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.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

To the novice file sharer, the site Mp3downloadhq.com sounds like it has an attractive name. MP3′s? Check. Downloads? Check. HQ? Sounds like the nerve center – check.

But this site doesn’t bring a free file-sharing experience. It brings a nasty and costly experience.

Searching the web, it’s impossible to find a satisfied customer. Indeed, most posts seem to concern allegations of connections to fraudulent activity. They even managed to fool thousands of LimeWire users and people searching for the Kazaa software.

Up until now, the slippery Mp3downloadhq seems to have been untouchable. However, it appears part of their ‘service’ entails letting their customers download copies of uTorrent directly from their servers. This hasn’t gone unnoticed and uTorrent appears to have let the lawyers loose:

Re: µTorrent Copyright infringement

Dear [Recipient]:

We represent [Private], and his software µTorrent. (collectively [Private]).

[Private] is the sole owner of all rights and copyrights to the computer software named µTorrent available from http://www.utorrent.com and other websites. (“[Private] Property”)

It has recently come to our client’s attention that you appear to be hosting a web site (mp3downloadhq.com) that offers a software program that contains [Private] Property. This software program seems to be available to subscribers only, and it seems to be something you charge money for. The material and activities at the online location infringe [Private] copyrights in the [Private] Property because the [Private] Property was copied and posted to the online location and is being distributed from the online location, without [Private] consent. The web page you are hosting clearly infringes [Private] copyrights by distributing [Private] Property.

It goes on to explain that in uTorrent’s lawyer’s opinion, mp3downloadhq willfully infringed its rights, making them liable for statutory damages of up to $150,000.

Ashwin Navin, President and Co-Founder of BitTorrent, Inc told TorrentFreak: “Unfortunately the BitTorrent community has a number of bad actors in it, most notably companies that use our trademark to sell adware-infested versions of software that is already available for free.”

Going on to show the care being taken not to stifle innovation whilst tackling these outfits he explains: “This half-baked attempt to “commercialize” BitTorrent isn’t a sanctioned use of our trademark, so we’re trying to find the right balance of retaining intellectual property rights to shut those guys down while maintaining an active and flourishing developer community that can continue to use our IP for great products. For example, uTorrent, BitComet, Azureus, and the Asus BitTorrent router were products developed in the BitTorrent community in good faith and enabling of good user experiences. We want to support those open source applications as much as possible, so we created a really lightweight trademark licensing process that isn’t profitable for our company at all, but hopefully helps novice users determine who the good guys are.”

There are legitimate ways for developers to use BitTorrent technology explains Ashwin: “We also have BitTorrent DNA available for anyone that wants to build a commercial application using BitTorrent P2P technology to reduce the infrastructure costs associated with streaming video for example.”

There are hundreds, if not thousands of these types of sites on the internet and they are almost universally hated so this is one copyright infringement action that is likely to be popular with file-sharers. Go for it uTorrent – and when you’ve finished with these guys, maybe you can do something about this blatant profiteering too?

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

If BitTorrent Inc really plans to compete with the pirates, the pricing of the content should be reasonable, the catalogue extensive, and all without DRM. If they can meet these ends they might have a good chance to convert some of the present BitTorrent users. Navin says that he hopes that BitTorrent users, all of whom he calls “members”, find the BitTorrent store a better experience than piracy.

The BitTorrent store will be launched next month, and videos will be ‘protected’ by Windows DRM. Ironically, Navin said on a panel at the international Consumer Electronics Show (CES) that DRM inspires people to pirate content. So they have to find a way to convince their media partners to remove the DRM first, if they really want to compete with piracy. Bram Cohen, the inventor of BitTorrent and co-founder of BitTorrent Inc, told us last week, “Right now most of our content partners are insisting on DRM for the content we’re making available. It’s causing an awful lot of headaches, but we’re trying to minimize the impact on user experience and support”

The BitTorrent Video Store will be filled with movies and TV shows from Warner Bros, 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, G4, Kadokawa Pictures USA, Lionsgate, MTV Networks (Comedy Central, MTV etc.), Palm Pictures and many other mainstream and independent content providers. In total there will be over 10,000 titles listed in their store, from classic TV shows to the latest blockbusters. According to Navin, this will make the BitTorrent store the biggest online video store on the Internet.

Ashwin Navin on the Netgear Entertainment Box, and the upcoming video store.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Windows DRM has been completely left behind in the portable media player market. The iPod can’t play content restricted (read: infected) by Microsoft’s little virus, and neither can Microsoft’s very own Zune! So, the only consumers who’ll be able to watch videos they have purchased from the BitTorrent Video Store away from their computers will be those who own Creative, Dell, Archos or any one of the other compatible devices. This is, assuming the content from the store will be protected with Janus, Microsoft’s Windows DRM for portable devices. If it isn’t, it won’t play on any portable device at all.

In September of this year Ashwin Navin, the co-founder of BitTorrent Inc said that his company foresees a future without DRM. Although, even then, the company had said that they would use DRM, Navin also made it clear that it would only be in the early stages. Let’s hope the POA hasn’t changed.

Navin made his standpoint on DRM quite clear when he said that “the bottom line is that DRM is bad for the content provider and it’s bad for the consumer.” About foreseeing a future without DRM, he said that he thinks “the future will not be marked by digital rights management. It will be marked by advertising-supported content that’s clear of DRM.” The inventor of BitTorrent, Bram Cohen too says that the company is “very concerned about the usability problems DRM introduces,” and that they are “educating [their] content partners about the lost commercial opportunity.”

To be fair, BitTorrent Inc is only walking down the path of limiting consumers’ rights because it is being forced to. The company is clearly against DRM. According to Cohen, it is the only way they have been able to strike deals with content creators. He says this is “at the insistence of [their] content partners.”

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

“This financing is a clear testament to the strength of our technology and potential growth, and I look forward to spearheading the continued development of BitTorrent,” said Bram Cohen in response to the announcement.

It hasn’t been an easy ride for the company, but it looks like things may finally be falling in place. BitTorrent Inc has had a great a business model for a while, it’s the support of major media companies that was lacking. The deals signed earlier this week and the following investment of venture capital is bound to bring it success.

“To have the support from Accel Partners and initial investor DCM is fuel for our continued leadership as the preeminent mechanism for efficient content delivery on the Web. Both firms are top-tier venture investors and bring a wealth of expertise and relationships to support our dominant position in the marketplace,” said Ashwin Navin, President and Co-founder of BitTorrent.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.