BitTorrent Fires CEOs, Closes Los Angeles Studio, Shutters BitTorrent Now (variety.com) 34
Things are not looking good at BitTorrent. Citing multiple sources, Variety reports today that the company has fired two former CEOs -- Robert Delamar and Jeremy Johnson -- and let go an unknown number of staffers. Company's CFO Dipak Joshi has stepped in as interim CEO. BitTorrent is also closing its Los Angeles-based production studio and shutting its BitTorrent Now streaming efforts. From the report: The company had officially announced the appointment of Delamar and Johnson as new co-CEOs in April. At the time, the duo laid out a renewed focus on media production and distribution, which involved the opening of a new Los Angeles-based production studio. These efforts culminated in BitTorrent Now, an ad-supported music and video streaming platform that launched in June. BitTorrent Now built on the company's efforts to strike media distribution deals with independent artists, but didn't actually use BitTorrent's P2P technology for streaming.
Wut? (Score:1)
I thought BitTorrent was a protocol to allow efficient distribution of large blobs of data.
What do you need a studio for to be a BitTorrent?
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I thought BitTorrent was a protocol to allow efficient distribution of large blobs of data. What do you need a studio for to be a BitTorrent?
If you make something popular then despite having no business model there are always some VCs willing to throw money after you on fame alone. Make some shit up, give yourself a nice salary as CEO and just milk it for as long as the money lasts. As far as I can tell the company's products don't really have any relation to its namesake.
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Don't forget to buy a studio in L.A.!
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As far as I can tell the company's products don't really have any relation to its namesake.
Somehow they're trying to pull a Napster while still doing P2P.
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Rumor has it they were found trying to use the software for legitimate purposes instead of just pirating media.
Well Duh! Everybody knows there is no money in that..
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Who are these people? (Score:3, Interesting)
What happened to the Bram Stoker guy? I thought he was BitTorrent.
BitTorrent Now built on the company's efforts to strike media distribution deals with independent artists, but didn't actually use BitTorrent's P2P technology for streaming.
Face, meet palm.
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BitTorrent the company does not use BitTorrent the protocol.
How meta
or zen
or something.
Re:Who are these people? (Score:5, Funny)
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No, this is actually a legitimate example of irony.
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What happened to the Bram Stoker guy? I thought he was BitTorrent.
No, he was a well published vampire.
I think someone took him out for drinks and a stake...
Mod parent awesome (Score:5, Funny)
Five minutes ago, I could have told anyone the name of the guy who invented bittorrent protocol.
Now I am laughing and having to look it up. Worse, I know I won't remember it! I'll just remember "Bram Stoker" because you just permanently damaged my brain. For the rest of my fucking life, I am going to have to look up the name of the bittorrent guy.
AC, sometimes you're a genius. And sometimes you're a total bastard. And then there's times like this, when you're both. Fuck you, but also, fuck yeah!
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I understand, his name is Bram Cohen.
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Re: Goodbye! (Score:1)
BitTorrent the protocol is healthy and happily exchanging pirated stuff all over the internet.
BitTorrent the legal studio-agreement streaming effort is dying.
Some stuff just can't be monetised, especially when the competition is both free and better.
Good technology verssus bad economic models (Score:3, Insightful)
It might seem rational to you and me that we work (and play) together nicely, and that our computers could help us. Speaking in a broader sense, if there is some video or news item that a LOT of us want to see, then my computer could help nearby computers get that information, and they could help their neighbors, too.
Too bad no one makes a profit on being neighborly.
The way to maximum profits is CONTROL. You have to grab the customers by their balls and tits and squeeze until you get the last pennies out of them! Plural "You" in this case refers to inhuman corporations, fully sanctioned as human beings by the US Supreme Court.
Government ought to be a neutral referee, but governments tend to like control, too, and when you add in unlimited lobbying by those inhuman corporations, BitTorrent never had a chance. The rules of the game are written by the most cheaply bribed politicians working for the least ethical businessmen.
In conclusion, we now have "government of the corporations, by the lawyers, for the richest 0.1%" ruling the earth.
(Con Man Donald, one of the least ethical businessmen and a self-confessed master of bribing politicians, probably thinks that quote comes from Honest Abe.)
Re:Good technology versus bad economic models (Score:3)
If Slashdot had a better economic model, one of the features that I would be most likely to support would be a recent-post editing feature for stupid typos, like the one in the original Subject: of this thread.
Gotta stop flogging that dead horse, but my next two targets would be (1) features to reduce the visibility of trolls and (2) improvements in the moderation. Actually, the recent-post editing doesn't matter that much to me, much as I hate the typos. It would probably be 3rd or lower on my list.
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While what you say is true, it doesn't necessarily apply to bittorrent.
Bittorrent is a protocol for transferring data. Whether you use it to transfer data to paying clients or to the whole world is largely independent from the protocol. All you'd need is an additional bit of authentication on the tracker to restrict connections to those which have paid you money (which may require a custom client) - but the underlying protocol wouldn't care one bit, either way.
Now granted, that's not any sort of guarantee t
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I think I have to say that I don't know enough about the company versus the protocol. Perhaps it is a mistake to link it to the "brand" or label BitTorrent, since I'm really talking about P2P as a philosophy that makes a lot of sense from a technical perspective. I think P2P networking should replace a lot of the giant infrastructure of the ISPs, but the problem is not technical, but economic and political.
Big infrastructure creates the economic potential for big profits and the political potential for cont
Wait (Score:3)
"BitTorrent" was the name of a company as well as a protocol?
What next, DivX?
Its like "linux" (Score:2)
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A company, BitTorrent, created a piece of software, BitTorrent, which used the protocol, BitTorrent, for P2P filesharing.
The BitTorrent company at least was created by the guy who created the BitTorrent protocol. I think their early "BitTorrent" software was not, however, the original implementation of that protocol. (Don't quote me on those facts, I'm going off of memory here.)
Later, BitTorrent the company bought/licensed the uTorrent software and distributed it under the name "BitTorrent". (They mercifull