Possible response to "only uploading is lawsuit-worthy."

[jasong]

I've been thinking about the RIAA's policy of only suing uploaders. What if you had to assert that you weren't breaking copyright law in order to connect to a torrent? People could easily lie about that, but it might make it harder for the RIAA to only sue uploaders.

What do you think?

[NBtarheel_33]

If I understand the finer points of P2P and BitTorrent, etc., whenever you connect to a torrent and download it, piece by piece from peers, you are also uploading pieces to other peers in a similar fashion. Moreover, if you download an entire torrent, and leave your BitTorrent client running, you become a "seed", or a node that is basically screaming "hey, I have a whole copy, come get what you need from me!"

Doesn't that instantly make any downloader an uploader, as well? Especially with respect to seeding; that seems like patent uploading of content for others' consumption. At the very least, it seems to muddy the waters enough to make separation of users into "prosecutable uploaders" and "immune downloaders" excruciatingly difficult, if not outright impossible.

Better solution: The RIAA/MPAA/what-have-you-AA should wake up and embrace the post-Chicxulub world by working with torrent sites and torrent providers to encourage paid memberships or paid downloads (or even something ad-supported) that would allow users to pick and pay for just what it is that they want (e.g. one track instead of an entire 20-track CD). Take the infamous Pirate Bay, for instance. Charge an annual subscription fee of $100-200 and then also charge a nominal amount by the download (or even by the KB/MB/GB). There could also be different download speed levels (pay more for faster speeds), or even an extra fee to access so-called "seeds". Users feel like they are saving money and getting what they want, and the producers of content are getting paid. Seems like a fair compromise.

Just seems silly to me to think that there is any hope at this point of keeping someone from burning a few extra CDs for a friend, whether they do it physically or over the Internet. It didn't work for "home taping" or in the age of "don't copy the floppy". So it makes far more sense for the interested parties to quit wasting money on lawyers and legal threats that really go nowhere (the Pirate Bay guys have all been fined and sentenced to jail in Sweden, but they're all in countries that won't extradite, and their servers are now all over the world in the cloud), and start figuring out how to monetize so-called "piracy".

[firejuggler]

NBtarheel_33, you can configure your torrent client in such a way that it does not upload. Not appreciated by the communitty, slower download speed, but no upload.

[jasong]

Another thing they could have is a pay-by-the-minute option. I hate the idea of renting a movie, deciding that it's crap, but then I can't even get a partial refund. OTOH, if the movie is actually good, maybe they deserve more money.

When I buy a 45-minute long show from Amazon(an hour with the commercials) I pay $2.99. That's a little over 6.5 cents a minute. Why not ask for $20 at a time, and only charge for the stuff I actually watch? If I want to watch a 3-minute long chase scene 20 times, that's an hour's worth of content, and they'd deserve the money if I were actually that transfixed by it.

That's the reason most people start torrenting, garbage content, and then their senses get dulled to the illegal aspect of it. It's the RIAA's own fault that society has managed to get so damned addicted to torrenting. When a criminal act puts a consumer in a better position than the honest behavior, there's obviously a problem with the business model.