businessweek.com — The company has raised $8.75 million in venture capital and plans to create a marketplace for dispensing digital goods. BitTorrent aims to distribute movies, music, games, and software and generate revenue either by selling ads within the content or charging a fee for the files.
Sep 27, 2005 View in Crawl 4
Closed AccountSep 27, 2005
Alright lets all pay for something we can just take. I will be the first one to pay for this service!<a class="user" href="http://www.geek2us.net">http://www.geek2us.net</a>Coffee
coffeebeanSep 27, 2005
I wonder how this will be seen by current BitTorrent users. Are they selling out or will this improve bittorrent?
Closed AccountSep 27, 2005
Yeah he had a great idea, I can see the day in which we can watch what we want on demand for a fee by using the internet and bittorrent. I then think each person who seeds files for lets say a 10 to 1 ratio should be paid a small fee by the copyright holder for continuing to seed after that 10 to 1 ratio. Only of course after the person has paid to view the copyrighted material, only then would they be eligible for a small re-imbursement for sharing the bandwidth so others can pay a fee to view the same copyrighted material. Go ahead steal my idea, I just wanna watch new movies legally the day they come out while in the privacy of my own home.
ranjurSep 27, 2005
I'd venture that a system like rewritable mentioned would be ideal, but the problem is, you wouldn't get everyone onboard. I think you'd have the usual squabbling over rights and whatnot, and we'd never get a unified, cheap source for all our digital content (especially TV shows). If anyone from the 'industry' is listening, the reason I download TV shows currently is because I can't get a good source of High Definition content. And no, I'm not subscribing to one of the services because for $10 extra they give you about 10 HD channels. I'm yearning for the day everything goes to HD, so programs won't look like ass on my widescreen television.
aooogahSep 27, 2005
I don't mind paying for downloads through commercials in television shows and movies. I can always skip ahead in my media player anyway if they get really annoying. Music downloads, on the other hand, should have a fee since it would be simply wrong to stop for a commercial break in the middle of a song.
diecastbeatdownSep 27, 2005
this is great. content needs to reach people at the fastest speed possible, and relying on individual networks to supply that content is just insanity (read as: some ISP in kentucky should not be the only source for a single file, etc). with more and more distributed networking via torrents we the people of the net should be able to retreive content as fast as we possibly can. all thats needed now is a real streamline OS and browser.
Closed AccountSep 27, 2005
sellouts
richmanSep 27, 2005
As long as you have a choice between using the free bittorrent clients we have today or using the commercial clients (with restricted use of private trackers), then I don't mind.
thetronSep 28, 2005
It won't work. If they let people use any bittorrent client with DHT enable client, It means the non-subcribers could bypass a pay subcription systemHowever using their own BT client without DHT. Would snarf this
topgalerSep 28, 2005
If they charge a fee for the files, it needs to be smaller than the normal fee, otherwise it would be a rip-off. I'm a long-time Bit Torrent user and for non-commercial/creative commons content, I can justify sharing the file. Why should I help foot the bandwidth bill for a company I'm buying or licensing something from?
gizmolaOct 5, 2005
This sounds like a really half baked idea. Bittorrent is not a network, it's a protocol. It's a good idea, that in actual practice doesn't tend to work all that great, but in terms of the situation where Joe Average has something great to share with others, Bittorrent is the best thing going. The entire point of Bittorrent is *not* to have a centralized hub. Furthermore, advertising as a revenue model on the web is the fastest way to go belly up, and I thought that venture capitalists would have figured this out by now.