Grokster ‘comforts’ BitTorrent
p2pnet.net News:- “We take comfort in the Supreme Court decision on Grokster.”
RIAA boss Mitch Bainwol, perhaps? Or the MPAA’s Dan Glickman, maybe?
Nope. That’s BitTorrent’s Ashwin Navin who last October declared, “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”.
Two US courts unanimously ruled a p2p application owner can`t be held responsible for what a user does with its software, but the US Supreme Court decided otherwise and the entertainment industry, with the Big 4 Organized Music labels to the fore, applauded vigorously. They’ve since been been using the decision to swallow, and eventually regurgitate as re-born, the independent commercial p2p companies.
The first quote comes in an InfoWorld Q&A and Navin goes on to say:
That [Grokster]placed a lot of emphasis on intent. So if you have the right intent you should take comfort in the fact that the law and any courtroom will look at what you’ve done to validate your status. From the very early days, [BitTorrent inventor] Bram [Cohen] never encouraged anyone to use BitTorrent for piracy. In fact, he said that would be a stupid thing to do, because BitTorrent doesn`t guarantee you any anonymity. In fact, we’ve gone to copyright holders and tried to engage them in licensing efforts so people can go out and license their content legally.
Here’s Torrentfreak on another aspect
In a recent interview with InfoWorld, the co-founder of BitTorrent Inc, Ashwin Navin made an interesting statement, one we just couldn’t help but question. He says BitTorrent.com filters out illegal content.
Published today, InfoWorld’s interview with Mr. Navin is about BitTorrent Inc’s new relationship with Hollywood as they try and build a content delivery system using BitTorrent, and DRM (we’re pissed about the latter). When asked about the illegal torrents that BitTorrent.com indexes and if the company was planning to remove them, Ashwin Navin said, ‘Absolutely. BitTorrent.com is filtered so that we will not surface links for unlicensed content.’
It’s interesting how BitTorrent Inc’s focus has shifted to include DRM and be restricted to only legal content. The initial goal of BitTorrent.com was to index all the various movies, music, TV shows and other files available over BitTorrent. Wired News reported in 2005 on the upcoming launch of the site that was going to be ‘an advertising-supported search engine dedicated to cataloging and indexing the thousands of movies, music tracks, software programs and other files for download.’
We recently wrote about how BitTorrent.com was helping game developers distribute demos. In that article we profiled the strategy game Disciples II: Dark Prophecy. It was only a demo. But if you type ‘Disciples’ into the search box on BitTorrent.com, you’ll find both the demo and a pirated version of the full game. Or try searching for ‘Prison Break’ and see what you find. Each one of the 29 results you get is a copyrighted file. How exactly do these ‘filters’ work?
How does BitTorrent.com get all this illegal content? It obviously doesn’t have an active uploading community like The Pirate Bay or Torrentspy. Instead, it indexes other torrent sites like The Pirate Bay, Meganova, Torrent Portal and TorrentReactor.
So, our question is, How is BitTorrent.com different from any other so-called illegal torrent site that indexes copyrighted content? Btmon.com does exactly the same thing! Sure, BitTorrent.com’s frontpage is full of game demos, legal music downloads and movie trailers, but one little search query away is just about every popular movie, TV show, music album and computer game.
In our minds, and according to US law, what BitTorrent.com is doing is not illegal. The DMCA clearly states that websites are only required to take down files if the copyright holder or a representative files a complaint. But why does the MPAA sue sites like Isohunt and Torrentspy (who also respect the DCMA), while they’re in bed with BitTorrent?
If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.
Also See:
making peace with the MPAA – The new, corporate BitTorrent, October 11, 2007
Torrentfreak – BitTorrent Inc: We Don`t Index Illegal Torrents, January 1, 2007
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January 2nd, 2007 at 4:24 pm
“Or try searching for ‘Prison Break’ and see what you find. Each one of the 29 results you get is a copyrighted file”
None of those 29 torrents is actually an infringing video. This shows how little time people dedicate to research before writing an article.
January 3rd, 2007 at 12:30 am
Yeah and I guess you are going to say next that thgey have NO copyrighted content? You are a fool if you think that is true. Mabye it is you that should do some research.
January 3rd, 2007 at 8:54 am
…i love how ashwin co-opted a court case which the entertainment industry won, in his favor… bittorrent has crafted a clever strategy to strike a balance between the entertainment and tech lobbies without spending the millions that google pays in youtube bribes
January 3rd, 2007 at 9:49 pm
Its only a matter of time before copyright owners sue these guysz into submission at at least out of the dream world they are presently in. Isn’t it a laugh that these guys think using the very same defences that saw others found liable for copyright infringement in the U.S and Australia, are going to work for them!
January 5th, 2007 at 9:47 pm
Take it from me Ashwin Navin is a total eyewash and a complete fraudster and uses his fraudulent skills to con the mpaa and eventually bram cohen too …heard that he duped a company in India after he left yahoo so bad that the person had to sell off his assets and is today drowned in debts.