BitTorrent dumps sales staff
p2pnet news view | Products:- Bram Cohen’s BitTorrent, the file-sharing protocol which, like P2P file sharing application Kazaa, is most named in the corporate entertainment industry file sharing wars, has fired its entire sales and marketing department, says Valleywag.
“BitTorrent creator Bram Cohen (right) has promised to take down links on his BitTorrent search site leading to Big Seven movie studio downloads and he and the MPAA are to, ‘work together and proactively identify ways to limit access to infringing material available via search engines like the one at BitTorrent.com and to promote constructive innovation in this area,’ states the MPAA,” p2pnet said in 2005, going on:
“The news came during a press conference featuring MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) boss Dan ‘Jedi’ Glickman and Cohen when Cohen, ‘confirmed BitTorrent, Inc.’s commitment to removing links that direct users to copies of pirated content owned by MPAA companies’ from its site.
“In what has to be the largest understatement of the year, Glickman said he’s glad, ‘Bram Cohen and his company are working with us to limit access to infringing files on the BitTorrent.com website’.”
The ‘new’ BitTorrent would among other things make a killing by opening an online store, with Ashwin Navin spearpointing the effort.
Now, Valleywag says the immediate cause of the layoffs was a, “failure to sell the Torrent Entertainment Network, BitTorrent’s attempt at an online media store, to Best Buy for a rumored $15 million”.
According to the story, the deal fell apart because of a recent FCC ruling on file sharing.
Could this have been referring to the Comcast fiasco under which America’s largest ISP has been told to leave file sharers, whose accounts it’d been deliberately blocking, alone?
“CEO Doug Walker, who replaced troubled founder Bram Cohen last fall, had hinted at a rethink of the store in March,” says Valleywag, adding:
“Walker’s also said to be rethinking BitTorrent’s ‘DNA’ service, which sought to offer businesses a cut-rate online content-deliver service, using file-sharing technology to undercut Limelight and Akamai’s prices. BitTorrent is now thinking about making the service free, which would certainly count as ‘cut-rate’ —- but also suggests that it hadn’t had much success selling it.”
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.Stumble It!
Valleywag – BitTorrent Inc. laying off 12 of 55 employees, August 6, 2008
p2pnet – BitTorrent, Hollywood team up, November 23, 2005
Comcast fiasco – Stop throttling traffic, Comcast ordered, August 1, 2008
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August 7th, 2008 at 8:35 pm
Where did you get your info. The content on BitTorrent.com is all legal. I use this service which includes pay and ad supported video.
August 25th, 2008 at 11:57 pm
Anyone interested in “Warez” that even thinks of going to bittorrent.com deserves what they find there, which i’m sure is a whole lot of pay and little to no content. Grow up or use limewire, I have no sympathy to those who get took.