Reddit, Amazon Push For 'Day Of Action' On July 12 To Protest The Killing Of Net Neutrality

from the something-vaguely-resembling-accountability dept

So as we've been noting, a lot of people remain under the impression that companies like Google and Netflix still support net neutrality, and they'll be rushing in any moment now to help thwart the FCC's latest attempt to kill the rules. In reality, Techdirt readers know that Google hasn't actually supported net neutrality since around 2010 or so. Netflix, also perceived as a consumer ally on the subject, made it clear recently that it no longer sees the need to fight for net neutrality now that it's an international video powerhouse. The company's shift from disruption engines to slightly myopic legacy turf protectors should surprise nobody.

That said, Google and Netflix's departure from the conversation left many net neutrality advocates wondering if any bigger companies would be willing to lend a hand in the latest chapter in the debate. Amazon managed to answer that question this week by throwing its weight behind a July 12 "Day of Action" being coordinated by consumer advocacy group Fight For the Future. According to the group's website, Amazon will join Reddit, Etsy, the ACLU, California ISP Sonic, Mozilla, Kickstarter, BitTorrent, Github and Vimeo for a day of protest -- both online and off -- against the FCC's plan to gut the popular consumer protections.

The plan appears to be to mirror the Internet Slowdown Day back in 2014. You'll recall that that effort, which involved numerous major websites warning their visitors about the threat to net neutrality via site banners, helped convince Tom Wheeler to stop half-assing things, and classify ISPs as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act (giving them the adequate legal authority to enforce the rules). His decision was subsequently supported by the courts.

The problem, of course, is that Tom Wheeler was a bit of a rare bird in technology government policy circles. In that when presented with quality evidence that conflicted with his world view, he was actually willing to change his position and do the right thing -- even in the face of giant ISP lobbying pressure. It's part of the reason that Wheeler went from dingo to internet hero in relatively short order, breaking free of a long line of timid, bipartisan telecom industry sycophants heading the agency. There's zero indication so far that new FCC boss Ajit Pai has any of the qualities that made Wheeler popular.

Still, the companies and consumer advocacy firms hope the effort can still generate something vaguely resembling SOPA-esque accountability for Pai's plan to ignore the public interest and kill the rules:

"The effort is led by many of the grassroots organizations who have organized the largest online protests in history including the SOPA blackout and the Internet Slowdown," notes Fight the Future. "The day of action will focus on grassroots mobilization, with public interest groups activating their members and major web platforms providing their visitors with tools to contact Congress and the FCC."

The FCC is fielding comments on its plans to kill net neutrality until August 18, ahead of a finalizing vote to kill the rules later this year.

Filed Under: broadband, day of action, net neutrality
Companies: aclu, amazon, bittorrent, etsy, fight for the future, github, kickstarter, mozilla, reddit, sonic, vimeo

Hollywood Funded Group Demands BitTorrent Inc. 'Take Responsibility' For Piracy

from the just-like-hollywood-takes-responsibility-for-its-movies? dept

You would think that a Hollywood astroturfing group, funded by all of the major Hollywood studios, would know better than to issue a blatant attack on another company for "failing to condemn" how some people viewed their products. After all, Hollywood is the industry that glorifies murder, con men and (yes) piracy. And Hollywood gets quite up in arms any time anyone suggests that its movies might influence folks in that way. That's the correct response because it is silly and ridiculous to attack an industry that makes one thing for then not condemning how that thing may be viewed or used improperly. But, apparently, some folks in Hollywood have no problem casting similar aspersions on industries they hate.

Earlier this year, we wrote about the "launch" of a new Hollywood-funded organization called "CreativeFuture." As we noted, this "launch" was a bit misleading, because CreativeFuture was just the rebranding of Creative America, an organization that Hollywood slapped together as an astroturfing group in support of SOPA and PIPA. It pretends to represent the interests of creators, but actually is almost entirely funded by the major Hollywood studios. After Creative America was a complete disaster, widely derided (even inside Hollywood) as a joke, Hollywood did a rebrand to CreativeFuture, and brought in new leadership in the form of Ruth Vitale, whom the NY Times described as "sassy." Except, as we noted, the playbook remained the same: basically misrepresent issues related to copyright, pretend to represent "artists" when actually representing the big studios who regularly screw over artists, and always, always, always blame the innovators and technology companies who have provided new tools and services that have helped reinvent the industry for decades.

Vitale is bringing her "sassy" take to this playbook with a bizarre attack on BitTorrent, entitled: We're All Waiting, BitTorrent. The basic argument is that since BitTorrent is often used for exchanging unauthorized copies of content BitTorrent Inc. has a responsibility to (1) "condemn" how its own technology is used and (2) figure out a way to stop it from being used that way.

If BitTorrent wished to prevent their client applications from being used to facilitate massive piracy, it could do something about it. The company says it’s all about technology, so how about using technology to reduce piracy?

Funny how some technology companies like BitTorrent are always extolling the unlimited power of technology – except when it can be used to help creators by preventing the unauthorized distribution of their creative content.

I believe that BitTorrent’s failure to publicly condemn the misuse of its protocol – and to actually do something about it – is going to hurt the company’s efforts to build legitimate business models... just like it hurts everyone else’s.

Despite the fact that, for many years, Hollywood has been blamed for all sorts of stuff concerning its movies -- and Hollywood has, rightly, pointed out that it's ridiculous to blame its movies for idiots imitating what's in the movies, or for believing they're anything more than fictional stories. And yet, now, when it comes to technology, Hollywood wants to take the same bogus moral panics used against it and turn it on technology? Just how cynical can Hollywood get?

Oh, actually much more cynical. Vitale also pulls out a sarcastic "manifesto" that BitTorrent creator Bram Cohen wrote many years before working on BitTorrent, in which he jokingly talked about building tools to "commit digital piracy" as if she's found the smoking gun.

The whole point of this "sassy" rant appears to be to drive creators away from embracing new technologies. She directly says that creators should "pause" before working with BitTorrent Inc., because even though it's created a massive tool for free distribution, combined with a very committed and loyal audience, which many creators have found help drive sales, she doesn't like that they haven't "done enough" to "stop piracy."

This is the same misguided playbook that Jack Valenti played for years, attacking the very technology his industry needed to embrace, delaying the inevitable and harming the very industry he "represented." Because, really, what does Vitale think will happen if either of her demands are met? If BitTorrent could magically make its protocol less useful, people will immediately switch to something else. If BitTorrent were to vocally "condemn" uses of its technology for infringement, does she honestly think that people who use BitTorrent to infringe on copyrights will magically change their ways? Who is she fooling, other than herself?

Instead of recognizing that there are many big entertainment fans that the industry could embrace and drive towards additional offerings, Vitale wants to make this a silly moral stand that will do no good -- not unlike the silly "morality" attacks on Hollywood for "promoting" sex and violence. Why Vitale would take such a page from the very people who tend to attack her industry is beyond me. It's hardly a strategy for embracing the future, and seems like one that only cements legacy Hollywood's image of being clueless and out of touch with today's entertainment fans, as well as new and innovative technologies.

Filed Under: astroturfing, blame, copyright, innovation, responsibility, ruth vitale, sassy, technology
Companies: bittorrent, creativefuture

BitTorrent Shows You What The Internet Looks Like Without Net Neutrality; Suggests A Better Way

from the change-things-around dept

If you've been following the whole net neutrality fight for a while, the following graphic may be familiar to you -- showing what a potential "cable-ized" world the internet would become without strong protections for net neutrality: At some point, someone created a similar version, that was specific to AT&T: A little while ago, however, someone took the joke even further, and set up a website for a fake broadband provider, asking people to Join the Fastlane!, and it was pretty dead on in terms of what such a site might look like: I particularly like this bit: It's now come out that this campaign (along with some associated billboards) has been put together by BitTorrent Inc., not all that different than the company's billboard campaign against the NSA. Along with this, BitTorrent has put out a blog post explaining, in part, how we got here, but more importantly how we need to start thinking about a better way to handle internet traffic to avoid the kind of future described above.

The key issue: building a more decentralized internet:

Many smart researchers are already thinking about this problem. Broadly speaking, this re-imagined Internet is often called Content Centric Networking. The closest working example we have to a Content Centric Network today is BitTorrent. What if heavy bandwidth users, say, Netflix, for example, worked more like BitTorrent?

If they did, each stream — each piece of content — would have a unique address, and would be streamed peer-to-peer. That means that Netflix traffic would no longer be coming from one or two places that are easy to block. Instead, it would be coming from everywhere, all at once; from addresses that were not easily identified as Netflix addresses — from addresses all across the Internet.

To the ISP, they are simply zeroes and ones.

All equal.

There's obviously a lot more to this, but it's good to see more and more people realizing that one of the fundamental problems that got us here is the fact that so much of the internet has become centralized -- and, as such, can be easily targeted for discrimination. Making the internet much more decentralized is a big step in making it so that discrimination and breaking net neutrality aren't even on the table.

Filed Under: centralized, decentralized, discrimination, fast lane, innovation, net neutrality, open internet, spoof
Companies: bittorrent

Ridiculous: Short-Sighted, Anonymous Hollywood Exec Flips Out Over Using BitTorrent For Promotions

from the what-year-is-this? dept

I had thought that we'd gotten past the point at which Hollywood execs would freak out over the use of a modern, better, more efficient technology to help promote a movie, but apparently in the minds of some of the folks who run the big movie studios, we're perpetually stuck in 2004 or so. That's the only explanation I can figure out for this wacky article from TheWrap, which highlights what appears to be a single (completely anonymous, of course) Hollywood studio big shot absolutely losing his mind over the fact that a major movie is promoting itself by distributing the first 7 minutes for free via BitTorrent, in a marketing deal done with BitTorrent Inc. Indie studio Cinedgim made the deal with BitTorrent to promote their new film Arthur Newman, starring Colin Firth and Emily Blunt, and it seems like a perfectly normal way to promote stuff, but not to one studio exec who can't even bother to stand behind his words by identifying himself.

"It's a deal with the devil," one studio executive told TheWrap. "Cinedigm is being used as their pawn."

A deal with the devil? Funny, I remember most of the major studios doing deals with BitTorrent Inc. six years ago. That was for a poorly planned out and poorly executed video download store, but still. Most people now recognize that there are all sorts of opportunities in going where your customers and fans are. That a Hollywood exec doesn't see that is a bit scary for whichever studio they happen to work for.

"It's great for BitTorrent and disingenuous of Cinedigm," said the executive. "The fact of the matter is BitTorrent is in it for themselves, they're not in it for the health of the industry."

Now that's just funny. As if the studio execs are not in it for themselves? The studios have focused on a business model that sucks the life out of the "health of the industry" for ages, by trying to squeeze out as much money as possible from just a few ideas -- doing remakes and sequels and adaptations, rather than doing anything that is new or unique. And then they use Hollywood accounting to make sure the actual creators almost never get paid any additional money, while they make many times over the amount invested. A statement like that pretends that the exec has the "health of the industry" in mind, rather than his own bottom line.

And, of course, there's a strong argument that this statement is totally wrong as well. Cinedigm really does appear to have a much bigger focus on the health of the industry than this nameless studio exec, because Cinedigm is trying to adapt with the times and to embrace new opportunities.

"I really missed them being at the forefront of the piracy issue," the studio executive said. "I don't remember them going, 'Naughty, naughty, don't use our technology for that.' They don't give a shit."

Huh? Actually, from rather early on, BitTorrent made clear that you shouldn't use their technology to infringe, because BitTorrent does nothing to hide your IP address. When it first came out, in fact, most people talked about how it wasn't a great technology for infringement, given the lack of secrecy involved in using it. Furthermore, from as far back as I can remember, BitTorrent the company (which this exec seems to confuse entirely with BitTorrent the protocol) has worked hard to promote legitimate and non-infringing uses. We already talked about the (failed) partnerships with Hollywood in the past, but the company has long been focused on helping to try to find ways to drag Hollywood execs into the 21st century with a better, more efficient platform for distribution.

Really, this exec just seems to be acting in a knee jerk way against BitTorrent the company without understanding very much at all. Hell, even the idea of releasing the first seven minutes of a movie online for free to drive more views -- that's been done for years. There's almost nothing new here at all. In fact, we wrote about a movie studio doing the exact same thing thirteen years ago when Dreamworks did that with Chicken Run. How could it possibly be a bad thing to release the first 7 minutes of a movie for free, in an effort to convince people that it will be worth their while to go see the full thing? Well, I can think of one way: if you make crap movies where the first seven minutes will convince you not to pay to see the rest. Perhaps that's this exec's problem.

Thankfully, the forward-looking folks at Cinedigm don't seem put off by one anonymous exec at a competing studio:

"Blaming BitTorrent for piracy is like blaming a freeway for drunk drivers, " Jill Calcaterra, Cinedigm's chief marketing officer said. "How people use it can be positive for the industry or it can hurt the industry. We want it help us make this indie film successful."

Furthermore, it appears that they're planning to use BitTorrent to promote a number of other films this way as well.

Filed Under: hollywood
Companies: bittorrent

Yes, There Are Many, Many, Many, Many Legal Uses Of BitTorrent

from the too-legit-to-quit dept

When the VCR first came on the market, nearly 100% of the TV and movie content it was used for was "unauthorized," because the big studios refused to offer films. Of course, thankfully, the Supreme Court eventually made it clear that just because it was "unauthorized," it didn't mean that taping TV for later watching was "infringing." But, if the metric you used to judge whether or not a new technology is a "pirate technology" is what percentage of its use was "unauthorized," you get a very skewed picture. Early on, all sorts of new and innovative technologies are mostly used for unauthorized copies... until the industry catches up. However, people don't often deal with trends very well, and they assume, quite incorrectly, that if a technology is initially used in an unauthorized manner, it must be a "piracy tool" and no amount of discussing how trends and adaptation works will convince them otherwise. Lately, there has been plenty of talk about BitTorrent -- with a few cases here and there pointing out that a high percentage (usually over 90% of works are infringing). The argument being made is that there is little redeeming value with BitTorrent since it's almost exclusively used for infringement.

Of course, over time, things change. Content creators begin to embrace the new, realize that it might not be evil, and suddenly we see more and more interesting case studies. And that seems to be happening with BitTorrent. The recent MusicMetric analysis of BitTorrent downloads for the first six months of 2012 found that 31% of downloads were for authorized files. Now, you can argue that this is still less than half of all files -- but it's a big step up from the standard claims that somewhere between 1% and 10% were authorized. It seems quite likely that the trend is moving in the right direction.

In an effort to highlight just how much authorized content is shared using BitTorrent, Bittorrent Inc. put together a neat graphic representation of just one day's authorized downloads, creating a massive page that includes a single dot for every authorized download. We've put a snapshot of just a small portion of that image below this post... but that's really only a fragment. If you go to the full page, there's an awful lot of scrolling involved. And that's because it's showing 689,955 authorized downloads. In a single day. Not bad.

In case you're wondering who's actually offering up music that's getting downloaded like this, Eliot van Buskirk tracked down the top ten authorized music acts on BitTorrent, which turns up a few surprises.

1. Death Grips: 34,151,432
2. Counting Crows: 26,950,427
3. Billy Van: 18,702,053
4. Gods Robot: 12,172,672
5. Way Too Sick: 9,974,321
6. Paz: 6,485,001
7. Bray: 5,878,492
8. Pretty Lights: 5,005,061
9. DJ Shadow: 4,349,048
10. Chester French: 523,356

As Eliot notes, that number one legal download, Death Grips, is signed to a major label deal on Epic (part of Sony Music). The Counting Crows are obviously a big name as well, and we wrote about their decision to use BitTorrent. They're ex-big label, but now independent. Also, DJ Shadow and Chester French were both associated with Universal sub-labels, though I do not know if either are still "signed." Either way, it's interesting to see that it's a mix of artists, including some from major labels and some others. It certainly looks like, perhaps, the idea that BitTorrent is just for infringement may have to be officially considered debunked.

Filed Under: authorized uses, bittorent, trends
Companies: bittorrent