p2pnet.net News:- Yesterday, p2pnet re-published a list of BitTorrent sites originally posted by Slyck and several Readers’ Writes bemoaned the fact, saying we might just as well have put up a sign up for the Big Seven music studio and Big Four record label cartels.

“I want to say what a tactical blunder it is to post a list like this on a well known site for p2p news,” says one post. “Why not just send the letter to the MPAA themselves with header go get em’!”

However, none of the sites on this list is secret. Each of them could have been found by anyone with a little knowledge of file sharing. And if you don’t think the MPAA, RIAA or the scalp-hunters who work for them are capable of zeroing in on any or all of the sites on the Slyck list, think again.

Finding IP addies and/or BT sites isn’t rocket science. The studios do, however, have unlimited financial, manpower, media and political resources and when you turn enough monkeys loose …..

The RIAA and MPAA are bully organizations using terror to drive their former customers like cattle. They see you as cash-cows and they want you to use only channels they supply and control.

Hollywood’s principal weapon is Fear. And like all bullies, it picks on people who can’t defend themselves.

However, as someone once said, there’s nothing to fear but fear itself and the reality is: you, as an individual, stand about as much chance of being nabbed by entertainment industry bully organizations as you do of winning the lottery, or the pools, or of being struck by lightning, as Canada’s Dr Markus Geisler emphasised in a recent academic study.

All the Higgins list did was to consolidate 10 of the better-known sites. But there are plenty of others that aren’t on the list. And if their existence increases the numbers of people downloading, all to the better.

‘Devastated’ by p2p
As the numbers of people sharing files increase, obviously, the chances of an individual becoming a victim decrease exponentially. The more file sharing and uploading and downloading there is, the sooner Hollywood will be forced to abandon its terror tactics and the lie that it’s being “devastated” by p2p.

Instead, it’ll have to acknowledge p2p and the p2p networks and applications as primary vehicles of sales, marketing, promotion and delivery, and online ‘consumers’ as the new customers of the digital 21st century who must be courted, not condemned.

That’ll happen, but not without more tantrums and dramatics and foot-stamping on the part of the studios, software builders and labels.

For the moment, the Big Seven movie studio cartel has joined the music industry in using national police forces to try to grind the BT (p2p, in its eyes) networks into the ground, and that they’ve been able to use tay-payer funded agencies for purely commercial purposes is a horror in and of itself.

But the entertainment industry’s Canute-like attempts to turn back the tides of progress will fail.

They’re trying to destroy the future to maintain the past and it won’t work for them any more than it’s worked for others who have tried to do the same thing – and that’s just about every maker of every technology that’s had a radical effect on what people see, hear and do, and how they do it.

The cat is out of the bag.
It was no coincidence that until very recently, p2pnet carried very little about BitTorrent.

Until it became widely popular, most of the files being shared on the p2p networks – especially the movie files – were of low quality.

Now, however, thanks to the inevitable growing interest being shown by the mainstream media in BitTorrent, and thanks to the several well-meaning individuals and organizations which have produced BT for Dummies software, the practice of using it has exploded.

The door is open. The cat is out of the bag.

BitTorrent is probably the first widely available application to make it possible for millions of people to share good, or better, quality digital media along channels opened by p2p. And there’s no way the entertainment industry could continue to ignore that.

Apps and networks able to handle only low-res files are yesterday. It just took the mainstream media a while to cotton onto the fact. Their reports on p2p and BT alerted more and more people to the possibilities, forcing the studios to react.

But just as there are many more BT sites than those on the Slyck list, there are also many other applications and technologies in hand, or being developed, to allow the movement of large VHQ (very high quality) digital media online.

For example, as far back as 2003, using Windows Media 9 software, Rain Networks engineers in Brazil were able to transmit a 90-minute movie by satellite from Rain’s central computer in São Paulo to cinemas across the country.

And it only took 20 minutes.

The movie and music cartels are well aware of, and threatened by, this kind of development. That’s why they’re trying to cram a horse that bolted long ago back into a barn that doesn’t even exist any more.

Sooner or later, they’ll be forced to acknowledge that the change isn’t just happening, it’s already happened and if they’re to get a piece of it, they’ll have to create not just new business models, they’ll also have to take into account the fact that the people who were their former ‘consumers’ are once again ‘customers’ able to completely by-pass them, if they so choose.

Soon, they’ll be wooing you instead of suing you.

In the meanwhile, Slyck’s list will be more of more use to you than the MPAA.

Believe it.

Something you think we should know? tips[at]p2pnet.net

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See:-
struck by lightning - Scamming the media, p2pnet, August 23, 2004
by satellite – The main attraction, Guardian Unlimited, December 4, 2003

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 12th, 2005 at 4:28 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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