The new, corporate BitTorrent
p2pnet.net News:- What happens when the corporate entertainment cartels scarf up open source applications?
They immediately become closed, and that’s what’s going to happen to BitTorrent, which was among the first of the ex-p2p companies to be swallowed live and whole by the corporate entertanment cartels, with Hollywood’s MPAA acting as the front.
Significantly, these days we hear very little from Bram Cohen, the guy who put BT together. Instead, all the talking, and the schmoozing, is left to Ashwin Navin who, Cohen told p2pnet, was introduced to him by an unnamed friend.
What of BT’s relegation to the dark realm of closed systems?
Yesterday, we reported that PaidContent’s Jemima was at Mipcom 2006 when she spotted Navin. She later collared him and, she says in a post, Navin told her his childhood dream was to work at Apple.
Never mind, Ashwin.
Meanwhile, BitTorrent now employs 32 people, “and attracted $9 million in venture funding last year to prepare it for its transcendence to the world of legal distribution,” says PaidContent, going on, “In its current status, around 90 percent of the content on BitTorrent is illegal, although PBS and some other not-for-profit organisations rely on the downloads tool as a major – and very effective – distribution system.”
But not to worry, though, because, “There will be plenty of changes to improve the user experience and the new service will no longer be open source,” states Jemima.
And according to Navin, “making peace with the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) and RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) has created a big opportunity to turn BitTorrent’s secret source into a real product”.
Secret Source into Real Product, eh?
And, “Surprisingly, given BitTorrent’s current status as a totally free product, 33 percent of its users said they would be willing to pay for content,” says the item.
“Had that figure been under ten percent, said Navin, the legal downloads project would not have gone ahead. As it is, the remaining 67 percent said they would be happy with an ad-supported service – if the ads are relevant and targeted. Consequently, BitTorrent is likely to combine a free, ad-supported basic service with a paid-for premium add-on based on unlimited use for a set subscription.”
Interestingly, Jemima says Navin is a (or the?) Pirate King and yesterday, Disney co-chair Anne Sweeney told the Mipcom audience, “We understand now that piracy is a business model. It exists to serve a need in the market for consumers who want TV content on demand. Pirates competes the same way we do – through quality, price and availability. We we don’t like the model but we realise it’s competitive enough to make it a major competitor going forward.”
Also See:
unnamed friend – p2pnet talks to Bram Cohen, April 28, 2006
PaidContent – Interview With The Pirate King, October 11, 2006
business model – Hollywood lauds pirates, October 10, 2006
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October 11th, 2006 at 7:49 pm
“Pirates competes the same way we do – through quality, price and availability”
Is she kidding or is she serious?
October 11th, 2006 at 9:16 pm
So we’ve got an estimated 90% of current BitTorrent traffic that is unlicensed copying, that clearly won’t be on the new BitTorrent network.
And we’ve got an estimated 10% of licensed BitTorrent traffic, from the likes of PBS, NASA, and Linux distributors, that are highly unlikely to pay for the privilege of using the new, closed-source, BitTorrent network so long as the old open-source BitTorrent serves their needs.
Finally, we’ve got the members of the MPAA, who have consistently proven their inability to market an appealing and value-priced product over the Internet.
100 minus 90 minus 10 plus 0. Doesn’t take a degree in computative mathematics, does it?
How is the MPAA possibly going to prop up this doomed business model? Sue NASA for “inducement”? I guess we’ll have to stay tuned.
October 12th, 2006 at 2:59 am
More and more of the worlds isp’s are blocking or at least deprioritising traffic using known filesharing protocols. I suspect the “New and Improved!!!” BT will fall victim to this as much as the old one does. Which isn’t going to help them at all.
October 12th, 2006 at 5:27 am
Well, I am paying for my bandwidth, up and down, so Comcast better don’t pull that crap on us, ’cause I am fuckin’ paying for my bandwidth, and I want it all.
October 12th, 2006 at 7:38 pm
What happens is what happened to Edonkey/Overnet – a better opensourced version arrives (Emule) that doesn’t go closed and corporate. The majority of the userbase moves to the open client, and the original (now closed) client becomes marginalised. The new open client then drives the network, and the orginal slowly disappears as it become less and less relevent.