BitTorrent is to movies what "bolt-cutters are to stealing bicycles"

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/02/bittorrent-is-to-movies-what-bolt-cutters-are-to-stealing-bicycles.ars

by abraham • 15 years ago

68 60 15 years ago

arstechnica.com

pg• 15 years ago

BitTorrent is to movies what air is to sound.

bigiain• 15 years ago

I agree 100%

Bit torrent is a genuinely useful tool, that happens to be useful for both fully legitimate purposes as well as other uses.

I'd accept some lobby group applying pressure to make bit torrent "illegal" right after they get majority public agreement that cars should be illegal (bank robbers use them to make their escape!) and spray paint (graffiti taggers use it!)

ericd• 15 years ago

I think the person that said that quote is implying that things like bolt cutters should be made illegal, strangely enough.

He also wants DMCA's safe harbor provisions curtailed.

cgranade• 15 years ago

It kind of amazes me that someone can make a statement like that bolt cutters analogy and not stop to ponder why bolt cutters are still legal, despite their utility in stealing bicycles.

barista• 15 years ago

The classic mistake of equating bits to atoms!

iwwr2• 15 years ago

You can't really fit IP into the same framework as physical property rights. Whether we think IP is valid, it should be treated as distinct. Be it through the theory of 'social value' (IP in general) or 'social incentives' (patents) or the needs of business identification (trademarks).

A physical property right refers to a physical good, whereas an intellectual property right refers more to behaviors (making a nondestructive copy) and to classes of goods (eg. storage media).

It's also relatively easy to define a physical good or a physical boundary of land, but 'original creations' are much less precise. Indeed, nothing is really created in isolation and oftentimes, the same invention is developed independently (and near at the same time) by multiple entities.

We should rather call IP an intellectual monopoly privilege, than a right to a piece of property.

VladRussian2• 15 years ago

>as physical property rights ...

>We should rather call IP an intellectual monopoly privilege, than a right to a piece of property.

I hope you don't overestimate what physical property rights are, in particular that typical "fee simple" title is basically the license ("monopoly privilege"?) to a real estate vs. allodial title which is almost impossible, at least in the US nowdays.

iwwr2• 15 years ago

Thanks for the reference, btw: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allodial_title I didn't know that particular term.

But I would distinguish rights from their actual recognition. Rights can exist without them having to be recognized. They can't be taken away, just infringed against. If someone has been wrongly imprisoned, his rights still exist, even if they are being broken systematically.

Also, the difference between IP as a 'right' and as a 'privilege' consists in the difficulty of arranging for a system of IPs in a world without a monopolistic enforcer (or 'privilege granter'). It could be just that IP is a new phenomenon and our social systems are not yet prepared to deal with it. It could also be that IP is falsely recognized and their enforcement further breaks existing rights.

sabat2• 15 years ago

We should rather call IP an intellectual monopoly privilege, than a right to a piece of property.

I could not have said it better. It's not property, and no allowance for treating the intangible as property exists in the US constitution. It grants a monopoly for a limited time in order to encourage artists and inventors. Obviously that's been perverted into what's now called IP -- fake "property" that is "owned" by corporations rather than artists and inventors.

kahirsch2• 15 years ago

Treating the intangible as property was long established in common law, not just with regard to patents and copyright, but many other things. Blackstone lists, for example, ten kinds of "incorporeal hereditaments": http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/b/blackstone/william/comment/b...

The clause in the Constitution about granting exclusive rights was not creating something brand new, but just assigning the power to do it to the federal government instead of the states.

j_baker• 15 years ago

To me, the entire idea of IP is trying to artificially shoehorn the idea of property ownership onto ideas. Physical property is a zero-sum game. For me to make $20, someone has to lose $20. Intellectual property without patents isn't. If I can make something, then other people can as well. But when you have a patent, it turns into a zero-sum game just like physical property.

tomjen3• 15 years ago

Physical property is only a zero sum game if you steal the money.

To make twenty dollars you have to create and sell something that is worth more than twenty dollars to the buyer. This is possible because not everyone values things the same. If you have a bread factory you have enough bread that you will value it less than me, who would otherwise go hungry.

So yes, you lose a bread and I gain one, but you value the price higher and i value the bread. Who lose?

wybo• 15 years ago

> We should rather call IP an intellectual monopoly privilege, than a right to a piece of property.

Agree. And the pernicious thing with this is that, while of course publishers and creators should be renumerated, doing this through scarcity, which is a natural condition in the physical world, does not make sense, as it is not a given in the virtual world, and scarcity should be avoided where possible, right?

Markets basically are good because of three things: 1) enabling efficient investments, 2) decentralized decisions, 3) and efficient use.

But in the virtual realm, while the first two of these are the same under scarcity, the 3rd is not, as without natural scarcity, efficient use is 3) as much use as possible.

Therefore a market-like popularity algorithm (no council of old men deciding what receives money, but popularity / appreciation / number of downloads) + a levy system, or something similar, would make the on-line market work much more in the spirit of the first, physical goods market, rather than according to the letter of that market.

And as the importance of virtual goods grows, it becomes more sensible to create a second market for it, so we have two free markets, instead of one.

For those interested, I wrote more about this in my (history) thesis: http://www.logilogi.org/pub/Enclosures/paper.pdf

tzs• 15 years ago

It can be shown by mathematical economists that a free market leads to optimal use of resources, under the assumption that goods in the market have certain attributes. Intellectual goods lack those attributes, and so a free market does not work for them (in the economic sense).

Our IP laws basically give intellectual goods those attributes that allow a free market to work with them. Essentially the law makes intellectual goods behave like physical goods so that the market can deal with them.

Given that, I see nothing wrong with applying the term "property" to intellectual goods.

stcredzero2• 15 years ago

I see this as a problem. The free market in IP only works when we pretend reality is other than it is? No wonder things don't work!

dionidium• 15 years ago

A general purpose tool with criminal uses? Well, yeah.

MichaelGG• 15 years ago

Has there been any successful criminal prosecution of BitTorrent users?

mryall2• 15 years ago

Or, more to the point, bolt cutter users?

markkat• 15 years ago

No, I'd say it's like a very fast and free bicycle copy machine. No one loses their bike, but it might upset bicycle-makers.

w1ntermute• 15 years ago

On a related note, there was an interesting article in the Economist on the implications of the anticipated widespread use of 3D printing in the near future.[0] It will be very interesting to see how the manufacturing industry responds to this change and the similarities/differences compared to digital products.

0: http://www.economist.com/node/18114327?story_id=18114327

DanielStraight• 15 years ago

When you put it in these terms, it seems almost impossible to justify copying music.

You expect a company to put in the time and money necessary to develop a good bicycle so they can sell one and then have it copied forever? How can a system like this possibly survive?

People in the developed world have lost almost all sense of the true cost of what they consume. We buy gasoline without paying or knowing the cost of undoing the environmental damage. We buy plastic cups and bowls and plates and forks and knives and spoons and bottles and packages without even thinking about the cost to recycle them or hold them in landfills until they decompose (if they even do). We buy clothes without considering the wage of the person that made them. We buy meat without concern for the suffering of the animals or the environmental degradation from the production of livestock. Or the impact to the soil from monoculture farming. Or the impact to our health from the monoculture farming. We buy technological gadgets without even knowing what chemicals they contain, where they come from, and what their global supply looks like. Then we think nothing of throwing those gadgets in the garbage five years later. We rely on minimum wage workers every day to stock our stores and clean our offices (and many other things) without caring about the struggles of low-income families.

And yes, we copy music without considering the financing required to produce art.

No, no one loses their bike with a bike copying machine. But quite a few people lose their jobs. And everyone loses the benefit of their innovation.

mkramlich• 15 years ago

And just like bolt cutters, it can be used for many things other than stealing. Therefore, it is very useful tool and it is now and should in the future remain legal.

JonnieCache• 15 years ago

Yeah. What are the Authors Guild going to do when all their bolts are the wrong length?

praptak3• 15 years ago

"And just like bolt cutters, it can be used for many things other than stealing."

And, contrary to what those guys might want you to think, it cannot even be used for stealing.

cs9• 15 years ago

Another wet US dream to force everybody under their rules. Wikileaks demonstrated the urgent need of an US independent Internet infrastructure, i.e. DNS, payment.

elbrodeur• 15 years ago

FTA: "Piracy has all but dismantled our recorded music industry. Any business plan in the music industry must now take into account that piracy is the rule, not the exception."

I think that this doesn't seem to be quite true. There is ample evidence to support the idea that it's current laws and litigation that are stifling innovation and "business plans". I'm of the opinion that if there is anything that is promoting or enabling piracy, it's the lack of innovation.

chadgeidel• 15 years ago

I'm not a fan of piracy, but it's hyperbole like this that has to stop. The recorded music industry seems to be quite vibrant - contrary to the claims of the MPAA for the past, oh, 10 or so years.

(edit - voicing agreement with the parent)

rick888• 15 years ago

" I'm of the opinion that if there is anything that is promoting or enabling piracy, it's the lack of innovation."

no innovation?

We've gone from CDs to online streaming music like pandora,last.fm, and grooveshark.

I remember when Napster first came out and the pirates of the Internet tried to legitimize their actions by saying that music was just too expensive and you couldn't "try before you buy". Next, it was DRM.

Now that music is 99 cents/song (and many times less than this), you can get it with no DRM, and you can pretty much listen to any song you want for free before buying, you would think that sales would increase and piracy would decrease.

Instead, it's worse than ever and sales have been tanking, which is exactly why the music industry wanted to stop it in the first place.

What "laws and litigation" are stifiling "business plans' and innovation?

RyanMcGreal• 15 years ago

"I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone."

-- Jack Valenti, MPAA president, in testimony to Congress, 1982 http://cryptome.org/hrcw-hear.htm

I guess the film industry has gotten a bit less hyperbolic in the intervening years.

mryall2• 15 years ago

Yeah, and even less logical. Which court has ever ruled that we should ban bolt cutters to prevent bike theft?

lhnn• 15 years ago

When I read the title, I thought it was going to be an article defending BitTorrent as a technology.

lukeschlather2• 15 years ago

It's pretty clear from the article that they fully understand that BitTorrent is a legitimate technology, and that's why they're instead asking for the right to sue people who link to infringing content.

GHFigs4• 15 years ago

The bolt-cutter quote comes from the president of the Author's Guild, not part of the film industry.

That is in the first sentence of the article.

pessimizer3• 15 years ago

The president of the Author's Guild, Scott Turow, is part of the film industry.

jemfinch• 15 years ago

Hey, that's a pretty apt description, actually.

I can still go down to my local hardware store and buy bolt cutters.

todayiamme2• 15 years ago

What should scare them is that they are fighting an exponential. In their daily lives these people have become accustomed to constants that pretty much remain the same throughout their lifetimes, but computing by its very nature is exponential. As people follow Moore's law religiously and the price of computing drops so does, proportionally, the price of digital distribution.

It's this sudden increase of processing power that allows millions of computers to run protocols like BitTorrent. That creates the infrastructure to run them in the first place. Although now they appear to be hardly computationally expensive, but even 20 years ago in 1991, would this have been possible?

Their problem is that this exponential nature of computing has vanished the floor on the price of distribution. Since, they're fighting an exponential this means that iteration also becomes far more easier. It's just a question of just a few more processor cycles.

The real world systems they're using to clamp down are fairly constant. Politicians and the art of law making hasn't really changed over the past 80 years or so. So, by the time it takes them to iterate and be ready for the next wave. It's successor would have knocked them off their feet.

So, in one corner you have a constant system. In the other you have an exponential. Who do you think wins?

That aside as Fuller would say, "don't fight forces. Use them."

note: as donaldc points out it really is more of a result of hard drive growth & bandwidth than pure processing power.

donaldc• 15 years ago

It is exponential, but it's more a result of the exponential growth in hard drive storage space and internet bandwidth.

todayiamme2• 15 years ago

Thank you for correcting me.

tsuyoshi• 15 years ago

Setting aside the difference between taking a tangible thing and copying an intangible thing, BitTorrent is more like a pickup truck than bolt-cutters. It's useful for transferring large files, like a pickup truck is useful for carting around large objects.

The funny thing to me is, I would think if they want effective tools for tracking down who is infringing on their copyrights, BitTorrent is great, because it's easy to see who is transferring what. Before BitTorrent came around, everyone was using ftp, irc, nttp, etc. which are harder to track.

Anyway, DVD decryption software would be the bolt-cutters.

compumike• 15 years ago

And while bolt cutters are common items that can be used in plenty of legal ways, it can be illegal to have bolt cutters in some situations. Ever heard of "Possession of Burglarious Tools"? (varies from state to state) Intent / purpose matters greatly in the eyes of the law.

Check out these jury instructions from Massachusetts: http://www.mass.gov/courts/courtsandjudges/courts/districtco...

xutopia• 15 years ago

BitTorrent is to movies what repeating a friend's joke is to humour.

beej71• 15 years ago

BitTorrent is to movies what big spoons are to making salad!

bsiemon• 15 years ago

Creating and/or controlling things that are scarce is an easy way to make money. It is interesting too see how technology constantly erodes business models based on this concept.

drdaeman• 15 years ago

I hope they'd outlaw bolt-cutters, so nobody will steal our precious bicycles.

rbanffy• 15 years ago

So, what else are bolt-cutters useful for?

tripzilch• 15 years ago

> BitTorrent is to movies what "bolt-cutters are to stealing bicycles"

ummmmmm ... how does this analogy work?

Bolt-cutters are to stealing bicycles, a tool that facilitates and simplifies an activity.

So the analogy goes, BitTorrent facilitates and simplifies movies.

I think they left out a verb and meant to say "BitTorrent is to watching movies what bolt-cutters are to stealing bicycles".

praptak3• 15 years ago

Bad analogies are like leaky screwdrivers.

ConceptDog• 15 years ago

Book and movie distribution channels have approximately 2 years left to evolve or die. Music faced the same thing and decided to fight a losing war.

They can be smart and embrace the change before it overwhelms them or be stuck culturally in traditional distribution and get swept away before recovering as music has done through iTunes and indy.

BitTorrent is to movies what "bolt-cutters are to stealing bicycles"

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