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October 15th, 2006

Thank Goodness for Bittorrent

Lawyers and corporate execs can say all they want about the illegality of television shows being shared out via Bittorrent and easily searchable by any number of search engines, but when your Dish receiver starts acting wonky and randomly losing its signal, it’s a whole new game. This week, thanks to Bittorrent, I was able to download and watch two shows that I missed because of a lost signal. After watching the show, I deleted it. I didn’t sell it, I didn’t bootleg it, and I didn’t even keep a copy to watch later. I just watched it.

As far as I’m concerned, that’s “fair use.”

Posted in Technology, Television, Movies, and Music

Paul October 15, 2006, 5:53 pm

I agree completely.

Back in the olden days I’d purchased a CD (Ben Folds Five, for your records) and accidentally scratched the durn thing while taking it out of the case. It damaged it beyond repair, and I lost two tracks. In that case I felt no remorse going online and downloading those two tracks.

Terry M. October 16, 2006, 3:53 am

I download a TV show with BT once in a while, but it has really pumped up my music collection. I have over 800 GB’s of music downloaded largely from BT. With other technology you download music by the album or the song, with BT you download by the *discography*. Recently I’ve mostly switched to newsgroups as they are a lot faster, and you tend to get more variety due to more of a ‘push’ model.

(Yeah I remember when Napster came out and I was bitterly opposed to music pirary; I have changed my tune sometime since then.)

Ryan October 16, 2006, 9:12 pm

Terry — I’d be really interested to hear about the changing of your tune. I would never have expected that from you!

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