Legal BitTorrent Thinktank

[Agozer]

Ok, so here's the deal: I'm doing some research on legal uses of BitTorrent and the current legal applications (i.e. The BitTorrent store, the upcoming Headweb service, several legal trackers, etc.) that make use of it. This'll be my final paper for this semester.

 

What I'm interested in are your personal opinions an views on how the providers of these services could make these legal Bittorrent marketplaces more accessible to the consumer and how to get consumers to embrace these services. Of course it's no surprise that illegal BitTorrent downloading will always be the choice most will take, but still I'd like to believe that the legal applications have a fighting chance.

 

- So, you see a future of legal BitTorrent?

- What the content should be like and what about the prices?

- How to make it interesting for the masses and if you like to call it that, mainstream?

- What about DRM and other such tricks to prevent leaks to public trackers? Will there ever be a solution that gets accepted by both the consumers and the media companies?

- Quality of the media being sold? Compromises?

 

If at all possible, I'd really like you to wrap your mind around these questions and speak up. Now, I don't want such straightforward thoughtless answers like "Just make everything free for everyone, lol". What I'd like to see is a civil discussion about the future of BitTorrent and what you want from it from a legal point of view.

 

Thanks.

[Gryph]

By when do you need a response to these? I'll probably be able to give you one one Monday after my test. Hopefully that isn't too late.

[ken_cinder]

I've already experienced truly legal uses of BitTorrent.

 

Many companies are distributing their demo's and freeware using torrents instead of your normal HTTP/FTP server.

Even some hardware manufacturers have started distributing driver packages and software bundles for their hardware via torrents.

 

I also don't think people will prefer turning to illegal downloads. If things like movies, music and video games weren't so damn overpriced people would be more inclined to buy them. Digital Downloads for even cheaper would be a blessing.

 

The average music CD here? $20. I'm not paying more than $7.99 for a CD EVER.

 

The average DVD movie here? $22. Why the hell should I pay this much for something I'll probably only watch 1 or 2 times? Renting it is a waste of money too, because it's a good 1/3 the price just to rent it.

 

Games? Don't get me started. The average new game costs $69.99 here. WTF!? How am I supposed to afford to buy games when they are so expensive? If you buy 10 games in a year, that's $700! Not to mention hardware costs.

 

Downloadable content skips the disc pressing, distribution and advertising (In stores) cost. Savings could be HUGE if companies weren't so damn greedy.

[Agozer]

By when do you need a response to these? I'll probably be able to give you one one Monday after my test. Hopefully that isn't too late.

Monday will be fine. The deadline for the draft is on Monday a week from now, and even after that we get a few weeks to polish it.

[OverlordMondo]

I use torrents for legal things all the time. Normally for music. A lot of people use it to cut down on bandwidth costs or some such. I don't know that I'd see any major companies using it to distribute things like music. I think it works better when what you're distributing is free, and that once you start paying for it, no one is saving much money on torrents as opposed to ftp downloads or whatever. Also, a lot of people that don't use computers as much won't want to download an extra program for these things, though they'd probably be convinced to do it eventually.

[Shibathedog]

I did a huge report on Bit Torrent for one of my networking classes and I had a pretty big section dedicated to this. If I still have it somewhere I'll send it to you.

[Agozer]

I did a huge report on Bit Torrent for one of my networking classes and I had a pretty big section dedicated to this. If I still have it somewhere I'll send it to you.

Much appreciated.