Bits BitTorrent Seeders: Driven By Profit?

The problem is in this case that it was a release the band paid for themselves, knowing full well not many would buy it, but wanted it to be a special release akin to merchandise. So why did this core group of fans who love them enough seed it when the release will make it to services like spotify? That's not caring about the band. It's a flimsy excuse to say they are doing them a favour by sharing their music when there is legal ways that will honour the bands through prs that are still free to the consumer.

Tbh I'm torn about most of this stuff, there is certainly a lot of exaggeration about profit loss, but I think it effects the little Guy the most.

 

Shock horror people make money from internet advertising and lure people to their website with the promise of fast downloads. I kind of fail to see what the big deal is here, I find it amusing that they actually wasted a considerable amount of time, money and effort on this 'research'. Even if they did shut down these 100 people who supposedly account for 66% of torrents it wouldn't make a great deal of difference in the long run.

 

You actually have totally changed my mind on piracy, ok it isn't right but its not exactly wrecking there lives and they're still earning millions...

 

A small, hardcore team of 100 people doing 66% of the original seeds? I don't know why but I find that quite scary; I imagine a secret cabal at work. Still, I suppose this is to be expected as certain people get known for providing quality rips of things e.g. aXXo.

 

Well, ill be short: long live Pirate Bay and Demonoid, **** the others!

 

Never heard of the "Scene"? It's just a bunch of release groups. There's probably nowhere near as few as 100 people doing it, there's maybe 100 usernames or IP's, but most scene groups probably only use one or two locations to distribute from, and they may have 10's or scores of people in the organisations.

 

Good article, raising awareness that piracy is not always about freedom of speech. The pirates are making a nice tidy profit from it too. No surprises there, I doubt anyone would go to that much effort to 'stick it to the man'.

 

That makes more sense!

I also forgot to say in my original post:

Making profit from torrents? If I were to visit a torrent site, I wouldn't go clicking on ANY adverts they had! As for paying for a premium connection, the whole point is that the downloader is getting something for free - why would they hand over their card details and money to an organisation whose legitimacy is always in question?

 

Who said that? All I said is that that's the way scene/release groups see the issue.

Did you read any of the comments at all?
The statement is only true if the "pirates" are the people running public trackers, not the people releasing the actual material.

Spot on.

 

The majority of computers I fix (from friends and relatives) is by cleaning malware and spyware off their systems and the one thing they all have in common is that they all download from torrent sites. I keep telling them to stay away from them but they do not listen, perhaps I should just refuse to fix them in future.

 

The research is just too out of date. Mininova? Come on, get with the times. And industry fakes? Anyone downloaded one of those recently? And in it for profit? Yeah right, and all that money goes to buy Somalian's new pirate eye patches, or to fund child trafficking. Why do people release? For the fun, prestige, community spirit - not for a bit of ad revenue, as if the release groups see any of the money anyway.

The cat's out of the bag now, so what's got to change? If you're trying to sell something that nobody wants to pay for - then you need to look at what you're selling and how.

Einstein said the definition of insanity was "Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." And copyright holders need to learn from the squared emc dude.

Telling people it's wrong doesn't work!

No I wouldn't steal a car, but I'll watch the latest episode of Fringe thank you very much.

 

I think music should be live, a hell of a lot of the atmosphear and feel of the music is lost when you're sitting in your room rather than in the middle of a pit with hundreds of other screaming people around you. If this was more widespread then it might even get rid of some of the crap musicians/singers that have to get everything touched up to sound half decent before it can be released.

 

The movie/tv/music companies are part of the problem. I want it now!

The music industry has just started to make songs available online when they're played on the radio, but I still can't log into History/Discovery/Fox/Warner Brothers, pay a few pounds and download Ice Road Truckers/Big Bang Theory/tv show of choice when its aired in the US/Canada. If I could pay the source directly to download what I want, just after its shown on TV somewhere, I would. The same goes for movies, make them available for download for a small fee once they finish at the box office.

To me, the biggest part of the problem is not the price, its the availability.

 

I don't want to go to deep into this topic, but the groups are not doing it for fun anymore these days... The hackers of old, who did it for showing off are long gone.
And yes, the groups are releasing their "work" themselves these days aswell running own sites. These sites are just not open to the general public however like TPB, but you need to gain access to them usually by paying some money or offering to seed files by yourself.

 

@M7ck - quick way to be out of work lol

torrents are not destroying the music or film industries - indeed they are actually improving them for consumers.

for Music we have bands touring again as they need to focus on where they can get income - further it pressures the undustry to more open business models that meet consumer need rather than industry - such as spotify.

for film - do you honestly see netflix as having been possible previously or (arguably) the move to digital distribution , common release dates and 3d to keep people in cinemas? though the failure of blueray is largely due to torrents - but I think thats also a good thing (more shelf space now

For productivity software its also great for consumers as they can access the latest and most advanced software for free and given that 99% of income came from business and still does - this has not hurt the producers. It has however hurt open source and smaller suppliers whose cheaper software is less in demand.

the problem for games is that there is no alternate sources of income - there are no movie theatres or tour dates to compensate. This is why the gaming cloud will move in and rule.

Having said that - the push to the cloud is probably good for consumers in the long term as when crysis is on mobile phones, you no longer have to have a desktop etc... you will wonder why you ever had your own computer.

torrents in that sense have pushed the industry to invest in new and better models. If they stick with the old ones they fail and if they offer worse options then consumers will ignore them.

old industry has had a kick, they deserved it now they're finally investing in new products and delivery models to respond.

 

You're kidding right, you think people download a film for free then go out and buy/pay to download again

Take your agenda somewhere else, people pirate to get stuff for free you're not fooling anyone, call a spade a spade, its getting something for free that you should have to pay for

I download stuff, but I dont do it as a preview so I can pay for it late, atleast not with 99% of what I download. If im that interested in it id go to the cinema, otherwise if I didnt download it Id never watch it- doesnt make it right but when somethings not that interesting and you can get it for free, who wouldnt

And what exactly is wrong with that? Someone spends a day in a recording studio and makes a fortune is the way it should work is it

I personally dont see torrents as having that detramental of an effect on film/music sales, most people without the know how wouldnt have a clue how to download something from PB, its only a small precentage that do it. It still isnt right but the effects are being exagerated

 

people also pirate because of availability

if i could pay the uk tv licence fee to have access to i-player I would.

 

haha no, this isn't what I do for a living. I only help friends and family at no charge.

 

What's all this now? You lost me.

I don't know if I've ever seen anything like this before. Every release has an nfo file, but I don't recall seeing any URLs in nfo files.

Is this just some quirk of uploaders at The Pirate Bay?

 

Am I the only one reading Kazaa for the investigator name?