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The Internet Entertainment

Hollywood Looks to BitTorrent for Distribution 283

Posted by timothy from the who-is-this-cerf-guy-anyhow dept.
daria42 writes "Vinton Cerf, who wrote the original TCP/IP protocol and is currently chairman of ICANN, said this week he had recently discussed BitTorrent with at least two interested movie producers. 'I know personally for a fact that various members of the movie industry are really getting interested in how to use the Internet--even BitTorrent--as a distributed method for distributing content,' Cerf said. 'I've spoken with several movie producers in the last month.'"
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Hollywood Looks to BitTorrent for Distribution More

Hollywood Looks to BitTorrent for Distribution

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  • From the article:


    Hollywood is anxious to embrace BitTorrent as a method of movie distribution, according to the father of the Internet, Dr Vinton Cerf.


    But I thought that Al Gore [sethf.com] invented the Internet...

    • allright, thats the slashdot i know and love. None of this encouraging enlightened discussion crap. I, for one, welcome back our trollish first posting overlords.

      mostly joking given the actual content of the link...

  • It will happen, but not for a long time..... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Greg Wright ( 104533 ) * on Thursday April 14, 2005 @05:28PM (#12238693) Journal
    Notice that the first link under that article in the 'related links'
    section is, "BitTorrent hubs close after ISP raid". In that article is
    says, "The music industry's anti-piracy unit claims 50 file-sharing
    [BitTorrent] hubs in Australia closed....". Seems like the
    entertainment industry's one hand doesn't know what the other is
    doing. That is the biggest problem as I see it; trying to get all the
    content holders, content producers, content creators and talent all on
    one page. Until they do that none of them, nor us, will be able to
    benefit from what the Internet has to offer as a new channel for media
    distribution.

    Will it be easy? No. Will it happen at all? Eventually. In the mean
    time it is going to be very painful indeed. Two steps forward, one
    back.

    • Re:It will happen, but not for a long time..... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by turbosk ( 73287 ) * on Thursday April 14, 2005 @05:33PM (#12238759)
      Is anyone concerned that MP/RIAA would want to know their "enemy" better in order to discover its weaknesses and close it down more effectively? I can picture the discussion with Mr Cerf, and the movie guy is nodding and taking notes furiously, saying, "yes, do go on".

      It's the same reason some men read Cosmo magazine- it's like getting behind the lines and into the mind of the adversary.

      • Re:It will happen, but not for a long time..... (Score:4, Funny)

        by GweeDo ( 127172 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @05:59PM (#12238982) Homepage
        I thought it was for the pictures?
      • Is anyone concerned that MP/RIAA would want to know their "enemy" better in order to discover its weaknesses and close it down more effectively? I can picture the discussion with Mr Cerf, and the movie guy is nodding and taking notes furiously, saying, "yes, do go on". It's the same reason some men read Cosmo magazine- it's like getting behind the lines and into the mind of the adversary.

        This applies to the ??AA and those men you mention who read Cosmo: You won't get anywhere until you stop treating thos

      • "Is anyone concerned that MP/RIAA would want to know their "enemy" better in order to discover its weaknesses and close it down more effectively?"

        If that's the case, they're already doing it now.

        Frankly, I don't care. I'd be willing to pay for legit versions of movies or TV shows for download. I'm more worried about restrictions like "You can't copy it to your laptop after you've purchased it".

    • Re:It will happen, but not for a long time..... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by snuf23 ( 182335 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @05:39PM (#12238816)
      There is a big difference between closing bittorrent sites that act as trackers for pirated materials and using the bittorrent protocol for distributing MPAA's approved legal content. Just the same as Blizzard using bittorrent to seed patches for World of Warcraft while not condoning piracy of their software over bittorrent.
      It would be beneficial if the MPAA, RIAA or others embraced using p2p such as bittorrent because it helps to legitimize p2p. This doesn't mean protection for pirates, but it does mean protection for the protocol (i.e. we won't see legislation forcing it to be killed at the ISP level).

      • Re:It will happen, but not for a long time..... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by barawn ( 25691 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @06:31PM (#12239300) Homepage
        It would be beneficial if the MPAA, RIAA or others embraced using p2p such as bittorrent because it helps to legitimize p2p. This doesn't mean protection for pirates

        Actually, it could. Part of the problem with BitTorrent is the fact that downloading necessitates uploading - so even if you have a legal right to obtain a copy of something, in order to do it, you have to upload to other users (who may or may not have the right to have it). By embracing BitTorrent as a protocol, they're removing one of the possible objections - namely, they can't claim that a person downloading something from BitTorrent illegally is committing copyright infringement thousands of times - just once.

        (Of course, this presumes that they won't recognize this problem and build it into some license agreement crap thing, which they probably will. It also doesn't avoid the objection that just because I have a legal license to one copy of a copyrighted work, and a fair right to make one copy of that copy, doesn't give me the right to make a copy of a different copy.)
        • The problem with that is this: If the movie or record industry was to embrace BitTorrent, the idea would likely to be to have authentication to access the tracker. Thus, it could be presumed (if the system was secure) that everyone accessing the tracker - and, thus, everyone to whom a downloader would be uploading - would be authorized to be receiving their copy. In the case of a copyrighted work being distributed via BT by someone NOT authorized to do so, everyone downloading is committing the dual viola
          • Doesn't matter. Unless it's in the license when you download, the downloader is not allowed to make a copy of the copyrighted work, and that's what they're doing. That's why I figure it will probably be in the license agreement. No way their lawyers are that stupid.

            I would love if they would make the argument that if they're authorized to have it, then they are authorized to download, and upload as well: because that just justifies the previous argument.

            If they say "yes, it's okay for a recipient of a l

      • Re:It will happen, but not for a long time..... (Score:5, Informative)

        by FreeUser ( 11483 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @06:56PM (#12239547)
        There is a big difference between closing bittorrent sites that act as trackers for pirated materials and using the bittorrent protocol for distributing MPAA's approved legal content.

        Sure there is, and that isn't lost on anybody.

        The point is that the recording and movie industries have attempted to buy legislation banning the technology itself. This would have made using bittorrent (or any other peer-to-peer technology) illegal even for legitimate means, such as distributing Linux iso images. Now these same industries, who tried their damndest to ban the technology completely, are embracing it. That is news, and as you say, protects the technology, not those using the technology to violate copyright.

    • Re:It will happen, but not for a long time..... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by podperson ( 592944 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @05:54PM (#12238948) Homepage
      I see no contradiction.

      If Hollywood chooses to use BitTorrent to distribute films (legally) but fights to shut down illegal distribution (via BitTorrent) this is no different from it distributing films by video and shutting down video pirates.

      BitTorrent is a technology, not a legal or moral imperative.
    • Closing down BitTorrent sites has nothing to do
      with "one hand not knowing what the other is
      doing."

      That is like saying police seizing illegal guns
      is a case of "one hand doesn't know what the
      other is doing." Just because they are going
      after the illegal portion doesn't mean that there are not legal ways.

      The fact that BitTorrent sites are so popular
      for downloading illegal movies shows that they
      could be popular for downloading legal (DRM'd
      of course)movies.
    • Seems like the entertainment industry's one hand doesn't know what the other is doing.

      I don't know.. Seems like providing legal ways to for people to get content using state of the art technology would be a great thing.

  • Door of no return? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fembots ( 753724 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @05:28PM (#12238699) Homepage
    The thing is, if any movie producers/directors decided to distribute their works over the internet, they might not be able(allowed) to go on big screen anymore.

    So any promising producers might not take up the offers, and those less-promising ones might only attract a lower level of interested audience.

    We have seen few success stories in online music distribution by bands, but the mainstream still hasn't moved yet.

    Having said that, anything has to start somewhere.

    • Re:Door of no return? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by RM6f9 ( 825298 )
      One would think the success of "The Blair Witch Project" would keep cinema owner/distribution chains from shooting themselves in the (collective) foot with such an arbitrary decision. Meanwhile, were I a producer eager for eyeballs and had confidence in my work, 'twould seem that making $2-$3 per viewing/download would create more profits for me than whatever I'd get once I got done paying the conventional distribution chain - and, I'd receive them faster.

    • Re:Door of no return? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by LocoMan ( 744414 )
      I know that for movies/shorts to be eligible for an oscar nomination they must be premiered on the big screen first (or at least that's how it used to be), so in the animated shorts it automatically would disqualify anything that was shown first on the internet.

      Personally I'd like this, but I don't think I'd make much use of it... I like DVDs as they are (I'd welcome lower prices, of course), and the ones I buy I mostly buy for the extras, and personally there are lots of movies (specially the ones with l


    • 81% hated iCLOD city on 1st day. Can you stand it there?
    • Actually Hollywood hired some directors from the screening of shorts from sites like atomfilms.com .

      I think the director of Elisha Custhbert's last movie was hired like this from reading his bio.

      eric.

    • Re:Door of no return? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by shark72 ( 702619 )

      "The thing is, if any movie producers/directors decided to distribute their works over the internet, they might not be able(allowed) to go on big screen anymore."

      On the contrary; many directors have gotten their start by creating films which they've distributed online. My grandmother was in one such film [ifilm.com] that was an online sensation for a time (if you never caught it... trust me, you probably wouldn't want to see your own grandmother in it) and which opened a few (small) doors for the director [imdb.com]. And, a

  • Music video legitimately released via bittorrent (Score:5, Informative)

    by garagekubrick ( 121058 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @05:30PM (#12238720) Homepage
    We released a video we made for Portland band The Decemberists to bittorrent on purpose. We've had much greater impact from that than the few times MTV2 aired it.

    Wired article [wired.com] details how and why.

    For everyone concerned some four weeks later it's been an enormous success.

    • Re:Music video legitimately released via bittorren (Score:5, Interesting)

      by garagekubrick ( 121058 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @05:34PM (#12238771) Homepage
      I should've mentioned - the band are not on a major label.

      The album and video came out in the same week. A week later the band found themselves without the support of a major label in the Billboard Top 200 and in the top 10 at iTMS and top 20 at amazon.
      • The thing most people dont realise which is a contributing factor to this success is that a music video is basically an advertisement for a band. By distributing your ad to people who are intelligent enough to comprehend BT, and not the near-illiterate common denominator of MTV, you might actually succeed in reaching people who are not only jaded enough to know when something is bad, but jaded enough to realise that something is good.

        (Disclaimer: Note that if you disagree with anything I just said, you're
      • I'll point out that the Decemberists have really excellent performance and songwriting on their side. Not just BitTorrent :)

  • Cheaper than a movie (Score:4, Interesting)

    by fwice ( 841569 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @05:31PM (#12238724)
    If it costs less than the $10 i have to pay for a movie ticket, plus the $5 for a soda and $4 for a small popcorn, then I think it's a definate plus.

    Went to see sin city last night. $20 for two tickets, $4.50 for a soda, and $4 for a popcorn. Not exactly a cheap date anymore.
  • Can we call Bittorrent a 'Decentralized' Network? The word 'distribute' has too many uses in this context; my head hurts.

  • Next VHS? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by a_greer2005 ( 863926 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @05:32PM (#12238743)
    The MPAA has done 180s before when it comes to tech, look at their complete change of face on the VCR and video industry after the famed surpreme court case.

    • From the No Duh department (Score:5, Insightful)

      by cryptochrome ( 303529 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @05:50PM (#12238913) Journal
      Yeah, but this one was totally predictable. Overloaded servers and bandwidth limitations have been THE obstacle to growth for internet media. BT and its ilk solve those problems nicely. But these would-be distributors going to have to convince the ISPs to give consumers synchronous bandwidth to really make this scheme work effectively.

  • hmm (Score:5, Funny)

    by Sv-Manowar ( 772313 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @05:32PM (#12238744) Homepage Journal
    Ironic, how the industry turns to one of the tools their were claiming ruins it.

    It's a smart move by the movie business, they are expanding into the online market, better late than never. They just need a way to make sure to stop piracy, as shown with the iTunes mp3 encoding.
  • Why not? A topic of discussion before, how about movie theaters participating in a p2p "theater only" version of bittorrent? They could efficiently distribute large digital film content in an economical manner.... Wouldn't this help legitimize the whole p2p debate?
  • "a distributed method for distributing content"
    Reminds me of the Fast Show quote:
    "The mafia is probably the most organised of the organised crime organisations"

  • You know what they say (Score:3, Insightful)

    by nutznboltz ( 473437 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @05:34PM (#12238769) Homepage Journal
    If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
    • More like shove the distribution costs onto users and still change them a fee. BitTorrent is great--when the originator of the content cannot or should not be expected to foot the bandwidth costs himself.

      Seriously though, they'll have a method to charge for their content (almost certainly right?) but all the expense of "shipping" that content will appear on the user's ISP costs. Sounds like a great scheme to me.

      I hypothesize that, given the relatively high cost of consumer upstream bandwidth, doing thi

  • IPV6 (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Wouldn't this be better accomplished with IPV6 multicast?

    • Not really (Score:3, Informative)

      by Wesley Felter ( 138342 )
      The Internet does not support multicast, so it doesn't matter. Also, multicast has nothing to do with IPv6.
      • The Internet does not support multicast, so it doesn't matter. Also, multicast has nothing to do with IPv6.

        Ours doesn't, but I'm pretty sure that part of Internet2 is a multicast requirement. Right now multicast usually gets dropped at the edge.

  • They don't even have to do anything! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 14, 2005 @05:34PM (#12238772)
    Just stop suing the sites and bam, they will distribute it for you! It's amazing.

  • I have to confess I am rather skeptical (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Lead Butthead ( 321013 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @05:34PM (#12238775) Journal
    The net in general has been around for quite some time; much of which the music and film industries has met it with open hostility. In particular P2P applications thus far has met with nothing but legal hostility. That said, I am suspicious this is but a ploy to lure out some of the application authors to be crucified at a later date.

  • Up with bittorrent in the mainstream (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tantalus ( 466821 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @05:34PM (#12238776) Homepage
    This would be terrific for showing that bittorrent is worthwile for small and large business models in which legal content is served. In Canada, one major cable ISP, Shaw, uses traffic shaping to heavily throttle bittorrent since they see it as a tool for pirates, but more mainstream uses of bittorrent would put pressure on Shaw to ease up on the throttling.
    • In Canada, one major cable ISP, Shaw, uses traffic shaping to heavily throttle bittorrent since they see it as a tool for pirates

      Where? I'm in Winnipeg on Shaw, and I just used bittorrent to download the Ubuntu install and Live CD's, and I got a steady 650kB/s within seconds of adding the torrents. That's as fast as this thing goes, so I don't think there is a very effective throttling in place if there is any. I think you just need to fix your firewall, and/or get a better client.

    • You could try using a different port, since traffic shaping looks for activity targeted a specific ports only. If you're using the default Bittorent port you'll likely be slowed, but pick a port that's commonly used for something else that they don't throttle. For instance, if you're not using bt while also playing Quake III, set your Bittorent client to use port 27960. Most ISP's don't throttle the gamer's ports because that's the only reason a lot of people get broadband to begin with.

      Tommy
      • You could try using a different port, since traffic shaping looks for activity targeted a specific ports only. If you're using the default Bittorent port you'll likely be slowed, but pick a port that's commonly used for something else that they don't throttle. (snip)

        Nope. Shaw uses Ellacoya [ellacoya.com] based traffic shapers. These units work very close to the application layer, and thus recognize BT traffic, no matter what port you use. They aren't your simple port-based throttlers most ISPs use. Of course, it would

  • Dubious (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Daath ( 225404 ) <(kd.redoc) (ta) (pl)> on Thursday April 14, 2005 @05:35PM (#12238782) Homepage Journal
    Well, I don't know about you. I think BitTorrent is very cool and has it's uses, especially amongst those who don't have multiple redundant fiber connections. But when game companies (Blizzard for example) and movie companies start to distribute their wares by way of BitTorrent, that makes me wonder.

    Now I myself don't pay by volume, but I do know some who do! Are we supposed to pay for their wares, and then we get to download, sometimes slowly because BitTorrent downgrades users that don't share because of closed ports/firewalls etc.

    We pay them, but we have to distribute it for them?!

    Big companies, who probably have big a** internet connections themselves, should make their wares available for direct download by standard HTTP and/or FTP...

    Well, maybe that's just me.

    • Re:Dubious (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Future Man 3000 ( 706329 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @05:47PM (#12238897) Homepage
      I'll bet that if P2P becomes a viable commercial transport mechanism we will all see caps/pay-by-volume appear on our accounts. Most ISPs aren't going to take on the bandwidth of major servers (and BitTorrent protocol overhead) in addition to client traffic without infrastructure upgrades.

      It'll make a good excuse to add sliding fees for upstream use. But maybe we'll get back to the point where we can download game demos and patches without "waiting in line" for an hour.

    • Re:Dubious (Score:2, Informative)

      by stoanhart ( 876182 )
      Just like to clarify that BitTorrent doesn't "downgrade" people. It's just that the concept on which BitTorrent functions is inhibited by the lack of full two-way communications. It's not to punish leechers, it's just the way it is.
    • We pay them, but we have to distribute it for them?!

      Big companies, who probably have big a** internet connections themselves, should make their wares available for direct download by standard HTTP and/or FTP...

      Well, maybe that's just me.

      Well, for me, regardless of their fat pipe, I would prefer a torrent download vs a regular HTTP or FTP one.

      Why?

      It will probably be faster, and its more efficient on the net in general. I don't know about you, but whenever I hop on a hot torrent, the thing screams. I'
    • For some reason I don't think those who pay by the byte are gonna be big World of Warcraft players...
    • Well, I wouldn't get my panties in a knot quite yet.

      It says it all in Hollywood "looks" to BitTorrent. I mean, sure. I look at Uranus to park my boot, but is it gonna happen? It'll probably never make it there.
    • Big companies, who probably have big a** internet connections themselves, should make their wares available for direct download by standard HTTP and/or FTP...

      I think you overestimate big companies - there's good reason that ftp.idsoftware.com only allows ~50 (IIRC) users with one connection each; and gamespy / fileplanet has 250 with 500 queued -- it's simply impossible to deal with several thousand users wanting ~30MB updates at once via HTTP or FTP; queueing and P2P are the only sane solutions. Given th

    • There's a couple of things they could do here. An obvious one is charge less for BitTorrent distribution than direct HTTP or FTP downloads. You're doing them a favour by reducing their bandwidth costs, so that should be reflected in a lower price.

      The other option is to move the BitTorrent distribution up one tier to the ISPs. If pay per view content is cached at the ISP level you could potentially stream it in real time which is the logical way to send video anyway. The ISPs would save considerable bandwi

  • Bittorrent For TV (Score:3, Insightful)

    by TheFlyingGoat ( 161967 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @05:36PM (#12238786) Homepage Journal
    Take a look at my journal for my idea on how BT could work for TV networks.

    Partially OT, but some of the ideas would fit a movie distribution model as well.

  • My money is ready (Score:4, Interesting)

    by kwerle ( 39371 ) <kurt@CircleW.org> on Thursday April 14, 2005 @05:37PM (#12238797) Homepage Journal
    I'm ready to pay a dime/episode of The Daily Show. With commercials. I'll pay a quarter/episode without commercials. Sell me a torrent in a timely fashion.

    I can get it illegally now, but I'd much rather pay for it and be able to get it timely, consistently, and in better quality than some of the rips seem to appear.
  • Hopefully I'll not have to d/l russian screeners anymore then.
    • Actually, BT is a good source of the movies Hollyweird will never distribute in the US. Hong Kong, India, Eastern Europe, South Africa..etc. The world is full of creativity and that is far more then can be said for Hollywood. Does anyone know a good source for the Polish film Avalon with subs? -it Makes the Matrix look boring....

  • They are late to the game. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by zymano ( 581466 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @05:43PM (#12238854)
    The amateur are producing short films already using broadband to distribute their films.

  • There's a Soviet Russia joke here... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by suitepotato ( 863945 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @05:44PM (#12238858)
    ...but I am too apathetic to look for it. What follows is no troll. I swear.

    My first reaction to this and the article was, "what amount of crack is being smoked now and by whom?"

    My second reaction was, "this is par for the opportunistic and predatory but too stupid to live course."

    Once again, late to the party and like the worst newbie's granddad, going "ooohh, what's this I hear about this inter thing?" Anyone remember their take on the VCR for years and years? It was the money people reacting to the new dynamics of the entertainment market with the entrenchment of the VCR that led to the end of all crap straight to the first run cinemas theme of the 70s and beginning of the straight to video with those what were we thinking mistakes theme of the 80s on.

    I think the experienced net-going public's desire to adopt a DRM-ified torrent system is about like their desire to see a musical version of Trainspotting starring Andy Dick. We know that DRM is going to be the first thought on their minds. I think we can also see some sort of iTunes-like pruveyor appearing and it being half-assed to start, broken repeatedly, the IP providers getting stern and filing lawsuits, and the system progressing to some sort of bastard offspring of Tivo and BitTorrent.

    No thanks. They still don't get it? Indeed.
    • I'm a smart guy, but I'm having a little trouble parsing that first paragraph. Maybe a comma or some extra periods?

    • the IP providers getting stern and filing lawsuits

      By "IP providers" do you mean "Internet Protocol providers" or "copyright, patent, trademark, and/or trade secret providers"? If the former, do you mean "providers of IPv4 address space" or "providers of Internet access"? If the latter, do you mean "providers of licenses to copyrighted works" or "providers of licenses to patented inventions such as MPEG-4"?

  • What do users get in return? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 14, 2005 @05:45PM (#12238868)
    So let me get this straight, the movie companies get to piggyback off of their customer's bandwidth to take a chunk out of their expenses? I can see the sense of community when its free stuff being distributed, but for DRM'd files and when you know someone is getting a profit, I'd think the sense of community that is normally associated with BitTorrent will vanish.

    There has to be incentive for a person to use their internet connection to help out a publisher. Whether it be credit, cash, or free services, there has to be something there to make people want to seed.
    • Not really - if the movie owners give one seed and there's one downloader at a time, there's a little overhead more than HTTP. Two downloaders at once and their bandwidth halves -- even if people disconnect as soon as they have all the file, the upload they gave during their download still gives a massive saving over plain HTTP.
  • One of the biggest issues with BitTorrent is the leeches that don't leave their torrents uploading after they are done downloading. I would expect this to increase greatly if the files being downloaded are DRM'ed and paid for, because less people would feel a sense of community or otherwise see a reason not to leech. This problem could well be minimized by the software (perhaps integrate the downloader and the player, or put the downloader in a background daemon), and if it was done in a way that is not to

    • One of the biggest issues with BitTorrent is the leeches that don't leave their torrents uploading after they are done downloading.

      Do it like Netflix. If you haven't seeded your last rental, and your last rental is underseeded, you get a "Very Long Wait" on other movies that are underseeded.

  • Yes, they finally realize that P2P is not only good lammers, it is also good for sharing good things.

  • From the I'll-Believe-It-When-I-See-It Department: (Score:4, Funny)

    by jtosburn ( 63943 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @05:54PM (#12238942)
    'I know personally for a fact that various members of the movie industry are really getting interested in how to use the Internet--even BitTorrent--as a distributed method for distributing content,' Cerf said.

    I think he mis-heard those movie producers. What they said was that BitTorrent is a "disturbing method for distributing content."

  • You can't have a cake and eat it too (Score:3, Insightful)

    by __aaitqo8496 ( 231556 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @05:55PM (#12238951) Journal
    You want to sue people over the use of peer-to-peer applications, but at the same time monopolize on it's popularity?

    Until I can legally download & burn a movie cheaper than going to blockbuster and doing the same, forget it.

  • Reality Check (Score:5, Funny)

    by mokolabs ( 530326 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @06:04PM (#12239021) Homepage
    As inevitable as IP-based film distribution is, Vint Cerf talking with TWO movie producers isn't news and doesn't herald the dawn of a new age.

    If Slashdot worked like Fark, we'd file this under... OBVIOUS.
  • when the movie ends up online before it's out in theatres. What gets me is that bitorrent does not encrypt traffic (AFAIK, correct me if I'm wrong) and someone at the ISP of *any* of the theatres could just sniff for HTTP requests that end in .torrent and download an extremely high definition file of the movie for free. Just tossing that out there...

  • The hard part (Score:3, Insightful)

    by overshoot ( 39700 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @06:06PM (#12239040)
    will be getting the law changed so that they're the only ones who can legally use it.

    On the one hand they're trying to convince the United States Supreme Court that the developers of a technology can be sued into oblivion if at any point the technology is mostly used for copyright infringement.

    On the other hand, they want to use it themselves. That's going to take some tricky wording.

    Anyone remember the Lazarus Long line about how no sane adult wants justice, but it's what we're willing to settle for?

  • I don't think so (Score:4, Interesting)

    by maxpublic ( 450413 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @06:07PM (#12239054) Homepage
    Can't say I have any more faith in the MPAA waking up and smelling the coffee than I do the RIAA. If you've actually worked with the powerhouses in the industry you'll know that they value control far more than they do money, and despise everything internet-related precisely because it strips them of some of that control. This is an industry where execs regularly torpedo projects with huge promise and/or ratings just because someone working on the project has pissed them off. Money has very little to do with it so long as a certain minimal amount keeps rolling in (and sometimes not even then).

    Don't look at this through rose-colored glasses. Execs in the movie and TV industries are some of the biggest egomaniacs alive. If anyone is looking to distribute movies/TV via BitTorrent it'll be some small house outside the mainstream that can't get their films into theaters. The big guys will never follow suit; they'll take the RIAA path and try to legislate/intimidate p2p into oblivion.

    Max

  • Does not mean anything (Score:4, Informative)

    by randomwalker ( 758064 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @06:12PM (#12239099)
    I hate to be critical, but movie producers are not movie distributors. In fact a movie producer can be anything from agent, script right holder, banker, to part of a star's entourage. Cerf talking to movie producers is like me talking to cows to judge what Mcdonalds is doing

    The movie studios (the distributors) are well aware of bittorrent and the myriad of other distribution technologies that are available. The distributors do not generally distribute directly to consumers, but use middlemen (which include hotel VOD systems, cable, TV broadcasters, airlines, retail stores, rental services, etc). If someone implements a system using bittorrent which meets the security requirements they have, they would license content to it. Bittorrent would just be a component of the system.
  • The music industry could profit immensely from using BT as a distribution source. Say I want to buy and download a movie for $10. Now, if we're using Bit Torrent, and I upload the whole movie to 10 other people, the movie industry could institute a "payback" plan for saving their bw by using mine. They could credit me say $1 for each complete movie I upload back. That would be a HUGE incentive to not only buy what the industry is putting out, but also to be a part of it.

  • Shame on you, hollywood! (Score:3, Funny)

    by lightspawn ( 155347 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @06:30PM (#12239292) Homepage
    According to Andrew Lack, President of Sony Music, "P2P stands for piracy to pornography." Which P are you planning to use, MPAA?
  • Make money from Bit Torrent?... hmmm, Prodigem [prodigem.com]. Why slashdot hasn't picked up on our new ability to sell access to torrents baffles me.

  • BitTorrent = Discount (Score:4, Insightful)

    by iamghetto ( 450099 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @06:39PM (#12239387) Homepage
    I have a problem with BitTorrent being used to distribute content that I'm paying for. While I agree that movies and television shows should be legally available for download, they people supplying the content should pay for bandwidth.

    If I use BitTorrent, I'm using my own bandwidth to help them redistribute/resell the exact same content that I just paid for.

    Because of this, any content distributed over torrents should be discounted accordingly.

    I believe that torrents work right now because their content is recieved for free. There is a sentiment of community. You can only get a file because other people seeded it. So in kind, people continue to seed the files to return to favor. That's what makes it work.

    If I'm paying $10 for a movie, I wouldn't count on me spending anytime seeding it. I've paid for it. I don't owe the community anything.

    If that makes any sense... :)
  • Is it April 1st? Nope. Check.
    Is it an invented quote from The Register? Nope. Check.
    Does it have a </sarcasm> tag at the end? Nope. Check.
    Is it in the list of things that will never happen? *bzzt*

    Now wait a minute, something's wrong here...

  • Really GOOD Idea (Score:3, Interesting)

    by whig ( 6869 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @06:44PM (#12239427) Homepage Journal
    This is actually a fantastic opportunity for the movie industry, if they embrace it rather than trying to demonize the protocol. Remember, folks, Bittorrent is just a tool for content delivery, and the direct-to-home video market is huge (i.e., Netflix).

    Bittorrent trackers can be configured to serve content only to authorized subscribers. Delivering high quality releases over the net from the source is something that would have a huge market potential, but would place nearly impossible bandwidth demands on the content server were it not for the distributed nature of the protocol.

    I can also see this as being something that companies like HBO with their huge catalog of movies could make available online on-demand, just as they do over digital cable today.

  • I'm not a Pirate! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Nom du Keyboard ( 633989 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @07:21PM (#12239710)
    I'm not a peer-to-peer file sharing pirate.

    I'm a beta tester for the MPAA's 21st century digital distribution system.

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