Princeton Professor Ed Felten over at the
Freedom To Tinker blog explores a survey his students recently completed on BitTorrent file availability that found, not surprisingly, that a significant majority of the content available violates copyrights. Again, this is what's
available, not necessarily what's being actively downloaded, the survey taking a random, 1021-file sample of files available via the trackerless variant of BitTorrent, using the Mainline DHT. Of that data, just ten of the files, or approximately 1% were likely to be non-infringing:
quote:
Overall, we classified ten of the 1021 files, or approximately 1%, as likely non-infringing, This result should be interpreted with caution, as we may have missed some non-infringing files, and our sample is of files available, not files actually downloaded. Still, the result suggests strongly that copyright infringement is widespread among BitTorrent users.
Raise your hand if you're surprised? Of course the fact that a lot of pirated content is available via BitTorrent isn't surprising, and while some are using the study to support the view that clearly no good can come of BitTorrent, others are
debating the study's methodology. Mike Masnick over at
Techdirt however, thinks the study just shows how much better a job the entertainment industry could do at delivering what consumers want:
quote:
I don't think anyone has ever denied that a ton of infringing content is shared on BitTorrent -- and, as some have rightly suggested part of the problem is that those who provide the content haven't done a good job making alternatives available, and that drives people to these potentially illegal options. But what I don't get is the claim by industry lobbyists and lawyers that this somehow proves that BitTorrent needs to be stopped/fixed/held back/filtered/whatever. I read into it exactly the opposite. It shows what a piss poor job so much of the industry has done figuring out how to embrace the obvious demand that's out there, and how to leverage that smartly.
Blocking BitTorrent simply drives those consumers to distribution platforms that are harder to track. Again, if the entertainment industry wants to compete with piracy, they need to offer cheap, easy, and elegant alternatives.
