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The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

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

#541

Post by adjagu »

Semaphor wrote: post #475
arximboldi wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Torrents don't really work for music. Soulseek is your friend there, super old-school but great community and it has basically everything. I also buy almost everything I find on Bandcamp. Excepting those über-hipster techno artists with 100-copies vinyl-only releases (but those you can usually still find rips on Soulseek.)

Before there even was Bandcamp, there was Oink's Pink Palace [0], not only one of the best sources for music (NiN's Trent Reznor was a member & user of the site), some (lesser known) artists even released music exclusively on OiNK. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oink's_Pink_Palace

To add to your comment is the interview of Trent Reznor and Saul Williams from 2007 [1].

Begin excerpt from said interview:

What do you think about OiNK being shut down?

Trent: I'll admit I had an account there and frequented it quite often. At the end of the day, what made OiNK a great place was that it was like the world's greatest record store. Pretty much anything you could ever imagine, it was there, and it was there in the format you wanted.

If OiNK cost anything, I would certainly have paid, but there isn't the equivalent of that in the retail space right now. iTunes kind of feels like Sam Goody to me. I don't feel cool when I go there. I'm tired of seeing John Mayer's face pop up. I feel like I'm being hustled when I visit there, and I don't think their product is that great. DRM, low bit rate, etc.

Amazon has potential, but none of them get around the issue of pre-release leaks. And that's what's such a difficult puzzle at the moment. If your favorite band in the world has a leaked record out, do you listen to it or do you not listen to it?

People on those boards, they're grateful for the person that uploaded it — they're the hero. They're not stealing it because they're going to make money off of it; they're stealing it because they love the band. I'm not saying that I think OiNK is morally correct, but I do know that it existed because it filled a void of what people want.

Cease excerpt from said interview.

Flash forward 11 years and there still isn't a legal alternative to OiNK' Pink Palace (OPP) that can hold a candle to it. I love music, but the music that I love I can not find on any streaming service.

The bands I like are old enough that they are no longer touring or producing music and since I can not find any of their "old" songs on any (legal) streaming or downloading sites I am left with zero options to support the bands I personally like.

[1]: https://www.vulture.com/2007/10/trent_reznor_and_saul_willia...

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

#542

Post by kelnos »

zimpenfish wrote: post #466
kelnos wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> but I doubt even a company like Netflix has the clout to negotiate better terms. I think they might be getting there - they've shown they can generate their own content that people want to watch and that they're a "destination" site - both pretty big sticks to wield at the next relicensing discussion. (Imagine trying to explain to your investors that your next 10 years of films won't be on Netflix...)

I don't really think they're getting there. Stuff like Disney planning to pull most of their content off Netflix in favor of their own streaming service they're going to release makes me wonder how strong Netflix really is. I feel like studios could all develop their own walled gardens, avoid giving Netflix a cut, and do quite well.

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

#543

Post by wpietri »

XorNot wrote: post #312
wpietri wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just make your content available, easy to obtain and people will pay for it. It's that simple. No, that's just easy from a consumer perspective. But it's not simple at all from the business perspective. Making movies and TV is expensive and complicated. Getting them to break even means a lot of careful work to maximize revenue and profit from a variety of revenue streams. It means dealing with a lot of players that…

Except people would happily accept variable pricing for content provided it was centralised. Steam gets this so right - games change price all the time, go on sale etc. It's the same phenomenon you see with landlords - rental properties go unoccupied for huge periods of time because they believe they'll get a better deal just in the future - with media we've let absurd copyright durations do the same damn thing, and…

Sure. Consumers like this and Steam likes this, because they get a cut of everything on their platform. But game makers are maybe not so interested in having their industry collapse into a monpsony situation, where their choices are 1) give Valve whatever Valve wants and accept whatever Valve gives them in return, or 2) don't make games.

Free markets don't promise perfect efficiency in each case. They promise to be reasonably efficient on average. They also don't promise perfect happiness for just one side of the market; they're a means of reaching a compromise between all participants.

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

#544

Post by wpietri »

andrei_says_ wrote: post #358
wpietri wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just make your content available, easy to obtain and people will pay for it. It's that simple. No, that's just easy from a consumer perspective. But it's not simple at all from the business perspective. Making movies and TV is expensive and complicated. Getting them to break even means a lot of careful work to maximize revenue and profit from a variety of revenue streams. It means dealing with a lot of players that…

What if the correct licensing entity could receive the micropayment made by the viewer? What hidden complexity am I missing on the delivery / payment side? Not speaking of making content free, but making content easily accessible, at a nominal price. The easily accessible part has been proven solveable, by hobbyists, already.

You are missing that movies are not primarily paid for through direct sales and micropayments. Movies have an extremely complicated system of distribution to many audiences and through many media. The point of this system is to maximize producer revenue. If they don't do that, they can't afford to make movies.

US movie studios are reasonably good at making movies. They are maybe not so good at translating them into Chinese, figuring out how to market them in China, and distributing through the many channels there (first-run theaters, second-run theaters, VOD, DVD, streaming, and probably more). So they sell distribution rights to other companies.

If you want to replace that, you have to come up with a system that is better both for consumers and producers. Yes, hobbyists have figured out part of what's better for consumers. (Although those technologies are terrible compared with Netflix, so only a part.) But optimizing for one criterion is way easier than optimizing for two or more.

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

#545

Post by mixmastamyk »

floatboth wrote: post #491
dijit wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was this way with iTunes for a long time. iTunes successfully turned me off pirating music, why would I do it when I can pay 99p for a song and have all the metadata correct, including album art, perfectly synced to all my devices in perpetuity? And no DRM means I can play them on my non-apple/iTunes devices and media players.. great! Well, unfortunately I want to own my music, so I don't like to use streaming serv…

> all the metadata correct, including album art https://picard.musicbrainz.org/ I even… buy music on iTunes… and overwrite all of their metadata with MusicBrainz's.

Why, is it better?

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

#546

Post by mixmastamyk »

rayalez wrote: post #411
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…

Also don't forget a much narrower content selection. I'm happy to pay for Netflix, but if you live in the wrong country, it has like 10 times less good content than the US version. I understand that there are business and licensing reasons for that, but it is still a bummer to use a much inferior second rate version of the website.

The US version is losing content every month. Brazil looked a lot better, my guess is that they know Brazilians will not pay for anything, haha, even if they could.
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