BitTorrent Goes Mainstream

[gonzo]

BOSTON - Reuters reported Tuesday that peer-to-peer site The Pirate Bay (http://thepiratebay.org/) is racing to develop its own file-sharing software as the provider of its current application, BitTorrent (http://www.bittorrent.com/), seeks partnerships with mainstream entertainment companies.

BitTorrent, which enjoys some success with major media companies, is looking to add features that prevent the trading of pirated material, said The Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde.

"If they go and do something stupid, it will affect a lot of people," Sunde said, noting that the site typically has 1.5 million daily visitors.
The Pirate Bay has come under fire from law-enforcement agencies seeking to shut down its trading of copyrighted material, which is illegal in several countries. The site is based in Sweden.

Sunde said he hopes to have the first version of his site's software ready by early 2008. He has called for developers to pitch in at SecureP2P (http://securep2p.com/).
BitTorrent co-founder and President Ashwin Navin said his company has little to lose.

"We are not really disappointed here," he told Reuters. "The pirate community has never paid us a dime."
Navin estimated that 150 million people use the BitTorrent technology.

Score more breaking daily news at avnonline.com

[KevinG]

"We are not really disappointed here," he told Reuters. "The pirate community has never paid us a dime."

Exactly.

There was a recent story that relates to that.

The band Radiohead put their new album online and gave people the choice of buying it or downloading it for free.

Duh.

What do you think they did? It is not surprising that most people (62%) chose the free download.

Actually, it was very surprising to me that 38% actually paid for it.

Source: http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=1883

[KevinG]

Here's another related one.

Senators want Justice Department to sue P2P pirates.

American peer-to-peer users worried about being sued into oblivion by the recording industry may soon have a much bigger concern: facing off against the U.S. Department of Justice. Two senators, a Democrat and a Republican, introduced a bill on Wednesday that would unleash the world's largest law firm on Internet pirates. It would authorize the Justice Department to file civil lawsuits against people engaged in peer-to-peer copyright infringement--with the proceeds going to the company or person who owns the copyright. "This legislation is a simple bill that would give the Department of Justice the authority to prosecute copyright violations as civil wrongs," Sen. Patrick Leahy, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said during a hearing on Wednesday. Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican, is a co-sponsor. This is not the first time this bill, called the Pirate Act, has surfaced in Washington. Despite criticisms from civil liberties groups and complaints from peer-to-peer companies that it amounted to corporate welfare for copyright holders, the Pirate Act has cleared the Senate three times. (Here's our coverage after the June 2004 vote.)

http://www.news.com/8301-13578_3-9813358-38.html

[gonzo]

Heres some news you can use out of all of this.

I slapped up a torrent script on a site a while back.
You dont have to advertise it - it rains down traffic!

But its all FREELOADER traffic. Totally worthless.

I pulled it down. They werent even clicking on the ad for legit free stuff.

I think most of the people that use those types of sites are packrats.
You know when you dont got a dollar to go to the dollar store...make yourself feel better by downloading a bunch of free shit.