A low-THC cannabis strain for treating severe epilepsy - <AUTHOR> http://www.5280.com/healthandwellness/magazine/2014/04/tangled-web <comment><USER2> This is a really moving story and not the only of its' kind, but I also worry that a lot of people are being turned onto what we call CBD-only medical marijuana legislation, which is unfortunate. It is possible that some states or municipalities which are / were / will be ready for broader measures will take the half-measure of legalizing CBD-only treatments.

<comment><USER3> You make it sound like that's a bad thing to legalize CBD-only treatment.

If CBD is the valuable compound here, why combine it with THC?

Personally I think they should make it schedule 2 or 3 instead of 1 and let it be prescribed like all the thousands of other drugs - there is nothing special about marijuana that requires self-prescription.

Edit: Looks like they've done that: [http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2014/02/111641/marijuana-derived- ep...](http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2014/02/111641/marijuana-derived-epilepsy- drug-clinical-trial-children-uncontrolled-seizures)

(Well actually I think people should be able to prescribe themselves anything they want as long as they pass a basic test on it, and take measures to avoid exposing other people - so smoking would be right out, but that's a different world.)

<comment><USER2> see, you have already misinterpreted an incredibly well written article and gone down the boxed canyon road. I think it's a bad idea to _only_ legalize CBD treatments, because THC is also valuable. There are also hundreds of other unclassified compounds in cannabis which are valuable.

So what I'm concerned is, in some areas of the country where it is more difficult to pass legalization, some activists who probably know better will consider legislation that only allows very narrow compounds and in fact, it may be nearly impossible to create a plant that is not illegal under CBD-only legislation.

Cannabis has countless uses, but speaking as someone who has participated in the authoring and passing of legislation, it's not easily amended or revisited.

A lot of people who don't personally care about cannabis that much are willing to vote for cannabis legislation once in a while, but they just don't want to talk about it all the time. Passing legislation that is overly narrow on any issue that people don't want to talk about makes them feel as if they have accomplished something for another community, but they really don't want to have to go through all the details every year.

Medical Cannabis itself has been described as a box canyon, largely because there are tons of medicinal herbs that just happen to never have had a war waged on them which noone would _think_ of regulating in the slightest. The problem this creates, of course, is that, say, at a free concert in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco if I ask people to sign a petition to put a legalization measure on the ballot, they laugh and say:

      "Dude, it's already legal!!"

Thanks, Captain unregistered voter, I totally hadn't noticed. But it's not.

That said, even with full legalization, medical cannabis will still be an important fight because it addresses the basic rights of people whose doctor have told them to use this substance. We're still fighting for legislation that prevents employers from being able to terminate a patient for cannabis use, and there are concerns about people on probation for non-drug offenses not being able to use it when in fact, it is often very helpful to them.

Anyway, Charlotte's Web is great, it's really amazing and beautiful that cannabis is able to provide this sort of relief to such young children, and it does need to be available, everywhere, right now, for everyone.

I'm just saying if someone is in a state and they think they can carry legislation across the finish line with stories like this, it's important to at least shoot for the bigger fight, because some children who have epilepsy may have parents, uncles, aunts, or grandparents with cancer or HIV and the munchies don't come from CBD. ;)

<comment><USER3> > in some areas of the country where it is more difficult to pass legalization

What do you mean area? Medical drugs are regulated by the FDA, not the states.

Unless you are talking about recreational use which is a different topic.

<comment><USER4> > Unless you are talking about recreational use which is a different topic.

No, it's still the same plant. Criminalizing its consumption is just flat out wrong.

Where's the FDA on regulating Traditional Chinese Medicine? You know, herbs and stuff?

What test are you going to force me to take to consume those herbs? Why do _you_ have any say over what _I_ can consume?

<comment><USER5> >What test are you going to force me to take to consume those herbs? Why do you have any say over what I can consume?

Before you say _" I can do anything I want/it's my problem/ freedom comes first"_, please consider the following:

\- There is an asymmetric relationship between a customer and a manufacturer with incredible marketing power.

\- You live in a society which invested in you, and although you might not value your life, it actually has value for said society.

\- You are not alone, the problem isn't the loner consuming <whatever> but the accumulated effect on society when the behavior is widespread.

\- When I'm ill I expect the drugs/treatments I take to either replace my symptoms will less unpleasant symptoms or cure me altogether. The purpose of testing and regulations are for people like me. You can call me a square if you want, but I think my expectations are actually widespread.

\- _" But we know the effect of <whatever>, I use it all the time, and no problem"_. Allergic reactions, interactions with other drugs, long term effects, interactions with diseases... So many possibilities...

<comment><USER6> Do you know how many FDA approved drugs kill people every year due to adverse reactions? How times drug companies have been caught selling FDA approved drugs that they knew to be deadly? How do you justify alcohol and tobacco being legal? Both directly kill millions.

How do you answer the actual question. On what moral principle can one human seek to imprison another human for growing or possessing a simple flower?

Why not outlaw fatty foods like burgers and fries? That's the only thing that directly kills even more people than alcohol and tobacco. Why not arrest people for eating illegally fatty foods? Arrest illicit burger dealers?

If you had grown up in a world where fatty foods were illegal you would tell us all how our desire to eat fatty food is bad for society. You would be right. It is. It's also my right as a human.

<comment><USER5> _Do you know how many FDA approved drugs kill people every year due to adverse reactions? [...]_

I don't understand your point. You realize that mistakes or corruption happen, whatever system you have in place, it doesn't mean the system is wrong.

 _On what moral principle can one human seek to imprison another human for growing or possessing a simple flower?_

With that kind of argument you could say such things as "On what moral principle can one human seek to imprison another human because it possesses a piece of metal?" (weapon possession).

The problem is the balance between public interest and individual freedom. My point isn't that outlawing <whatever substance> is the way to go, my point is that you have to put everything in perspective and avoid overly simplistic principles such as "what matters is my individual freedom".

You have to appreciate that your freedom stops where the freedom of others start and that your actions have an impact on society as a whole.

It's not just a childish "I'm free to do whatever you want".

You are. If you live alone in the forest.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for admitting that you "don't understand." I'll try a bit more, but you completely failed to refute or even adequately respond to anything I said so I'm not inclined.

How can you not understand that _my_ freedom implies _your_ freedom? How can I be free to live my life if society allows bad people to harm me? The world is not an abstract concept. Your attempt at speaking in riddles may convince you that you're right but it has no bearing on reality.

Calling freedom "childish" does not diminish it. Kings have been telling their subjects for millennia that they're not responsible enough to rule themselves. The fact that you feel this way is not surprising. It's a pessimistic and wrong viewpoint that is hard for many to even _see_ let alone change their thinking on.

Your intellectually dishonest attempt at comparing an actual "simple flower" and a manufactured weapon (not "metal" as you pretend) is entirely specious. Deciding what should be regulated by society is not trivial, the question is how you make your decisions. Do you make your decisions based on maximizing personal freedom or someone's perception of what's beneficial for "society"?

...and this is where I realize this is probably an argument between a Constitutionalist American and a Chinese communist. We will probably have to agree to disagree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Cannabinoids are very interesting. They're naturally occurring in both plants and animals and researches believe the Endocannabinoid system (ECS) plays a very large role in homeostasis. Cannabinoids have even been shown to induce apoptosis (essentially reversing cancer cell growth).

Within different strains of marijuana you get different ratios of different cannabinoids (THC, CBD, CBN, etc.) and the self-medicators have discovered that these different ratios are good for treating different ailments.

I'm a firm believer that all cannabinoids need to be fully legal (and the cannabis plant material) so they can be studied in greater detail. I believe one day we'll see cannabinoids in our daily vitamin and mineral supplements (probably not the intoxicating kind though).

</comment><comment><USER8> Epilepsy is not the only condition this plant cures, far from it, it's just the most dramatic because you can measure the decrease in seizures so rapidly.

</comment><comment><USER9> Fantastic writing.</comment>


The Amazon is burning at a rate not seen since we started keeping track - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-rainforest-fires-breaking-records-2019-8 <comment><USER2> This is horrible. Is there with relevant knowledge can share how can a fire this large can be put out? It is likely that its gonna burn for many more weeks, all those wildlife habitats could be completely destroyed.</comment>


The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2017/06/01/the-long-slow-decline-of-bittorrent/ <comment><USER2> I can't read the article because the website is down. But I have something to say about torrenting movies.

Late last year, my old parents who don't speak English came to visit me for a couple of months in the US. I'm just a graduate student with a limited budget, and my mom is car sick so we couldn't go out every night. I didn't want them to waste time on Facebook after dinner until we went to bed, so I had to think of something to do. We would spend time watching classic movies together every night with the little projector I have. I would have to download the Vietnamese subtitles from subscene and play the pirated movies with VLC. Sometimes the timings were a bit off but VLC allowed me to fix it easily.

There was no streaming service offered at any price that allowed me to have native language subtitles with those movies. I'm very happy for the time we had together, it might have been the very last chance we had in our lives. I am very thankful because BitTorrent and VLC allowed me to do what would be otherwise impossible.

<comment><USER3> Torrenting for me has always been about convenience, not money. I recently wanted to watch a new show called A.P. Bio. It's free on NBC's website. But after struggling through one episode with lags and ads with no volume control, I gave up and just torrented the show.

Until they master such exotic technologies as "streaming video" and "volume control" they're going to keep driving people to torrenting. Netflix figured this out a decade ago, and I wonder how many people have ever "given up" on Netflix to go torrent a show? I can't imagine it's a lot.

<comment><USER4> The law/studio deals have to change. Netflix offers great movies and they lock it down to certain countries. For example I am big fan of Back To The Future. I can watch may favourite movie every month when I'm in UK but when I am in Poland then no luck. Same goes in other direction. While being in Poland I downloaded via Netflix National Lampoon Animal House to watch on plane. I watched half of it on plane then tried to watch rest in hotel and Netflix refused to play it because I was in UK. Funny thing is that when I switched to plane mode I could watch it. My question is what's the point? I as a person, am going in to agreement with Netflix that they will provide me movie. Nothing changes apart from my geographical location (I am paying the same amount of money, I am paying the same taxes, everything stays the same) and yet I can't watch the movie just because I am in different spot on the glob. I don't understand what is the profit for movie companies in narrowing down their own market.

<comment><USER5> _I don 't understand what is the profit for movie companies in narrowing down their own market._

The movie company sold the rights to show that movie in the UK to some other company instead of Netflix, probably for more money than Netflix offered them.

Also, you're paying a fixed monthly fee, and unless you're part of the small minority that travels a lot, you're not likely to drop Netflix over not being able to watch certain movies in foreign countries, hence they didn't lose anything.

<comment><USER6> Licensing a movie in such a way that it can be played in France but not Poland seems as ridiculous as licensing it such that it can be played in Pennsylvania but not Minnesota. When will this Stone Age practice go away?

<comment><USER7> Are you saying it shouldn't be legal? Or that the business practice doesn't make sense?

Let's say you're a French movie distributor. You know the French market, you know which movies will sell, you know how to market to French audiences. Because of this you can bid more on the rights to distribute movies in France than a global company that doesn't have any specific knowledge about the French market (your return is likely to be higher and you're liekely to have fewer failures). Same in the Czech, Romanian, etc markets.

But let's say this movie conflicts with the release of some other movie you're distributing so you want to hold it back for three weeks.

What's your proposed solution? Tell the studio they can only sign deals with global distributors? Tell them to accept less money?

<comment><USER8> > What's your proposed solution? Tell the studio they can only sign deals with > global distributors? Tell them to accept less money?

Stop signing _exclusive_ deals with regional distributors. If you're going to put something on Netflix, put it on Netflix world-wide. That doesn't mean you can't also put it on a streaming service based in France that concentrates on French language movies -- do both. Let them each pay you for non-exclusive global rights.

You get paid more per service for an exclusive deal, but you also get paid by fewer services. Which is increasingly looking like a bad deal as the many different services proliferate. Having a hundred buyers is more profitable than having only one buyer that pays ten times as much.

It's the same game they're playing with regional exclusivity to begin with -- get more buyers by dividing up the rights. Rights in one country aren't worth as much as rights world-wide but you can sell them to more people.

The difference is that regional exclusivity makes customers angry and non- exclusive licensing makes customers happy.

<comment><USER9> Distribution rights for huge back catalogs were sold to third party local to a given country/region distributors long ago. There's a lot of entropy there, and each has exclusivity to control distribution for the given region.

It's not that easy to work away from. Which is why Netflix has been paying more to create or co-create content (most Netflix content isn't world-wide exclusive it seems).

<comment><USER8> > Distribution rights for huge back catalogs were sold to third party local to > a given country/region distributors long ago. There's a lot of entropy > there, and each has exclusivity to control distribution for the given > region.

Which is another reason not to use regional licensing going forward, and pass laws to disfavor it in general. It increases transaction costs -- then when Netflix or any of your hundred other buyers wants global rights to a particular film, they have to negotiate with a hundred regional distributors instead of just the original creator. The transaction costs go from "N" to "N times M" where N and M are both large. And transaction costs make otherwise profitable transactions either less profitable or not happen at all.

<comment><USER7> > _Which is another reason not to use regional licensing going forward, and > pass laws to disfavor it in general_

I'm curious what your proposed legislation would be. Just outlaw exclusive licensing? Would you prohibit vertical integration between content producers and distributors or just force vertically integrated companies to license content to competing distributors?

How about a distributor that has an inherent market advantage and so can bid higher on the rights than other distributors? Would that be allowed? Or would you require producers to charge some lowest common denominator fee so that you can't create releases that are effectively exclusive?

I just can't imagine how you would ever effectively police this without taking away a lot of free market rights from participants.

BTW, just so it's clear, I fully support the current EU Digital Single Market rules that try to enforce the fact that you should be allowed to watch your content while you are traveling. I think that's much easier on all sides of the equation because you're not forcing anyone to make additional deals that they don't want to make (i.e. distributing content to other companies when they want it to be exclusive). I just think it's a big step from that to actually legislating away exclusive distribution deals.

<comment><USER8> > I'm curious what your proposed legislation would be.

A big thing would be to just discontinue legislative _support_ for it. Get rid of any law preventing third parties from circumventing region locks, so that major companies can overtly thwart them.

Then you can get a "tell Netflix I'm in..." selector from your ISP or bank and the problem gets solved by the market itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The reason why for me, someone with a netflix and amazon prime account in Germany, bittorrent is neither dead nor declining (for movies and TV shows):

a) Being on time. If you want to take part in the online discussion about tv shows, you have to watch them on time. For a ton of shows I can't even buy episodes on the day they come out. Torrenting is still the far superior choice.

b) Languages. Yes netflix, I know that I live in Germany. That does not mean that I don't want to have the option of watching anime in Japanese with English subtitles. And Amazon, it's great that I found out you are now showing advertisements before every episode, but it's also in German. While everything else on amazon.de is in English for me.

c) Quality. I don't care that your algorithm thinks my network is not fast enough for HD. Just let me tell it that it's wrong. Or I could torrent and download something in actual HD within just a few minutes.

The worst thing is that all of those are completely artificial. There is no technological reason for any of those problems to exist. And ignoring if I want to or not, in most cases I don't even have the option of throwing absurd amounts of money at them to make them go away. Because of greed, laziness and/or stupidity, torrenting is still the superior option in most cases. For me.

PS: Mostly thanks to Bandcamp.com music torrenting is completely dead for me.

<comment><USER11> > PS: Mostly thanks to Bandcamp.com music torrenting is completely dead for > me.

Seconded. My music search these days is

        Find interesting band
                   +
                   |
                   v               not sure I can
            Is on bandcamp? +-no-> be arsed to even
                   +               check torrents
                   |
                  yes
                   |
                   v
               buy entire
             discography on
                bandcamp

<comment><USER12> Torrents don't really work for music. Soulseek is your friend there, super old-school but great community and it has basically everything.

I also buy almost everything I find on Bandcamp. Excepting those über-hipster techno artists with 100-copies vinyl-only releases (but those you can usually still find rips on Soulseek.)

<comment><USER10> Before there even was Bandcamp, there was Oink's Pink Palace [0], not only one of the best sources for music (NiN's Trent Reznor was a member & user of the site), some (lesser known) artists even released music exclusively on OiNK.

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oink's_Pink_Palace](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oink's_Pink_Palace)

<comment><USER13> To add to your comment is the interview of Trent Reznor and Saul Williams from 2007 [1].

Begin excerpt from said interview:

What do you think about OiNK being shut down?

Trent: I'll admit I had an account there and frequented it quite often. At the end of the day, what made OiNK a great place was that it was like the world's greatest record store. Pretty much anything you could ever imagine, it was there, and it was there in the format you wanted.

If OiNK cost anything, I would certainly have paid, but there isn't the equivalent of that in the retail space right now. iTunes kind of feels like Sam Goody to me. I don't feel cool when I go there. I'm tired of seeing John Mayer's face pop up. I feel like I'm being hustled when I visit there, and I don't think their product is that great. DRM, low bit rate, etc.

Amazon has potential, but none of them get around the issue of pre-release leaks. And that's what's such a difficult puzzle at the moment. If your favorite band in the world has a leaked record out, do you listen to it or do you not listen to it?

People on those boards, they're grateful for the person that uploaded it — they're the hero. They're not stealing it because they're going to make money off of it; they're stealing it because they love the band. I'm not saying that I think OiNK is morally correct, but I do know that it existed because it filled a void of what people want.

Cease excerpt from said interview.

Flash forward 11 years and there still isn't a legal alternative to OiNK' Pink Palace (OPP) that can hold a candle to it. I love music, but the music that I love I can not find on any streaming service.

The bands I like are old enough that they are no longer touring or producing music and since I can not find any of their "old" songs on any (legal) streaming or downloading sites I am left with zero options to support the bands I personally like.

[1]: [https://www.vulture.com/2007/10/trent_reznor_and_saul_willia...](https://www.vulture.com/2007/10/trent_reznor_and_saul_williams.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> P2P forced the industry to adapt and now we have good streaming services, but the content selection is nowhere as good as what you can find on torrent sites.

What the Popcorn Time devs did was simply amazing. It had a Netflix-like interface plus a huge selection of content that you could watch right away. The industry should learn from these guys.

Just make your content available, easy to obtain and people will pay for it. It's that simple. There's no reason, in 2018, that I cannot go online and legally stream/download any movie/TV show I want. Classics, old movies, 90s movies, whatever. Just make it available at a reasonable price, in a easy to use UI and people will pay. How is that hard to understand?

<comment><USER15> > Just make your content available, easy to obtain and people will pay for it. > It's that simple.

No, that's just _easy_ from a consumer perspective. But it's not _simple_ at all from the business perspective. Making movies and TV is expensive and complicated. Getting them to break even means a lot of careful work to maximize revenue and profit from a variety of revenue streams. It means dealing with a lot of players that are trying to maximize their own revenue and profit.

Things can and will get better. But not by ignoring the essential complexity of the domain.

<comment><USER16> Except people would happily accept variable pricing for content provided it was centralised.

Steam gets this so right - games change price all the time, go on sale etc.

It's the same phenomenon you see with landlords - rental properties go unoccupied for huge periods of time because they believe they'll get a better deal just in the future - with media we've let absurd copyright durations do the same damn thing, and probably at the expense of artists and content creators who I _want_ to support.

<comment><USER17> Valve have absolutely nailed the consumer-centric business model. Gabe Newell was the first person I heard the concept of "piracy is a service problem" from and they've turned it into their core competency.

However, centralization of the marketplace, even from a publisher standpoint, isn't a Good Thing. Steam's degree of control over the game publishing platform market is pretty pathological from the view of developers.

A better solution from the content creators' standpoint is a marketplace with competitors. In gaming, this doesn't really exist (maybe GoG/Humble?) but in streaming media delivery, it does (Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Video).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> At least where I live, Hungary, torrenting was decriminalized some years ago as long as someone isn't doing it for profit. It's still illegal but they stopped going after end users. The biggest private tracker has 770k users atm with an exceptional 1452% seed to leech ratio. Basically almost everyone (ie daily internet users) is using it in the country.

Also they introduced a "blank media" tax on everything (CD, DVD, SSD, HDD, USB flash drive etc.) as a compensation for the presumed losses.

<comment><USER19> Until the EU want to do a new trade deal with the US, and the US decides it wants to co-opt your legal framework to enforce its commercial appropriation of European culture, history and stories through Disney and Hollywood. And then you'll be getting lots of enforcement.

The whole copyright thing is just a US export thing, as soon as it becomes a problem for them, they'll force the EU to make it a problem for you too.

<comment><USER20> this might be an unpopular opinion, but I think copyright is a good thing, as it allows for artists to actually get paid for their work

<comment><USER21> Problems:

\- Company hires a bunch of artists to make something, pays them one time, keeps gathering checks decades after the artists are dead, and even longer after they're getting any payment for the work.

\- Artist collects money from their work, dies, and the estate continues collecting for decades.

The purpose of copyright should be to encourage artists to create works for the enrichment of society as a whole, by giving them a monopoly on sale of those works for a _limited_ time, followed by a release of the work into the public domain.

Instead, we've got constantly-extending terms, slim-to-no chance of something still being culturally relevant by the time its copyright expires, and people besides the artists receiving the most benefit, in many cases.

Copyright itself can be a good thing, but the current U.S. implementation of it sucks.

<comment><USER22> The time limit on copyright seems to be just an inefficient form of taxation.

If Disney keeps copyright of Snow White the government can tax Disney's extra profit to pay for cancer research. Isn't that more socially useful than giving everyone the right to watch Snow White on YouTube for free?

<comment><USER23> > Isn't that more socially useful than giving everyone the right to watch Snow > White on YouTube for free?

Why stop there. Wouldn't it be ever _more_ socially useful to hire vandals to break windows and graffiti houses so the government can collect the taxes on the repairs. See also: war.

Just because something generates economic activity, doesn't mean it's a net benefit to society.

<comment><USER22> OK let me drop 'socially useful' from the question: Is it better to (a) allow anyone to watch Snow White on YouTube for free; or (b) fund cancer research with a tax on Disney's sales of Snow White?

With vandalism the costs clearly outweigh the benefits. With copyright extension it seems to me the benefits outweigh the costs.

<comment><USER24> The alternative of course is that someone could use the Snow White IP to create new media, in the same way that Sherlock Holmes has generated numerous films. Guy Ritchie's two Holmes movies have netted over $1B USD at the box office. That wouldn't have happened if the Doyle estate still held the copyright.

Not to mention the fact that the Snow White character itself was pulled from the public domain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Putting Kodi under "Streaming Piracy" is pretty inflamitory. Kodi isn't there to enable streaming piracy. (There are non-offical plugins that do that, but they've made many announcements about Kodi's stance on Piracy)

<comment><USER26> But let's be honest, 99.99% of Kodi and Plex use is purely for pirated content. Otherwise, I'm not sure where everyone is getting all these non DRM digital downloads.

And most aren't using special plugins with Kodi, they just use Kodi to play their content they get from torrents and Usenet.

<comment><USER27> I can't speak for anyone else, but I only use Plex for format-shifting DVDs I've purchased. While this may be a violation of the DMCA's prohibition against breaking copy protection, it is not piracy or even actionable copyright infringement.

<comment><USER28> I knew I wasn't the only one. Once I have a disc in hand I'm going to handle it once, get it on the NAS and watch it on any device in my house without thinking about the media that it was purchased on. Throw an old laptop SSD, a raspberry pi and a USB wifi into the mix and you can stream your collection while driving across the country.

<comment><USER27> I have little kids who can't be trusted to keep physical media from being damaged. :-D

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Seems to be down. Their CDN (distil[0]), which bills itself as a "Bot mitigation" company, shows a CAPTCHA to the Wayback Machine archiver[1], effectively making it useless.

[0]: [https://www.distilnetworks.com/](https://www.distilnetworks.com/)

[1]: [https://web.archive.org/web/20180212161645/https://www.plagi...](https://web.archive.org/web/20180212161645/https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2017/06/01/the- long-slow-decline-of-bittorrent/)

<comment><USER30> Yeah, it's almost like they should use some sort of peer-to-peer distribution system to allow scalable distribution of their content...

<comment><USER31> Reminded me of the Coral CDN [1] project. Shame it's dead now.

[1] [http://www.coralcdn.org/](http://www.coralcdn.org/)

<comment><USER32> Wow, I had no idea this went away (although that would explain why I never see that style of link anymore)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> What's more interesting to me is using BitTorrent not for pirated movies but as a content distribution system enabling more free services like Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a super heavily visited website, so must pay a lot for hosting. They manage to pay for it all with donations, but other sites can't.

For example: What if Open Access journals used peer to peer for nearly-free content distribution? That'd allow the open access publication fee to be basically eliminated, and what costs are left could be handled by donations.

<comment><USER33> > What's more interesting to me is using BitTorrent not for pirated movies but > as a content distribution system enabling more free services like Wikipedia.

That should be much higher in Wikimedia's TODO list, IMHO. There is a browser extension called WikipediaP2P for chrome, but if I'm not mistaken the author is not affiliated with the Wikimedia foundation and it's _only_ for chrome.

I donated money once to the foundation so now I receive emails from times to times, asking for more money. It nags me when I read the claim that they need money to pay for servers and yet they don't seem to make any effort to distribute Wikipedia in a P2P way.

<comment><USER34> But do note that hosting is actually only a very small percentage of where money goes.

In 2017, Wikimedia received ~87M in donations while only ~2M were spent on hosting. [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/d/da/Wikim...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/d/da/Wikimedia_Foundation_Audit_Report_- _FY16-17.pdf)

<comment><USER35> What the hell? Why do they need my money if they have 50 Million dollars in cash or cash equivalents? Am I reading that right?

And who the hell are their employees that are getting paid 33 million dollars a year? How many employees _are_ there?

EDIT: Reading a related comment's linked OP-ed, it appears that the Wikimedia Foundation spends a lot of money on non-wikipedia things. That is disturbing to me. I would like to donate to _Wikipedia_ , not Wikimedia. Wikimedia may or may not be worthwile (I'm simply not familiar), but it isn't where I want my money to go.

<comment><USER36> They have ~300 employees. So 33M is not a crazy price to pay. ~110k USD/employee/year. Considering the industry they're in (information and tech) this is totally reasonable.

Otherwise no big deal that it may or may not fit your values to donate to Wikimedia.

<comment><USER35> Not crazy, no, but surprising that they have ~300 employees.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> As long as channels like The CW will play 5 minutes of ads (half of them _being for The CW_ ) for every 10 minutes of "The Flash," torrenting will never die. Sorry, but that's fucking ridiculous.

As long as I learn that a show I wanted to watch today on Netflix was taken away by Netflix yesterday, torrenting will never die.

Especially if you use a neat service like [https://bitport.io/](https://bitport.io/) and/or a VPN like [https://speedify.com/](https://speedify.com/)

</comment><comment><USER37> >Cause 5: VPN Usage

>The real problem here is that there's no way to know just how much of VPN traffic is growing or how much of it is BitTorrent. Though different traffic studies look at the internet from different vantage points, some simply would not be able to see VPN-obscured BitTorrent traffic.

I'm on a VPN all the time, and torrenting without a VPN, to me, is living on the edge. I'd constantly wonder: how long before I receive a stern letter? Every day would be a desperate roll of the dice. I'd turn to alcoholism to dull my anxiety. That kind of life's not for me. So the hundreds of gigs in shows and movies I torrent (can't purchase those anywhere without DRM, can you? And paying for them indefinitely to get them [if the licensing doesn't run out] with streaming compression seems silly instead of just downloading them once) is obfuscated! Yay!

<comment><USER38> > I'm on a VPN all the time, and torrenting without a VPN, to me, is living on > the edge. I'd constantly wonder: how long before I receive a stern letter?

That's really a USA thing.

<comment><USER39> Yeah, I suspect something like that. I'd be much more worried about a (relatively cheap) VPN provider ratting me out than my ISP.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> While it's true that BitTorrent as a protocol has significantly fallen out of favor as the go-to technology for John Q. Pirate's needs, there are still many niche torrent sites that stay alive by differentiating on quality and community.

Most of these sites are invite-only, and each tend to specialize in a specific type of media. One site might accept only movies, another TV shows, a third comic book scans, and a fourth might be the go-to repository for textbooks and e-learning materials. Not all that into blockbuster movies? Just join a tracker that specializes in older and more obscure films.

On many of these sites, the material uploaded often includes many more choices in format and quality than is commercially available. A movie, for instance, might offer the option to download a 1080p encode in various video and container formats, or even a full bit-for-bit rip of the BluRay disc. This level of detail and dedication to the pirate media also tends to spin up a community within the site. After all, the people who dig through bargain bins of comic books to scan and upload them (or who scan the big Marvel/DC releases each week) are probably a lot more interested in sticking around and discussing their favorite comics than the drive-by downloader who is only interested in getting his hands on the latest Walking Dead issue.

It's an interesting ecosystem, and while commercial products have caught up greatly on the convenience side I think there is a way to go still on baking in quality, variety, and community.

<comment><USER41> > BitTorrent as a protocol has significantly fallen out of favor as the go-to > technology for John Q. Pirate's needs...

Out of curiosity, what would you say is the go-to technology for pirates now?

<comment><USER42> For me, at least, I still use torrent//magnet technology on The High Seas.

I'm not sure if this is because I am yet again unaware of What's Next until it's too late, or yet again Simply Stubborn on what tech I use, or whatever Option Three is this time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> The article claims that p2p traffic is dropping and quotes percentage numbers which appear to be a percent of total web traffic. This doesn't actually tell me if p2p traffic is dropping. It only tells me that its not growing with - what I would expect is a growing pie of internet traffic.

Furthermore, I would consider the source (plagiarismtoday.com) when choosing to trust some of the items in this article. I've never heard of them - but my initial inclination is to believe they have an agenda.

</comment><comment><USER44> BitTorrent is going nowhere. Some uses are being - temporarily or not, we'll see - less popular. It remains critical.

</comment><comment><USER45> So show actual decline the article would have to use some metric based on absolute bitorrent bandwidth. Instead it uses percentages of total traffic. So it could just be showing that Nefix has gotten popular, not anything about bitorrent.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h Especially since we know that Netflix has grown to be a ridiculous percentage of all traffic

<comment><USER46> yeah I take issue with the way the stats are presented in this article, and I hoped that more people would be saying it in the comments. a smaller share doesn't directly mean smaller usage, it might as well mean bigger usage of services (which we know increased) while p2p remained constant. the fact that it hasn't grown with the rest of the internet doesn't mean that it isn't as big as it used to be

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I think the main takeway is that people not necessarily want it for free, they just want it convenient.

Why would I buy a game in the store when I can just illegally download it? Why would I pirate games when I can easily get them on Steam? Why would I download a series when I can watch it on Netflix? Why would I try hard to pay for my non-netflix series when I can just download it? Why would I go out and buy a CD when I can just illegally download it. Why would I download MP3's when all is available on Spotify anyway.

From this reasoning, I think the future might hold: why would I open a bank account and do slow wire transfers when I can just use cryptocurrency?

<comment><USER48> Because if someone steals your money from a bank or you lose your PIN there is still a way to get your money back. If you lose your private key or someone steals it you can't get your money back with crypto.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> The article concludes that:

> The internet is now dominated by legitimate choices for video streaming.

I really, really would love that to be the case, so that copyright holders stop freaking out about their presumed losses due to pirated content, and would just leave the pirates be.

<comment><USER34> I absolutely agree.

I personally really love the patron model (e.g. Patreon) where people who have the money and care about something can promote it for all of humanity.

As a (relatively) poor kid I pirated a lot because I didn't have a good alternative. But now that I'm better off, I'm really happy to pay and support content creators while allowing others who are not as lucky as me to get it for free.

<comment><USER50> Patreon has been getting worse over time as people have explored what it is capable of (both on the corporate and user side).

At first, it was just a recurring paypal where subscription got you access to a private forum.

Then creators started putting development materials and bloopers on it.

Then extras and previews.

Now a lot of patreons are just turning into paysites. All the content is on patreon, all of it behind tiered paywalls. Its no different than technology we had in abundance in 2004.

The difference is that with paysites the owners of the site handled the payment processor. Now those creators have forfeited their autonomy for the (probably worthwhile as web centralization has shown) increased exposure and convenience of being on THE recurring payments site. Now one corporate entity can arbitrarily kill someones business on their own whims while taking a cut of all their fans contributions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Kim Dotcom on Twitter: "How to stop piracy: 1. Create great content 2. Make it easy to buy 3. Same day global release 4. Works on any device 5. Fair price" || [https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/380757105298268160](https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/380757105298268160)

</comment><comment> Digital-Citizen From the article:

> The real problem here is that there's no way to know just how much of VPN > traffic is growing or how much of it is BitTorrent.

That's a show-stopper problem for the entire article. All of the claims made in the article hinge on the idea that BitTorrent use is undergoing a "Long, Slow Decline". But the author provides no way to back up that claim and buries the lede suggesting why: they don't have the data to back up the claim in their chosen title. The article is largely a joke, a collection of baseless speculation, propaganda (including uncritical use of "piracy", "Legitimate Alternatives")[1], no awareness of why people share data via BitTorrent, and nothing that indicates an awareness of how laws differ around the world (an American bias is unacceptable since the Internet, BitTorrent use, and alleged activity are all global). Sadly some of the feedback on this group echoes the same sentiment: claims about what most people do without posting any sources to back up the claims.

On top of all that, the article is hosted on a service that could use a more resilient underlying infrastructure. As one poster here pointed out, it's as if the article should have been hosted on a service that lets people pass around verbatim copies of the article.

[1] See [http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to- avoid.html](http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html) on how these and other terms are unwise to use without explaining what you mean. One of the giant risks is conveying an undisclosed viewpoint that colors your take on everything else: "unauthorized copying" or "prohibited copying" could have been used instead of "piracy", for example. I'd add "legitimate" to that list of words for the same reason: the word implies that such copying is illegitimate where it is illegal. But as that gnu.org article also points out, "[L]aws don't define right and wrong. Laws, at their best, attempt to implement justice. If the laws (the implementation) don't fit our ideas of right and wrong (the spec), the laws are what should change.". If we're to have a reasonable discussion of this, we ought to admit to our views and speak of them clearly, not hide behind propaganda without ever explicitly coming to terms with their implications.

</comment><comment><USER52> I hope torrents stay strong. No way I could've cultivated my love for films and music without Karagarga and What/Redacted, respectively.

<comment><USER53> I have a theory that the current generation growing up with their young artists only working through streaming platforms are going to have a tough time in 20 years reliving songs they loved of their youth because the streaming platforms they listened to them on will be long dead and no one bothered pirating it and sharing it.

Case in point it's super easy for me to find discogs of even unusual artists I grew up with on torrent sites. But if I search for artists mentioned a lot in the indie music press today I really struggle to find anything on the torrent sites.

I don't trust corporations to look after their own cultural artefacts. Karagarga is a beautiful example, passionate individuals will mash together video from one movie release, audio from another and subtitles from another to create a competent release of a film because no perfect copy exists. They'll do it purely for their love of the source material.

<comment><USER54> > I have a theory that the current generation growing up with their young > artists only working through streaming platforms are going to have a tough > time in 20 years reliving songs they loved of their youth because the > streaming platforms they listened to them on will be long dead and no one > bothered pirating it and sharing it.

This is what happened to a lot of the songs by amateur musicians on mp3.com when it shut down in 2001, and that was all downloadable. I still have a few songs I downloaded from mp3.com that I have not seen hosted anywhere else. For streaming this has been an ongoing problem with SoundCloud for a long time. A lot of musicians delete their accounts or get blocked, move on with their life, and there is not a download option so all that is left are "check out this cool track" dead links.

This is ironic when you consider that a lot of mp3 blogs of the 2008-2011 era were about "rediscovering" amateur cassette and little known vinyl releases from the 1970s and 1980s.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> > Better Legitimate Alternatives

By no way can a vendor-locked, regionally-policied, DRMed thing be considered a "better alternative", IMHO. I would rather pay twice (or even more) the price of the legitimate alternatives to just legalize the usage of unlimited, no-nonsence, DRM-free standard-format files exchange if only this was legally possible.

</comment><comment><USER56> That having been said, torrenting in some ways seems healthier than ever. On a median retail connection I can download an entire season in 30 minutes while I'm getting ready some food, or the first episode in 5 minutes and get started watching. When I was a kid and still used torrents regularly, it wasn't like that. Much of that has to do with better connections and cheap bandwidth, but it's a fact of use nonetheless.

In short, I'd have killed 5 or 10 or 15 years ago for the torrent speed/quality/content that's available today. That says something.

</comment><comment><USER57> Site is down, but I noticed recently that the bit torrent client is looking more and more like 90s malware every time I download it. It has been streaming commercials for a while now. Ive decided to look for an alternative client next time I need to install one

<comment><USER58> I suspect you're referring to μTorrent, which has been descending into awful spam-infested garbage for a long time now. As another user suggested, give qbittorrent a go.

<comment><USER59> qbittorrent is the best out there for windows imo. my only complaint is that it seems to have no dpi awareness whatsoever.

<comment><USER60> Check out PicoTorrent. It's very very lightweight and simple. And DPI aware.

[https://github.com/picotorrent/picotorrent](https://github.com/picotorrent/picotorrent)

<comment><USER59> that actually looks fantastic. thanks for the recommendation!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> It's interesting to me that all these people who don't use BitTorrent themselves are commenting on how they've "over heard" how it is mostly being used for this or that. It is easy to say people should pay for content when you live in a high GDP country. When you earn 200-300$ per month you can't afford to pay 10$ for a movie or thousands of dollars for software.

<comment><USER62> You're getting downvoted because HN.

I'd pay for entertainment, if it was quick (streamed) and maybe per episode. Seems really easy to do. But no, it's either a whole season on outdated media in English (that includes foreign movies, it's always dubbed) or nothing. If it's geographically limited, I can't get it.

So, no, fuck you all, I'll torrent and more importantly, seed, as much as I can.

Even with the government cracking down on the Internet, torrents are still seemingly unscathed, so that's one good thing.

And if you can't afford it, well I'm of the opinion that you should still get it. This is how Windows and Word became the most used software in the world. Ultimately, brought more users than it lost.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> This article fails to see the difference between streaming services and p2p downloading.

If I want to watch content more than once, I contribute to increased traffic every time I stream that content. In other words: Streaming = certain amount of traffic, every time content is viewed.

P2p downloaded content is usually downloaded once, but can be watched infinitely without touching the internet.

The article also fails to touch on the fact that the internet itself is now much more mainstream (especially globally) than it was in 2006.

Of course there's less torrent traffic today than there was in 2006. Streaming services are big for mainstream content that is being consumed by the mainstream. The non-mainstream continue to fill their increasingly cheaper storage devices with downloads. The difference being: they don't contribute to internet traffic every time they consume media.

Kind of renders the article moot for me..

</comment><comment><USER64> It's still popular for anime. Sites like HorribleSubs or Nyaa make it a breeze to download and watch anime, without having to deal with crappy Flash players of anime streaming sites or having buffering hell because the site is having traffic problems. _cough_ Crunchy Roll _cough_

</comment><comment><USER65> I have a netflix subscription, but I download all movies from bittorrent, for three reasons:

1\. Quality, especially audio, on many netflix movie I just cannot hear the voices. VLC is much better at mixing 5.1 to stereo for my speakers (not mentioning having multichannel when I watch on TV)

2\. Being able to apply filters. I don't use many filters, but when I watch movie on my computers, I like to change the gamma of VLC, as my monitor is calibrated for color accuracy. In the browser, the color balance is wrong, I can adjust that in VLC without changing my monitor calibration.

3\. Subtitles, I want subtitles on the black borders when possible. What I often do is applying a crop filter to have only one black border at the bottom and I place the subtitles in it.

<comment><USER66> Do you do this with VLC or another media player? I have a 16:10 monitor that often has space in the letterboxes for subtitles. I took the time to do this in VLC for a foreign TV series, but the next time I went to use subtitles it was broken and I didn't bother to tweak it. This really ought to be a built-in feature that just works™ without fiddling.

<comment><USER65> Actually, for subtitles, I use mpv.io with --video-align=-1 which is smart enough to place the subtitles at the right place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> This piece and its sources focus on the share of p2p and BitTorrent traffic as a percentage of the whole, which doesn't tell us anything about its absolute rise or decline. Of course its share is going to fall as other intensive types of traffic become popular.

</comment><comment><USER68> They do not understand that it's just protocol and service. It's useful while it's handy in solving problems. Waiting for articles about HTTP declining in favour of HTTPs and TCP over UDP.

</comment><comment><USER35> Does anyone know if there exists an updateable torrent which lists other torrents?

That is, a torrent using [http://www.bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0046.html](http://www.bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0046.html) to keep an up to date archive of magnet links or something?

If not, does anyone if any of the major trackers offer an API to scrape all magnet links + tags? I don't want to take on the liability of publishing said tracker-torrent, but I can certainly write the software to make it easy.

</comment><comment><USER69> In order to have torrents, someone has to buy the DVD or BluRay. If fewer people are buying that stuff, there are fewer torrents. Could be a factor? Only takes one person though for a given movie.

There is a trend now that the encodings are larger. A 110 minute movie can be anywhere from 5 to 10 gigabytes or more in full high def. Sometimes you can find newer movies in smaller sizes; sometimes not.

Downloading and storing that is inconvenient compared to streaming. It takes longer; less powerful mobile devices don't decode the large stuff very well; you may get skipping if you happen to view these huge downloads over shitty Wi-Fi in a crammed airspace.

An 0.8 to 1.5 gig download is still a reasonable alternative to streaming.

I was traveling back in January and crammed 16 movies into as many gigs of free space on the 32 gig SD card on my tablet for watching on planes and in hotel rooms. I did that by running almost each one of them through ffmpeg to get the bitrate down. In some cases I tweaked the resolution. In one or two of them, I re-coded the audio to a lower bit rate (256 kbps to 128: it wasn't a musical movie, WTF!) Almost no perceptible loss of quality; all perfectly watchable.

Pain in the butt to do that, though!

Basically, I have this theorem that two hours of a perfectly watchable movie with good sound do not require more than around 1.5 gigs of H265+AAC data. When I see larger sizes, I tend to become kind of reluctant to pull the download trigger.

</comment><comment><USER70> BitTorrent serves a purpose even when unused, like nuclear weapons. All media companies know that if they put ridiculous hurdles in front of content consumption, piracy will pick back up.

</comment><comment><USER71> Claiming about BitTorrent usage just on declining bandwidth doesn't makes a lot of sense. Since, now ISP has started caching things and using solutions like Torbox to enable their customers to enjoy torrents on high speed.

This might be affecting overall bandwidth numbers of bitTorrent. But from usage point of view, I absolutely do not see any decline. Programs like Popcorn time are actually phenomenal in terms of their UI/UX, thus it's getting adopted crazily.

</comment><comment><USER72> To me, torrenting has become the new SMS. When Hangout, whatsapp, imo, and whatnot fail, I always resort to SMS which simply work.

I have access to netflix, amazon, and Youtube, but when they fail, in the most ridiculous ways, there is always the guarantee of torrents in the highest possible quality.

</comment><comment><USER73> I pay for access to these services but they all require in browser DRM to watch. My media PC doesn't have any non-free stuff on it so I basically have to torrent the stuff I already pay for. It's super annoying but oh well...

</comment><comment><USER74> That is one of the most poorly written articles I've ever read. Aside from the jarring punctuation marks littered throughout, why is there a Kodi logo next to "Streaming Piracy?"

</comment><comment><USER75> Decline? I don't know about bittorrent as a client, but torrent use in general is very widespread and probably one the biggest sources of piracy

</comment><comment><USER76> I still enjoy the integrated verification of bittorrent very much. No need for post download md5 check and retries.. just coast along comfortably.

</comment><comment><USER77> The fact that companies can connect and see the IP of all downloaders is an issue.

A newer iteration needs better anonymity to become ubiquitous again.

<comment><USER78> It's only a problem in countries that enforce copyright laws fiercely, e.g. USA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> Movies and TV shows are a lot less watchable now. I'm not really as excited about the new block buster as I used to be. Maybe this is the perennial "I'm getting old and don't realize it" but I also understand box office and movie revenue to be down. Definitely steaming is a big source as well

</comment><comment><USER80> Stremio with a popcorn time plugin is the new way to pirate movies. Convenience and performance is roughly on par with legal services like netflix. It's typically used under a vpn, so I'm curious about how popular it is... who uses/ or knows about people who use it?

</comment><comment> cup-of-tea For most people, convenience is king. Netflix etc. didn't have to compete on quality or catalogue size, only covenience. And they won. With that we lost some of the greatest collections of human culture ever assembled. Those were only available with BitTorrent.

</comment><comment><USER81> I am learning Japanese. Ever since d-addict took down their torrent section. It was almost to impossible to find quality content with Japanese subtitles. I now rely on Netflix Japan, but the content is still very limited.

</comment><comment><USER82> I tried looking for the Olympics Opening Ceremonies, something I was 100% certain would be up on torrent sites. Couldn't find a single one. Ended up logging into the NBC Sports app and streaming it that way.

</comment><comment><USER83> more interested in seeing what the younger demographic is doing. the legal alternatives are good, but with monthly services being offered by everything and everyone, i wonder if there will be some eventual pullback

<comment><USER84> The legal alternatives are a start. I wouldn't say they are good.

Outages, exclusive availability, time-delayed availability, poor quality transcodes and poor overall quality, and literally every damn service decided that $10/month is a good price.

Which it might be, for any one service. I don't want to start paying $10/month (or equivalant) for Hulu, Netflix, Amazon, HBO, Disney, Sportify, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> I'm not really a fan of torrents anymore, got a two DMCA's a few years back.

Now I just xdcc stuff from various IRC networks or I just search via Google with "index of movie_name_here 720p mkv".

</comment><comment> white-flame The most obvious is that people are more on phones today than on full-featured computers. You're not going to run p2p uploading on such a device. You're going to be streaming.

</comment><comment><USER86> I hope bittorrent doesn't decline too much. A lot of open source software offloads their downloads to torrents to save space/bandwidth/etc and lower costs.

</comment><comment><USER78> I'd gladly pay for a "Better Legitimate alternative" if there was one. Executing proprietary software and DRM are deal-breakers for me.

</comment><comment><USER87> Always wanted to augment http to use BT as a transport, but with the rise of https I'm not sure that would even be possible any more.

</comment><comment><USER88> the answer is, #1 and #5. the "enforcement" and "demographics" reasons are bullshit. I've never heard of a "streaming pirate" site but keeping a long term connection open to a pirate entity's site seems like a crazy thing to do just from a browser exploit point of view.

</comment><comment><USER89> Netflix stopped serving It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and now those torrents are really really popular =)

</comment><comment><USER90> It would be nice if we had substantial public funding of the arts and the results were free to copy.

</comment><comment><USER91> P2P is alive and well on enterprise networks, with Kollective leading the pack.

</comment><comment><USER92> 1,2,5 strike me as by far the most impactful. Legal alternatives are much more prevalent and convenient than ever before. By the same token, people used to streaming from YouTube or Netflix look for the same experience in their piracy, and pirate streams offer that. For people who want a collection of files to pore over, a VPN is a cheap and reasonable service most in that demo will be familiar with.

Finally, a lot of piracy around the world took the form of downloading files and burning them onto discs form physical distro, which has also changed for the most part.

<comment><USER93> I think it's important to separate:

* People who just want to watch "something", often while multitasking

* People who like a show / movie, and want to own it for future re-watching

"Watch something" has vastly improved. There are huge collections of content available online, TV/movies from all eras, Youtube's "amateur" video content, Twitch streams, and of course social media as a passive entertaining time- sink.

But the experience for fans, in my opinion, hasn't improved much.

The choices are: buy disks, or pay for multiple subscriptions to content owners (eg HBO Go for Game of Thrones). Otherwise you depend on a subscription that may drop content in the future, or a purchased stream (eg Amazon instant video) with variable performance and online-only availability. I'd argue we _regressed_ \- disks and disk players are more expensive, while streams are added costs if you want to buy the disk. It's also getting harder to rip disks for personal archival. I still regularly pirate movies, even _after_ purchasing the movie - stealing is sadly the easiest way to get a non-DRM digital copy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER94> do we have a mirror? Its down for me.

<comment><USER95> How coincidental that a website about the decline of a P2P technology went down under heavy load

</comment></comment><comment><USER96> Bittorrent is declining because the big mainstream stuff that people want is now after years available for convenient streaming. The industry has finally adapted.

If you want to read Ever17 bittorrent will aways be there keeping it available to mankind. Since I DO believe creators should be payed when possible I see this a win. Piracy for me was always about being a library of Alexandria. Not a way to steal the latest Hollywood trash.

</comment><comment><USER97> Saving movies to disk doesn't make much sense. The files are huge, and rewatching is not that common. BitTorrent is great for music, sadly we lost what.cd to law enforcement.

<comment><USER52> Saving movies to disk makes a lot of sense - I like not having to rely on either a big company's services or library nor some sketchy, slow illegal streaming site. Not to mention a vast number of movies are not available for streaming illegally or legally in a convenient way.

If I download a movie I know it will always be available and work 100% of the time regardless of internet connection or money. If I delete it after watching, BitTorrent gives me a similar guarantee provided I can be online.

<comment><USER98> I don't use streaming, and it's interesting how when I go to someone else's house, I'll be like "It should be on Netflix" and it's not .. but it was a few years ago.

I recently met up with an old roommate who still keeps a NAS with TV shows and movies and he had tons and tons of stuff on there that you simply can't find anywhere. Lot's of old kids shows for his daughter, old stuff that you could only get on MySpleen.

With everyone moving to streaming and not having the wall of DVDs/BluRays/VHS tapes, we have lost something, but stuff isn't on streaming forever. Things rotate out, and fewer people are actually buying media. Even with eBooks, you're paying for a license to see that media for a limited use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER99> This strikes me as an area where distributed apps on a blockchain could have a big impact.

Currently, top piracy options like torrent websites and Kodi addons constantly get taken down by the government (through methods described in this article).

But what happens if a distributed YouTube exists with every movie in pristine 1080p quality, that lives on a blockchain so the government can't shut it down or issue DMCA takedown requests?

<comment><USER100> The blockchain itself would be too expensive to store a large amount of data, so they would only be storing magnet links much like most tracker sites currently do.

<comment><USER101> Is anyone currently storing magnet links in a blockchain?

It seems like one of the more appropriate types of data to be storing on blockchains.</comment></comment></comment>


Innovations Snuffed Out by Craigslist - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/29/when-craigslist-blocks-innovations-disruptions/?hp

<comment><USER2> Data Thief Snuffed Out by Craigslist.

The barrier to entry in the classified ads space is the same as every other space - attracting advertisers.

You don't get to steal somebody's advertisers just because you have a prettier interface and attracting them to your site is hard.

</comment><comment><USER3> There is a commentary on this article also on HN at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4309692>

<comment> jack-r-abbit Actually, I think you were looking for this HN thread: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4309177> Yours links to the HN thread about the article written in response to this NY Times article.</comment></comment>


Google Chrome and the future of Virtual Reality - <AUTHOR> http://wemo.io/google-chrome-and-the-future-of-virtual-reality-interview-with-531 <comment><USER2> The article says "That's where Brandon Jones comes in. He is the one (and only) person at Google working on VR support for Google Chrome." This doesn't seem right, that google only has 1 person working on VR for Chrome. You'd think there would be an entire team working on such an important technology. They should move the Glass Team over to help out.

<comment><USER3> Not really. It isn't going to be that important until the hardware is both affordable and ubiquitous. So they can afford to take the software development side slowly.

<comment><USER4> Even then it won't be important until it's actually useful. VR hasn't actually proven to have demand beyond the enthusiast crowd. Right now it's just a solution looking for a problem, some gimmick that companies are jumping on to look ready for the next thing. Let alone the fact that 3D content hadn't exactly exploded on the web yet.

<comment><USER5> I've used Google cardboard, and while it's true most of the apps are a gimmick, the youtube VR app is downright awesome.

If I had a VR unit with an elastic head strap (cardboard has none) I would watch youtube with that over any other medium of consumption.

It makes me wish I could code in that interface too. Rather than buying three expensive monitors, you can have six or sixty in front of you at any moment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Are there any popular (as popular as it could be) building blocks for 3d webpages? It seems like right now I would need to use canvas?

<comment><USER7> Actually, that is something I'm actively working on: [https://github.com/capnmidnight/Psychologist.js](https://github.com/capnmidnight/Psychologist.js)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I feel pretty confident we will see a re-distribution of resources at google towards VR as more commercially-facing devices get released. The Gear VR is the first product and we will see a relatively large number of mobile and thethered devices come out in 2015.</comment>


The startup I worked has closed, I want to keep working - <AUTHOR>

I start working as freelancer for an small startup that this week closed due lack of money.
We were building a complex and big management system that I'm really confident on the success of the idea but recently I receive an email saying that all the team have to stop working because a big client withdraw his intention to buy the service, and the owner was not able to keep the payroll of the team anymore.
I really like the staff and the owner I feel responsible for this the outcome, It will be different If I was capable to finish the release on time.
I ask HN about the intention I have to keep working on this, I profoundly feel the urge to ask the owner to allow me keep working on the project without pay. I review my current situation and I known I can last two months just fine if I don't receive payment. My idea is to finish the MVP and giving the project the opportunity to find another client without expending more money.
I just start writing an email to them about this idea, and don't feel I'm doing it right, I want them to say yes.
The status of the project is 60% done, surely it can be finish in less that two months.
The project manager write a flattering email introducing me for a position in another company. I known the Owner and PM really want to keep going, but I known also because of their work ethics doesn't want to me to work without being paid.
I ask HN, how can I propose to keep working on the project and give this another opportunity to success. <comment><USER2> > We were building a complex and big management system

Sounds like long sales cycles + probably a longish period between "sale" and "integration done, workers trained, in production" (which may be the point when the cash starts flowing...).

> My idea is to finish the MVP and giving the project the opportunity to find > another client without expending more money.

I don't know the specific market you are in and the technical ability of the persons you are trying to sell to. It may be that a finished MVP vs. a 60% done MVP doesn't significantly improve the chance of a sale. It may be that for the sales process, slides-only or a 5 min click demo are enough to convince the client of your technical ability and the discussion will move on to other topics.

Apparently this has worked before, and the owner may be looking to replicate that before investing further time into building the MVP.

Sales is tough, really tough, and may be the far bigger problem for the startup. A finished MVP doesn't necessarily make this easier, sadly.

</comment><comment><USER3> Like any answer, it depends.

Option 1: If the rest of the key team (Owner and PM) stay onboard, then you can negotiate for sweat equity.

Option 2: If nobody wants to continue working on the project, then the conversation changes to, what does it take for you to own the existing code base.

Whatever the case, working for free without any compensation (whether monetary or share of the business) ends in hurt feelings all around.

<comment><AUTHOR> The Owner and PM believes in the project.

I don't want to own the code base, I feel it's a matter of loyalty, responsibility and maybe optimism of my part that leads me to this idea of keep working.

However, what I fear the most is to have the opportunity of keep working on the project and fail.

I understand the compensation problem, it can hurt both parts and I don't want that

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Depending on how far the product is, have you considered partnering with your boss and whoever else to get funding for the project to continue working on it as a startup venture? If it's truly a good idea you believe in and you've put the work in and have something that somewhat works, why not give it a shot? You only have time to lose.

</comment><comment><USER5> You said that you can go for two months without the pay. Is the Owner and PM in the same position ?

If yes then you can talk to them about the sweat equity. It will give dignity to both the parties. In any case you fail. It will not give harsh feeling to anyone.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I briefly talk with the owner and PM, I will have a response soon. Thanks for all the advices</comment>


Ask HN: Can you be sued for having just a verbal agreement about profit sharing? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Maybe a little more backstory in the comments would help.</comment>


Hans Zimmer designed the sound for BMW's futuristic concept car - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/29/19914287/bmw-hans-zimmer-design-bmw-vision-m-next-sound-profile-blade-runner-cyberpunk-3d-print <comment><USER2> That's a terrible sound for a car.

> ...produced a sound for the car that feels right out of a film...

The problem being that it sounds _exactly like a soundtrack_ being played alongside what the car is doing rather than being able to believe that the car is making the sound.

Also, the picture of that BMW M Next looks like it could have been made in the 70s if with much less imagination and far more conservatism. The Forumla-E cars don't look great either but at least they're trying.</comment>


Apple Starts to Implement Service Workers for WebKit - <AUTHOR> https://webkit.org/status/#?search=service <comment><USER2> No content in the link. What is it all about?</comment>


Inside the Vatican-blessed tech accelerator that's tackling climate change - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/40424655/inside-the-vaticans-tech-accelerator-thats-targeting-climate-change?utm_content=buffera9430&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer <comment><USER2> "Companies participating in the Laudato Si Challenge will receive $100,000 in seed funding in exchange for a 6% to 8% equity investment, and expert mentorship."

</comment><comment><USER3> Although interesting, the above link contains lots of tracking parameters - i.e. I can see you saw it on Twitter.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are right. It is difficult for me to remember and remove those when sharing.</comment></comment>


Ask YC: Startupschool Afterparty? - <AUTHOR>

Hey, so I know we have wikis going for meetups and such.  Why don't we all try to agree and collaboratively come up with a spot in Palo Alto close to Stanford.  Would be good to keep the discussions going on afterwards in a fun environment and all hangout.  I'll be glad to coordinate and help make arrangements/volunteer time to make this happen.<p>AIM is jlbxk8 if you want to chat.<p>@pg- did you guys have anything planned already? don't want to overlap.<p>-jlb <comment><USER2> I've created a Startup School Chatterous room so that we can have a backchannel for the event:

Here are the instructions to join.

Web: <http://www.chatterous.com/landing/ss08/> with passcode ss08

Jabber/google talk: add firstname.lastname@example.com and send @join ss08

Email: @join ss08 in body to firstname.lastname@example.com

Phone: text CHTR JOIN ss08 ss08 to 41411

<comment><USER2> I've also posted details on how to join on the Startup School wiki: [http://wiki.startupschool.org/doku.php?id=ss08_chatterous_ro...](http://wiki.startupschool.org/doku.php?id=ss08_chatterous_room)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Looks like a lot of folks are hitting the SuperHappyDevHouse that evening. And others are talking about arranging dinner on the Facebook event page.

Regardless, you'd want to put it in the wiki. Having information spread all over the place means people will be spread all over the place (which is fine-- too many people makes for crap conversation--but folks ought to be picking where to go based on complete information and consonance with the other folks showing up at the same places).

<comment><USER4> Are you sure you didn't read the wiki from last year's event? I checked out the page for the 25th SHDV and there is no time or date scheduled. Nonetheless, I think we should get them to schedule it. It was a lot of fun last year! I'll contact one of the organizers.

<comment><USER3> Ah, looks like I was. Wrong window opened (I'm the one that moved all of the old content over and started the new 2008 entries...you'd think I'd know what I'm looking at).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> After the party it's the after-party. I'm down for something.</comment>


Donald Trump Warns of Penalties If U.S. Firms Take Jobs Abroad - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-takes-credit-for-saving-indiana-jobs-1480628609 <comment><USER2> man I would totally try to get my firm abroad before that guy was president then. Even if you lost some money doing it, might be less than the penalties.

<comment><USER3> At the rate he's going, there will likely be a hefty fine for those that have already taken their operation abroad.</comment></comment>


Pendulum: Python Datetimes Made Easy - <AUTHOR> https://pendulum.eustace.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> I saw this library mentioned in a StackOverflow comment. I hadn't run into it before. Wondering if anyone has experience using it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I especially like this bit, mentioned in the FAQ ([https://pendulum.eustace.io/faq/](https://pendulum.eustace.io/faq/)):

 _It also removes the notion of naive datetimes: each DateTime instance is timezone-aware and by default in UTC for ease of use._</comment></comment>


Overdoses Are Killing More Americans Every Year Than Died in the Vietnam War - <AUTHOR> http://thesoundingline.com/map-of-the-day-drug-overdose-rates-across-america/ <comment><USER2> Blogspam of

[https://datausa.io/map/?level=state&key=drug_overdose_ageadj...](https://datausa.io/map/?level=state&key=drug_overdose_ageadjusted&translate=669.073132048444,808.0400706849915&scale=3963.949711595803)</comment>


Leonard Peikoff on mosque near Ground Zero - <AUTHOR> http://www.peikoff.com/2010/06/28/what-do-you-think-of-the-plan-for-a-mosque-in-new-york-city-near-ground-zero-isnt-it-private-property-and-therefore-protected-by-individual-rights/

<comment><USER2> Ashley Roy wrote a brilliant essay on this matter: [http://madisonobjectivists.wordpress.com/2010/07/01/a-mosque...](http://madisonobjectivists.wordpress.com/2010/07/01/a-mosque- at-ground-zero/)

Just in case that link breaks someday, here's a quote that you can use to search for the rest of it:

"As an opponent of the mosque, I wish to demonstrate the level at which I think this discussion must proceed. In particular I aim to show that if one regards the mosque as an objective threat, then building the mosque, not banning it, constitutes a violation of individual rights. On this view, its prohibition (or destruction) would neither entail granting exceptional powers to government nor fueling "the danger of rapidly accelerating tyranny." Defending freedom can hardly be construed as tyrannical, unconstitutional or the lesser of two evils. Therefore to support the mosque, one mustn't view it as an objective threat. It is this issue that must be decided.

As I see it, public advocacy of Islam assumed the status of a threat when first the Twin Towers fell in its name (and possibly before). This threat is infinitely more severe and unambiguous when issued at Ground Zero. If individual Muslims wish to separate their advocacy of Islam from the war being waged against us, they must explicitly denounce all translations of Islam into violent political practice—the opposite of erecting a mosque over the graves of persons killed by its enactment."

</comment><comment><USER3> Heres my take there are only three possibilities here:

1) The Mosque is of anti-american Muslims. That should be stopped.

2) The more likely scenario is that these are just Muslims wanting to build a Mosque in their neighborhood.

3) Maybe (2) but to show that Muslims care for the victims just as anyone do.

For (1) I say take the same action as you would with a confederate flag in a black neighborhood. If the people beat the shit out of them, great.

For (2) it should be allowed, period. It is their constitutional right to practice their religion and it is bigotry to blame all Muslims for the actions of the few.

For (3) more power to them, hope they succeed.

Edit: Since it seems to be point (1) then we should stop it. I don't feel property rights ever play into the argument though. The only argument I have is, if it is their property, they should have the right to build a religious establishment for the purposes of the community. If that is not the goal, they should be denied the right to build there.</comment>