, AT&T.

  • Private bittorrent networks (Score:3, Insightful)

    by GNUPublicLicense ( 1242094 ) on Friday April 18, 2008 @02:50AM (#23114876)
    As a security and privacy feature, people shall now start to deploy full encrypted trackers on which only people they know can connect to (password or PSK). And that additionally to "public" trackers. Another thing, some transports should be able to hide randomly torrent traffic in well known protocols in order to avoid CPU efficient detection. Torrent traffic means data and control stuff from the tracker and other peers. The idea is to make tracking torrent users unreasonable and inefficient regarding net performance. Namely, torrent user tracking will cost a lot and would kill net efficiency.

  • Sorry, everyone! (Score:5, Funny)

    by rubicon7 ( 51782 ) on Friday April 18, 2008 @03:02AM (#23114910)
    I'll throttle my client back a bit.

  • Yarr, scurvy MPAA will be dancing the hempen jig. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by falsemover ( 190073 ) on Friday April 18, 2008 @03:09AM (#23114930)

    In Australia a CD / DVD be around $40 (about US$37). Since this represents about $37 o' pure greed, it's no wonder t' people be votin' with their mouse. I say, when t' sea be rough, jump on t' starboard ship.

    Arrr, ahoy landlubbers, we be PIRATES and YOU MPAA will be dancing the hempen jig.

  • And all p2p of copyrighted media is stealing, that must mean that DVD sales and box offices takings are down 24% in just four months.

    Crikey, the industry must be really hurting!

  • When talking about BitTorrent... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by the_arrow ( 171557 ) on Friday April 18, 2008 @04:11AM (#23115154) Homepage
    Things are happening in the case against The Pirate Bay. One of the police officers involved in the investigation now works for Warner Brothers in Sweden. See here [thelocal.se] for more info.

  • Most torrents ARE 'piracy' (Score:3, Informative)

    by HetMes ( 1074585 ) on Friday April 18, 2008 @04:24AM (#23115188)
    Don't try and make a point about torrents not being 'piracy' by mentioning a few users who downloaded a Linux distro last winter. Anyone knows it's a flawed argument; they're statistically irrelevant anecdotes. Remember those words, as they apply in almost any debate where a general statement is made, and some not too bright person tries to refute it.

    • Re:Most torrents ARE 'piracy' (Score:5, Insightful)

      by JasterBobaMereel ( 1102861 ) on Friday April 18, 2008 @05:05AM (#23115308)
      From the list of torrents downloaded please subtract

      Linux Distributions
      Other 'free' Software
      Non-Copyright Music
      Non-Copyright Movies
      Creative Commons Content

      You still have a very large number of downloads ...but then how many of these people would have bought the content they downloaded?

      The industry always complains that they have lost $x million in sales but they do not allow for the fact that the vast majority of the downloaders would never buy what they downloaded?

      • Non-Copyright Music
        Non-Copyright Movies

        Nitpick: pretty much everything is copyrighted by default. I think you meant "freely distributable".

    • we will make points about legitimate torrents. For a lot of open source developers, torrent is a viable and important distribution channel.

      for people like you (bitter and cold), it will always be seen as the inverse mass of its parts.

  • Mandriva Spring Edition must be popular (Score:5, Funny)

    by flyingfsck ( 986395 ) on Friday April 18, 2008 @04:32AM (#23115214)
    Well, obviously lots of people must be downloading the latest Mandriva Linux...
  • Negative publishing is publishing. Many more people are now aware of the existence of bittorrent and, even worse, are aware how the entertainment industry deals with piracy. The consequences are simple: more and more people distrust the entertainment industry and start using p2p networks (among which bittorrent).

    How does the entertainment industry respond? Not by removing or reducing the reason of illegal downloads. Not by gaining trust with the people. No, imagine that sales might actually go up because th
  • "After a peaking at almost 12.5 million downloaders on the 200 most popular files, traffic dropped at the beginning of January"

    Well, probably the main reason for this is one of those 200 most popular files (well, several 'cause lots of people seeded different copies): The new Christmas episode of Doctor Who!

    Lots of us Yanks would rather not wait 6-8 months to get their Who fix when the sci-fi channel finally gets around to it.
  • Now that we have started acting like children we should be treated like children. I'll expect George Clooney to come by my house, give me a cookie and prop up my self esteem.

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