For isoHunt founder Gary Fung, 2014 was his first year away from the BitTorrent community. But even though the site was shut down by the MPAA, Hollywood still faces the same problems piracys. Fung stated his opinions on piracy and the future of media distribution on TorrentFreak.
The isoHunt website has been head of the BitTorrent community for over a decade, and Fung today closed his first year as an outsider.
Has the prospect of piracy changed? What are the lessons for the big companies in the entertainment industry and what do they have to do to face the challenge of piracy?
Gary fung
I have said many times in the past, in court and elsewhere, that closing isoHunt does not mean anything to them and how much people share. IsoHunt was a statistical tool that showed a reflection of what they wanted to share. I was right, basically nothing has changed in the file-sharing of BitTorrent. Nor will anything change with the recent downtime of The Pirate Bay as it turns out.
At present, piracy is maintained by the media's inability to serve their customers well.
I like movies. I've been to theaters many times to watch good movies with my friends. The closing of isoHunt did not change that. Recently, there was a movie I wanted to see: The Imitation Games. After weeks of the premiere in the US, I still could not see it in Canada. A few days ago, the screenings began in a single local theater.
"Piracy" is not a problem due to money, it is a problem due to the ease of access. Money is just a part of the access problem. What do studs expect from people? Do patience when they want to see a movie, but they can not pay for it because it does not play locally?
So how can the entertainment industry stop piracy? With Innovation.
Stopping my mixing with file-sharing gives me the freedom to say that streaming services are the future of movies and television. Technically, streaming and recommendations are the things that can compete effectively with piracy, which is not so convenient, legally and not in terms of high quality. Continue to undermine collective streaming services with licensing restrictions and territorial barriers and expect piracy to grow. War on the Internet can not be won by lawyers.
I wanted it isoHunt to evolve into a service of discoveryof content. I realize now that without working with content owners, this is not possible (proof its closure isoHunt). Technologically, I envisage studios and other media companies to create open APIs and platforms to develop new innovative streaming streaming services.
This will stop the studio's fear of a service like the Netflix. Studios fear it will dominate the media and eventually dictate its own terms in the industry. New streaming services could take a hybrid approach, using BitTorrent P2P streaming to lower costs but also Bitcoin for pay per view micro-transactions.
Imagine everyone being able to watch and hear anything, anytime, anywhere, with a few cents, automatically removed from your Bitcoin wallet. Entertainment will be totally transferred to the cloud, searchable but also with quality detectors through recommendations.
I believe that all this would be ideal for bridging the digital divide between creators and consumers. Taylor Swift does not want to be at Spotify? It can create its own platform using a feed API, a rights clearing house, and a Bitcoin sales address. The same will apply to every TV show and film producer.
And here's my advice to all industry associations, like MPAA, RIAA, etc., for continued relevance in this internet age, and potentially, for everyone's benefit. Become standards bodies for programmatically available APIs on media rights, metadata, and micro-transactions. Record companies and the moviesgraphics/TV studios will be able to use these standards to make their own projects, stream them and accept payments from third parties.
With open APIs, new streaming streaming services will be able to innovate freely. By increasing competition and choices, consumers will be able to have better prices and collective access to everything, just as on the Internet that everything is available. With competitive streaming services, artists and studios will not be afraid of streaming giants such as Netflix, YouTube and Spotify, which have already established themselves as a major force in distributing content.
Streaming services will get new channels, available on any connected TV, audio system and mobile device. Micro-transactions which are the most difficult part from a technical point of view, have the potential to stop subscription streaming, and the piracy of today. The free and cheaper tiers of access via APIs will be able to be supplemented by advertising of course and new forms of product promotion, something already started by YouTube (although ethics in the ongoing merge of content and advertising, should be questioned).
Piracy and property talks I believe will be largely academic when access to content will be so easy. The media companies that are now hunting their future customers and technology associates with lawsuits would laugh as today we can laugh when carriages are suing cars because they go too fast.
