p2pnet - rss feed: BitTorrent gets $8.75 million
p2p news / p2pnet:- Bram Cohen’s days of nickel-and-diming it through donations are over.
He’s Hollywood bound.
He and partner Ashwin Navin have raised $8.75 million from a venture capital firm DCM-Doll Capital Management, says USA Today.
The money will be used to “improve its [BitTorrent’s] infrastructure and make it more appealing to Hollywood,” says the story.
“The piracy business is not something anyone can make money on,” Navin is quoted as saying. “We want to distribute paid and ad-supported content, using this technology.”
BitTorrent is becoming a critical player in “bringing content to market online for the entertainment industry,” Navin said recently.
“The Internet tears down so many limits that the industry endured using physical distribution,” he says, “and now, thanks to the efficiency of BitTorrent, the entertainment industry can securely offer unlimited selection at aggressive prices to a global audience.”
Something you think we should know? tips[at]p2pnet.net
See:-
Hollywood bound - Bram Cohen goes to Hollywood, August 1, 2005
USA Today - BitTorrent gets $8.75M from venture-capital firm, September 27, 2005
aggressive prices - BitTorrent and the cartels, September 12, 2005
September 27th, 2005 at 3:55 pm
and i was flamed for predicting this in an earlier piece.
just wait - the cartels WILL buy the BT company and have more leverage to threaten and close down every tracker they find, suing more innocent people into submission.
just wait.
good luck, bram.
September 27th, 2005 at 4:34 pm
Gee, even Ashwin Navin, of all people, has bought into the cartel’s spin and started calling it ‘piracy’.
1) I don’t know of any file sharer who wears an eye patch and has a parrot sit on their shoulder while muttering “Shiver me timbers.” and “Aaaargh…” while on line. (Halloween Costume Idea: “Software Pirate.”)
2) ‘Piracy’ involves taking a tangible object belonging to another person or group of people and depriving them of it’s benefit and utility. Furthermore, to differentiate ‘piracy’ from just plain old ‘theft’, most dictionaries state that piracy requires the use of a sea-going vessel. File sharing on p2p is not ‘theft’ either, for the same reason that piracy isn’t. Most filesharing occurs on dry land, not on the high seas.
3. What this activity could possibly be is ‘infringement’. It depends on what you do with the file. Mere downloading does not infringement make. If you are downloading an album that you already have on vinyl, but want to have a digital copy, you are committing ‘fair use’, not infringement, piracy, theft, kleptomania, or anything of the sort. (I’m still waiting for the RIAA to suddenly make a pronouncement that it was intended all along that LPs and 45s were deliberately designed to wear out and thus no one is entitled to an immortal copy of the content they’d purchased contained on such things.)
4. They don’t want to use the correct term for this activity because the word sounds so ‘wimpy’. Jeez, it’s got ‘fringe’ right in the middle of it, just like the slipcovers on Grandma’s couch. ‘Piracy’ sounds much more like a violent and despicable act and conjures up more masculine and aggressive images.
Finally, a question for the dictionary publishers of the world? Do you try to remain neutral when crafting the definitions of words that may frequently be used when discussing politically controversial topics? Yes? Okay, then why are you starting to add the cartel’s definition of the word to the dictionary then? The ones I looked at stopped at ‘copying’ in the definiton as in “The unauthorized copying of another’s intellectual property.” when it should be “The unauthorized copying AND SALE of another’s intellectual property.” Otherwise it’s just infringement and Grandma’s boring old couch.
Having looked at several (supposedly scholarly and detatched) on-line dictionaries and a few in print, not a single one of them offers “The murder of unborn children.” or anything like it as a definition for ‘abortion.’ As publishers of scholarly works, you should not be perpetuating one side’s propoganda in a political controversy.
Those in the p2p community should take advantage of every opportunity to re-balance the vocabulary by correcting the improper use of certain words and terms when the cartel spinmeisters and Big Media use them to inaccurately describe the activities that take place with it.
–TG
September 27th, 2005 at 5:17 pm
in other words they have been bought out by hollywod and this is the last we will ever hear of them or they will alter BT so it cannot be used with non drm files
September 27th, 2005 at 6:43 pm
Ive been flamed several times for pointing out the INTENT of most comercial peer to Peer companies is to monetise thier bussness models .
People didnt belive me when I said eDonkey and Limewire where going to move to a paid model .
September 27th, 2005 at 8:32 pm
If you don’t feel any heat, you’re not cooking ; )
Cheers!
September 27th, 2005 at 8:43 pm
From now on, DON’T UPGRADE YOUR BIT TORRENT! Just stay with the current one!
We can’t let them make BT more “hollywood” friendly…
I will refuse to use a BT program that lets them see what I’m dling… or restricts me in anyway!
September 27th, 2005 at 8:53 pm
Bram (Stoker) looks like a member of some lame 80s metal hair band, & why is Mike Myers standing next to him???
September 27th, 2005 at 8:57 pm
If these Mafia-like cartels continue on their paths, they will cannibalize their businesses. Broadband subscription’ll disappear if they lock down the Net. If energy costs continue to spiral, many people will have to choose - heat or cool the house/gas up the car to go to work OR keep paying for high speed internet service? Hmn…the choice’ll be easy for the majority of people. Lock down technology & eventually people’ll more important things to do with their hard earned cash.
September 27th, 2005 at 10:14 pm
if you’re interested, here is the original article from jon:
http://p2pnet.net/story/5773
and my response:
http://p2pnet.net/story/5783
quite a few ridiculous flames (as is the standard reaction to most of my articles) claiming i was off base and should get lost, and a few supporting me.
well, here’s a big fat piece of humble pie for all those ANONYMOUS COWARDS who think they know it all.
September 27th, 2005 at 10:15 pm
Yeah, I had the temerity to say that Napster & “free” unfettered music downloads would not be around forever a few (cough) years back on the afterdawn BBs.
Wow, I did I get napalmed. Talk about ostriches.
(For those of you with Molotov cocktails in hand I said UNFETTERED.)
BT getting sucked in by the dark side. Too bad.
BTW, 9 mil prolly gives the “investors” controlling interest already…
September 27th, 2005 at 10:25 pm
nah, he looks like Chekhov or Sulu…or maybe just one of the unnamed red-shirted extras that always get killed in Star Trek TOS.
when the cartels buy BT, he’ll be wearing a red shirt and will be dumped.
September 27th, 2005 at 10:27 pm
you moron, they can do that already. your ip address is already available. plus BT is open source so if they had some special function which were too intrusive, we’d just rip it out.
bitorrent has the opportunity to actually force the cartels into being smart about media distribution.. i hope they can pull it off
September 27th, 2005 at 10:30 pm
name-calling isn’t very nice. idiot.
but i hope you’ll enjoy the cartels’ versions of BT with DRM-only files, spyware, adware and restricted to crappy wmv/wma/quicktime”matroska files. plus, it won’t be free, so…enjoy!
September 28th, 2005 at 12:06 am
The moron name calling thing is not okay. It kinda makes you sound… well…
I hope the OTHER opinions you expressed in your post are right. Some closed software has gone open like open office. I don’t see why they could not do it the other way around. IMHO 9 mil will most likely place a lot of “force” pushing in the opposite direction of which you speak. As I said, I hope I’m wrong and you’re right…
September 28th, 2005 at 12:20 am
To be honest, i knew LOKI was a scam as soon as i saw it. I just had a gut feeling, thats why i didn’t give any money.
As far as Bram etc.. is concerned, well, all they did was create a protocol, just like http, ftp, SOCKS. Once you create it and release it, it’s public, and they can’t trade mark/patent it now. So basically, if the cartels want to waste their money on it, it’s fine with me. There will always be free alternatives.
The only possible implication for this is, it might give the cartels more ammunition against free services. As they can claim to provide legal alternatives. However, even that seems stupid, because people will not accept paying for items and the bandwidth to distribute it to others, all saving the cartel money.
I also think we need to re-design the torrent system slightly differently. Currently, the trackers are far to exposed to attacks by the cartels.
September 28th, 2005 at 12:36 am
Any “version” of BT that would actually be “appealing to hollywood” would by default have to be a shadow of it’s former self. It would have to be dumbed way down, only work with DRM infected files and/or have some half assed “filtering” features. My assumtion is that a closed exclusivly pay-per-POS delivery platform using BT technology is what will happen, along with a major effort to stomp out the way BT is currently used ,not only infringing use, but ALL use. Amateur and free “legit” content is just as big a threat to hollywood as infringing on their copyrights.
Ashwin Navin states, “[with BT technology]… the entertainment industry can securely offer unlimited selection at aggressive prices to a global audience.”
Agressive in what sense Ashwin? I think he’s either dreaming or got sucked in. You choose.
September 28th, 2005 at 1:00 am
sucked in, of course. that’s what happened when they give you millions of bucks to play with. plus a new house in a gated comunity, a couple of humvees, privates schools for your kids. who could resist?
he’ll be lying in the gutter drinking woolite in a few months after the cartels are finished with him.
September 28th, 2005 at 5:04 am
I find it hilarious that Ashwin Navin commented recently that bittorrent isn’t interested in P2P file sharing in anyway, and that edonkey etc can have all the traffic.
Does anyone seriously believe hollywood or anyone else for that matter (including venture capitalists) would be interested in it if it wasn’t for P2P file sharing. I think not. These people are arrogant prats, and i hope they fall on their faces.
September 28th, 2005 at 5:05 am
Well, this might be a bit controversial (quickly applies some 3000+ sunscreen) but good luck to him.
He’s had a good idea, made it work, and now he’s gotten it to the point where he’s in a position to make money off it. As long as the cartels don’t screw him, he’s laughing. Personally if i was him, i’d sell the rest of my stake in it and run. With 8.75mill, hell even in the us you could retire on that and never have to work again.
Then again if it was me, i’d do all that, and then create bt2, new and improved, with all kinds of things the cartels would really NOT like added to it. The thought that their money paid for development of an even better p2p app that’s gonna “cost them billions!”(at least if you believe them anyway) would really be a kick in the ghoulies. But i’m a bastard like that ;o)