Content owners should embrace BitTorrent, not fight it
Welcome to the BitTorrent and BitTorrent client news section of Quartermeg.com!
Jonathan Arber: Dec 2, 2005
The BitTorrent P2P filesharing protocol has been steadily picking up users since its release in 2003, but over the last six months it has really taken off - its creator Bram Cohen claims that BitTorrent accounts for a third of all Internet traffic. Most recently, it hit the headlines when Cohen met with the head of the MPAA (the US cinema industry association) to discuss how BitTorrent could be used for legitimate commercial services.
Comment: Press reports on Cohen's meeting with the MPAA misleadingly implied that BitTorrent is either a P2P network, such as FastTrack or Gnutella, or a software application like Kazaa or Grokster. But it's neither. When people say "BitTorrent", they generally refer to the file-sharing protocol. There's no one BitTorrent network, nor is there one single piece of client software.
The BitTorrent protocol was designed to transfer large files over the web to multiple users without wasting bandwidth or crippling networks. It was quickly taken up by users to share copyrighted content, because it's ideal for sharing content such as movies, dvds and software.
It is largely due to BitTorrent that filesharing activity has swung away from music, towards software and movies, which often appear only hours or days after (or sometimes before!) their cinema release - hence the MPAA's interest. Indeed, over 50% of filesharing activity on the web is now attributed to BitTorrent - and this figure is growing.
Music labels, movie studios and software houses increasingly realise that BitTorrent is not only hugely popular, but that its decentralised nature means it is virtually unstoppable. As soon as one torrent link site is shut down, another five pop up to take its place, and the lack of a central network makes it hard to find targets for concrete legal action.
However, we believe that there's a massive opportunity here for the content owners. At present, BitTorrent clients are still relatively complex to use, putting off ordinary consumers. On top of this, users have to wade through the murkier recesses of the web to find the sites hosting torrent links. There is no reason why the content owners can't build their own torrent sites, offering links to download versions of their files with DRM (digital rights management) protection, or even build an iTunes-style interface through which users can buy and download large pieces of content such as movies or software.
A combination of the speed and efficiency of the BitTorrent protocol and the commercial savvy of the big content players could easily entice many users to start downloading movies and software over the web, which also greatly reduces distribution costs. Of course, the price would have to be right, and there are all sorts of revenue-cannibalisation and channel issues.
Rather than fruitlessly chasing those BitTorrent users who spread copyrighted material, content owners should look towards using the protocol to offer new distribution services that are easy to use and reliable, and thus perhaps entice users away from illegal filesharing.
View the complete bittorrent article here. |
