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BitTorrent Lays Off Marketing Staff
Can't afford to market something designed to be free

BitTorrent, the company that has developed the p2p content delivery technology based on the protocol of the same name, has announced that the entire sales and marketing staff for the business is going to be laid off. It was initially reported that this major layoff (the department makes up more than twenty percent of the company’s staff) was due to a failure to sell the company’s online entertainment store. That store offers legal media downloads for a fee and hasn’t really been successful because the downloads are all locked up with DRM. Although the store’s failure is a problem for BitTorrent, it has since been announced that the layoffs are not related to the issues with the online store. No statement was issued as to the reason for the layoffs but people have commented that the success of BitTorrent has been in its free p2p sharing and that it doesn’t make financial sense to have a whole team of people marketing the sale of something that is free.

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brianiscool
join:2000-08-16
Tampa, FL

brianiscool

Member

lol

Bitorrent just has money to give away for free.

funchords
Hello
MVM
join:2001-03-11
Yarmouth Port, MA

2 edits

funchords

MVM

I don't buy it (please excuse the pun)

I've certainly paid for online content -- DRM-free MP3 files from payplay.fm Doing so is fine -- you know they're encoded correctly, you know what you're downloading, and you're supporting the art.

That the same thing -may- be available for free isn't a deal-killer for me. Buy it and escape the hassles of bad codecs and bad karma.

But purchasing a DRM-infected file, never. I will always avoid doing infecting my property with DRM.

Funny thing that I just realized as I was describing this -- I feel the same way about buying something on a "mail-in" rebate.

The whole transaction is tainted and I'd rather pay more and not have to worry about it.

Without DRM and without a mail-in rebate, the transaction is "genuine" and the item that I bought is mine without extra "gotchas" or hassles to come later.
B04
Premium Member
join:2000-10-28

B04

Premium Member

Re: I don't buy it (please excuse the pun)

Don't think about it too long. You eventually realize that paying for software that you can't easily share with others or put on several of your own computers is equally confining. It's a long dark road into an open source mindset.

Just "sold" another person on using PDFCreator instead of paying for yet another Acrobat license...

-- B
fiberguy2
My views are my own.
Premium Member
join:2005-05-20

fiberguy2

Premium Member

Re: I don't buy it (please excuse the pun)

I love it... take a delivery system that many people use to "share" and serve a large amount of illegal content and then put a store behind it that has DRM so you can't enjoy the very act that most people do, yet deny, and what do you have? A train-wreck.
EPS4
join:2008-02-13
Hingham, MA

EPS4 to funchords

Member

to funchords
This is exactly the reason I like to buy as much of my media in physical form as possible... while there is some DRM associated with DVD, it has been cracked (I don't have any reason to use Blu-ray)... plus with physical media you get the right that digital distribution will always take away DRM or no DRM, the right of resale.
Corydon
Cultivant son jardin
Premium Member
join:2008-02-18
Denver, CO

Corydon

Premium Member

Re: I don't buy it (please excuse the pun)

Exactly why I still buy CDs. No DRM hassles, I get to pick the format I use to rip and I can take my music from my home computers to work to mp3 players to the car to wherever without any hassles.
russotto
join:2000-10-05
West Orange, NJ

russotto

Member

Backwards layoff?

That's a switch. Usually it's sales and marketing that gets booted last... R&D comes first.

Cheese
Premium Member
join:2003-10-26
Naples, FL

Cheese

Premium Member

Ummm...

Remove the DRM, and maybe people will buy from you! DUH?!?!?
dentman42
Premium Member
join:2001-10-02
Columbus, OH

dentman42

Premium Member

Re: Ummm...

said by Cheese:

Remove the DRM, and maybe people will buy from you! DUH?!?!?
And make sure the prices are right. $.99 is pushing it for a .mp3 even at 256k (we need more lossless DRM-free files), and $1.99 is way too much for a single episode of a TV show that I can DVR for free OTA or included in my normal cable bill. Plus, since it's a P2P format, that means I'm paying a large part of the distribution cost, so it better be dirt cheap.

As far as artists and labels claiming that P2P lowers the value of the product and makes it a "commodity" - well, the way it's marketed long ago made it a commodity, and the proliferation of new, usually pathetic "artists" lowers the value. The more there is to choose from, the less perceived value any one item has. Plus, all the crappy CDs release over the last 15 years have scared away many consumers.
Plus, the $3.99 bargain bin ("cut-out") CDs have been around since before P2P. Why buy a new CD for $15.99 now (they were $12.99 when I got my first player back in '86, with a promise that as R&D costs were recouped, the price would drop dramatically) when it will be available cut-out or used for less than $5 in a year or two? Plus, there's a lot more competition these days for people's "disposable" income.

RARPSL
join:1999-12-08
Suffern, NY

RARPSL

Member

Re: Ummm...

said by dentman42:

Plus, the $3.99 bargain bin ("cut-out") CDs have been around since before P2P. Why buy a new CD for $15.99 now (they were $12.99 when I got my first player back in '86, with a promise that as R&D costs were recouped, the price would drop dramatically) when it will be available cut-out or used for less than $5 in a year or two?
While I agree with you about $16 being more than $13 (ie: The price SEEMS to have increased not decreased due to R&D cost recovery) you are using two separate definitions of $1. $13 in 1986 dollars is much more than $16 in 2008 dollars due to inflation - IOW: The actual price HAS dropped as measured in "constant" dollars. Waiting a year for price to drop to $4 is a separate issue (like waiting a year to buy a book you want to read [not just own] as a paperback in lieu of it's original release as a Hardback book).