The Running Tally » torrent

There’s Not An App For That

Conrad — Mon, 11 May 2009 23:34:48 +0000

What? BitTorrents are used for downloading pirated content? Say it isn’t so! Now I suppose you’re going to tell me that the Nigerian guy that I gave my life savings to is some sort of scam artist.

Citing copyright infringement concerns, Apple won’t include a BitTorrent client in the App Store.

The Cupertino-based electronics company rejected Maza Digital’s Drivetrain, saying “this category of applications is often used for the purpose of infringing third-party rights. We have chosen to not publish this type of application to the App Store.”

(Via Wired)

Study Finds Pirates Buy 10x More Music [Gizmodo]

Zac — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 05:03:50 +0000

Here is a story from Giz that doesn’t surprise me much at all. Turns out the same people that pirate music, also buy more of it. I can relate to this, i am not going to go out and buy a CD for $12-$15 to find out that there is only one decent song on the whole thing. Giz:

A study from the BI Norwegian School of Management has found that those who download free music from services like BitTorrent are also the biggest legitimate consumers of downloadable music.

In fact, among all 1,901 Norway-based study participants (all of whom were over the age of 15), it was found that those who downloaded ‘free’ music were 10x more likely to download pay music. In other words, music pirates are the music industry’s largest online consumers.

Note: ‘Free’ music obviously implies pirated music, but it also encompasses legitimate free music download services.

The findings also included that, in the 15-20 age range, 50% of participants had bought a CD in the last six months. So that trusty format isn’t dead quite yet.

(Via Gizmodo.)

My Mythical Online Rental Service for Movies (Slate)

Zac — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 15:30:09 +0000

There is an article on Slate that pretty much sums up what I think we all feel, and what is wrong with the MPAAA. Farhad Manjoo talks about the spectrum of limited availability of movies to stream on Netflix, to the high availability but correlated price on iTunes. So what to do? Torrents. It is what people are doing, and just like me, it isn’t really about money, it is easy. The MPAA, by not adopting to modern technology, is making even non computer savvy become an expert at BitTorrent.

(Via Slate)