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The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

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Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#361

Post by mattmanser »

andrestan wrote: post #218
mattmanser wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until the EU want to do a new trade deal with the US, and the US decides it wants to co-opt your legal framework to enforce its commercial appropriation of European culture, history and stories through Disney and Hollywood. And then you'll be getting lots of enforcement. The whole copyright thing is just a US export thing, as soon as it becomes a problem for them, they'll force the EU to make it a problem for you too…

"enforce its commercial appropriation of European culture, history and stories" How do you actually mean by this? It seems to me that the vast majority of big Hollywood movies are of US origin and not European. For example see here, http://www.businessinsider.com/highest-grossing-movies-of-20... where only Beauty and the Beast could argued is "appropriation of European culture". If anything, it seems like the EU not…

You've got it ass about tit, Europeans can't create works based on US culture and sell it to them, but the US did just that to them 100 years ago but then forced crazy copyright on the rest of the world.

No-one can sell derivatives back to the US. The US can use elves, orcs, dwarves, vampires, werewolves, Repunzels, Thors, Lokis, fairy godmothers, Romeos, Juliets, etc. commercially all they want.

But we can't use Supermen, Wolverines, Mikey Mouses, etc. commercially.

I'm not saying it's a bad move from the US pov, but let's not claim it's done for the sake of artists, it's done for $$$ tax revenues and keeping US entertainment as a dominant export.

It's basically an extremely effective one way, heavily US favourable trade embargo that they've codified into international trade law.

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#362

Post by webmaven »

Robotbeat wrote: post #44
Retric wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Advertising generally scales linearly with distribution and bandwidth is cheap. You can make money serving 100 Megabyte files files with a few banner ads, so I don't think bit torrent really enables much in that context.

You're right that bandwidth is cheap, so in some ways BitTorrent was made (partially) obsolete simply by availability of cheap bandwidth. But ads are not necessarily desirable for something like Open Access. And generally speaking, I think we should encourage empowered decentralization wherever possible. One thing a peer-to-peer architecture for Open Access distribution could enable would be the ability to put a whol…

Doesn't the supporting data etc. go into an Institutional Repository?:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_repository

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#363

Post by MarkMc »

AlexandrB wrote: post #349
MarkMc wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The time limit on copyright seems to be just an inefficient form of taxation. If Disney keeps copyright of Snow White the government can tax Disney's extra profit to pay for cancer research. Isn't that more socially useful than giving everyone the right to watch Snow White on YouTube for free?

> Isn't that more socially useful than giving everyone the right to watch Snow White on YouTube for free? Why stop there. Wouldn't it be ever more socially useful to hire vandals to break windows and graffiti houses so the government can collect the taxes on the repairs. See also: war. Just because something generates economic activity, doesn't mean it's a net benefit to society.

OK let me drop 'socially useful' from the question: Is it better to (a) allow anyone to watch Snow White on YouTube for free; or (b) fund cancer research with a tax on Disney's sales of Snow White?

With vandalism the costs clearly outweigh the benefits. With copyright extension it seems to me the benefits outweigh the costs.

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#364

Post by Digital-Citizen »

remir wrote: post #110

P2P forced the industry to adapt and now we have good streaming services, but the content selection is nowhere as good as what you can find on torrent sites. What the Popcorn Time devs did was simply amazing. It had a Netflix-like interface plus a huge selection of content that you could watch right away. The industry should learn from these guys. Just make your content available, easy to obtain and people will pay f…

When one uses any of the popular commercial streaming services they also submit to non-free software (proprietary software, untrustworthy by default), and tracking.

The media one gets from such services contain DRM (digital restrictions management; I use this expansion of the term because I side with the people who are subjected to the restrictions, not with the publishers who subject others to those restrictions). DRM is anti-user, always implemented with non-free software, and (even on its own greedy merits) routinely fails to achieve the claimed goal of preventing unauthorized copies. But DRM achieves a little-discussed goal of giving someone else control over one's computer. In this time of remote control and mass surveillance, it's worth noting that DRM is rightly seen by those subjected to it as a threat, not a friend.

And there's nothing incompatible with commercially distributing DRM-free copies of digital works via a free software client. Private BitTorrent trackers work and could be set up and used by authorized distributors to implement commercial distribution. But years into the existence of the commercial streaming services there's no indication that they care to try.

These issues aren't explored at all in the wholly lacking article; these issues are ignored as reasons why people would want to retain full control of their computers and copy data via a free software BitTorrent client.

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#365

Post by eximius »

millette wrote: post #256
scientician wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I volunteer myself and some of my servers to run software to support Wikipedia, Sci-Hub, The Pirate Bay etc if I can do it and have some safeties in place: - Everything encrypted all the time, I have none of the keys - ... I guess I'd just want to be reassured I'm legally and practically safe. Are there any projects like this already? In another thread someone mentioned PopcorntimeXSci-hub which sounds about right wi…

Built on the dat project https://datproject.org/ - my little finger tells me dat will take bittorrent's P2P place in the not too distant future.

It's written on NodeJS. I have a very hard time believing in a systems project written in JavaScript.

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#366

Post by jedberg »

gamblor956 wrote: post #292
jedberg wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Netflix usually doesn't offer even English subtitles to an English-speaking movie if you're in a non-English speaking country! Sadly, this has nothing to do with streaming and everything to do with rightsholders (aka "Hollywood"). The rights on the subtitles are held by the company that makes them, are then sold to the company that distributes the movie, which are then resold to regional distributors, separately fr…

This means that if you want to show, say Transformers, you have to negotiate with one company to show the picture, another company to license the sound, and yet another company for each set of subtitles. Sound is part of the film license in the US and Europe. This includes music and songs within the film. Studios pay out big bucks to license songs for films. For example: my current employer would pay a license of app…

That's not entirely accurate. The song is only licensed for certain uses. For old TV shows especially, digital streaming wasn't a thing, so it wasn't included in the license. They have to be renegotiated for streaming.

That's why sometimes the songs in the shows on Netflix are different than the ones on the DVDs, for example.

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#367

Post by adrusi »

icebraining wrote: post #277
adrusi wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a wireless audio configuration which introduces 200ms latency. This is usually unnoticeable because I watch almost all my video through mpv, which lets me set a 200ms delay on the video to compensate. I can't play Netflix titles through mpv, and as far as I've been able to tell, the Netflix player doesn't have an AV sync setting. My setup is idiosyncratic, and I wouldn't expect Netflix to build in every featur…

https://www.reddit.com/r/LifeProTips/comments/1j7hce/lpt_whi...

This works on the old silverlight player, not on the modern HTML5 EME-based player. I've been able to find some hidden keybindings that work, but those only display information. Let me know if you know how it can be done.

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#369

Post by kelnos »

xxs wrote: post #338
drchickensalad wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're free to think that, and possibly some less important companies could get away with it. However, in reality, the content owners really aren't that dumb and incompetent. There are very punishing legal implications to breaking the contracts, especially your relationship with others. And the content owners don't just do nothing; there's quite detailed questions and requirements they give when you renew their conte…

>You're free to think that, and possibly some less important companies could get away with it. In the EU most people have identity documents... and enough services that provide identity verification. The said verification is mandatory in some industries like online gambling. There is no intrinsic hurdle to remove the retarded IP block. Using VPN to bypass it is just yet another step away but again, why bother with VP…

That doesn't matter. The studio doesn't care that you live in country X. They just care that it's being viewed in country Y. I disagree with this practice as well, but I doubt even a company like Netflix has the clout to negotiate better terms.

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#370

Post by dingo_bat »

Semaphor wrote: post #78

The reason why for me, someone with a netflix and amazon prime account in Germany, bittorrent is neither dead nor declining (for movies and TV shows): a) Being on time. If you want to take part in the online discussion about tv shows, you have to watch them on time. For a ton of shows I can't even buy episodes on the day they come out. Torrenting is still the far superior choice. b) Languages. Yes netflix, I know tha…

> Quality. I don't care that your algorithm thinks my network is not fast enough for HD. Just let me tell it that it's wrong. Or I could torrent and download something in actual HD within just a few minutes.

This is so true. I have a decently fast connection (75mbps) and Netflix's own speed test tells me the pipe really is that fat. YouTube can play 1080p60fps content without breaking a sweat. But Netflix is always blurry af. I tried firefox Chrome edge and even the native windows app. The quality is always lesser than what you can get on YouTube. It's the same on Android. I think it doesn't even show me 720p on my 1440p phone. Even when I pre-download something so the network strength is not an issue.

On the other hand, Amazon prime content is crispy clear 1080p most of the times.

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