Digbeth, May 28th
The latest development in the War On Torrents is the raiding of The Pirate Bay, a Bit Torrent tracker site of great notoriety and such, by Swedish police. While interesting as news it’s probably not a big deal as new torrent sites pop up all over the place, especially after a legal clampdown.
What’s really interesting, I think, is the timing. I could be wrong but I seem to remember the last time the torrenting community was temporarily thrown into disarray came just as the major US TV shows ended their seasons, allowing a few months of restructuring to take place before they started again in September. Now here we are with nothing much worth torrenting TV-wise and this happens. And you know, by the time Lost and Battlestar and the rest start up again in the “Fall” (when in Rome…) it’ll all be okay again. Am I reading too much into this? If I’m not it begs some interesting questions…
Related to this is news that Warners are to sell video via Bit Torrent, which is an intelligent move, except it’ll be all DRM’ed up as per usual. At first I dismissed this as not of use to me but then I thought about it. I’ve always said that I’d be happy to pay for downloadable TV but only as a high quality DRM-free file I can do what I want with, not in some crappy iPod format or whatnot, but I’m not able to hand my money over. But actually I can, by buying the show from iTunes (or whatever service is offering it) but not downloading it from them, instead getting a proper copy via Bit-Torrent. They get their royalties, I get my shows.
So once these download shops kick into gear I’ll be getting Lost and Battlestar this way, and any other shows I sample and decide are worth paying for (paying for the previous seasons since they probably won’t allow me to pay for the current ones before they’re broadcast in the UK). I’ll also start doing this for music I torrent, paying for, but not actually downloading, any albums worth buying on iTunes. If enough people do this maybe they’ll notice a discrepancy in their income vs downloads and realise what’s going on. I won’t hold my breath but at least my conscience will be clearer.
[Update: Martin Currybet has a nice Pirate Bay analysis and a neat idea.]