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Re: [tlug] Bittorrent on Debian: Newbie stuff



Jake Morrison wrote:

A friend who is a hardcore BitTorrent user for television
shows told me recently that he had been having a lot of
problems recently with fake shows and bogus trackers,
particularly for the Sopranos.

This is exactly the conclusion that I had been coming to. There are some articles on Slashdot and so forth about it. HBO is inundating the web with files that (1) are filled with incorrect data, thus slowing down/clogging Bittorrent clients, and (2) files that are 95-97% complete; so the download stops when you've just about got it finished.

The debate on this practice goes back and forth. Some people say that after all, HBO owns the material, so they have a right to obstruct its distribution. The opposite point (and one that I agree with) is not that people like my self are unwilling to pay--many of us would be willing to pay HBO a fair price to be able to download this material. And clogging the Internet with garbage data is not exactly ethical, either.

Sopranos is currently in season 6, and WOWWOW in Tokyo is showing season 4, so how long will we have to wait before we can see season 6 here. Two more years? HBO ought to take a clue from Apple and others that have taken the clue that file-sharing is here to stay, so they would be well-served to figure out to take advantage of it, rather than clogging the pipes with garbage.


So for debugging purposes you may want to try with something
like a nice Linux distribution or NerdTV
   http://www.pbs.org/cringely/nerdtv/

This is the sort of thing HBO would do if they were smart.


Thanks for the advice.



Chuck




---------------------------
Charles Muller

Toyo Gakuen University
Faculty of Humanities
1660 Hiregasaki, Nagareyama-shi
Chiba 270-0161 JAPAN
Mobile Phone: 090-9310-1787

Web Site: Resources for East Asian Language and Thought
http://www.acmuller.net

<acmuller[at]jj.em-net.ne.jp>



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