DISQUS

Seth Finkelstein · 2 years ago

It's a complicated game.

Now he's a *partner* and not a *pirate*. That matters.

Except he's a partner in a sabotaged division.

But that's MUCH better than being a defendant in court.

He can try to get a sane pricing structure from here. Instead of trying to avoid a lawsuit.

All in all, it's a good thing. A small step forward beats a large step backward.

Matt · 2 years ago

Peer Impact who have a simmilar movie rental service and better bussiness model than Bittorent has (they give seeders a system credit) hasnt been the run away success it should of been either .

www.peerimpact.com

pwb · 2 years ago

I'm not sure I agree. Most people watch most movies once. The recently launched services from Apple, Amazon and Walmart only offer purchasing, not renting, and really aren't going anywhere. There is a pretty well-understood market for rentals and pay-per-view. There aren't many movies that are worth owning, especially as a download that is far inferior to a DVD.

Anonymous · 2 years ago

Wait - so they expect me to contribute my bandwidth while they charge me with ludicris prices? Wow, simply unbelievable.

If they're gonna charge these ridiculous prices, the least they could've done is hand down the bandwidth savings.

The sheer stupidity of the movie/record industry is unbelievable.

And let me guess - these aren't HD and won't come out faster than the pirate versions right?

Jim Summers · 2 years ago

The shame about DRM is that it makes the legal files different than the pirated movies. BitTorrent works best when lots of people are trying to download the same file, so if the legal files were the same as the pirated ones, they'd download faster because of the higher number of sources. Here was a perfect opportunity for legal users to take advantage of pirates to improve distribution, and the movie companies screwed it up with DRM.

Mathew · 2 years ago

That's a good point, Jim. The studios could actually have benefited far more from the P2P structure if they had kept the files the same.

And Anonymous, I think you are right to be outraged at the prices (and it sounds like Bram is too). In effect, the studios are using you and others like you as a distribution system, and charging you full price at the same time.

Allen · 2 years ago

"'We are not happy with the user interface implications' of digital rights management."

I think that Cohen's phrasing of it as "user interface implications" trivializes the real problem. It sounds like marketing spin, suggesting that the problem could be fixed with a lil' spit n polish to pretty-up the user interface.

That's wrong: the "implications" of BT's DRM'd system run very deep. People hate these systems not because the UI is a little ugly--otherwise no one would have put up with years of hideous open-source BT clients--but because we feel these restrictions emotionally: What do you mean I don't *own* it? Why can't I share it with friends? Why can't I move it to my Mac and then to my iPod?

Those aren't just some missing features, those are the basic personal and social behaviors and expectations around buying and using media products.

Mathew · 2 years ago

Thanks for the comment, Allen.

I think what Bram meant by "user interface" (although I obviously can't say for sure) is just the overall appeal -- or lack of appeal -- that such a service with DRM is likely to have for users, as opposed to the technical UI design.

I would agree with your central point though. In effect, DRM is trying to change the way that people have thought about content for decades, and that is darn near impossible -- or at the very least pretty stupid.

pwb · 2 years ago

DRM isn't as big a deal for a pay-per-view service. You watch it once...you're done.

Rob Hyndman · 2 years ago

Now *that's* a buried lead ...

Finite · 2 years ago

As to the files all being different with DRM applied... the DRM must be being applied post-download client-side for the BitTorrent techmology to work, right? (!)

Interestingly, the iTunes store does (or did at the time of PyMusique) this too, even though they don't use P2P.