I was going to ignore this, because based on what’s known there’s not much interesting or surprising, but people keep submitting the research done by a student of professor Ed Felten of a sample of some content available via BitTorrent (erroneously described as a “census” rather than a “sample”) that suggested that 99% of what was available on this particular slice of the BitTorrentsphere was infringing. While there may be some legitimate concerns with the methodology, I have to say that my response to the original was: of course. So what?
Of course the majority of files shared on BitTorrent are infringing. And I don’t see how it much matters if the percentage is 60% or 90% or 99%. 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. The fact that so much is infringing should be a siren waking the industry up that it’s time to stop fighting what people want, and start figuring out how to serve them. And for those who think this is evidence that BitTorrent needs to be blocked (wow) because so much is infringing, I’m wondering how they defend the legitimate parts that do get tossed out along with that. So just because NBC Universal is too clueless to figure out how to take advantage of a great distribution and promotion mechanism, people who want to use those tools and want to embrace better forms of distribution and marketing shouldn’t be able to? That makes no sense to me.
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