I am listening to the podcast version of On the Media and just heard MPAA chief Dan Glickman say that Bittorrent and all P2P “is based upon encouraging people to illegally infringe copyright material, to take movie and music for free”. As far as I know, I am the only podcaster who offers as my standard default feed Bittorrent files. I am the benificiary of being able to serve my podcasts to an order of magnitude more users than I could without it.
Dan Glickman is dead wrong, and if I am unable to use Bittorrent it will substantially impair my ability to deliver my podcasts, which are freely offered to the public and which have no copyrighted materially save that which I am permitted to use. There is a huge amount of hubris in Big Media’s insistence that their movies and music are the only thing worth moving through P2P. They are incorrect, and getting more incorrect every day. Citizen created media is getting more compelling every day, even as Big Media gets less compelling. Peer to peer is our best tool in getting our citizen media out to our fellow citizen listeners and viewers. I’m fighting back the only way I know now, by shifting my media consumption from the Big Media to the citizen.
Whenever this guy speaks, something comes out of his mouth that is so far from reality it makes your head spin. It helps to remember that every time the entertainment industry has predicted its own demise due to some new technology, it has been wrong. These guys are the business equivalents of paranoid schizophrenics.
The bit that gets me is that these guys are fighting to keep the make believe world of artificial scarcity, as they have business models that fit that artifice.
In truth there has never been a world of scarcity. Us consumers always relied on the labels to actually filter the huge array of music/tv/etc and bring us stuff that interests us. Pity the industry forgot this was their real mission, as opposed to shipping plastic.
So now we have a better system for shipping bits. We still need players who are willing to filter down the vast hordes of acts into something we want.
That’s what we payed for, and we still will. Nothing new here, apart from the death of a dead business model. 🙂
The single biggest point of disingenuity from Glickman was when asked about this history of entertainment industry opposing every single innovation that ultimately made them more money. Glickman trotted out reasons why “this time is different because VCRs were only taping the air, blah blah blah.” The key point is that the folks leading these organizations have no vision, have no interest in having vision. The bonepiles of history are littered with those who deny the lessons of the past because “this time it is different.” Welcome to the pile, Glickman!
Dave, I’m glad you use Bittorrent in your feed and I’m glad it’s being used more – like that enormous (legal) music sampler from SXSW they offered up for download w/ Bittorrent. A few more of these types of situations pop up and it will be harder and harder to ignore for people who try to sue technology like this.
You’re the only podcaster I know of using BitTorrent as your *default* feed, Dave, but you’re certainly not the only one offering a BitTorrent feed. (I know you’re not claiming to, I’m just saying…) I’ve been offering a BitTorrent feed for months–probably due to your experimentation with the format.