MPAA BitTorrent Deal: Bram Cohen covers ass
Filed under: Tech Stuff, Distribution
The MPAA has just sent out a press release in conjuction with this afternoon's announcement that BitTorrent's Bram Cohen is, indeed, in league with the MPAA devil. The release confirms the earlier rumor that
Cohen has pleged "to remov[e] links that direct users to copies of pirated content owned
by MPAA companies". Cohen went on to parrot his stance from the Newsweek interview: “BitTorrent, Inc. discourages the use of its
technology for distributing films without a license to do so. As such,
we are pleased to work with the film industry to remove unauthorized
content from BitTorrent.com’s search engine.”
So, it's not as much of a partnership as some predicted, and as anyone familiar with Open Source will point out, a "commitment" on behalf of Cohen doesn't mean much for anyone else. I found this to be the most interesting aspect of the release: "Over the last year, MPAA has brought lawsuits against several websites using the BitTorrent protocol for illegal distribution of movies. Since then, 90% of the sites sued have shut down." Is Cohen really doing anything here but covering his own ass?
Slyck has the full release.
So, it's not as much of a partnership as some predicted, and as anyone familiar with Open Source will point out, a "commitment" on behalf of Cohen doesn't mean much for anyone else. I found this to be the most interesting aspect of the release: "Over the last year, MPAA has brought lawsuits against several websites using the BitTorrent protocol for illegal distribution of movies. Since then, 90% of the sites sued have shut down." Is Cohen really doing anything here but covering his own ass?
Slyck has the full release.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
11-23-2005 @ 8:56AM
Hardwareguy said...
Cohen knew what he was doing when he put a search engine on BT.com. Now he's playing the "remorseful" child and playing along with authority to stave off punishment.
He had fun while he could.
Reply
11-23-2005 @ 12:35PM
The Jeremy said...
Cohen is covering himself no doubt. But can we blame him for doing so? BitTorrent is a great tech for non-infringement purposes too. I guess too many people forget that when they are trading gray-area content. After all, there are plenty of "podcasts" and "vidcasts" that are distributed through the Torrent process that allows the small scale content makers the ability to distribute their wares without driving up their website bandwidth costs that they would normally incur.
For example, its a great distribution system for the content created by the folks - formerly of (G4)TechTV - at Revision3 (Diggnation, Systm, The Broken, Infected with Martin Sargent, etc.). Check them out at:
www.revision3.com
Reply
11-23-2005 @ 7:25PM
The Jeremy said...
Cohen is covering himself no doubt. But can we blame him for doing so? BitTorrent is a great tech for non-infringement purposes too. I guess too many people forget that when they are trading gray-area content. After all, there are plenty of "podcasts" and "vidcasts" that are distributed through the Torrent process that allows the small scale content makers the ability to distribute their wares without driving up their website bandwidth costs that they would normally incur.
For example, its a great distribution system for the content created by the folks - formerly of (G4)TechTV - at Revision3 (Diggnation, Systm, The Broken, Infected with Martin Sargent, etc.). Check them out at:
www.revision3.com
Reply