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BitTorrent Partners With TV and Movie Companies
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Wed Nov 29, 2006 08:42 AM
from the why-again-please dept.
from the why-again-please dept.
An anonymous reader writes "BitTorrent Inc just announced that they teamed up with several TV and Movie companies. The new list of partners includes 20th Century Fox, Paramount PicturesG4, Kadokawa Pictures USA, Lionsgate, MTV Networks (Comedy Central, MTV and more), Palm Pictures and Starz Media.
These deals will add a great deal of content to the BitTorrent video store, including popular movies like Mission: Impossible III and X-Men The Last Stand and popular TV-show such as 'Prison Break' and 'South Park.'"
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Does anyone have details on this one? (Score:2, Funny)
Not details, but strong suspicions. (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been thinking though about how you could do DRM on bittorrent-delivered files, and it seems like a problem. Bittorrent only works because you have many people distributing the same file; if each client's copy is encrypted with a personal key (which is the only way to keep people from redistributing them) then P2P won't work.
I suspect that they try to dodge this problem by using a client program that's really, really ugly -- lots of obfuscation, use of keys stored on remote servers, encryption of everything that's written to disk, etc. I assume that all peer nodes are authenticated against a central database as well, and that their communication is encrypted or at least obfuscated (and naturally, the whole thing will be a 'Trade Secret').
There's really not going to be anything good about this service, except as a technical challenge to hackers. Maybe there are some recently-unemployed programmers in Russia who'd like to give it a go?
Parent
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The DRM will be such that you have to use their player, or a player that is compliant with their DRM. It will then not play until you pay - that video for that player on that machine.
Yes, someone could crack it - theoretically. So what.
Don't buy DRM anything!!! It is just heroin and crack for the entertainment industry. If they think they can get away with it because people are buying it, they they will continue to do it. If they get no revenue from it, they will discontinue it. That doesn't mean that
I can't be the only person who's thought this (Score:5, Interesting)
Take that data, encrypt it with the victim's assigned key, and distribute the video in 2 parts. The encrypted part is personally downloaded, while the bulk data is torrented. Then you just have a special plugin for windows media player or something else that reads both file streams and reconstructs on the fly, never recreating the real file.
20megs out of a 600meg movie would be trivial for them to serve to people and they'd still get the benefit of 600megs torrented.
Parent
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The o
You're overthinking it. (Score:3, Insightful)
Upon downloading the file, you use a program to unlock it. The program would interact with a web-service. It would charge your credit card, give you a username/password, and it would decrypt the file and merge in your unique signature. You'd never see the key that's used to decrypt the file. It's never stored on your PC and it's encrypted itself with SSL during the key-retrieval.
I'm not suggesting this is how i
Neither method would work (Score:2)
And of course, the "thousands of keys" technique is still predicated on a single symmetric key protecting the file... that's the only one you care about breaking, where you focus your efforts is just different.
Bittorrent can't be used as a sustainable business model to profitably distribute DRM co
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It's like buying a TV and then waking up in the middle of the night to find out they have been using your truck to deliver TVs to other people and thus make money.
To me, it seems like they are taking the wheel we made, making it square and then selling it back to us.
Read what you just said. (Score:3, Insightful)
And THAT'S where you strike. The only catch is that not only do you have a free-and-clear copy, but so does anybody else (the key is easier to distribute than the now-un-DRM movie itself). In a non P2P model, the content provider can limit the spread of a key that breaks an official file by using seperate per-file encrpytion keys for each registered user.
No amount of mucking about with SSL or PKI will fix that problem.
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First, you would have to have an account to use this service. That means the "original distributor" has your name, address, phone and credit card numbers. When you sign up, a certificate is generated for you to sign any files you have "purchased". The certificate has a public/private key pair. Doesn't much matter in the scheme of things where the private keys are stored, as the distributor can impress upon you that this key uniquely
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Then I guess you won't be a customer, then.
The entertainment studios have already laid down the rules. "We're cool with this as long as the consumer is limited as possible". On the Xbox 360, you can buy TV shows -- for only that Xbox. You can rent HD movies -- for only a couple of days. Even the iTunes store is getting slowly backed into a wall (the restrictions on movies and television shows are a lot more onerou
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So lets get this straight (Score:4, Interesting)
The RIAA are working against AllofMP3 (a RU company) to move their business away from legally selling material to a non-existant case.
Something's a bit twisted about that.
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Not to say I'm defending the RIAA or the MPAA; I hate them both with a passion. But it certainly makes sense, and it's not as sinister as it sounds.
Re:So lets get this straight (Score:4, Insightful)
> case.
They'll profit from selling movies.
> The RIAA are working against AllofMP3 (a RU company) to move their business away from legally selling material to a non-existant
> case.
They're not profiting from someone else selling their IP.
Parent
Re:So lets get this straight (Score:5, Insightful)
They'll also save money by distributing said movies using your bandwidth, instead of theirs. They're capitalizing on the idea that "torrents are cool" and hope that by simply inserting the words "download using bittorrent" that the geek side of you will be more willing to buy.
It's a shame that in some bid to legitimize itself to the media companies, BitTorrent has quite literally been used like a cheap whore. MPAA gets to save money on bandwidth and distribution costs, and your computer gets to run what I can only imagine will be a constantly-running, branded bittorrent client in the background, using up your bandwidth to save the MPAA money.
BT sold out, or were really stupid - one or the other.
Parent
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The RIAA are working against AllofMP3 (a RU company) to move their business away from legally selling material to a non-existant > case.
They're not profiting from someone else selling their IP.
Then the RIAA should work to shutdown every music retailer in Russia. Allofmp3 pays the same to the record "industry" (as it were) in Russia as every other music retailer, and the RIAA gets the same cut from every track sold on Allofmp3 as they do from any other legit sale in Russia.
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That's irrelevant (Score:2)
Does this effect me? (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm also curious, if Peerguardian or the like has bl
Don't get excited; they're not that cool. (Score:2)
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So what's new? (Score:5, Funny)
But I already get those from Bittorrent...
Re:So what's new? (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Does anyone... (Score:2, Funny)
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damn leechers..
Aaaaaay! (Score:5, Funny)
My Only Question (Score:5, Insightful)
Will I be able to play the files?
I'm deliberately not saying what platform I'm on or which media player I'm using, because, if I need a specific media player or platform, the answer to the question is "no".
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the answer via your own criteria is also probably no, due the the 800 different mp4/divx implimentations each of which causes divide by zero errors on each other's players and codecs and generally creates a total nightmare for someone like me, who missed an episode of Lost and just wants to watch that one without having to spend 6 hours hunting through download pages and message boards just to get the entire house of cards perfectly balanced on my PC long enough to w
But all that was already available... (Score:2)
Why should I pay to get an inferior product? (inferior in both resolution and filetype)
If they want to make a go at it and entice people, they need to do two things. 1- make it full HD res and SD res at the highest quality possible, make it a filetype that will play on most anything, and finally create
BOGO (Score:4, Interesting)
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And it's still... (Score:3, Insightful)
So where's the incentive for me for downloading it via bitorrent and letting MPAA profit from using my bandwidth ?
Right idea, wrong protocol (Score:3, Insightful)
Consider it a discount... (Score:2)
If they use HTTP or some other similar strategy, they will have to pay for whatever connection/infrastructure that can support 500 KB/s * num of concurrent clients. To acheive that, the price they need to charge per their business case is 15 dollars a month.
Now with Bittorrent (or something like it), they can skimp a little on
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I will be very (but pleasantly) surprised if the cost savings are passed down to the consumer.
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Re:Right idea, wrong protocol (Score:4, Informative)
This substantially reduces the cost on a content provider that would otherwise need to provision expensive hardware and bandwidth to deliver content via FTP/HTTP. Now they can use the resources of the downloaders and use CacheLogic's infrastructure to provide service even better than the one current BitTorrent networks have and perhaps even better than they could possibly afford to provide by using FTP-like central servers.
Users are motivated to pay BitTorrent and content providers, and not download for free, simply because BitTorrent combined with in-network caching gives a better service than plain BitTorrent. Users that don't pay cannot access Cachelogic's infrastructure. If their pricing is reasonable, I can see this scheme taking off rapidly. I know i would pay 5-10$ to download a movie i want to see now in a couple of hours or less, instead of waiting 2-3 days, while using all my uplink and slowing down my browsing speeds. From the article: "In a joint announcement made today by CacheLogic and BitTorrent, a global network of cache servers has been organized under the name "VelociX". VelociX is the network protocol that governs the actions of a theoretical global community of cache servers. With potentially thousands of networked cache servers at the disposal of the end user, network costs are cut and download speeds are increased significantly.
For example, let's take a look at a CDP enabled client on the prowl for a specific 4.5 gig file. The CDP looks for the closest geographical area for a VelociX swarm, in addition to conventional peers. The VelociX swarm provides the bulk of the file sought after, greatly reducing the reliance on peers. This equates to greatly accelerated download speeds, and since this takes place largely on dedicated servers and not peers, the ISPs costs are reduced.
Unless you plan on downloading authorized content, the network probably isn't for you. In the CacheLogic press release, VelociX will allow "legal content (infringing content is not accelerated) to be inexpensively delivered in minutes instead of hours." Content that is authorized to function on the VelociX network must be manually published via specific hash codes to a central data base."
Parent
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-dave
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It's not simply lets write some software, it's a hardware issue, which is much more complicated. What constitutes ergonomic and easy-to-read? The size of a PDA? The size of a sheet of paper? Of a standard paper-back book? Color or black and white? Fixed form factor or something that rolls up to make it easy to store.
Look at the eInk stuff, it's cutting edge, just out, not yet perfected, yet you assume that there should
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When I think of an eBook reader being perfected, this is what I envision.
Something the size of those old apple PDA's...roughly about the size of a small paperback. 512mb of internal flash memory with a CF card port. Adjustable brightness and contrast on the screen, adjustable font size, standard times new roman font, the ability to read the major ebook formats.
Why is that so d
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-dave
Hard (engineering) problem. (Score:3, Interesting)
To simulate a paper book you'd need something that had a contrast ratio of about 80:1, an ISO brightness (reflectivity at 457nm held at 45deg incident) of 80-90, and a resolution of somewhere around 300 dpi, which means a 2400x3000 pixel display for 8"x10".
I think it might just be that making an eboo
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Oh wait, that's not it. Turns out tons of people want them. What nobody wants is to pay $350 for the reader, $30 for a book (a higher cost than the dead tree version), and then get told when, where, and how many times they can and can't read the book they would own if they bought the dead tree version, but only have a very limited license to with the ebook version.
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That's why it's not just a matter of putting a 486 with 4MiB RAM (Would need some permanent storage in there as well) into a box with a screen. A
Re:seed? no thanks (Score:4, Insightful)
Step 1. Get TV and Movie companies to provide content
Step 2. Get end-users to provide storage and bandwidth
Step 3. Profit!!
Parent
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This just seems like a way for the publishers to lower the operating cost at my expense.
Bittorrent isn't a network. (Score:2)