Mark Cuban: BitTorrent is Doomed
Written by Smaran on January 23, 2007The self-acclaimed guru of IPTV, Mark Cuban claims that P2P, and more specifically, BitTorrent is doomed. Apparently, “conflicting clients”, lack of knowledge, limited Internet plans, and “bandwidth premiums” are going to be jointly responsible for the death of BitTorrent.
So, here’s Cuban’s argument. He believes that from the business standpoint, BitTorrent and other peer-to-peer technologies are great. They save massive amounts of bandwidth and help efficiently distribute large media files, possibly even speeding up transfers. We agree with everything up ’til here.
But now he goes on to say that although content creators can profit from BitTorrent, users are getting screwed. Why? Here are his reasons.
Conflicting Clients End Users don’t understand how P2P works The P2P model of seeding is a HUGE problem for those [...] with bandwidth constraints or per bit or per minute costs There is a misconception that there is bandwidth savings for the end user
On conflicting clients he says, “When multiple clients are installed on a PC, not only does that create confusion among users, its a ‘last installed, first in charge’ approach. THat approach and lack of respect for other clients will lead to user configuration problems.”
Okay, number one, if you’re referring to file associations, ie. the most recently installed app is associated with the file type, then this “problem” is not limited to BitTorrent clients. Everything from graphic editors (Photoshop, Gimp) to music management applications (iTunes, WinAmp) do this. Secondly, if this causes confusion among users, then how do millions of people manage to get their music into iTunes and sync it to their iPods without accidentally having their mp3s added to the Windows Media Player library? This “lack of respect” isn’t so much about BitTorrent client developers trying to steal users from their competitors, as it is about how operating systems function today.
Onto point two. “End Users dont understand how P2P works, and once they do, they get concerned about giving up bandwidth.”
I hear BitTorrent transfers make up about one third of all traffic on the Internet these days. It seems rather likely that end users do in fact understand how P2P works. And unless their other online activities are hindered by BitTorrent or P2P, I don’t see users really having a problem with the uploads. Most don’t even bother uploading once their file has been download, and since the majority of users download torrents from public trackers, they aren’t forced to either.
Mark’s third point, “The P2P model of seeding is a HUGE problem for those using wireless broadband with bandwidth constraints or per bit or per minute costs. People are going to wake up and find that they owe Verizon, Sprint, whoever a lot more than they ever thought possible because they installed a client on their Laptops. That could lead to these networks blocking the protocol.”
Point three actually makes sense. The real problem here is miscommunication. In developing countries like India, ISPs milk customers for money by charging them for every MB downloaded, and in some cases, for every minute spent online. Some ISPs (Sify, for one) even lie about unlimited plans and have per-day limits (eg. 200 MB), which, if exceeded, cause the number of days the plan is valid for (usually a month) to be reduced every time the download limit is excedded. Someone I know actually ran up a bill of several hundred dollars because he thought he was on an unlimited plan, whereas in reality his ISP hadn’t processed his request to change plans. But as BitTorrent and P2P grow in popularity, users are quickly starting to demand ‘unlimited’ plans. If you look at the trend, ISPs are more likely to cash in on the P2P phenomenon and offer unlimited plans for a premium than start blocking protocols. And although per-bit and per-minute plans are widespread in developing countries, I don’t know how much of a problem they are to European, Australian and North American users.
Cuban’s last point is, “There is a misconception that there is bandwidth savings for the end user. If you want to download a 1gb size file, 1gb of data will be delivered to your PC. There is no savings of bandwidth on the client side. In fact, the client is charged a bandwidth premium because after they have received the entire file, they are asked to particpate in the peering by delivering parts of the file to other users.”
Guess what, the end user doesn’t care if he’s uploading bits while downloading. Unlike hosting providers, the user incurs no cost from constantly uploading data. It doesn’t matter, as long as he can go about his other activities. And unless he’s on a per-bit or per-minute plan, no “bandwidth premiums” are going to be charged to him. Also, no one is asking the user to “participate in the peering” (or simply, seed) once his download is complete. That is only a requirement of select private trackers.
When it comes to utilising BitTorrent in business, as part of a content store, I think Cuban’s looking at it the wrong way. When the various BitTorrent stores (BitTorrent.com, Zudeo.com) are up and running, content creators are not going to be getting a free ride. Users are not going to pay the same price they do at conventional stores like the iTunes Store and Amazon Unbox. Why should they? They’re acting as servers for content creators and are distributing content for no charge at all. But since money isn’t being deducted from their bank accounts, and seeding a torrent is not really affecting their web browsing, users are okay with uploading.
I’m open to the possibility that I’m dead wrong. I don’t know, maybe Cuban is right. Maybe BitTorrent is in fact doomed, and the video streaming technologies he pioneered with Broadcast.com in the 90s will make a major comeback. I mean, who uses BitTorrent these days? Just a bunch of pirates, soon to be exiled to metal platform in the middle of the North Sea. Right? Right.
What do you think? Are the days of P2P over? Is the the balkanisation of BitTorrent imminent?
Creative Commons photograph by kk+.
Previously: Isohunt Back Online
Next: The Pirate Bay: Serving over 4 Million Torrents a Day
79 Responses
BitTorrent is the future!!!
Some of his reasons would have made sense 10 years ago, but not now. The BitTorrent protocol is here to stay, and I’m sure it will only grow bigger.
In the near future people wont even notice that they are using BitTorrent because it will be built into commercial video / streaming services.
Its always amusing when some rich guy who has no idea how people live or what they do claim to know something about us. Somehow the money makes them stupid. Stick with what you know. At what point in his limo ride to work did this wisdome hit him?
It works well with legit content and I see no reason why it will die in next few years.
The only way I can see BitTorrent being doomed is if it gets packet/frame shaping on ALL major ISPs. The BT Encryption, if you even want to call it encryption, will soon not be able to pass the ISPs packet/frame shaping. If ALL ISPs throttle BT traffic..this will cause BT to die or evolve again.
BT over SSL? Im sure ISPs can’t sniff that. -_^
I hope BitTorrent will at least stay active long enough for me to finish downloading the latest episode of Bleach.
ur arguments r very well put and make a lot of sense to me,Smaran!
cubans arguments seem to be a lil ignorant to me and just like ernesto said may have been understandable at least 10 years ago…
the key point is probably that the demand is commanding the supply sooner or later. here in europe at least many ISPs already jump on the bandwagon and supply flatrates with 16000+ mbits for very aquireable prices! and that i guess solves at least 55 percent (=D) of cubans acclaimed problems….
also i think that the common user is not as stupid as cuban would like him/her to be. but this is just something that time is gonna tell…
i also have an open ear for cubans theory which means i dont want to be “too”ignorant to his arguments but still it looks to me as if he himself
is one of those outsider-businessmen trying to push the crowd to their prefered direction, which in this case is obvious…
Nice article, Smaran. Well done. :)
I agree.
Cuban is out of his league. If he believes bittorrent will fail, then I think he’s too old for the technology game.
Bittorrent as you said already makes up more than a 3rd of all Internet traffic and it is continually growing. In fact I would say that torrenting is still in the early adoption stage as the masses still have trouble understanding the applications and where to get torrents etc.
Australia is fairly ok with their broadband plans. We generally have a download cap which if we go over, our speed is just throttled back to dialup speeds. Though a few ISPs still charge a per-MB fee when you go over your download cap.
People who want to utilise P2P know to get plans that throttle speeds instead of charge fees. ISPs will be forced to accommodate the users who want to use P2P and torrenting.
I agree that the bittorrent protocol doesn’t exactly favour the users, as they do end up using more bandwidth than the file itself with the downloading and uploading. So in that respect I think bittorrent will fail if it is monetized (as Bittorrent.com is doing). What bittorrent does do is allow content creators to distribute their files cheaply. And if you have a community that wants to support your new IPTV shows for example, then they will be happy to seed.
cheers
LOL!
Maybe the expert Cuban should go discuss this with the INVENTOR of the internet, Al Gore!
People won’t stop downloading torrents until they have a better alternative or the costs of downloading exceed the benefits. Most people download torrents now because they are getting media content and software for free. Whatever deterrents or risks are currently associated with illegally downloading copyrighted content are not sufficient to prevent the current number of P2P users from downloading that content. Until a stronger deterrent or better source of content is available (either legal or illegal), people will continue to download torrents.
Bit Torrent? Doomed? Mark Cuban is an idiot if he thinks this is true.
The only way Bit Torrent is going to die is if a significantly better technology comes and sweeps us off our feet.
People want junk. BT offers the best platform for distributing that junk. Thus, BT will be around until either people get sick of downloading free content (not likely) or something better comes along (no candidates as of yet).
Mark Cuban, you are the guru of poorly-founded speculation.
does this guy even know what bittorrent is? it isn’t anything like the fasttrack network which kazaa was built on. seriously, who the hell does he think he is? does he even have anything to do with the internet being where it is today, or is he just some guy that has all kinds of money that’s trying to show how “smart” he is, when in truth he’s just a wealthy dumbass.
The future of p2p when it comes to streaming movies is with companies such as reeltime.com, gridnetworks.com and eventually with the Venice Project.
One other thing to consider that might inhibit BT’s growth, though I doubt it would kill it–the fact that American ISPs currently limit upload bandwidth bigtime. As BT becomes more popular, I think this would slow itself down, wouldn’t it?
I’ll listen to a merely wealthy doofus spout on the digital world right after I get my politics from celebrities. And that will only happen if I fall onto my head from an overly tall building.
Man, why do these jerks get a public platform for their opinions??? My opinion: Mark Cuban is already doomed…to suffering the company of a jackass, himself, for life.
wasn’t this the guy that said “only a moron buy Youtube”?
“only a moron WOULD buy Youtube”
bleh.
mark,
shut the fuck up. What the fuck do you know? You lucked out in the first boom. But what makes you think you know fuck all about fuck all ?
But then again who the fuck would ask this dick balls anyhting other then what do you think about the NBA’s new balls ?
Mark Cuban is an idiot — why does this have to make the news? He got lucky and made some money. Good for him. Do we have to listen to him too?
Ugh.
-Dirk
I disagree with the Cuban but I have had thoughts about the effectiveness. The question I always ask myself is who benefits from bittorrent – I don’t save in speed since my FTP transfers and regular downloads are always faster and don’t fluctuate as much as bittorrent.
On the other hand, once I download a file using bittorrent, I am secure in the fact that the checksums are checked automatically while there is no guarantee with ftp or normal transfers. I believe it saves the server end bandwidth as people are taking up less bandwidth by spreading the files over the network.
I still prefer, as a client, a fast FTP server over bittorrent. I can download a Linux distro in 30 t0 40 minutes vs 2 to 4 hours of bittorrent clients bouncing in and out of the network.
However, that is me. I value my time and as of now I don’t see speed increases with bittorrent. The question I would like to know is which is better. People getting on and off quickly and not all at the same time or 2 to 4 hours (even longer sometimes) of a large group of people on net soaking up bandwidth.
I not here to bash take sides just questions that I haven’t answered myself or found any real answer to on the net. I’ve seen better arguments against bittorrent than what this guy put up. I’ve also seen pretty decent arguments for bittorrent yet I haven’t found any compelling evidence that has made me
jump on the bittorrent bandwagon 100% – but that’s me…
Cuban is a toll thinks he knows everything. Just to show how big of a tool he is look at blizzard. Probably one of the most profitable game company’s in the world. They use torrent to move there patches and save money in return. You start downloading the patch and share it with everyone else patching and they spend no more money on extra lines just to push the patch to 8 million people and growing now.
15 & 16, I was gonna say the same thing. He was the one who said anyone who buys Youtube is a moron, and the very next week, Google bought it. LOL
Australia is ham strung with MB capped plans, however this does not at all prevent, or even reduce the Australian’s use of Bit Torrent, applying the same attitude/results to the rest of the world, and it certinaly doesnt spell doom for BT.
Mark Cuban is an idiot. P2P, will always be around….even if bit torrent dies out….it is used in tons of chat programs, as well as some programs being (some) open source, it will live on. Even if it died on on larger networks, the colleges, etc, would still probably have access to it…or simply switch the way it operates….
The main and only reason BT will fail is because its slow as hell. No one wants to wait forever to download the movie or tv episode they bought, or the music.
Try any of the supposed pay to download bittorrent based media distributors, they are slow as hell. Who wants that? The only way to get faster speeds is to seed, and the avg consumer will not give a shit about seeding. They paid money for their product & they have ZERO reason to help save the store money.
The whole bittorrent concept is completely flawed and useless as a means of commerical distribution.
“Guess what, the end user doesn’t care if he’s uploading bits while downloading. Unlike hosting providers, the user incurs no cost from constantly uploading data.”
Not true for everyone. My ISP includes uploads in my monthly quota. That’s the worst thing about Bigpond (Australia)
Kudos to a well written rebuttal of a man who thinks he knows everything about what “people” want.
nice one bruv, top article.
If p2p is doomed, it’ll be because of dumbass developers who write clients that don’t play fair. *cough*BITCOMET*cough*
Wow idiots, mark cuban isnt a self made millionaire for nothing, and he has a point, people are computer illiterate and mess shit up.
headline is complete BS. Cuban DOES NOT say that bittorrent is doomed. He says that he is not “as sure” as others that it will take over multimedia distribution, and to explain why points out some issues he sees with bittorrent IN THE CONTEXT of commercial distribution of multimedia.
Congratulations on making yourself look like a reactionary teenaged fanboi incapable of understanding what you read.
Say wha? I had to stop reading it was that bad… I doubt Bit Torrent is doomed Mr Cuban.
[quote comment="42580"]headline is complete BS. Cuban DOES NOT say that bittorrent is doomed. He says that he is not “as sure” as others that it will take over multimedia distribution, and to explain why points out some issues he sees with bittorrent IN THE CONTEXT of commercial distribution of multimedia.
[/quote]
He still talks shit.
All his arguments can be easily overcome in a commercial context.
1. Seeding is not a problem, because there are server seeds that can serve as a backup
2. Conflicting clients is not a problem, it’s a luxury. And most video services will implement a client in their service anyway
3. The bandwidth saving is for the distributer and not for the user! The user benefits from it because the prodcuct will be cheaper.
etcetera…
[quote comment="42537"]wasn’t this the guy that said “only a moron buy Youtube”?[/quote]
Yes, he did! Google, the moron. Hah!
VERY WRONG ! but nicely written letter. p2p wont die. bittorrent doesn’t rely on any central server. so it Can’t Die. end of story.. kind of makes you look stupid that you wrote that whole article and over looked that crucial point. but hey whatever floats your boat man.
n00b!
Let’s face it. Mark Cuban is an idiot.
He made his fortune by finding an even bigger idiot (whatever bozo at Yahoo who greenlighted the acquisition of broadcast.com for $5.7B!)
Now he comments on tech like he knows what he is talking about, when his only repeatably proven talent is getting fined by the NBA.
He said Google was stupid to buy YouTube (a company already 100x more successful than broadcast.com ever was). I don’t think there are many peope who would agree with that one. To me, it really seems like he’s just bitter that he hasn’t had an original idea in… well, ever?
The last line of Cuban’s post:
In conclusion, P2P is a product that tests great. In application however, it has a ton of challenges
Yup what a tool… DOOMED I say DOOMED. I don’t think I will ever visit torrentfreak again for such a crass traffic mining headline.
IPTV sux we need to murder this Mark Cuban dipshit and smear his entrails all over his pussy wussy excuse for a brain cell
Pls someone dig out his eyeballs and skewer his nuts and ffed them to the idiot himself.
then cut off his nipples and boil them and vitamise them smearign them all over his tummy then disembowel him slowly with a baseball bat.
put a bomb in his fridge
put arsenic in his cereal
take the door of his microwave and tie his head into the microwave and turn the microwave on full
A very similar article to this one: http://www.zeropaid.com/news/8236/Mark+Cuban+on+BitTorrent:/
BitTorrent is amazing… :D we will still have it until the year 3000.. :P
Computer illiterates do not know how to use a .torrent file, it’s too complicated for them, therefore it IS doomed.
Everyone always forgets the legal bittorrent actions such as downloading linux ISOs
The author of the article points out that in developing countries like India, people pay for bandwidth by the MB. My friend lives in a small village with a population of 40,000 off the west coast of India and gets 256 kbps DSL with unlimited bandwidth for about US $30 a month. He has been having this since 2003.
Just because you made 10 bazillion dollars in the dot com era doesn’t make you the harbinger of things to come for everything internet. BitTorrent rocks, I don’t know who the hell has a cap on their internet connection still, but that will be a thing of the past very shortly, and bandwidth will only go up, not down, my shortsighted, super rich friend. So get a clue Mark and go back to managing that basketball team you own.
Peer Impact gives its network members a system credit for uploading so its a matter of bussiness models when it come to premium paid content .If you are getting the content for free like Joost that is supported by advertising Im sure you dont mind your computer being used as a relay for other computers in the netowrk .
http://www.peerimpact.com
BitTorrent my die but private trackers
will never because the users have to
upload to keep their accounts and that
most private torrent site users understand about P2P.
For the rest of the world people will be forced to learn about P2P and more advance P2P programs will be created therefore fixing any networking problems.
In the end torrents will never die within the next 10 year a least but could be phased out for better technology.
I have had a broadband line with on of the big companies here in the UK, I pay a flat rate each month for a 4mb (stop laughing!) line with no caps.
I have 1 pc that is used purely for P2P and I’ve never had any of the problems described in this article. Admittedly I class my self as having a fairly good level of computer knowledge and I understand quite well how BT works. I’ve had multiple clients on the machine at the same time (never on the same protocol, use either emule or BT) and haven’t encountered any problems.
As far as using BT for as a distro system I think it’s great – twice now I have managed to download between 1.5-2.3Gb in little over an hour or 2, I don’t know how this compares to simply getting it off my ISP’s newsgroup server but it seems fast enough for me!
1) The headline is an overstatement.
2) Cuban doesn’t really get BT, apparently. OK, a lot of fairly smart people are confused by BT and recent developments surrounding its use. They don’t claim to be dot-com geniuses, but who really buys that about Cuban anyway?
3)
a)”last installed client” problem–
for the clueless, this will eventually be fixed by consumer software firewalls getting smarter about BT, and/or better UPNP implementation by clients.
What Cuban didn’t mention is having more than one machine run BT on a home LAN–the typical family setup. Port mapping becomes an issue here–Azureus gets all wonky when I try and fire up multiple clients on different machines and try and run it all through a WRT54G using DHCP and UPNP. In that environment you still usually need to set up static IPs, forward dedicated ports to each machine and configure the clients appropriately.
This is beyond the ability of many casual users. However, we don’t need casual users to push BT to the tipping point that will be necessary to generate interest in developing or adapting commercial software for those who need hand-holding.
b) Who the hell has a laptop with a cellular WAN connection and isn’t acutely aware of connection charges? If you get all slap-happy with a metered connection, bad things will happen to you before you get around to installing BT.
People on metered cellular plans are generally well aware of issues regarding bandwidth and transfer.
Now, the fine print in a number of cellular carrier’s data plan agreements disallow the use of P2P (either specifically or as part of a more general clause) although in practice the traffic is usually not filtered. I would assume this is so they can cancel you if they feel you are causing problems on the network.
BT is here to stay, the only real threat to it on the horizon are trust issues (RIAA & MPAA seeding fake torrents etc) and anti-neutrality efforts to legitimize filtering and/or shaping of traffic.
[quote comment="42635"]A very similar article to this one: http://www.zeropaid.com/news/8236/Mark+Cuban+on+BitTorrent/quote
That’s quite different
Mark Cuban is a troll.
Rule #1 do not feed the troll.
Cuban is only pitching a proprietary and centralized distribution system, exactly the thing BitTorrent was designed to outperform… and does so well.
this dude is teh shit.
jackass.
the sure sign that you dont have a worthwhile response to a discussion is to call names.
First, I understand BT. Have used it. Invested in it. Worked with it. Its not some special sauce. Its easy.
what some of you seem not to understand is
1. i didnt say it would die. as 1 person who obviously read what i wrote stated, what i wrote was in a commercial context.
2. If you think that BT for illegal download is going to work exactly the same as it is for paid download or streaming, you might want to take a closer look
3. Does anyone really believe that if Itunes switched to BT for video delivery they would lower the price ? or any other content provider for that matter ?
4. BT bigots should try turning the argument around. what if Fox, Parmamount, NBC/GE, any major media company immediately switched to open source BT, let me tell you what the headlines will be.
“Internet Users Subsidize Fox Billion Dollar Content Business”
Did you know that you pay for your copy of The Simpsons twice ? Thats right. You pay for the content from the Fox site, then you pay for the bandwidth that delivers it to other buyers.
That will excite consumers about these companies.
and remember, those same companies create their own media players on their websites to stream. That shows yo uwhere there heads are at in terms of control
and then there is of course the issue of trackers and how fast content is delivered and using which resources. Think all the media cmpanies want to be treated equally and in accord with what the BT TRackers think is fair ?
5. The BT community seems to think their world is the mainstream world. Its not. Guess what, MOST people follow the law and dont download illegally. They dont want to know what bt is. They want Lost when they want lost. So they go to Itunes or wherever to get it because its easy and there is a brand they trust associated with it.
Now if Adobe does P2P attached to a flash client, it has a chance to work because its all there
6. Talk to ISPs about how their bandwidth is used by BT. they hate it because BT downloaders are efficient. they find ISPs where they can upload at high speeds. Which in turn clogs the ISPs bandwidth. Which in turn pisses them off. If you havent noticed, on the last network segment of every ISP there is a bandwidth SHORTAGE.
Not the backbone, not the interconnects. That last segment of DSL, that last node of Cable. THEY DONT HAVE ENOUGH BANDWITH for seeders
Particularly given that BT users tend to just leave their PCs on all the time and are happy queing up every movie and TV show theythink they might watch at sometime. Which in turn means they are continuously uploading and downloading content.
To make matters worse, they are using bandwidth at some multiple of the size of the original files they wanted. So to the last mile, which already has a shortage of bandwidth, BT clients are huge bandwidth hogs.
7. For those who think that BT is going mainstream quickly. BitTorrent.com downloads hasnt sold shit worth of legit content.They announced their deals how long ago and do you know anyone who has done anything but download for free from them or any BT host ?
BT is a great technology. But for a great technology like this , there has to be a slamdunk winner from a business perspective. Just like IPod/Itunes created a real business(even if the music industry itself is a mess), P2P needs a slamdunk winner that draws mainstream users to the technology in a way where the technology doesnt matter.
And for all of you haters…Kiss my Ass.
As much as I respect Mark Cuban (Go Mavs!), he consistently bashes anything he did not think of or can’t make a buck off of. It’s like he won’t accept the fact that culture and technology have progressed since 1999 and that broadcast.com was not the epitome of man’s achievements.
Cuban is an idiot and obviously doesn’t know what he is talking about.
Ignore him.
I always see the peer numbers wanting and seeding the mmorpg: planeshift grow day by day. For me this shows a greater interest in bittorrent.
Mark Cuban is right in some respects in his response .
Bram Cohen’s Bittorrent Inc client will be closed and controlled for the content owners.
The open source reference platform of Bittorent does not have enough network awareness built in and therefore wates too much bandwidth and if it did most people would not use it for piracy because the content owners would know exactly who you are , what you are sharing and when you are sharing like they do with Kontiki,Red Swoosh,LX Systems ,Grid networks and Joltids Peer enabler a whole slew of commercial p2p based content distribution services that have some artificial intelligence built in and are connected to a central server .
The open reference platform of Bittorent isnt that good at hiding your identity anyway …
\
The last mile is a huge problem but it could possible be solved by hybrid cable and WiMax networks that use Ad-Hock networking but that would cost the ISPs even more money they don’t like to invest in infrastructure .
A bunch of bullshit.
kthx
I’ve been seeding for days at present, utorrent is down right now, but it’ll go back up when I sleep, and it’s on all day while I’m at work. I’m on flat rate, I’ve just signed up to triple my bandwidth.
I believe in BitTorrent, the medium and the message. I believe in giving back what I’ve taken, I’m scrupulous about making sure my ratio is at or above 1.0 for every large file I take.
So some idiot with a competing commercial product is talking down the free opposition? Yawn, wake me when it’s over.
[quote comment="42747"]I’ve been seeding for days at present, utorrent is down right now, but it’ll go back up when I sleep, and it’s on all day while I’m at work. I’m on flat rate, I’ve just signed up to triple my bandwidth.
I believe in BitTorrent, the medium and the message. I believe in giving back what I’ve taken, I’m scrupulous about making sure my ratio is at or above 1.0 for every large file I take.
So some idiot with a competing commercial product is talking down the free opposition? Yawn, wake me when it’s over.[/quote]
so you are an honest thief ?
oh c’mon! how about legaltorrents.com? do you consider them as pirates too?
i totally agree with Smaran here! I am NOT on an unlimited plan but i almost always seed torrents on public trackers. In fact i leave my PC on 24/7 and always have p2p software running with uplaods enabled. The whole idea that users know nothing about how P2P works doesnt seem correct to me. i think that the majority of torrent users are actually quit in the know, especially when you consider things like port forwarding and firewall rules etc that need to be set up in order to reap the full benefits of P2P. torrentz 4eva!
hey mr cuban,
great that u join our conversation and set some things straight.
so it all comes down to a missunderstanding oviously.
and i guess the bottom line is:
bittorrent is …
GOOD for illegal downloading.
BAD for commercial use.
i havent heard anybody say anything else tho, so what is all the fuss about?
I disagree with Cuban’s logic and points; however, I have a lot of concerns wrt p2p’s ability to thrive. The issue is one of economics. The carriers/ISPs are not getting the money for increased bandwidth usage. This is ok when p2p is less than 50% and the network is not saturated. But soon both will change. At that point, the carriers/ISPs will have to figure out how to make money in order to support the growing usage of their pipes. In order for p2p to thrive uninterupted, the carriers/ISPs need to be able to financially benefit from it and be able to recoup their capex investments. Encryption of p2p is just a short term solution. You can also block based on traffic pattern and other heuristic means – they already do that in the security world. Even if the p2p community can outsmart the carriers/ISPs, the long-term impact is that the pipe owners will go bankrupt or stop buidling out the infrastructure, which is bad for p2p.
I don’t get it, if an isp announces that the customer can get 10/10 Megabit access, and the client uses it, why is it the clients fault that the ISP hasn’t properly dimensioned their service to accomodate for the stuff they sell.
Both sides are wrong.
Bittorrent isn’t doomed yet.
Abusing copyright as a business model is doomed.
The entertainment industry needs to find a different way to monetize their product. A way that respects both their customers and the current state of technology. Any discussion about which distribution model is best for a given business model if the business model itself is terminally broken is pointless and clueless.
Cohen may be wrong, but Cuban is just being clueless.
Well, Cuban has a point here, though his arguments are somewhat flawed. It is hard to make business on top of BitTorrent for other reasons:
BitTorrent is inherently not reliable. Current difficulty of use of most BT software and messy network configuration are a major hurdle. But more importantly, BT relies on content to be sufficiently popular to guarantee reliable, fast and economic delivery.
Indeed, Hollywood blockbusters are very popular, but the cost of delivering a DVD movie to consumer desktops over the net isn’t too high – surely it is cheaper than distributing plastic disks, and is marginal when compared with the royalty fees. The same goes with music , 90% of what you pay in iTunes for a song goes to royalties but only 1% for the bandwidth cost.
So when the blockbuster distributors make a choice , traditional downloading vs. BT , they choose the former. Would a consumer pay 9.99$ to download a movie reliably via http or pay 9.90$ and download it unreliably with BT?
Unfortunately, most content in the internet is not that popular -most as in 99%. However most of the bandwidth is spent on these 99% (the efficient delivery of the top 1% is solved fairly well for a long time now). Content made by most bloggers, art houses and Time’s “people of the year” is usually not too popular, or at least takes a long time to become popular , and therefore BT can be applied to a fraction of it with much effectiveness.
I think that BT is a very cool, disruptive and useful technology. However, it does not make a foundation for much business. The protocol itself is revolutionary and powerful , and is making great sense as a free/non-profit/promotional distribution channel. I’m a strong believer in business opportunities for P2P technologies (e.g. Skype, or The Venice Project). But not all P2P technologies can sustain a business model (e.g. Napster and Kazaa).
Cool! kabababrubarta
[quote comment="42711"]the sure sign that you dont have a worthwhile response to a discussion is to call names.[/quote]
If it’s just names, true but that doesn’t mean that no worthwhile arguments have been presented in this whole thread
[quote comment="42711"]First, I understand BT. Have used it. Invested in it. Worked with it. Its not some special sauce. Its easy.[/quote]
Well good for you but I do see some contradiction in that very last sentence to your original point. You seem to think that commercial adoption of BT will be hindered by a lack of understanding from n00bs and ease of use. It is extremely easy to use for an early adoption technology, but you seem to change your mind an awful lot, don’t you? Just for point of reference, we were doing many things manually via command lines years ago that are now quite automated in a cute GUI. BT’s transparency is increasing as well. The World of Warcraft updater is an excellent example. People often don’t even know they are using it. What makes you think this can’t be applied to other applications as well, such as the app provided from X media store?
[quote comment="42711"]what some of you seem not to understand is
1. i didnt say it would die. as 1 person who obviously read what i wrote stated, what i wrote was in a commercial context.[/quote]
Oh, but I do and I am replying to this, taking that into account.
[quote comment="42711"]2. If you think that BT for illegal download is going to work exactly the same as it is for paid download or streaming, you might want to take a closer look[/quote]
This is quite a broad swipe. Naturally, there will be permission to access type systems in place on commercial closed source clients, just like you need a WoW account to use its updater’s BT implementation. This only reflects the infancy. It’s really a realm of endless possibilities when considering how content might be controlled and is highly dependent on what you are using the distribution system to accomplish, As to seeding, you have to admit it could be practical in certain instances where the client just runs but may be subject to QoS within your OS(built-in to Windows, but seldom used, installable in Linux) so that it is transparent to any other activity on your computer. A streaming service where the user seeds a stream with a QoS aware client could be in the future someday.
[quote comment="42711"]3. Does anyone really believe that if Itunes switched to BT for video delivery they would lower the price ? or any other content provider for that matter ?[/quote]
Slow down Mark on your rant. I believe there are companies in this world that will pocket anything they can because they can. There are also some great smaller content and software providers that charge for their product to make a living and are truly trying to be innovative and not gouge the consumer. BT could enable them to cut back their price a bit and allow them to turn a little more profit for the small companies that actually make a marginal profit. BT is already great for open source and freeware that occupies hundreds of megs or even gigs on your drive, If a content control is enabled(see above), the less greedy ones might lower the price while getting some profit they did not have. A few independent companies do things for the same reason as freeware makers, but they need to put food on the table, which is everyone’s right to do in exchange for their work.
[quote comment="42711"]4. BT bigots should try turning the argument around. what if Fox, Parmamount, NBC/GE, any major media company immediately switched to open source BT, let me tell you what the headlines will be.
“Internet Users Subsidize Fox Billion Dollar Content Business”
Did you know that you pay for your copy of The Simpsons twice ? Thats right. You pay for the content from the Fox site, then you pay for the bandwidth that delivers it to other buyers.
That will excite consumers about these companies.
and remember, those same companies create their own media players on their websites to stream. That shows yo uwhere there heads are at in terms of control
and then there is of course the issue of trackers and how fast content is delivered and using which resources. Think all the media cmpanies want to be treated equally and in accord with what the BT TRackers think is fair ?[/quote]
Nice rant but content control IS possible. It could even be applied by something as simple as their tracker refusing to give peers under the same conditions a normal download would be refused coupled with a content key transparently sent to your client to open the content to be readable on your pc. You are shortsightedly looking at the open source clients used for “free downloads”. Once again, this is just a base for the implementation and by no means a finished product. BitTorrent is a protocol that many applications can use, but is not the products themselves, I can see the streaming player application again possibly providing free previews from Fox and the like, which the companies already do with their own bandwidth. It would be wise to pass some of the savings on and market it alongside regular service and state the facts. You save money by helping them out. A good QoS-aware app would have minimal-no impact on network performance and most consumers would use the method that will eventually be faster and possibly save them a little change, provided it’s a transparent implementation. Implementation and marketing is everything when it comes to any technology.
[quote comment="42711"]5. The BT community seems to think their world is the mainstream world. Its not. Guess what, MOST people follow the law and dont download illegally. They dont want to know what bt is. They want Lost when they want lost. So they go to Itunes or wherever to get it because its easy and there is a brand they trust associated with it.
Now if Adobe does P2P attached to a flash client, it has a chance to work because its all there[/quote]
Now you are really getting stupid, no offense sweetie. I am just shocked that you have argued competently here throughout and ignored hard facts here. Let me see, The Pirate Bay alone generally records serving 4 million torrents a day!! Yes they are the largest but that is just 1 tracker. To say that is not mainstream is absolutely ludicrous, especially considering BitTorrent is relatively in infant form without many vital changes since its inception. I also say LOL at “trust iTunes” as well as other stores when their policies are what force many people to go “download illegally”! Noone wants DRM clogged mp3s(or even worse, wma) that can only be had with 1 program. Ironically, this DRM was conceived to protect content and increase their profits, All it’s really doing is causing distrust and making people pirate, Some DRM is known to spy on you and mess up functions on a computer while some simply has locked people out of their bought music forever. An increase in bitrate of content would not hurt either. BT can help with that. Please wake up from your fantasy world. I disagree with you, but you were doing ok with some facts until now,
[quote comment="42711"]6. Talk to ISPs about how their bandwidth is used by BT. they hate it because BT downloaders are efficient. they find ISPs where they can upload at high speeds. Which in turn clogs the ISPs bandwidth. Which in turn pisses them off. If you havent noticed, on the last network segment of every ISP there is a bandwidth SHORTAGE.
Not the backbone, not the interconnects. That last segment of DSL, that last node of Cable. THEY DONT HAVE ENOUGH BANDWITH for seeders
Particularly given that BT users tend to just leave their PCs on all the time and are happy queing up every movie and TV show theythink they might watch at sometime. Which in turn means they are continuously uploading and downloading content.
To make matters worse, they are using bandwidth at some multiple of the size of the original files they wanted. So to the last mile, which already has a shortage of bandwidth, BT clients are huge bandwidth hogs.[/quote]
Here you go flip flopping again now talking about what pirates do when you have stated that your argument is for commercial purposes. You can’t have your cake and eat it too, I’m sorry. Do you really think people will be queuing up paid BT downloads the same as free BT downloads are queued up? I really don’t think so, Maybe about the same as normal paid downloads because it will be controlled by how much money a person wants to spend, I don’t see anyone queuing up itunes downloads for day and night, That would be quite expensive. As network strain for ISPs go, remember we have a primitive implementation of an excellent protocol. Extra bandwidth use is a given, but how much it impacts a network is not, In it’s current state, I agree with you, A good QoS-aware app can detect when the network is getting under heavy load but such cues as latency, Look at a Windows app called cfosspeed. It can control your network throughput based on latency either to maximise your bandwidth usage -OR- to make sure your ping times don’t suffer. What is to stop a commercial torrent app from monitoring such clues? We both know that your vision of the world will also need upgrades from ISPs. It’s an inevitable fact that they cannot escape. A well designed torrent application could almost eliminate the excess impact on network performance that is typically a payload of torrents,
[quote comment="42711"]7. For those who think that BT is going mainstream quickly. BitTorrent.com downloads hasnt sold shit worth of legit content.They announced their deals how long ago and do you know anyone who has done anything but download for free from them or any BT host ?[/quote]
As I said, it pretty much has. Where have you been? Maybe for not what companies want it to be mainstream form but that’s another story, I also never accused Bram of being smart beyond this protocol. Experienced marketers with good coders could get the job done, I’m sure, We just need to demand it out of them.
[quote comment="42711"]BT is a great technology. But for a great technology like this , there has to be a slamdunk winner from a business perspective. Just like IPod/Itunes created a real business(even if the music industry itself is a mess), P2P needs a slamdunk winner that draws mainstream users to the technology in a way where the technology doesnt matter.[/quote]
And I still have yet to see what makes you have so little faith that such a marketer focused on innovation will come around, Despite what some may say, Apple was once a great innovator, since you commonly cite itunes as an example, Blizzard has already made the technology not matter and has proven BT valid for updates. Maybe OS updates are next for Linux users? Users don’t even know they are using it, unless they look things up. You seem to not be aware of many of the latest developments, as well as potential in numerous areas, WoW was a few years ago and numerous considerations for Linux have been discussed. Commercial companies are late adopters but they often copy things done in Linux way back.
[quote comment="42711"]And for all of you haters…Kiss my Ass.[/quote]
Not a hater, just a critic. I would much rather spend my time hating the RIAA, MPAA, BPI, BRIEN, etc.
The whole thing reminds me of the mp3 wars. “Can’t see people paying for legal stuff when it’s available for free.” Wow. Guess Apple & iTunes are really losing out big on their business model.
To take Mark’s own words – a majority of people out there don’t wanna know about BT or illegal downloading. Well, if the “law-abiding” public do outnumber the pirates, what is the problem? Everyone (except Sony) embraced mp3’s fairly easily. Lots of the people who download mp3’s now pay for them, and live with the ridiculous limitations of only being allowed to store them on one portable device. So what’s to say if someone introduced a legal BT network (a more effective BT network would also get sign-ups from so called “pirates”) that allowed people to catch their favorite shows legally, you think people wouldn’t sign on?
After all, if it costs me $1.99 for a TV show, but if I can get store credit by having a positive seeding ratio – people might buy into that.
The argument for the lack of commercial viability of BT is not that there won’t be a way to make it happen – it’s that big corporations don’t want to think about it or explore it because it doesn’t make them money now.
But the minute someone makes a viable business model, everyone’s going to line up, take their cut and try to sell us more crap online.
[quote comment="42761"][quote comment="42747"]I’ve been seeding for days at present, utorrent is down right now, but it’ll go back up when I sleep, and it’s on all day while I’m at work. I’m on flat rate, I’ve just signed up to triple my bandwidth.
I believe in BitTorrent, the medium and the message. I believe in giving back what I’ve taken, I’m scrupulous about making sure my ratio is at or above 1.0 for every large file I take.
So some idiot with a competing commercial product is talking down the free opposition? Yawn, wake me when it’s over.[/quote]
so you are an honest thief ?[/quote]
Every content provider out there taking money for their product should answer that question, Mark.
The quality (and I’m talking the content, not bells and whistles and FX) has gotten poorer and poorer because some ivory tower coke-head producer thinks they know what we want because some pent-up focus-group told their one of their underlings that they were horny as hell and very representative of the rest of us.
I will continue to find what I want, when I want it. No company will tell me what I will do. No basketball team owning pundit will dissuade me from doing what I want. Talk to me when the so-called news corps stop pimping the lies they tell us 24/7 as news. The issue of content ownership is so small when compared to the extremely egregious crimes perpetrated by all your friends at FoxNBCABCCBSA&EHistoryChannelESPN et al. I mean you do rub elbows with those types, right? The owners and managers of these sweatshops of profit-centric, disingenuous, mealy-mouthed ‘news’ holes. This is why the rich should stay cloistered in a room with all their money. They are irrelevant to the average person’s day to day struggles, and they really don’t want to hear what WE think of THEM.
Hypercasting, Mark. It really is the future.
I agree with with Brad said, http://www.reeltime.com has by far the best streaming video on demand out there.
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