Hong Kong prof praises BitTorrent
p2p news / p2pnet: "Many people think digital technology is dangerous (for [the] entertainment industry), but it’s also an opportunity."
Surprisingly, the observation comes from Gino Yu, chairman of Hong Kong Digital Entertainment Association, as reported by the China state news agency, Xinhua.
Also surprisingly, he, "doubted the feasibility of the catch-and-sue procedure currently used to bust online piracy, given the difficulty of identifying online pirates and the fast growth of technology innovation," says the story, going on to quote him as saying:
"We need to change the basic business model, the traditionally production and distribution system … the technology development is always faster than the change of law."
Yu, director of the Digital Entertainment and Game Development Multimedia Innovation Center of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and an associate professor, there, said, "Even the Bit-Torrent (BT or peer-to-peer) file-sharing program used by the pirates to download film copy will be useful to make more money," according to Xinhua.
"The BT program has attracted a huge number of online pirates, for it always speeds up the piracy procedure for each movie when there’re more people downloading the same copy at the same time. Though having caused a headache for authorities, the big number of people using the technology also provides a huge untapped market for advertisements and other form of intellectual products that can use the Internet as a vehicle."
Yu also told Xinhua, "Good intellectual products should be enjoyed by the public for free or a low cost, the same as library and museum."
But, lest anyone get the wrong idea, "The government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, however, still pledged no mercy when talking about any form of piracy," warned the story.
(Thanks, Michael)
Also See:
Xinhua – Roundup: media convergence opens new perspective to solve piracy: scholar, February 22, 2006
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