LegalTorrents Offers CC Works Via BitTorrent 129
An anonymous reader writes "A site called LegalTorrents has just launched that hosts trackers and seeds for digital media licensed under the Creative Commons license. ('We distribute content with the full permission of the rights holders and use the peer-2-peer file-sharing technology called Bittorrent.') The site even provides a way to donate money to artists you like. (LegalTorrents takes 15% off the top unless you are a member, which costs $50 one-time during the beta period.)" It's always good to see "legitimate" content distributed in ways that make it hard to demonize the distribution system itself — something Lawrence Lessig in particular has been doing for years, and his book "Free Culture" is one of the audiobooks available through LegalTorrents. Note that LegalTorrents has been around for a while now, rather than "just launched," but the current beta period won't last forever.
First post (Score:5, Funny)
This post is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license version 3.0.
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We don't care. We sue anyone whether we have a case or not. We even sue people who have never used a computer before in their lives. We get new technologies declared illegal in and of themselves. We try to get judges to let us browbeat and interrogate 10-year old girls. You will be sued one way or the other.
- RIAA
Re:First post (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:First post (Score:4, Interesting)
How's this OffTopic? This is very relevant to the topic considering that this has happened once before [slashdot.org].
I'd mod you back up if I had the points.
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Now wait a minute. LegalTorrents has been around for years. I first read about it in Wired Magazine when they included a CD filled with free, CC-licensed music as an insert in each copy. The CD had a link to the LegalTorrents site. It was also discussed extensively in the accompanying article. That was in the November 2004 issue, almost four years ago. See http://creativecommons.org/wired [creativecommons.org]
So wait... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:So wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
If the site becomes popular enough , it gives exposure to the artists.
There, that was not so hard to figure out.
Re:So wait... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:So wait... (Score:4, Insightful)
Unknown artists are not uploaded by anyone anywhere except by the artist , they are the only one with the file. Where will they upload it, somewhere they might get money from it or TPB? Sure if they get popular the file will end up everywhere but poeple looking for new stuff and people who love real music will go there instead sifting trough all the RIAA crap on the other torrent sites.
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Well, I am not, either-or.
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RSS PLZ K THX (Score:2)
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I refuse to visit torrent sites that mainly deal in illegal goods.
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If it becomes popular enough?
Currently:
LegalTorrents - about 70 files
ThePirateBay - about 1.2 million files
How popular do you think they will become while most people continue straight down the street to the all-you-can-eat-for-free next door?
Re:So wait... (Score:4, Insightful)
Currently:
LegalTorrents - about 70 files
ThePirateBay - about 1.2 million files
Ok.
If you looking for CC music which of these 2 sites will make it easier for you?
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Is that really the point when you talk about popularity? For the site to become large enough for the exposure they give to artists being worth the 15% rake you have to assume that the "market" for CC music is large enough to make that happen. With about 10 music files they are a long way from reaching that goal.
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With about 10 music files they are a long way from reaching that goal.
You have to start somewhere.
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If I want something licensed under CC, I'm going to go where the bigger community is unless they have something in place to promote better seeding (and I see nothing like that for regular users here).
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Really? TPB has license-type searching now?
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Re:So wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
If the site becomes popular enough , it gives exposure to the artists.
There, that was not so hard to figure out.
Bingo!
And folks, it does (potentially) far more than that - it proves that the RIAA is out of their mind when they claim that P2P software is only for illegal sharing. It proves that software, like any other tool, is not necessarily good or bad - how it is used determines that.
If this site makes it and becomes popular, it is perfect proof that the laws that the **AA are lobbying for are really for getting/keeping control over online media - and not about piracy.
Of course, the **AA's next step will be trying to pass a law ensuring that royalties and profits for these types of services go to one of their organizations (like SoundExchange) for them to control funds distribution (ie: the **AA keeps the money - just like the recent Internet Radio bullshit that passed).
But, that's a few more miles down the road - first, this site (and similar sites) must prove that BitTorrent can be and is being used for legal purposes to help prevent the **AA (and others') attempts at laws making P2P software illegal.
Oddly, someone above posted about the upcoming "accidental" attack on this service by the **AA - and was modded OffTopic... dunno why. I surely wouldnt doubt that such a thing will occur, and I definitely find it on-topic to a discussion about LegalTorrent offering legal BitTorrent downloads - as such a situation would potentially cause two issues directly related (assuming the **AA find open servers)... (1) LegalTorrent would be "offering" illegal torrents, and/or (2) LegalTorrent wouldnt be offering anything once the **AA's server farm pummelled them into nothingness - just like they did to Revision3).
Re:So wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
15% isn't all that outrageous when you consider that the credit card and banking fees are included in that total. They are providing a value-added convenience... you don't have to track down the artist's site, the artist doesn't have to contract with a payment service, etc.
Plus, since it isn't mandatory, I'd say this is a perfect example of the free market at work. Unlike, say, the record company system where the only way to compensate the artists is through their record company. May the best distribution model win! If people don't like this, it will go away :)
Re:So wait... (Score:4, Insightful)
Right, you're always able to freeload off LegalTorrents in order to find and download the music you like, and then you can always donate to the artist separately if you so choose, and then LegalTorrents ends up having to foot the bill for their servers (however minimal it may be).
So in order to recoup the costs of all the freeloaders, they have to charge the good samaritans 15%.
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Re:So wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
If we REFUSE to give any money to the people who put effort into publicizing artists, music might as well as be dead. I don't buy the record studio's argument that we need them, but in their absence the grassroots movement needs some funding.
If you are too cheap to tack 15% on top of your donation, just go to the artist's page and donate directly.
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If we REFUSE to give any money to the people who put effort into publicizing artists, music might as well as be dead. I don't buy the record studio's argument that we need them, but in their absence the grassroots movement needs some funding.
But, if they were HTTP downloads I might agree with them, for FTP downloads or something other then P2P downloads, I would say that it is good for them to charge 15%, but when something that costs minimal bandwidth is being hosted, I find it hard to agree with them charging 15% on donations. Now, don't get me wrong, I think that this is a great idea, but honestly, 15% is kinda expensive considering they don't do much. And when you figure in how every other torrent site does the same thing without taking 1
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I guess promotion is going to cost, though.
No it's not, just post a few /. articles or something.
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IMO 15% is an estimate based on them expecting very few people to donate money. The more people that donate, the more they make, the lower they can make their cut. Assuming of course they're not greedy capitalists.
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I'm just glad they aren't - use the legal system to enforce my monopolistic revenue stream - greedy capitalists.
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Maybe, but I expect that running a tracker can get fairly pricey even if the http side of things for the website people use to get the torrents is cheap. And if it's a few people making this their full-time jobs to improve the service, track down the artists for donation locations, keep everything running nicely, etc... I don't know, it still seems fairly high but knock a bit off for CC processing (down to ~12% now) and having your one-stop shopping, it's not unreasonable either.
And indeed, if someone else
Re:So wait... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
15% is kinda expensive considering they don't do much
Whatever. I'd like to see random Slashdot dudes build a website that is still up and responds in under a second through a holiday-weekend front-page Slashdotting, attached to a storage system built to scale out to terabytes of hosted data with dedicated BT seeds, integrates several different programming languages and toolsets, supports multi-file uploads over the web with full Unicode support, has a Facebook app, backups, load balancing, memcached, and on top of all that also aims to build a community of real people who support and give their time and energy to help build it because it's such a cool idea.
Go for it, really. Maybe in your spare time.
I know some of the people building this... and they are working their assess off
surely the artist decides (Score:2)
if the artists think it is a good deal, they will upload their content. if they do not then they wont. Who are you to second guess the motivations of those artists?
I am in a similar situation. If you buy direct from my site, I get over 90% of sale price, if you buy the same game from yahoo, I likely get under 40%. But this doesn't mean yahoo are evil or I am being fucked over, it means that I have made a rational business decision that piggybacking on yahoos audience is worth the lower royalty rate to me. I
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"15% is kinda expensive considering they don't do much"
Interestingly, it's a lot more than many distributors let the artists have.
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The idea would be that at 15%, you'd have to donate ~$334 to pay for that 1 time membership fee. $334 is probably more then most people would donate.
so, to pay for tracker hosting costs (which is more extremely frequent requests for small amounts of information, opposed to fewer requests of large amounts of information) you can either pay $50 to become a member, or donate over $300 to have
Re:So wait... (Score:4, Informative)
Where did you get the idea that you get to tell people how much money they can make? If you don't think the service LegalTorrents provides is worth 15% of your donation, shut the fuck up and donate somewhere else. It's that simple.
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Why don't you just come out and say that you hate capitalism and that nobody should ever make any money at all for providing a value added service? At least you'd be honest.
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I believe the *artist* gets something like 7%? It was a subject of some discussion a year or two back, so you can probably find some good details still.
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Re:So wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
15% is not a bad 'payment' for a seed that will be there as long as the torrent is available.
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Bad name (Score:5, Insightful)
The name of the tracker indirectly spreads the notion that other torrents are inherently less legal. It's a content distribution platform. Much like with firearms, it's the people that use it that commit or don't commit crimes. Not the tools they use.
Other trackers are full of CC and open source contents as well. Just do a search for gentoo, ubuntu, slackware or some such on the pirate bay and you'll see what I mean.
Re:Bad name (Score:5, Funny)
"The name of the tracker indirectly spreads the notion that other torrents are inherently less legal"
What about the name of the piratebay? does name of the piratebay indirectly spreads the notion that other torrents are inherently less piraty?
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What about the name of the piratebay? does name of the piratebay indirectly spreads the notion that other torrents are inherently less piraty?
Yarr
Re:Bad name (Score:5, Interesting)
"The name of the tracker indirectly spreads the notion that other torrents are inherently less legal"
What about the name of the piratebay? does name of the piratebay indirectly spreads the notion that other torrents are inherently less piraty?
The Pirate Bay's case is more a matter of not being beaten down by epithets. If they call downloaders pirates, then the downloaders wear the name pirate with pride, and take the power away from the word, draining away negative connotations and whatnot.
It's the same method as homosexuals have used on 'fag' and black people on 'nigger'.
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"It's the same method as homosexuals have used on 'fag' and black people on 'nigger'."
Yes! You are absolutely right! these two words have TOTALLY lost all their negative connotations!
*going out to the gay part of the city to great black gays on the street with a loud: HI! NIGGER FAG!
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The Pirate Bay's case is more a matter of not being beaten down by epithets. If they call downloaders pirates, then the downloaders wear the name pirate with pride, and take the power away from the word, draining away negative connotations and whatnot.
I disagree entirely. The intent of their name is obvious, especially after you read their responses to inquiries from U.S. media companies. They want (wanted?) to rub the legal protections (previously?) afforded by Swedish laws in the face of American media interests. Something along the lines of "Yeah. We know what we're doing would be illegal in the United States. But we aren't in the United States. So you can't touch us!"
It wasn't about reclaiming the word "pirate" from anybody
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The Pirate Bay's case is more a matter of not being beaten down by epithets. If they call downloaders pirates, then the downloaders wear the name pirate with pride, and take the power away from the word, draining away negative connotations and whatnot.
It's the same method as homosexuals have used on 'fag' and black people on 'nigger'.
Yep, and it's about as effective too. I'll only let you counter argue if you're willing to prove you're right. You can either walk into the predominantly black club and start c
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Re:Bad name (Score:4, Funny)
And the quality is ...... (Score:2, Insightful)
..... most likely almost universally dismal
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Which is true of both CC and legit stuff, BTW :)
In all seriousness, does anyone know what percentage of traditionally produced IP is even watchable? I don't even buy cable anymore because the pickings were so slim... and don't even get me started on radio.
I'll be the first to admit that most of the CC stuff that I've downloaded is pretty shitty, but I've found some songs (and one Star Trek spoof from Europe) that are keepers.
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Which is true of both CC and legit stuff, BTW :)
In all seriousness, does anyone know what percentage of traditionally produced IP is even watchable?
Not more than 10% at least [wikipedia.org]
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I could say the same about commercial music as well.
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You managed to watch Meaty McMeat?? I was bleaching my eyes just a few minutes in.
On the flip side, LegalTorrents was how I discovered Revolution Void [revolutionvoid.com] (the Thread Soul and Increase the Dosage albums) and the 8bitpeoples [8bitpeoples.com].
Our music is on LegalTorrents (Score:4, Interesting)
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Normally I dislike people shilling their wares here but it got me to thinking that it might be interesting if there was one thread where that was *all* that people posted. Everyone has a pet project or knows of one that could use some exposure.
Best of luck to ya.
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Awesome (Score:1)
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LegalTorrents has been around for a while now, it's just that nobody has paid them any attention since they have such a small selection. That can change, though.
Jamendo [jamendo.com] also operates on a similar idea, and they have a much bigger selection (seems to be a lot of French stuff, but whatever). Also have choices between direct download/torrent and mp3/ogg.
Also check out The Internet Archive (archive.org) (Score:4, Informative)
Another good place to check for legally redistributable works is The Internet Archive [archive.org], one of the most important sites on the Internet.
They host a lot of things across a wide spectrum of interests. They are the place hosting the digital archives for organizations that frequently publish new work (such as news programs and audio labels). Big files are okay there as well: You might be interested in a copy of the DVDs for "Big Buck Bunny [archive.org]" (most of the material on the DVDs are licensed CC-BY 3.0 [creativecommons.org]), The Story of Stuff [archive.org] (my copy of this came with a signed note that said I should "Feel free to copy and share it freely for any non-commercial use".
legal or not (Score:4, Insightful)
Depends on your definition of 'legal'. It used to be 'That which does not harm society is legal', lately it has come to mean 'that which special interest groups are unable to buy laws against'.
the best idea ever (Score:2)
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"Way better than paying like $30 per full res image at rip off stock photo libraries."
Where are you paying $30? The hi-res images at istockphoto are around $8, and the web-res versions (which I use the most) are under a couple of bucks.
With stock photography, you typically get what you pay for. Corbis, Getty, et al tend to have the best quality, but they're pricy. istockphoto is really cheap, but you often have to sift through a lot of crap. And the "free stock photo" places tend to be awful.
That's why I'm
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I've got the tagline for them (Score:2)
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How many of those are actual legal torrents from either site?
Public domain torrents (Score:1, Interesting)
As a big B-movie fan there ought to be a mention of publicdomaintorrents.com [publicdomaintorrents.com].
Used to be a free service (Score:1, Interesting)
This used to be a free service up until at least August 12, 2007: http://web.archive.org/web/20070812051918rn_1/www.legaltorrents.com/index.htm [archive.org]
Why would anyone use this when archive.org (and etree) allows you to upload music for free in flac,shn,mp3,and ogg? Nine Inch Nails is up on archive.org:
http://www.archive.org/details/nineinchnails_ghosts_I_IV [archive.org]
http://www.archive.org/details/nine_inch_nails_the_slip [archive.org]
If archive.org can host NIN's music without problems, they can certainly host less popular music. Use a
That's a horrid name (Score:2)
It implies that all other torrent sites are illegal.
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It implies that all other torrent sites are illegal.
Hey, maybe I should start using it to publish some Intelligent Dance Music...
It has not "just launched" (Score:4, Informative)
LegalTorrents is not new (Score:2)
I remember downloading things from LegalTorrents a while back (at least one year).
If you go to http://beta.legaltorrents.com/ [legaltorrents.com], you'll see a lot of items listed with a date. I claim that this is the date the item was uploaded.
It's clearly not the date the item was published; for instance, if you go to http://orange.blender.org/ [blender.org], you'll learn that "Elephants Dream will be shown on the German TV channel 3sat, apparently right about now, 13 August 2006." Note that the elephants dream is tagged with the date o
Classic Rock? (Score:2)
So I was wondering if there'd be any decent music on the site. Bands I like:
* Cat Stevens
* Bee Gees
* Queen
Bands I dislike:
* My Chemical Romance
* Metallica
* AC/DC
Legittorrents.info (Score:2)
...did it first [legittorrents.info] and for free.
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feel free to leave the planet and go produce your own music and your own software and your own TV and games.
Just don't expect everyone else who has bills to pay to produce all that stuff while you sit on your ass bitching.