Piracy Leads to Less Crap says BitTorrent Co-founder
Written by Ernesto on November 09, 2008Ashwin Navin, former president and co-founder of BitTorrent Inc. has left the company after four years. Thus far, the company hasn’t been a great success, but the BitTorrent protocol is more alive than ever. Now he can talk more freely, we ask Ashwin about his view on the future of BitTorrent, piracy and online media.
Ashwin Navin leaving BitTorrent Inc.
His position as president of BitTorrent never held Navin back much. With quotes such as “iTunes DRM Inspires People to Pirate Content,” he was very clear about his attitude towards digital rights management for example. Still, he often found himself in an awkward position, where he had to please the average BitTorrent user, but also the big Hollywood studios.
Now Navin has quit his job at BitTorrent Inc, we decided to do an exit interview, hoping he can speak a little more freely. “My BitTorrent tenure certainly didn’t feel like four years,” was the first thing Navin told TorrentFreak. “But time flies when working among good people, world-changing ideas, and great fun! What attracted me to BitTorrent in the first place, and what is still inspiring to this day, is its ability to provide people true digital freedom.”
Indeed, the BitTorrent protocol provides freedom, but that is also why the entertainment industry is hesitant to adopt it. They don’t want freedom for consumers, but they do want to maintain their cash flow. Nevertheless, one way or another, BitTorrent provides the entertainment industry with a whole new set of tools, something with which Navin seems to agree.
“For its direct and indirect benefits, I believe BitTorrent sits among the handful of important technology breakthroughs such as the printing press, broadcasting, and the Internet itself. Why? Today’s publishing technology – like blogs, BitTorrent, and video sharing sites for example – quite directly forge a level playing field for creativity,” Navin said.
“Indirectly, these tools force large media companies to realize that there is no longer scarcity or a stranglehold on distribution that locks people out of self-expression. Anyone can speak to the world in any format, without filters. Freedom of Speech has never been so available to the masses. How these large corporations respond to this fundamental realization will benefit many many millions of people–creators and consumers alike.”
Navin hits the nail on the head here. BitTorrent is a great technology with a lot of potential. The thing the entertainment industry has to do, is find a way to leverage it. Listening to consumers instead of trying to shut them up would be a good place to start. The Internet has put the consumer in control, and it’s time for the copyright holders to realize this. Or as Navin puts it:
“The free flow of information and entertainment over the Internet doesn’t diminish the relevance of high value, professional entertainment at all. It does force the publishers to be more quality conscious (make fewer flops, and more hits). And the great cardinal sin in this era would be to withhold your content in exclusive deals or to be too precious with your creation. Now’s the time to be more promiscuous with your distribution strategy than before: be everywhere at once, wherever there are eyeballs you can count.”
“In the previous era, there was a lot of forgiveness when 3 or 4 companies owned every road to the consumer. Publishers could produce a crap movie or TV show and get away with it. But when there are millions of ways to get to the user, or in other words, millions of “channels” to choose from, the best entertainment presented in the most frictionless format always wins.”
So, Navin argues that piracy leads to less crap. The entertainment business now has to make stuff people actually want to listen to or watch. Unfortunately for them, it is getting harder and harder to influence and direct consumers to see things the way they want to. Information is more free than ever before and consumers have a choice now, and that will not go away. It’s up to Hollywood to take the next step, and compete with piracy.
Previously: China Hijacks Popular BitTorrent Sites
Next: isoHunt Founder Gary Fung on Copyfight
50 Responses
“file sharing is stealing.”
Hello Mr. Troll, how are you today?
As for the article, well put, this should force the industry to make better shows and movies plus… less feking reruns and ads.. or we’ll just find another way of getting stuff that will keep us entertained better.
Adjust and live with us, or saw hello to the Dodo in a short while.
http://www.eZee.se
pro-piracy is anti-artist.
oops, i guess the first troll comment was moderated so forgive me above if it sounds strange, unfortunately there is no edit button.
Also, last line i meant “say hello…” not “saw..”
Cheers!
I didnt even think of this, but now that its been brought up, I see that its true. If Hollywood wants us to watch their shows over homemade vid’s from bittorrent, then they better up their quality. Same goes for the music people as well, theres alot of great artists out there that could become famous via bittorrent if people stop listening to the hollywood stuff.
what he really means is that they are going to
EMBRACE
EXTEND
and CONTROL more of these tech startups, all with warner brothers in the background stealing the tech and hording it so the public can never use it.
Deal with the devil and you will lose your soul.
The curent ntairtainement “Industry!” (as they call themseves) is a swarm of parasites and must die.
Then a new healthy entairtainement sector can flourish. The seed of this new sector are there.
Parasites of the old world not to apply or else!
We are watching YOU!
also by his quote.
“The thing the entertainment industry has to do, is find a way to leverage it. ”
HUH you cant leverage that which is free and out of your control.
What they are doing in north america is ramp up ISP pricing by controling your internet.
5.6cents per megabit in japan do not fraking tell me that ohhh there close crap.
even double that cost should provide everyone up to the north pole with internet.
Very good article. And I fully agree – TV, for instance, has seen a -lot- of crap in recent years (like the overabundance of “reality” shows)
I agree, Tv is mostly filled with reality shows and other crap and most of magz are filled with useless info and only have small bits that are interesting.
Torrent media and web magz for the win, you can chose what, when and how you want it.
Who car3s?
xynta
http://5chan.ru
“The entertainment business now has to make stuff people actually want to listen to or watch.”
Shall that happen?
Navin said that ‘Publishers could produce a crap movie or TV show and get away with it. But when there are millions of ways to get to the user, or in other words, millions of “channels” to choose from, the best entertainment presented in the most frictionless format always wins.’
However, there is still one element missing to destroying the stranglehold of distribution, and has still not put the common person in control: that is copyright law. It is very important for the law to change – and such a change in the law itself can make it happen.
I do not think that the publishers will ever realize anything until the law is itself changed.
Roze
http://www.10ch.org/
There’s two facets to this story, one of which was completely overlooked in this article: BT, inc. let about half of it’s staff go at the same time Navin walked.
As interesting as Navin’s thoughts are, it’s a little disappointing to see the focus on fluff rather than the far more newsworthy train wreck BT, inc. has become.
Unless, of course, that article is forthcoming. Even so, it’s journalism 101 to lead with your best story. This ain’t it.
Freedom of information? You mean after the government censors, private interest censors, and corporate censors get done deciding what information your allowed to have?
Think of the children, and god bless america.
Oh look, a whole site bent on vilifying the same monster its viewers help create, how novel.
I hope BitTorrent (the company) release uTorrent as open source before they close down…
Followup on #12
Whoa, Post #9 -> http://5chan.ru
I stand corrected. Ironically theres some freedom left in russia.
“However, there is still one element missing to destroying the stranglehold of distribution, and has still not put the common person in control: that is copyright law. It is very important for the law to change – and such a change in the law itself can make it happen.”
Uh… Roze?
Copyright law was effectively abolished during the rise of filesharing.
The importance of changing a dead law is dubious at best.
Typical thief saying the industries need to change without suggesting any reasonable alternatives.
Making better movies and CD’s would not curb piracy at all. Pirates would just have a better quality selection of art to steal.
Using the excuse that movies and CD’s are too expensive is also BS. The last five CD’s I bought were all around twelve bucks a piece and they were all new releases. Not to mention the fact you can get individual songs for 99 cents from a number of places. If new DVD’s were five dollars and CD’s were three bucks, cheapskate socialist nerds would still pirate, still whine and still make excuses.
Navin is a douche. He conned Bram into creating the “company”. He was in bed with the RIAA and MPAA during his tenure but now that he cashed out with his 4 year options now fully vested he could care less about them, you or anyone else. He will play any side as long as he gets the money and the girls in his pocket. Beware of this guy.
TorrentFreak…is awesome
“Typical thief saying the industries need to change without suggesting any reasonable alternatives.”
Umm, not our job, if it was our job and we were paid for it, i’m sure we would come up with some “reasonable alternatives”
“If new DVD’s were five dollars and CD’s were three bucks, cheapskate socialist nerds would still pirate, still whine and still make excuses.”
True, some people would pirate no matter what but thats just because they have gotten so used to it and love “sticking it” to the man.
But on the other hand, a LOT of “pirates” (and i use that word loosely) would buy instead of downloading.
A lot of people “converted” due to the industry, and would love to convert back again, on reasonable terms.
Case and point: online music retailers.. logically they should not make **one single dollar** because all they offer is freely available but thats not the case is it?
Oh and while we are at it, break up the RIAA into small little pieces and make sure none of those bastards get jobs in the industry and I, and a multitude of others will buy albums again, till then…the music industry can suck an egg, or dirty monkey balls.
http://www.eZee.se
@18
The reasonable alternative is the people. Is is not the industry that should change; it is rather the industry that should be replaced by “community culture.”
@17
Not enough. Not until file-sharing is as popular as television will it really have an impact. Moreover, companies still sue, there are still negative attitudes about P2P, and it is still quite illegal to put anything up in public. The abolition of copyright law has only happened in P2P, but not anywhere else, either online or off.
Roze
If he really beleaved in what he was saying he would have quit when they opened the store.
Record companies are now an anachronism. We don’t need a “reasonable alternative” that accepts that record companies need to be paid. Record companies do not need to be paid. They need to fuck off and die.
file-sharing is much more popular than anyone realizes, and believe me, its more popular than a television currently. approximately 50 million internet users share files now, and not one of them are in the public eye.
stw
I like that man!
The problem with this article is that it doesn’t acknowledge the fact that ISPs are helping to kill off this great new frontier by imposing usage caps on their service, making the downloading of movies and TV shows, or even the use of legal video sites like YouTube and NetFlix, impractical.
Comcast has imposed a 250GB a month cap and AT&T is currently trying MUCH lower caps in Reno Nevada. These caps will pretty much kill any freedom that the people have to turn away from the entertainment cartels. Who’s going to download or watch streaming content when they’ll nickel & dimed to death because of it?
But lets be honest, unless your getting hd stuf and lots of it, 250gb is perfectly fine.
Tell me, when comcast started throttling torrents, did you complain? (I hope so)
Yet, now that they have become more open about there practices, people like you complain that 250 gig a month is not enough bandwidth.
Theres a lot of hype about how some isp’s are offering unlimited bandwidth, but imho they are even worce than comcast as they fail to realise that they will never have the capacitty to provide unlimited anything. It is however worth noting that a figgure will still be set on your monthly bandwidth based on the connectivity that you have – ie: if you are constantly downloading at the fastist speed that you can get for a month, then you will have there for reached a limit.
hey Ashwin what do you say about torrentfreak’s position that filesharing is piracy?
i say piracy is theft
piracy is the illegal manufacture and sale of conterfeit products. piracy is stealing revenue which belongs to the copyright holder, piracy is stealing
filesharing is copying, filesharing is not piracy
but torrentfreak says filesharing is piracy! i say torrentfreak is warped
what do you say Ashwin?
I’d pay a reasonable monthly subscription to access the content I want, when I want without interruptions every 5 minutes to sell me tapax and prostate medication.
I would maybe live with a pre-roll ad (after all, you know who I am and can target them so they’re relevant) but don’t interrupt the show.
Netflix and Hulu are doing a great job of freeing up a lot of that content online and on-demand but there’s still more that could be done. Neither of those give me 100% of the professional and amateur content that I want access to (and I include live motor racing from around the world – NASCAR, WRC, F1 – as well as Dr Who or H2O for my daughter!)
Studios and networks could (should) use Bittorrent to distribute the content to minimize their bandwidth bills (just look at LiveStation for instance), and I’m happy to have it wrapped with DRM as long as they recognize it’s me and let me watch on my phone, my PC, or my TV (via Xbox, PS3 or transcoded), remember where I am and let me pause/replay/bookmark how I want.
I’m happy with episodic delivery so I only get a new episode of CSI each week… but add it to m menu as soon as it’s available and don’t make it disappear if I don’t watch if to two weeks.
Of course as well as telling me what’s available and letting me put bookmarks in shows I’d like it to be obvious when I look at my queue what I’ve watched (so I don’t start the same episode of Lost 6 times … though with that show you’re never sure if it’s a deliberate feeling!)
The model can be made to work with subscription and/or pay-per-view as long as the content providers work together via a common engine and make sure the costs are kept in reach of consumers.
Cable tell us “ad hoc programming would be too expensive to deliver to everyone”
I say Cable TV is dead. On-demand IP based delivery is the future – and the cable company has the ideal pipe and billing solution so they should embrace change
“i say piracy is theft”
You are a ret@rd. Why don’t you get charged with theft/larcent then?
“piracy is the illegal manufacture and sale of conterfeit products. piracy is stealing revenue which belongs to the copyright holder, piracy is stealing”
No it isn’t. Why do you idiots think that commercial pirates making money is taking money from the copyrigvht holder – and filesharing isn’t? They both do… how thick are you?
“filesharing is copying, filesharing is not piracy”
Yes – one thing right, … but then NO, filesharing is piracy you tard.
“but torrentfreak says filesharing is piracy!”
OK, apparently your extremely stupid so I’ll state the obvious: you break copyright law and the offwnse is euphemistically referred to as “piracy”, filesharing is copying, copying is breaking copyright law. I hope your small mind can follow that.
what do you say Ashwin?
The guys a multi-millionaire business-man with a life, don’t over-rate yourself and think he’d be interested.
250GB? For almost every Australian, that is an internet dream, I’m on 2 Gigs a month ATM, and i’ve never met anyone with more then 25.
“pro-piracy is anti-artist.”
i call bullshit on that.
first off, you’re calling them artists, which would mean they are indeed in it for the art in which case they are in it for creative expression and not money. therefore, it could be argued that piracy is indeed PRO-artist. lrn2 troll better ^_^
I’m all for the concept of a free exchange of goods and ideas, but how is anybody supposed to make a decent living off of the entertainment industry if there are no profits? Running executives out of the industry seems like a great idea and a great way to untether artists, but don’t forget that executives are the organization force that harnesses, rather than strictly tethers those creative impulses and drives the cooperation necessary to make the high quality entertainment that we all love.
I want to go into the entertainment industry on the creative side of things and I want to be able to make a lot of money doing it. If everything is pirated, unless I’m missing something, this will be impossible.
I fully understand the concept of reducing the cost of distribution, but if there is no revenue stream, there is no revenue stream.
make it fairly cheap, without DRM, and people will buy it to support a quality work/product
There are many things that simply cannot be made on the cheap… There is something to be said for the high-budget spectacle.
Um, look around you idiot. Are you sure you live in Australia?
I’m on a 200GB cap atm with TPG, $80/month. TPG is not the only ISP to offer 200GB cap.
So ..um, do you goddamn research you idiot.
Think the BBC has pretty much got it spot on. The service is paid for by the license payers and not adverts so quality is expected and ruthlessly enforced. Then again what do you expect from the first broadcasting company.
Only problem is that some of the executives have gone a bit power mad with the pricing and the pay of certain “entertainers”
Look at the whole row over the “new enthralling content” provided by gobshites: Jonathan Ross and Russel Brandt!
I’ve watched television in the US and Australia and both found them fucking annoying, so much so that I had to turn the TV off.
However the problem won’t just be solved in economically strangling the bilge that is spewed from certain production companies. The parasitic troglodytes in charge of commisioning the filth must also be dealt with. Gene Hunt style.
“pro-piracy is anti-artist”
And anti-iraq is pro-terrorism?
networks always have bad taste.how can crap like king of queens go for so long and arrested development only get 3 seasons? i guess most people dont like slightly more intelligent programming :(
I agree with this article, the entertainment industry is mainly filled with con-artists. they never think make a good film people will watch and pay for it, they are always pondering how can i trick the general public into watching this crap. Come on how many of u gone in to a cinema to watch a movie after seeing a trailer on the TV and found the movie to be total utter crap. Few years ago many, now hardly. Lets take max payne for example i got a TS and watched it the print was bad but i could tell it was a yawn fest. But when kungfu panda came out i check it out by getting a TS, then took all my friends on a week end to watch and we had a great time.
BitTorrrent ROCKS. Keepin it Free ROCKS.
Jess
http://www.anolite.echoz.com
@33, as @34 said, you can’t be a full-time artist if you aren’t making any profit,.. it takes time and money to create art (and art can be movies, tv shows, music, paintings, drawing, furniture, cars, phones, clothes, appliances, practically anything) but you can’t make any of these things AND be able to offer them to the public without getting a return on investment (ROI).
Many artists do love creating things or works, but many, if not all, would like to do that for a living, much like anyone else who wants to do what they love for a living. The difference between, say, a doctor or engineer and an artist, is that someone is paying the doctor a salary for his services. The only way artists get a salary is for people to buy copies of their works or someone to commission a work,.. that’s it.
Artists aren’t all in it to make things solely for selfish pricks like #33 to consume. Like anything else, if you want an artist’s work, you’re going to have to pay for it. Hopefully, we can find a way to pay the artists directly and reduce the number of executives taking a cut.
#33 likes downloading TV shows for free, that’s great, until the TV network isn’t making enough money to continue development of that show and it gets the ax.
A possible avenue could be a ’standards-based’ set top box (made by multiple manufacturers but all adhering to an exact , minimal hardware spec, and an open source OS that has a benevolent dictator guiding development (to reduce forks and centralize support)) with ’slots’ or ‘channels’ that individual TV networks could distribute their shows to, and you subscribe to each individual channel for a low monthly (or yearly) fee (like $5-10/month). This would kill off channels providing mostly crap and encourage better quality shows if the network wants to stay in business.
You can’t bang on about how the media outlets should die without suggesting a real, achievable solution. Doing so and refusing to buy any media will only, inevitably, kill off the media you love to fill hard drives with, they you’re left with nothing to watch or listen to because no one is making a dime.
Next time you want to scream that piracy is king and everything should be free, tell that to the vendor you buy computer stuff from, I’m sure they’ll agree and hand over a new, high end computer you can take home and fill with… why aren’t there any new movies coming out this season?
For all of those confused about piracy vs. file-sharing and theft let me retort. Say you download the movie “blah” and didn’t pay for it. IMHO if you were never going to buy it, can’t afford to pay for it, etc, then you were never a customer and thus aren’t stealing from anyone because no body was going to turn profit since you were not going ever buy it. Now if you can afford it, or wanted to buy it but instead download it then your a flat out pirate and you did steal from the MPAA(10 cent dvd’s resold for 12 – 30 USD) however you still didn’t steal from the artists, since the artist gets paid for making the movie(a salary) and more often than not the artists do not get a cut for DVD’s sold as that stays in the hands of the greedy MPAA. Now the RIAA is a whole other ball of wax, because artists DO get a per CD sale cut(about 1% and the RIAA gets the other percentage minus marketing, manufacture, etc…).
freedom of information? Freedom to see masses of useful information that distracts us from getting to the truth.
i meant masses of ***useLESS information
File Sharing is cool. I just wish people could come up with a simple legal way for people to pay for products they like.
I was on a bittorrent site one day and I saw a comment from the director of a film asking people if they download and like the film to go to their website and give some money. It was a good sci-fi flick and I enjoyed it so I went to the website and gave some money.
I think people don’t mind paying for going concerns and stuff they like. People tend to dislike paying for back catalogues and overly hyped products (that they MUST have but know they will never really use)
It will only get more difficult to make children born in the 21st century believe they have to pay for music that was recorded in 1970. It just will not make sense.
The flip side of the coin is that people are willing to pay for their morning coffee but when it comes a musician trying to make a living they are not. Difficult, exciting times ahead.
filesharing is NOT piracy.
The word ‘piracy’ suggests something morally wrong (along the lines of murder, rape and pillage).
The truth is that filesharing is ‘helping thy neighbour’; it is helping others as a community collectively.
If people really want to defeat the corporations which are causing our community so much trouble then listen to Free Art, Free Music and use Free Software.
It’s that simple.
if they would make good stuff, people would pay for it. If they would make it easy buyable (like downloadable), people would pay for it.
but because of greed, they refused to put them for sale online for too long. No wonder technology was faster than their greed.
if they think, people are still willing to pay $20 for a piece of plastic which they never use… well, no wonder people steal. it is easier to do than to buy a DVD you can’t rip yourself thanks to DRM.
As long they still want to force people to buy the plastic, there will be piracy.
Multiple Responses coming up
@2
Your an idiot. Many independent artists release thier work free of charge on bittorrent through sites like Demonoid, and thier work by the way is far above par considering the crap the music industry is putting out. If you can justify paying $20 for say the new James Blunt album, that only has 11 songs on it, by all means go buy it.
@15
Your also an idiot, uTorrent is already free and open-source, and as far as i know always has been.
@ anyone else who thinks the RIAA and CRIA and whoever else has a purpose
Screw you, you bunch of ignorant wankers. The reason that crappy movies, tv shows, music, and even games are being produced IS YOU. Because you PAY for the shitty production, YOU encourage production companys to keep putting out boring repetitive bullshit. So if you wanna blame anyone for the still declining quality or games/music/movies BLAME YOURSELF, because your not giving these companys/artists to make anything better then whats passable or ‘decent’.
When it’s worth buying, i’ll buy it. Otherwise i’ll keep using torrents.
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