Some of the screens look remarkably similar (say, 90%) to the other popular client, Azureus. Which I believe is older.

Technically, you are admitting to something that is a prosecuted crime in your country (are you sure you REALLY want to post about it?). If there is no legitimate way to get a hold of it, you are supposed to be just plain out of luck. This is why RIAA and MPAA etc are all such rabid haters of technology. Remember when only they controlled distribution? Remember when getting a movie on tape only happened YEARS after it came out. Now movies are pushed out in months just because they have no alternative, after all, movies are frequently available for download BEFORE the theatrical release (by over a year in some cases!)

That aside, there is another lesson to be learned from uTorrent. You can start a trend with a good idea and lousy software and eventually BUY your way to quality. I don't think anyone can argue that Bram's python client was lousy - it did the job, almost, but there were variants available immediately to address shortcomings and the original bit torrent client continually changed with features coming and going version by version (stability in features was part of the reason to use anything BUT the original author's version).

Fortunately, Bram was recently able to buy uTorrent, and in doing so stepped from a quality idea to a quality implementation. I sincerely hope that this does not become a lesson about how to destroy great software.

While we're talking about Torrent, can I branch slightly and ask if the dreaded "Event 4226" an issue with this client?

(The Microsoft imposed limit on the maximum number of half-open TCP connections: see http://www.microsoft.com/technet/support/ee/transform.aspx?ProdName=Windows%20Operating%20System&ProdVer=5.2&EvtID=4226&EvtSrc=Tcpip&LCID=1033 )

I know there are suitable patches out there, http://www.lvllord.de/ ,but there doesn't seem to be a current patch for XP x64 so my torrent use is really suffering (I'm currently using Shareaza).

The statistics are even nicer in Azureus while the ones they both share and highly similar.

>> If there is no legitimate way to get a hold of it, you are supposed to be just plain out of luck.

Well, here I see a future for the production team to make their website, and then to offer the rights to get the file for a price - or to put 'm through another distribution channel.

I admit I don't know much about the payment pyramids in video, and I'm aware that they can become pretty hairy and convoluted with music, not releasing episodes (when there's a possibility to eliminate distribution costs) is letting intellectual property rot and deprecate instead of turning in more of a profit than it generates currently.

Torrent is my favorite BitTorrent client as well.
There's only one thing that annoys the hell out of me : the ETA.

Estimated Time of Arrival is a point in time not a duration.

If you need a duration it should be ETE : Estimated Time En route.

Hey Now Jeff,
I've never tried uTorrent only BitComet & Azureus. Since it's what you recommend, I'm looking forward to trying it. Everyone sure does love bitTorrent.
Coding Horror Fan,
Catto

"What's a poor, law-abiding citizen of the United States of America to do?

BitTorrent to the rescue. I was able to locate a torrent of all the Boomtown episodes, and I'm downloading it now."

Um, those two statements are mutually exclusive. As Xepol, above, noted, you might not want to admit things like this in a blog.

Wow dude, repeating what the other guy said... you're blogging about committing a Federal crime and unlike say the rest of us, wouldn't your status as a A/B list blogger make you even more likely to be sued by the MPAA?

I really like the majority of what you blog about, so maybe could you fuzz out the images a little and say your using uTorrent to download, say Ubuntu or gparted?

Also, I don't think that your peers (screenshot #3) appreciate that you made a static snapshot of their illegal download/upload activity and distributed said activity to the public via this blog.

Did you get their consent beforehand?

I think the Wikipedia link you meant is this one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boomtown_%28TV_series%29

I have to agree with the people above. CodingHorror is a pretty popular blog, and this constitutes a crime, AFAIK. I remember you made a similar post about the Torrent WebUI ( http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000815.html ) which showed you were downloading episodes of Rome and The Chronicles of Riddick. It might be a good idea to just have some Linux ISO's in your screenshots or something.

Why in God's name do you get sued for downloading something that could have been recorded off the airwaves with a capture card, for free? There's little chance he'll be sued, although it's copyright infringement. All this post proves is that there's something wrong with the way TV stations work.

And another thing Xepol, specifically, what do you think uTorrent was used for before it was bought by BitTorrent?

for all the people worrying about the legality of Jeffs post and the details. It's not like the powers that be, couldn't do the same thing to get seed peoples information from their own bittorrent downloads.
Take off the tin foil hat. They don't want to go after someone downloading a trashed, canceled show episode. They want the people that have this weeks movies releases, AND 2000+ songs available to anyone.

>> Why in God's name do you get sued for downloading something that could have been recorded off the airwaves with a capture card, for free?

That's obvious. Home taping is killing music, downloading is killing TV.

Stick it to the man Jeff!

If you need shelter from the feds, rent a ship in the Swedish archipelago, aka the pirate bay. :)

I used to use Azureus, but with version 3 included so much crap so I went for uTorrent instead. I do miss the various plugins tough..

Welcome to the RIAA, MPAA & the rest of the MafiAA's hate list.

Great article, but please censor the net addresses of the rest of your peers in that torrent!

Jeff, you should check out Azureus' "Swarm" view, aka The Big Eye. That's my favorite visualization of the state of the torrent.

Correction for a couple of folks: Torrenting copyrighted material is not a "federal crime". It's not even a crime. It is, however, prosecutable in civil court.

Rob Janssen:
>> That's obvious. Home taping is killing music, downloading is killing TV.

That is a separate debate... and you are wrong.

Hey, maybe bloggig about crimes isnt such a good idea, we wont blame you if you change some words around to make it a third person type of story. "a buddy of mine...." and just hope that all the caches were purged within a reasonable timeframe...

At the same time, i have to agree, torrent is great, when i used to get linux distributions and other open source software via torrents, i was an Azureus user. The moment i found out about torrent, instantly switched, and boy, did it teach me some lessons. I replaced a lot of my software with less bloaty things in the following months and extended life of quite a few of my machines. Also the simplicity and design quality are something all software designers should aspire to.

Very brave to post this on a public blog :)

Btw, you posted an image with IP numbers of fellow partners in crime. You might want to blurr these.

KristofU - what makes you think ETA is Estimated Time OF Arrival. It can also stand for Estimated Time 'TILL Arrival, which would be a duration.

You cowards ;)

Does anyone else see the irony that just last week Jeff was decrying the evils of YouTube (http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000972.html) and now he's proud he could find a TV show in breach of copyright using BitTorrent?

I think people are missing the point in the "What's a poor, law-abiding citizen of the United States of America to do? BitTorrent to the rescue." sentence.
The point is, there is no "legal" way to get that episode. But, with Bittorrent:
- You can get pretty much any episode you like, of any show made ever made (almost).
- There's no annoying, unnecessary warnings along the line of "You were not allow to have downloaded this DVD over the internet, by the way.. Even though the downloaded copies don't have these warnings, so only the legal-owners of this disc will ever see this.."
- No unskippable company-logos/copyright notices you've seen hundereds of times and have never read.
- With something like a modified Xbox, one of those Media Extender devices, or a Windows Media Center or MythTV box, or a Mac Mini/Front Row - you can watch any episode you want without finding and changing discs, on your normal TV (Espically easy with LCD/Plamsa, which have VGA or DVI ports)
- You can easily make backups (Something that is basically illegal with DVDs..), and if you do lose it, just download it again. Not like with DVDs, where you need to break the law to back them up. Or buy the entire thing again, just because of that small scratch..

Seriously, aside from a legal-aspect, the "piracy" way of watching films is *FAR* superior for consumers, in every way. You get the material as soon as it's released. You can watch it on any device you want (desktop, laptop, phone, MP3 players like the iPod), as many times as you like. You have far more freedom with the content (to back it up. Or to recompress it for a portable device)

As for the Author getting sued for posting screenshots of him downloading this TV show - It will *never* happen. The chances of any anti-piracy organization caring enough even if they do see this post is about zero. The fact the show was canceled, and the DVD was never created, reduces the chances of that even more.. And the chances of anyone being sued on the basis of a few screenshots is fairly ridiculous.
</fairly rambling post>
- Ben

@ drukus : I should use the sarcasm tags ;).

On the other hand, the dropping incomes from commercials cause more and more blatant product placement, so one could argue that it'd be possible that the quality of the series suffers because of it.

Hey Jeff, if you like boomtown, I highly recommend you check out "Deadwood" if you haven't seen it already. It's a great series. Only ran for 2 seasons but all episodes are available to rent, probably on netflix.

If I were you I would remove this post immediately.

Oy, I don't like seeing all that useless info in my face. Just tell me how fast it's going, how much progress has been made, and when it will be finished. I use Transmission.

>> Does anyone else see the irony that just last week Jeff was decrying the evils of YouTube (http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000972.html) and now he's proud he could find a TV show in breach of copyright using BitTorrent?

I don't think he was blasting YouTube as much about it was ignoring copyright as he was commenting about how they are profiting from copyright infringement.

Moving on: I love uTorrent as my client of choice, and have been pushing it to my friends and family. However, what's been really annoying me for the past 2 years now has been the fact that all BT clients have all been coded to work in single user environments. However, now that we live in the day of house LANs, with 2 or 3 (or more computers), with each user wanting BT access at the same time. Having 3 clients all siting behind a router, running at the same time is a bad idea. It'll either leave your outbound pipe underutilized, or over utilized. Plus, by default, you must always have someone logged in to run these clients.

Why hasn't anyone developed a client/server BT app yet. One where the BT protocol is running on a central server, managing the torrents of several users, running as a service/daemon not requiring anyone logged in. Then the users have their own client that they can access the server with, and get a full featured experience.

I know you can use srvany.exe and the WebUI to get a pseudo experience, but I like my full statistical information.

Honestly man, blur out people's IP addresses.

I use BitTorrent as a testing ground for something i want to purchase... Spending $20 to get the latest CD from a band only to find out there is 1 good song and 10-13 fillers is a terrible thing... So, I will DL the cd and if I like it, go to iTunes and purchase the CD for $10... If i don't like it, I will go to iTunes and buy the one song for $0.99.

Everybody wins. I don't feel raped by the record label and develop a bad taste for the artist, and they get their money in the end. I am sure Jeff will rent Season 2 of Boomtown when it's available...

> Did you get their consent beforehand?
> Honestly man, blur out people's IP addresses.

If they didn't want their IP addresses known, then shouldn't be participating in a P2P swarm. I think it's the best part of the article.

Privacy is one thing, but when you head out to the local GlobalMart, expect people to take notice.

How's this for fitting,
After I closed the tab for this article I had one for a daily meditation open:

Buddha: If you do not tend to one another then who is there to tend to you? ...

The rest didn't fit in with the article... but this part made me go ha!

@ Xepol:
"There is another lesson to be learned from uTorrent. You can start a trend with a good idea and lousy software and eventually BUY your way to quality. I don't think anyone can argue that Bram's python client was lousy - it did the job, almost, but there were variants available immediately to address shortcomings and the original bit torrent client continually changed with features coming and going version by version (stability in features was part of the reason to use anything BUT the original author's version).

"Fortunately, Bram was recently able to buy uTorrent, and in doing so stepped from a quality idea to a quality implementation. I sincerely hope that this does not become a lesson about how to destroy great software."

No, I'd say this is a lesson about how to use Free Software (i.e. open-source) to make your project succeed.

Charles Petzold hates you now, Jeff. He really does.

http://www.charlespetzold.com/blog/2007/10/151219.html

If the episodes were never released on DVD and not shown on tele. Is it still illegal to download :O

<i>As for the Author getting sued for posting screenshots of him downloading this TV show - It will *never* happen. The chances of any anti-piracy organization caring enough even if they do see this post is about zero. The fact the show was canceled, and the DVD was never created, reduces the chances of that even more.. And the chances of anyone being sued on the basis of a few screenshots is fairly ridiculous.</i>

I agree. You are not even factoring in the blowback associated with the bad PR of them trying to. The essence of this post is talking about how great of a show it was. It makes me want to watch it now.

Legal issues aside, I want to pick on your comment relating to disk caching. On the write side of things, the fastest I've ever had a set of torrents go is at around 1MB/sec, and I'm sure all the other disk activity I was doing at the time easily dwarfed that figure. On the read side of things, usually you'd be sending blocks non-sequentially anyway, depending on your peer's request, and also at a far slower rate. I hardly think having an optimized disk would make any difference at all.

The music industry don't seem too bothered about getting bad PR.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7029229.stm

24 songs shared, fined $222,000. The punishment doen't exactly match the crime but I'd imagine the TV industry may well decide to work along the same lines. This post could give them a pretty good prosecution case I reckon (although IANAL)

I think there's at least one other thing we can learn from uTorrent. Guess what language it is written in?

Blurring IPs, hiding data. Oh please. Do you really think the RIAA can't get a copy of [insert favorite torrent client here] and get *exactly* the same information posted on this blog?

They know what's out there. There is absolutely, totally nothing that's news to any of the frantic ranters at the RIAA/MPAA mafia.

Honestly though, they are not a large risk, and they are as doomed as dinosaurs. The internet will eventually choke off their air supply. Money itself will put an end to their censorship nonsense more effectively than any legislation.

I have to side with Charles Petzold on this one (though I'm no fan of how the industry operates). I just dont think this is right at all. But I'm guessing I'm probably the minority opinion here :-)

/me is another uTorrent fan
The greatest thing (imho) about uTorrent is that the program is entirely portable.

All this commentary about uTorrent and none about Boomtown?

The series started out as greatly innovative, highly engaging and watchable. Then the panic set in and one by one the innovative bits dropped away until it was just another ho-hum procedural.

Shame. I guess it required an attention span of more than a minute or so, which doomed it for US TV.

yahoo wrote: "Why in God's name do you get sued for downloading something that could have been recorded off the airwaves with a capture card, for free? There's little chance he'll be sued, although it's copyright infringement. All this post proves is that there's something wrong with the way TV stations work."
---

Right, that's why the RIAA never sues people for downloading music that could've easily been recorded from "free" FM radio.

And TV execs never declare that "skipping commercials is stealing". And PVR manufacturers never remove commercial-skipping technology from their devices.

And businesses never get sued for playing the radio too loud:
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/07/2335244

Wake up.

"Oy, I don't like seeing all that useless info in my face. Just tell me how fast it's going, how much progress has been made, and when it will be finished. I use Transmission."

JS, uTorrent doesn't give you all this useless info in your face, its small and sits happily where-ever you put it showing you just what you want - a list of blue bars with ETA etc. If you press F5 you get the 'more info' screens. (admittedly you might need to set it up so the summary is shown by default).

just another example of how good the UI of uTorrent is, you just get the summary until you choose to see more by pressing the 'expand' button.

You also forgot the other good bits - when minimised it sits in the tray, with the right-click options you really want such as pause/resume all torrents.

>Blurring IPs, hiding data. Oh please. Do you really think the RIAA can't get a copy of [insert favorite torrent client here] and get *exactly* the same information posted on this blog?

So you think the RIAA monitors every single torrent? Ohhh please!

>The greatest thing (imho) about uTorrent is that the program is entirely portable.

I wouldn't consider it portable if Linux users have to run it through wine!

Azureus written in java is completely portable.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7029229.stm

I'm surprised I hadn't heard about this sooner - strikes me as the sort of thing that would cause a fundraiser - I'd throw some money her direction (Being that she's being used as the poster child for file-sharing).

Might send a good message if that fine just vanished... (heck, it works for corporate execs, why not for us?)

Evan,

You should check out rtorrent (and possibly other linux-based torrent clients). If you were to set up a central server (rtorrent doesn't take much processor power - typically around .5% or so on my 2 GHz processor, with about 200 (completely legal) torrents running) it'll handle itself pretty well. You can run it via screen or dtach, if necessary, or just in one of the terminal windows on that computer. And it's really easy for multiple users to add / remove torrents - just put the torrent file in a specific (network) directory and it'll start downloading.

You can find it here:
http://libtorrent.rakshasa.no/

Unfortunately it's a linux only client - but I'm sure you could get it running via Cygwin or something along those lines.

It's like this: if the knucklehead producers cancel a show and do not release it on DVD, and somebody wants to watch it -- there is no recourse!! No sales are lost because there are none in the first place.

If Jeff sells it then that's different.

Wake up sheeple.

> Azureus written in java is completely portable.

Which would explain why it eats such ridiculous amounts of resources.

While I like that bt can offer people the chance to see shows that have been cancelled or long forgotten... Like many others, I do find it extremely odd and frankly, disturbing that you chose to keep the IPs and identifying data visible for the other nodes.

While you can make the decision to publicly share what you are doing, I do not think it is wise to post other peoples activity and/ or identifying data.

While the mpaa (or riaa) might not bother with *this* file, some people might like to use that info to access said machines for both scurrilous or other reasons entirely. It is a bit of information that says IP x is using software/tech y. Knowing that enables the riaa, mpaa or hackers to have a look.

Basically, it seems to be in bad to terrible form to leave the identifying data of others in the image.

s/Boomtown/Windows 2000, Windows 98, Windows ME/

is it still OK to torrent and use things?

Windows 2000 has a similar status as this TV show. It can no longer be purchased. It is no longer supported.

I guess I'll go find a torrent and I'll run my home PC with it.

Just because it is easy or available doesn't make it any more right.

I think Jeff makes his money selling software for a living, or building software which someone else sells for a living. What if it were your creation that people were stealing for free, Jeff?

The state of copyright in the US is disgusting. It is stifling our culture and creativity. We need to revert back to 7 year or maybe 14 year copyrights.

Imagine if you could just wait 7 years and then watch this TV show LEGALLY because it were released into the public domain! That is the situation we had with all copyright materials less than 100 years ago.

I agree with several people above, Azureus had many of these features first. uTorrent just came along and implemented them in a restrictive Windows-only interface.

Also Corvec raises an excellent point. I've been using rTorrent for months now, and I love how lightweight it is. I can easily push 100Mbps upstream without the CPU breaking a sweat.

> The series started out as greatly innovative, highly engaging and watchable. Then the panic set in and one by one the innovative bits dropped away until it was just another ho-hum procedural.

Perhaps true, but I think my favorite episode is in season 2. I'm trying to figure out which one that is, which prompted the download.

> Charles Petzold hates you now ( http://www.charlespetzold.com/blog/2007/10/151219.html )

That's interesting. Obviously, I don't agree. I totally support things like the Amazon MP3 store with my pocketbook, but there was no way for me to obtain season 2 of Boomtown through any legitimate means that I'm aware of. Personally, I think obscurity and scarcity are the greater sins here-- Boomtown was a great show.

> Windows 2000 has a similar status as this TV show. It can no longer be purchased. It is no longer supported.

Not entirely true-- I can easily buy legal copies of Windows 2000 on eBay for almost nothing. Where is the equivalent for Boomtown season 2?

> you should check out Azureus' "Swarm" view, aka The Big Eye. That's my favorite visualization of the state of the torrent.

Screenshots:
http://images.google.com/images?q=azureus+swarm+view

I've never used Azeureus, so I can't say with authority who had these views first.

Interesting post, Jeff.

I can't wait until your book is available for download, because, you know, I want it *now*.

I hate to repeat what everyone has already said, but you should blur the peer IPs. Just as a courtesy to the people willing to risk legal action in order to share with you something you desperately wanted for no reward (a good ratio at demonoid is almost meaningless due to its public/private nature.)

Also, the chances of anti-p2p organizations reading this blog entry are 1 out of 1. And contrary to all rationalizations, they are NOT only looking for people sharing massive amounts of anything, they are looking for exemplar targets like defiant public violators, or a selection of people that fit the profile of the typical downloader to hopefully have a terrorist effect amongst other file sharers and raise an erroneous perception of the probability of their being caught and sued, which is currently less than the probability of being struck by lightning on a cloudless day.

I am absolutely sure that at least two or three people are having or will be having a discussion today of the possible PR merits of suing Jeff.

I use eMule (eDonkey/Kad client) and it has many of the same metrics available.

But in regard to the downloading copyrighted material thing.

I downloaded every episode of the first season of Heroes, I came in mid-season so I downloaded to catch up to the story arc. Then I started watching it at a friends house. Then I bought it on DVD.

This would not have happened if I hadn't downloaded it. (Plus, I think Heroes is funded in part by Nissan (Versa in the first season, Rogue in this season)).

I do this a lot. Hell, TV is probably the only thing I do download. I delete the crappy shows (Code Monkeys) and I eventually wind up buying the good shows (Venture Brothers, Futurama, The Office, and probably House next).

So where does that leave content creators? They do get my money or advertisers' money. Advertisers should know that the way we consume content is changing and change their tactics accordingly. Actually, they should have done so already with shows like the Sopranos and Entourage which have no typical commercials.

I think with Heroes NBC is approaching the problem in a positive way. By the deal with Nissan that gets their cars specifically mentioned by name in the show. That's probably a bonus for both parties. NBC gets advertising revenue and Nissan gets a slightly subversive ad that you cannot ignore.

uTorrent seems to make a big deal out of being 100% C++. How big is this advantage over develop the same thing in .NET? Afaik there is no major .net torrent client out there to compare with.

As for the RIAA/MPAA paranoia, come on people... all you need is tinfoil cap.

//Signed interweb citizen nr 81.224.30.112
(Currently downloading the latest album of swedish rockgroup Mustasch witout a qualm)

>> uTorrent seems to make a big deal out of being 100% C++. How big is this advantage over develop the same thing in .NET?

There's really only one reason that they make a big deal out of it being done in 100% C++; lower resource (memory) usage.

At the time uTorrent was first starting to get released, the only other client that had as much functionality was Azureus. Being made from Java, it was significantly more resource heavy than uT. I don't really care what language is used to code the program, but I do care about it's resource usage when running. Saying that it's made from 100% C++ (compared to Az, which is the "natural" comparison) gives me an easy way to justify why the resource usage would be lower (without having to do my own testing).

All Petzold's examples require depriving someone else of the use of something.

Should the estate of Shakespere (sp?) get royalties every time a high school performs one of his plays?

How about the first singer of the "happy birthday" song?

Finally, how frequently do the actual authors get the money and how often do huge corporations whose only accomplishment is to have a legal monopoly get all the cash?

Unreal, blur the ip's already! Trying to prove some sort of a point? Maybe your peers aren't interested in proving the same point. They share the file with you, and you put them at potential risk (however small). Nice.

All Petzold's examples require depriving someone else of the use of something.

Should the estate of Shakespere (sp?) get royalties every time a high school performs one of his plays?

How about the first singer of the "happy birthday" song?

Finally, how frequently do the actual authors get the money and how often do huge corporations whose only accomplishment is to have a legal monopoly get all the cash?

Re the blurring of network addresses: if downloading is legal, what are you concerned about? Oh, that's right...

Re Shakespeare's getting estate getting royalties: show Jeff your support for downloading by not buying his book and instead just download it from somewhere. Information should be free, right?

Look, I hate the record companies and the movie studios as much as the next guy, but this "I want it now, therefore I have the right to grab it wherever I find it." mentality is puerile.

"Re the blurring of network addresses: if downloading is legal, what are you concerned about? Oh, that's right..."

Its not legal, thats the point of why he should blur them.

Did I miss your point somehow?

@richard

the addresses should be blurred not just because of legality. It is pointing out an entry point to whomever - riaa/mpaa/crook... whomever. It is akin to randomly posting a person's email address.. Or sending out a mail blast where everyone's email address is in the to list. It is improper- regardless of legality.

Geeze, whats with the blasting? How many of you jay-walked or loitered? Infrigment is != to stealing!

This comment thread is saddening proof that the RI/MPAA's scare tactics are working. Say anything loud enough and often enough and people will start believing you, I guess...

Of course Petzold hates Jeff. Jeff would've knocked the little old lady with the iPod to the next subway stop.

For free.

(As an aside, do scrub the personally identifiable information from screenshots. Not because of MPAA/RIAA lawsuits - it's just a good habit.)

>> Perhaps true, but I think my favorite episode is in season 2. I'm trying to figure out which one that is, which prompted the download

Yeah, I will say that as flat as it became, it was only so in comparison to the first 6 or so eps. I still watched every one and would certainly watch more if they made them.

Plus, my wife (an English teacher) used the scene from season 2 with the walled in frat boy in her Poe unit. (-:

One word stood out: "What's a ***poor***, law-abiding citizen"

The whole "the market has failed" argument can be used to explain many things - drugs, prostitution, the failure of prohibition, etc. But a lot of times I hear people say that "X was to expensive so I torrented it". The problem with these people is that the only price at which they would buy it would be $0.

I think the thriving torrent scene has caused a general trend towards people not valuing things that can be copied easily, and toward simple laziness - why save money to buy X when I can blame the market and get it for free?

The example I have in mind are "poor students" who can't afford to buy CDs, but who can afford to blow $50 on beer & drinks three times a week.

>> ...the only price at which they would buy it would be $0.

And doesn't that imply that there is no economic loss to the creator?

@Mack:
> >> ...the only price at which they would buy it would be $0.
>
> And doesn't that imply that there is no economic loss to the creator?

No, because if the buyer didn't have access to bittorrent, they would buy the item at a price above $0. So the sentence should be read "the only price at which they would buy it given that torrenting it is an alternative would be $0".

There's only no loss if the person would under no circumstances whatsoever pay anything for the item.

But if the item were that worthless, they wouldn't bother to torrent it either.

The fact that the person is torrenting the item means that it has value for them. And *that* value is lost to the creator, because the person should be willing to pay that much.

tcliu:

This is why Radiohead's new approach is so great, I think. See their latest offering at http://www.inrainbows.com - they have their album up for download at their site at whatever price you are willing to pay.

>> if the buyer didn't have access to bittorrent, they would buy the item at a price above $0.

Or not buy it at all -- a lot more likely. That's what's implied in your original statement, and it rings true.

I don't argue that every torrented copy is a copy that would never be purchased, or that there is not some average loss when you look at all such copies -- some people likely would pay more than $0.

But I would argue that the loss is a lot closer to $0 than it is to the retail price.

As it is, there are only two prices: $0 or retail. What if the market clearing price is somewhere in between? Isn't this is the market establishing the clearing price in the only way it can?

I don't agree with Charles' position, but I thought his response in the comments was pretty funny:

"I actually have written an entire book that demonstrates how to resolve all copyright issues to everyone's satisfaction, but I have chosen not to publish it or make it public in any way. — Charles"

Jeff could have bought the missing episode if he had just bought the network. Couldn't afford it? then just take it

oh ... the uTottent stats are neat too.

I used Azureus for a while before switching to uTorrent. While I agree many of the features are similar, I prefer uTorrent b/c it is a much lighter application.

I hate to break it to some of you above who are yelling about Federal crime, but copyright infringement is not considered a crime in the United States, Federal or otherwise.

I find it interesting how angry Charles seems to be at you, seeing as you have committed no crime.

Regardless, uTorrent is a great program, so great, that I even use WINE to run it on my Linux box. I just can't find something to beat it (feature-wise), for the extremely small memory footprint it has.

Reading most of the comments on this blog and Charles Petzold's i am surprised that noone has brought up the way studios market their products, emphasizing that you have to get everything now at any cost, everything is a MUST watch extravanganza, and then they expect you to just forget something if they cant be bothered realeasing it after spending millions telling you that your extremeties will rot off if you dont get it.

Everyone seems to be praising azureus' swarm visuilisation. I see this as windows 98 defragmenter vs windows xp. One is more fun to watch, one defragments your hdd. I am still not going to roll back to 98.

Evan-- have you seen Vista's defragmenter? It's even more minimalistic than the one in XP, it provides nothing other than a spinning circle to indicate progress!

> Can I ask if the dreaded "Event 4226" an issue with this client? ( http://www.microsoft.com/technet/support/ee/transform.aspx?ProdName=Windows%20Operating%20System&ProdVer=5.2&EvtID=4226&EvtSrc=Tcpip&LCID=1033 )

Still an issue. All I could find were shady kernel patches to get around it.

Well, about this being a crime -- I am no lawyer, but I believe that equating ____ piracy and stealing is not accurate. Here's why: when you steal X, then not only do you now have X, but whoever you stole it from does not. Piracy, then is only half as bad in that you now have (a copy of) X, but the only thing you have done is hindered the right of the copyright holder to make money from selling it.

Now, by similar reasoning, it would seem that DISSEMINATING copyrighted material is as bad as N x (stealing/2), where N is the number of people that you disseminated the copies to. That's the amount of hurt you dealt to the copyright holder (who may be a millionaire, a starving artist, or a corporation with lots of mouths to feed).

Of course, the content markets are changing. Look at music. When I was growing up, it was super-lucrative to release an album. Now, artists are moving more toward live concerts, because of developments like the iPod and YouTube. But guess what, things like the iPod are great for making people impulsively buy songs, and with DRM may be bringing in a lot more money than and overall than CDs, and with more convenience o the user. Similarly, small clips on YouTube entice many people watch TV shows and movies and a lot of them would probably qualify as fair use.

All I can say is, the landscape is changing. I don't think going after ostensibly upright, honest citizens like Jeff who spend hundreds (if not more) of dollars each year on media, when they download an unavailable episode, is in the RIAA's best interests. Doesn't mean they won't do it, but that's my opinion. The RIAA should focus its attention on bigger things. And why aren't we indignant about all the lobbying going on in congress by companies with lots of money to extend the copyright to a ridiculous amount of time (vs. say patents) ?

All I can say is
www.dontdownloadthissong.com

Greg

My prediction: Jeff was after the episode "The Hole-In-The-Wall Gang". Because it featured a "Members Only" jacket joke. At least, that's why I would want to download it. :)

> I don't argue that every torrented copy is a copy that would never
> be purchased, or that there is not some average loss when you look
> at all such copies -- some people likely would pay more than $0.
>
> But I would argue that the loss is a lot closer to $0 than it is
> to the retail price.

Yes, I agree with that.

On the whole, the small loss on each torrent is made up for in volume, though.

So many comments, without one a convincing defense of Mr. Atwood's piracy on ethical grounds. Mr. Atwood says he disagrees with Charles Petzold's comments, and says no more.

Just because a person probably won't get caught, and that it can be argued it isn't exactly stealing, doesn't make this right.

@Rob Janssen -> "not releasing episodes [...] is letting intellectual property rot [...]" Unfortunately, that is the right of the owner. Thank the government for extending copyright well beyond anything the rest of society considers reasonable. Thank the judicial system for deciding that doesn't matter either.

@yahoo -> Actually, Bit torrent does have legal uses. In fact, I got an update to URU from Cyan Studios by way of bit torrent. I recognize that there are many gray and black market uses, but don't forget it does have legitmate uses like a photocopier and video recorder as well. (I live in Canada, where fair use still actually stands a chance, at least until corrupt politicians change the rules of the game)

All this said, I do agree that the system is out of control, consumers are getting screwed and the entire issue has some interesting parallels to historical events like the Boston Tea Party, which individuals who felt that the powers that be had gone to far and took matters into their own hands. Oh, that and the whole revolution too. Are the stakes as high? Are the powers as corrupt? History will decide.

Just remember, when you are in the theater next time and they run the anti-piracy ad and the guy says "it's wrong to just click a button and get the benefit of all that work without paying", just remember how you watched that movie on TV the night before, you know, the tv hooked to the antenna instead of pay cable...

Jeff , sombody else also disagrees :

http://tinyurl.com/23x9t6

Hello jackass.... seriously, hide your Peer's IP's at the very least, that's just dumb and rude. Second, don't mention the name of the actual show you're downloading, that's just dumb.

What are you going to do next, post a video of you stealing movies from your local Blockbuster?

The reason why there are no defenses of Jeff on ethical grounds is because there are no ethical defenses of copyright law, only pragmatic ones (which have been abandoned and replaced by some bizarre natural right of a human to all of its emanations). Trademarks do have an ethical component, but not copyrights.

He should feel as guilty downloading that show as you should if I tell you a joke I heard on the radio.

> Still an issue. All I could find were shady kernel patches to get around it.

Well the "shady" LvlLord patch works ok on XP (last time I tried it), just not on XP x64.
I guess you could probably do a binary diff on the files to see what has changed if you don't trust it. I believe it only changes the TCPIP.SYS file.

> Still an issue. All I could find were shady kernel patches to get around it.

Well the "shady" LvlLord patch works ok on XP (last time I tried it), just not on XP x64.
I guess you could probably do a binary diff on the files to see what has changed if you don't trust it. I believe it only changes the TCPIP.SYS file.

(Sorry for the double post - I got an error from your script saying that it was unable to rename 000978.html the first time I tried).

@ Xepol: this is where I see shareholders come in; their value is not maximized because valuable IP of which they basically own shares is left to rot instead of thriving. Duplication costs can be sort of ignored, and the rest is pretty much pure profit (again, correct me if I'm wrong). Initial production costs have been paid and the material's not new - but still desired.

I wonder why not more of 'm are balking (or it could be that I have a completely wrong idea of the actual mechanics). Their investment money is spent on costly legal issues.

> [...] there are no ethical defenses of copyright law [...]

What I meant by ethics is the ethical (moral) choice not to pirate.

Aside from abiding laws because we generally agree to do that in a civil society, there's the issue of what the content creators (and copyright holders) want. They might not mind their work being pirated, but without knowing that for sure, it doesn't seem right to assume it's OK.

Appologia - the defense of Attwood:

1) Legal grounds - some of you say what he did was illegal. Fine, can you please show me a federal law (or your state law) that specifically prohibits the unauthorized DOWNLOAD of music or software? I am not talking about unauthorized uploading/sharing/hardcopying.

2) Secondly, the moral grounds. Do you really believe that a season that will most likely never be released (because it wasn't finished) will make any more money for the publisher, that will now not have been made because Jeff downloaded it? Remember, Jeff bought other episodes when they were available. In the rare event that the publisher decides to release the episodes of the half finished season -- yeah, Jeff would have a slight moral obligation to go out and buy that, but small compared to e.g. returning a wallet someone just dropped on the street.

What do you think?
Greg

IN FACT - BUSINESS IDEA (who wants to do it? contact me :)

Let's say a movie or show just came out, and has now finished airing. You can sometimes wait for YEARS for this show to come out on DVD. How about making "NO FEATURES ADDED" versions and releasing them through legal channels? Imagine such a company, handling this.

Basically, a die-hard fan might want to purchase the video as soon as the series/movie ended, for a high price. There are lots of those, I bet (although you'd have to do market research to verify). Now, is it a blow to the company to allow them to buy that stuff in advance? No. If they illegally start copying it, then yes, possibly. Otherwise, the company gets good PR and most people get the video - just like of a news show.

Hey, I never said it was a GREAT idea :)

@Gregory

Jeff did distribute the work, as his screenshots clearly show him uploading parts of the torrent.

Bittorrent thrives because those who download usually (by default) become part of the distribution process and thus infringe copyrights.

I'm also a prime advocate of uTorrent and have been using it since its conception. Did you know that BT actually acquired that from the original creator? Now that is saying something. Ludvig did better than the actual creator of the protocol could. Wow! What an amazing program that is, and it's free!

And by the way, I alse feel that Demonoid kicks ass (as long as the servers stay up)!

Considering the episode you were looking for was never released commercially, you could make a request at the "Digital Archive Project" (http://www.dapcentral.org/) that someone with recordings of it post them up.

The DAP is a community of people who share copies of tv shows which were never released on VHS/DVD- Since they weren't released in any commercial context, the DAP is free to publish them without risking impending lawsuit. They're actually fairly militant about this- Anything released on DAP but then released commercially (e.g the occasional episode of MST3K) is instantly blacklisted from the server.

I got the entire season of Clone High from them. They've got a lot of other gems too... worth checking out.

God bless uTorrent. It is a testament to good software design.

Around the time when it first came out, all other BT clients brought even a powerful computer to it's knees by running a bunch of torrents. uTorrent can run a TON of torrents and the computer won't so much as flinch.

Also, to all you commenters talking about how Jeff
a) was stupid to admit to what he did
b) might get sued
c) should blur the ip addresses

LOL! I hope you are all joking because this type of paranoia would be a testament to how well the RIAA/MPAA's psychological terrorism has worked in this supposedly "free" country (soon to become a police state thanks to people like you).

Please call your Me.GetAGrip() methods. Thanks!

@ Matias : better safe than sorry ;). The actual "terrorism" does its effect well, I agree. The lawsuits are on the basis of an IP address where you at least have the option to prove that it's not yours. This here provides, well, uh, more concrete evidence. I don't think any Coding Horror fans would like to see him cough up $ridiculous,- because the MPAA can hold this against him.

To get back to mr. Petzold's riposte: I think we don't even have two but three different groups here:

- those who actually steal. Different from copyright infringement as already explained, bad analogy, using it doesn't help.

- those who demand the product.

- those who demand the product with money in their hands yelling "I want to pay for it".

The argument against entitlement he puts forth holds up for the first and second group, but not the third. It's just very hard to prove that someone belongs to the third group since there's just no option to pay.

Digital media removes the treshold of production; sadly, not the ones of the accountant's work of dividing the money afterwards or paying for the bandwidth/storage space. Outside of artistic principles I can't see much reason in holding anything back, or it's the kind of questionable marketing Disney does by only "unlocking" video or DVD for a short timespan.

I love uTorrent... Azureus is such a memory hog in comparison, uTorrent is a wonderful light weight client that does everything Azuerus can do but at minimal costs.

@Evan M: "BT protocol is running on a central server"

Actually, check out Azereus's "WebUI" module -- I run it on a headless box, and then you can use the web interface from other machines to upload torrents (or URLs of torrents). It doesn't give you full configurability that the "real" interface does, but it gives you all the necessities.

And of course, the key is it makes it very convenient to relegate all the heavy data lifting to the house server, while your personal laptop(s) can come and go and not be competing for upload nor tied up with a long term connection.

Leave the link to the .torrent file too. ;)

Sorry I just had to comment about this, I know it might seem a bit pedantic but...

informatics /&#716;&#618;nf&#601;r&#712;mt&#618;ks/
–noun (used with a singular verb)
the study of information processing; computer science. (from dictionary.reference.com)

Also referred to as information science (which is, unlike this particular entry suggests, slightly different from computer science). Anyway, it doesn't mean what you seem to think it means.

Debate about the legality aside.....

I was a big fan of season 1 of boomtown. I saw every season 2 episode of Boomtown (over the air) and there is a reason it was cancelled and never released on DVD. Not worth the drive space to steal, er download them.

-Larry

Jeff,

I found your article because I too have been searching for Season 2 of Boomtown, but to no avail. Where did you find those episodes available for download? Please let me know.

Entorin@hotmail.com

First of all, Utorrent is by far the best gui bt client. in console mode rtorrent is usefull as well. Second, stop bitching about the screencap with the IP addresses in it. Ip's are usually dynamic, and most of those are probably invalid, or linked to new computers by now. If not, the chances of any of them being put to a malicious use are fairly low.
Third, Downloading shows is not stealing, it IS copyright infringement, and does hurt the artist, but in this case, there is no legal way to acquire the show, and therefore no money is being lost. Although i occasionally make use of UT, I try to buy movies and music whenever possible.

p.s. slightly off topic, but not all artists care if you download their stuff. Trent Reznor was released from his contract with the record label for telling an audience to steal his latest album and share it.

- Koronis

yes, this is an old post but i have to say it.

way to stick up for yourself. if the 'powers that be' come after you, take the case to court and face your own (unlikely) ramifications. somehow, i don't see how a publicly broadcasted show that is OOP can be defended in court. who's to say you didn't create your own divx files of said episodes from video tapes that you created? i doubt half of these skeptics would copyrights concerning a video taped show, just because thats the way it has always been.

and rubbish to petzold, he's just bitter that you dumped on his crappy books.

For every Jim Baen, there is a Charles Petzold. Sad, really, but some people just don't get it and probably never will.

Downloading an orphaned work does not in any way replace buying a DVD. case in point: I downloaded all of the Venture Brothers episodes as soon as the torrents were available online. Why? To watch them! I love that show. And as soon as the DVDs were available, I bought them. Why? Because the quality is better, and to support the people who make the show. Same thing with Mystery Science Theatre 3000. And, I have absolutely no doubt, the exact same thing will happen if/when the full run of Boomtown is made available on DVD. I would be willing to bet any amount of money that Atwood will buy those DVDs if/when they become available.

That's what the Digital Rights Mafia and the media robbers barons and precambrian dinks like Petzold just do not understand -- they think like thieves, so they think everyone else thinks that way. And a few people are -- but most people aren't.

By the way, I wish people would stop parroting the propaganda of the Digital Rights Mafia.

Sharing is not piracy
http://www.blackgate.net/blog/index.php/sharing-is-not-piracy/

Copying is not piracy
http://www.blackgate.net/blog/index.php/copying-is-not-piracy/

The mu symbols look hosed. Perhaps the article was written in non-UTF-8?