|
news of 2005-01-08
Editorial: Should the industry pay more attention to BitTorrent?
And I don't mean whether they should shut down more networks, although that's probably what they're thinking about right now. What I mean is: The BitTorrent trackers around the world (and the recently deceased SuprNova.org especially) should give the creators of the illegally shared media quite a good idea of the potential of a commercial version of P2P. Here's how I mean that...
BitTorrent websites that host the torrent files usually give the users statistics about the files. I.e. you can look at the number of finished and unfinished clients (every client's a server). This not only tells a user whether the download's "going to be good" (i.e. fast), it also shows which files are more popular than others.
Now let's for the moment not think about 'moviez', 'gamez' or 'warez' - let's think about TV shows for now. (Although the same thoughts might apply to other areas as well.) People around the world are downloading the newest episodes of their favourite TV shows the very day they first air. There seems to be quite an interest in that. Now the creators of those shows could react in two ways, really. One of them, I think, is the right one. The other one's the one those companies tend to choose. ;)
They should simply make the episodes available to users out there. Legally. At a subscription or per-episode price. (Better do both...) They should make the eps available at the time they air. There's one very good reason why they should do that instead of trying to put their thumb on the illegal downloads. And it goes like this:
The users will download the eps anyway. But if they can download officially - and at an 'okay' price - the companies would make money, they otherwise wouldn't.
Those companies might argue that if they 'kill' the inofficial downloading of episodes of TV shows, they don't "lose money", but even if that was true, it'd still mean less money. However: The past few years should definitely have shown them that they simply don't stand a chance. Look at the music sharing crowd. Until Napster came along, people were already exchanging MP3s on FTP, Hotline, Carracho and other systems. Napster made things big. "The Industry" killed Napster, but what happened? Some people simply went back to the older systems I've mentioned, but most of them simply jumped to other solutions - and although "the enemy" (the illegal traders of songs) certainly took a hit - i.e. it became more difficult to get at the songs you wanted - the basic situation (which "The Industry" doesn't like at all) stayed the same: A new album comes out, and the same day or sometimes even before that, it's available for free (illegally, of course) on the net for everyone to enjoy. Systems like iTMS didn't change that basic problem, but they moved a lot of illegal music downloaders to the 'good' crowd. As Steve Jobs has put it: Good karma. And a much better experience overall.
I think the creators of TV shows should take action soon. The big sin's already happened, anyway. Want an episode of a TV show in good resolution without ad-breaks? No, you don't have to buy an expensive DVD box several months after the show first aired - you can simply download them. If you're on a broadband connection, it's really not much of a problem (besides the 'karma' issue of illegality). My call is simple and should be understood even by the most simple minds in the industry: "Hey, come and make some money, honey."
[ written by fryke™ on 2005-01-08 at 13:57 CET ]
[ contact (e-mail) ] - [ story link ] - [ back to top ]
|
