BitTorrent Fires 20% of Its Employees
Written by Ernesto on August 06, 2008BitTorrent Inc., founded by Bram Cohen, the inventor of the BitTorrent protocol, is firing 12 of its 55 employees. The company, which also develops the popular BitTorrent client uTorrent, had been struggling to make money from their download store, which is one of the causes of the layoffs.
One of the main plans of BitTorrent Inc. was to be the next iTunes, by selling movies and music via their “BitTorrent powered” online store. For several reasons, DRM being one of them, the store never became the success they hoped it to be.
Valleywag reports that the company has now decided to lay off its sales and marketing department, due to failing attempts to sell the entertainment store to Best Buy. This means that the development of uTorrent, specifically the long awaited Mac version, is not in danger.
The BitTorrent entertainment network was launched February 2007 and offers movie rentals starting at starting at $2.99. Before the store launched, BitTorrent Inc’s co-founder Ashwin Navin said that the store was going to compete with BitTorrent sites like The Pirate Bay and mininova, as he said, “If we’re not competing effectively with piracy, we’re not going to win.”
There never was any real competition however, mainly because the movies are infected with Windows DRM. The company never wanted to use DRM. In fact, Bram Cohen told TorrentFreak in an interview that the DRM issue is causing an awful lot of headaches, but that most of their content partners are insisting on it.
BitTorrent’s Ashwin Navin was a bit more outspoken about it. He said that DRM is “a time bomb waiting to happen,” and that it will inspire people to pirate content. One thing we can be sure of, it didn’t help to convert illegal downloaders to go legal.
If online video stores want to compete with their pirate counterparts, the pricing should be reasonable, the catalogue extensive, and all without DRM. The BitTorrent store failed to meet these standards, and unfortunately, 12 people lost their job because of it.
Update: In a comment received after publication of the article, Ashwin Navin told TorrentFreak that the layoffs are not related to the failing entertainment store.
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55 Responses
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That sucks for the people who got fired. I do hope they will start actually working on the mac version of utorrent.
1st
If they just open-sourced the clients already there would already be a Mac and linux fork of uTorrent.
PWNED
muhahahahahahah
Nothing personal but being a linux users I want nothing to do with anything windows which would include Windows DRM. So here is an idea for them….change you business model to exploit the new technologies. Pick an appropriate price point and give everyone alternatives rather then proprietary crap and head ache.
They have text on cigarettes that says “smoking kills”,”Cigs cause lung cancer” and other variations..
perhaps on software with DRM it should carry a label that says “We are fu*king morons so this software ships with DRM” or “The industry are f*cking morons and make us ship this to you with DRM”
They have been shooting themselves in the foot for so long I’m surprised they have not run out of feet.
WHEN will they (the industry) learn?
/Joe
http://www.eZee.se
Bit Torrent inc just doesn’t get it.
It is up against free p2p.
For it to succeed it needs to give away content and make money from advertising (media sales).
It can also ensure that bit torrent is on every server and pc so allowing everyone to download rich media without clogging the internet. It could collect fees from big media for the use of its software.
Anon. BT p2p
http://www.Dargens.com
Bittorrent, inc. deserves a slow painful death for the slow tortuous demise they’ve inflicted on what used to be a phenomenal client, utorrent. New version, banned, new version, banned, new version, banned. How long before the BT community labels these butt munches as the complete and utter idiots that they are?
Mark my words, if/when the Mac version comes out, it’s going to tank. Big time. The further they take this from the genius of Ludde, the crappier it’s going to get.
I bought GTA: San Andreas for PC the day it came out, I could have pirated it, but I wanted to own the game. I pop it in to play, the thing tells me about 75% of the time that the disc is not valid. THIS IS THE RETAIL DISC I BOUGHT IN THE STORE. What choice did I have but to get the no-cd exe crack in order to play it.
Now do you people finally believe me that utorrent is owned my BitTorrent Inc. and that BitTorrent Inc. is in the pocket of the MPAA?
Yeesh.
Infected with Windows DRM? Ya I don’t like DRM either but you really could have used a more neutral description of what they are trying to do to preserve the content from being illegally traded.
This site is so biased you make Fox News look like journalists. Your not on a crusade for pirates rights and accept the fact that companies would like to be paid for their products/services.
So what you are saying is that the firings have nothing to do with the article, nice.
if the guy states that it is unlinked, edit at least the start of the article where you say its linked, and is the ‘blurb’ on the front page, its purely misleading. (not trolling, just think its better on the whole)
THIS SITE HAS TURNED MY GAY :(
Long awaited Mac release, indeed.
@9
Neutral description? The neutral description is “infected.” The idea of “protecting against piracy” with DRM is already utterly absurd. This is the neutral description.
Even bittorrent can’t make DRM products profitable…
DRM should stand for dumb retarded managment for anyone that insists on useing it.
I feel sympathic to these guys, both bittorrent as a company and the guys n gals who are out of a job, due to failing sales or not.
I’m guessin because bittorrent is probably a hated company by the entertainment industry they probably didn’t want to cut anywhere near a fair price in the first place.
Forcing DRM, other sites get around it but only because there so big the entertainment industry couldn’t dare to lose the income.
Sadly the BT model fails in the fact people don’t want to pay per peice, I think it has to be per subscription and cheap at that to stand a chance of really having some affect.
Starting at starting at
DRM.. lol thats all you needed to say.
DRM = pathetic.
Why would I buy that? What are you stupid?
this was the movie industry at fualt i would pay for HQ movie download at a fair price with no
DRM Bittorrent had the right idea
but the evil industry couldnt meet them half way and kill the DRM
LONG LIVE PIRACY u get a better product AND QUALITY that u cant even buy only if the evil pigs could just get with it their is money to be made with online sales if u just get rid of the fucking DRM
The layofffs (and maybe more on the way?) are a big reason NOT to buy any DRM-infected downloads from Bittorrent, Inc., because if the company ever shuts down its DRM server, your paid downloads can become worthless faster than you can say “sellout!”.
“Now do you people finally believe me that utorrent is owned my BitTorrent Inc. and that BitTorrent Inc. is in the pocket of the MPAA?”
In the pocket? They sell movies made by MPAA members…
“This site is so biased you make Fox News look like journalists. Your not on a crusade for pirates rights and accept the fact that companies would like to be paid for their products/services.”
This is a blog.
Yeah, DRM horrible. My mom asked me to pirate some mp3’s because of DRM in the downloads on the official website (of a couple places) preventing her from using the music she downloaded legally.
“[...]accept the fact that companies would like to be paid for their products/services.”
No problem with that. I will gladly do that …
… the second those companies get rid of all the idiot management guys that whine about “we can’t compete with free” and then do indeed try to compete with free in that they offer stuff that is MORE convinient and as a minimum AS userfriendly AS the unrestricted current “better choice(TM)” offerings.
Hint for the whinebabies, you don’t archive this goal in the way that you make your product unattractive and high on hazzle factor with playing preventing DRM shit or by pumping the money into idiot scam compaies that take your money and then try to disturb the “better choice(TM)” competition to have it look even more unattractive and more “hazzleisch” then YOUR own offerings.
You don’t win customers from the competitor by attacking/besmirching him, but by being better then him and offer the customer more value then he does!
I have a big one
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