Adam Fields (weblog)

The MPAA shut down EliteTorrents, which was supposed to be “one of the first peer to peer networks to post an illegal copy of Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith before the movie officially opened in theaters last Thursday”, according to the MPAA press release.

(Sorry, word format.)
http://mpaa.org/MPAAPress/2005/2005_05_25b.doc

This kind of thing has a limited lifetime, because Bittorrent has gone trackerless. What this means is that once a full copy is out there somewhere, the network becomes very resistant to taking down any particular copy. I’ve written about the MPAA’s problems with this before, but I feel the need to reiterate: this is not something that you can just make go away. It’s not a technology, it’s a technique. The ability to reconstruct a whole from disparate parts, without a central resource means that it doesn’t help to shut down one, or even a few sites to stop the flow – you have to eradicate every last copy out there. Frankly, I don’t see that happening, and even if we did, the means to get there could not possibly be worth the end product.

So, assume that p2p file sharing is here to stay, and can’t be stopped.

Now, this is very interesting, because although I can’t find a reference for it, I’m told that Revenge of the Sith made back its entire investment in merchandising tie-ins before a single ticket was sold. If that’s true, even setting aside the record numbers of ticket revenue on opening weekend, this is hardly a poster child for revenue lost to filesharing, but instead an argument that filesharing is, in fact, great for generating buzz and activating supplemental revenue streams.

I’m not a marketer, I’m a technologist, but even this is obvious to me:

1. People like to spend money.
2. People don’t like to be treated like criminals.
3. People like to spend money on those they consider friendly or part of their community, even if it’s not true (you know who you are).
4. People share with their friends.

The creative commons folks get it.

I’m also confused about why EliteTorrents was hosting a copy of the movie, if in fact they were. With a trackerless torrent, if someone puts up a movie, and then they take it down, but multiple other people have sucked it down and are sharing it, you’ve got a pretty big whack-a-mole problem. The original sharer has probably complied with a what a C&D would accomplish, but the problem still exists. This is bad, I think – it increases the incentive for copyright owners to try to make the penalties greater for smaller instances of filesharing, and I think that would be counterproductive approach.