Australia will set an unwelcome precedent if it capitulates to the movie industry in its legal fight with iiNet, warns BitTorrent CEO Eric Klinker. Last month the Australian High Court allowed the Australian Federation against Copyright Theft (AFACT) to appeal the decision of the Full Federal Court handed down in February this …

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Monday 3rd October 2011 06:38 GMT Blarkon

BitTorrent has already managed to wipe out almost all science fiction programming on TV. You can scream until you're blue in the face that content producers need to have a business model where consumers can get things for free and choose to pay for what they want - but the reality on the ground is that if it doesn't make money, it probably won't get made and when users are given a choice to pay (with the production of TV now treated more like Busking) the vast majority won't.

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1. Monday 3rd October 2011 07:17 GMT Anonymous Coward
  
  Rubbish.
  
  Reality TV and other cheapo popular crap is what has killed Sci-fi.
  
  When TV companies can get higher ratings for shit like Big Brother at a fraction of the cost they are obviously going to go with that.
  
  Blaming it on BitTorrent has no basis in reality.
  
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2. Monday 3rd October 2011 09:12 GMT The Fuzzy Wotnot
  
  BT my arse!
  
  Cheap and cheerful shite, shovelled out by TV and movie studios for the dumb-down masses to consume! That's what's killed decent programming.
  
  Simple economics. Making cheap, safe shite TV at a fraction of the cost, using cheap labour and dirt cheap writers knowing it will sell and with it the ad-space in between or take a chance on new exciting ideas with fresh talent that encourage people to think? You tell me which one ensures the TV execs get a nice new, shiny Bentley every year and £1M gaff in the country?
  
  All this shit TV has had the opposite effect on me, thank God. I haven't watched broadcast TV for years, I just start moaning about the shite advertising and turn off. I now spend most of my time out and about taking photos or just country walking. If everyone started turning off they'd have to start seriously looking at the crap they pump into our homes and make half decent programmes.
  
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  1. Monday 3rd October 2011 15:55 GMT Field Marshal Von Krakenfart
    
    BB
    
    According to Stephen Fry on his QI qrogram, Sir Joseph Bazalgette who designed Londons sewage system to take the shit out of peoples homes, had all his good work undone by his great grandson who created Big Brother and pumped shit back into our homes .
    
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3. Monday 3rd October 2011 15:04 GMT Chad H.
  
  What utter nonsense
  
  There's just as much sci fi TV as there ever has been. Fringe, Doctor Who, Torchwood, Eureka, arguably Warehouse 13, Clone Wars, Nikita, I could go on.
  
  Sci Fi has been mistreated by tv networks for longer there has been an Internet - see Star Trek.
  
  Sure, some of the big names (Trek and Stargate) have gone dark but that was due to poor writing, not bittorrent.
  
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Monday 3rd October 2011 06:40 GMT Winkypop

Which can be all boiled down to:

We want more of your money, give generously.

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Monday 3rd October 2011 07:18 GMT Kevin Johnston

Valid point, to be promptly ignored

I liked the point about chasing how this stuff gets into the public domain. So much is available before it even hits the mainstream cinemas that choking it off at that point would be a lot simpler, but of course the studios would have to foot the bill for that option wouldn't they.

That should be an argument the ISPs are making and I can think of a number of suitable parallels in real life where the originator would be expected to show they had made all reasonable efforts before they could hassle the end of the chain but I shan't feed the trolls as they all fail if taken to extremes .

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Monday 3rd October 2011 09:39 GMT DrXym

P2P needs to get smarter

The reason the movie / music industry gets away with this stuff is in part because bittorrent and other p2p networks don't provide enough ways for users to be anonymous, or to have plausible deniability. Even encryption is usually disabled. So lawyers know IP addresses they believe to have copied content they believe to be infringing and they can go after them.

Some things that could increase user's security (at the cost of speed/bandwidth):

* Encryption on by default. i.e. the protocol would mandate encryption. There is no reason not to do this.

* Intermediate proxy nodes. It lowers the probability that the requesting IP is the ultimate recipient.

* It's probably a good idea that nodes favour proxies which are geographically part of another jurisdiction.

* Hopping. Requests can be made to hop between proxies.

* Proxies would maintain a cache of session data minimizing the need for expensive hops for popular data.

* Phantom requests. When a node reqfile is requested, protocol should also proceed to download (and discard) another file of similar size, perhaps one which is "trending".

* Distributed search so there is no need for pirate bays etc.

Some of these features would sound familiar to people who've heard of Freenet. But with a more conventional p2p the idea would be to strike a sensible default balance between performance and complete anonymity. Users could still adjust things if they wanted. Authorities / industry could still infiltrate the system but it would require a lot more effort to do and would give users a far greater presumption of innocence than is currently offered.

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