The end of BitTorrent as we know it
By George Gardner
BitTorrent will be rolling out a new service in the near future that will offer paid downloads of more than 5,000 titles including movies, television shows, games, and similar media. From a profit perspective, this may sound like a wonderful idea; however, from a user’s perspective, it will certainly be the end of BitTorrent as we know it.
BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer file distribution protocol that allows users to distribute files directly between computers without a middle medium. To share files, a user must create a “torrent” file, which contains metadata about the files to be shared. Anyone who wishes to download the shared data must first obtain the torrent file; once the file is opened in a BitTorrent client, the user is then connected to a “Torrent Tracker” where they are redirected to other computers around the world that are running BitTorrent and are sharing the same file.
Bits and Pieces of the file are usually downloaded from multiple computers and reassembled on the users machine; even as you download a file, you are sharing pieces of the file (that you’ve already obtained) with other peers.
BitTorrent trackers have undergone shutdowns and raids as a result of copyright infringement; however, the torrent files do not store any copyrighted data, which raises the question as to whether or not these ‘trackers’ are illegal.
It is possible to obtain, from a tracker, a user’s IP address and all their prior and current upload/download activity; in addition, many Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have sent letters to their users threatening to cut off their Internet service if infringement continues.
ISPs dislike Torrent users; filesharing accounts for a great portion of their bandwidth. Your ISP counts on the principle that not all users will be on the Internet – and thus eating up bandwidth – at the same time; they are simply selling you bandwidth that they don’t have.
BitTorrent, Inc. will soon be offering the BitTorrent Entertainment Network, consisting of over 3,000 movie titles, 1,000 games, and 1,000 music titles that generally include full albums.
Music videos and television shows will cost $1.99 to rent, or $2.99 for the HD version; while Movie rentals will cost $3.99 and $2.99 for new releases and older movies respectively. Videos will be only available to rent because of prohibitive licensing costs; they will be available to repeatedly watch the video for 24 hours after the agreement to rent has been set. BitTorrent will use Microsoft’s Windows Media 10 DRM to lock the content.
Aside from staying legal, what motivations do Torrent users have to pay for content that they could otherwise download for free? And herein lies the fall of BitTorrent.
BitTorrent, if they have not done so already, will take extreme measures to ensure that copyrighted material will no longer show up on torrent searches. A search for “Prison Break” will return the 24 hour “rental” torrent which would have previously been an illegal, yet free, ripped version.
Media pirates will eventually become frustrated with the new service and look to one of the many alternatives to BitTorrent such as eDonkey2000, Gnutella, or Azureus. Those who download copyrighted media will continue to do so, despite the claims by BitTorrent that their new service is aimed at those who regularly trade pirated versions of the same films they are offering with a price tag.
The company claims that at least 1/3 of the over 130 million users of the BitTorrent software will be willing to pay for high-quality legitimate content. Not likely.
Those on board with the BitTorrent Entertainment Network include 20th Century Fox, Paramount, Warner Bros., MTV, Voom, Kadokawa (Japanese Anime), and MGM; games will be available through Trymedia.
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February 27th, 2007
Bittorrent.com in only one of the many torrent aggregators/search engines, and in fact, its not one of the best or most popular. This manouver won’t change anything at all, at least not with the market they want to target (the guys that get episodes and movies). Everything will be exactly the same as it is today.
February 27th, 2007
You are quite right, Morocotopo; although there are still many users of BitTorrent (as we know it), we will see that number decline rapidly over time.
February 27th, 2007
mmm…no. Lets clear things up.
Bittorrent, the protocol: is still live and kicking, with more and more users all the time, both legit and nonlegit. This wont be affected by the change.
Bittorret, the client: has already been declining for a while, alternate clients get more and more users (uTorrent, Azureus, etc) because of either better performance, or functionality. This wont change either, as the alternate clients will keep growing.
Bittorent.com, the website: Has always been marginally at best as a search engine for torrent files, there are speciality sites for people seeking access to non-legit content. The fact that they are filtering content won’t change anything in regards on how the users that want to access nonlegit content use the same sites they’ve been using for a while (such as The Pirate Bay and similar). This wont change much either.
The only thing that we might see decline rapidly over time is the bittorrent.com site users, as they flock to other sites that accomplish what they want to.
February 27th, 2007
You are correct, Sir; perahaps I should have made myself more clear in responding to your original comment. It is BitTorrent, Inc. that will suffer the consequences of this action.