Nice find coins, I wasn't aware that there was so many torrent users world wide, from the article:
While JoyStream and vTorrent are yet to go live, when they do launch in early 2017 they will be able to immediately tap into 300–500 million existing BitTorrent users, compared to Netflix’s 90 million subscribers.
The potential to reach this existing global market of 300–500 million BitTorrent users has investors salivating at the prospect of backing start-ups that could be the future Netflix or Amazon Video.
This is from torrent freak, it was published in 2012, this is only two torrent clients:
https://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-surges-to-150-million-monthly-users-120109/When the dev finally releases vTorrent, anyone with 100K VTR is gonna be quite wealthy.
You have to keep reading till the end to see in 2012 there were around 250m BitTorrent users.
"Based on the 150 million active monthly users BitTorrent Inc. reports for their clients, the total number of monthly BitTorrent users can be estimated at more than a quarter billion. And despite these already dazzling numbers, there is still plenty of room for growth."
I think those numbers would have been dented by Kodi and Netflix.
The idea of being able to completely control rights in any capacity is an idea high up in the clouds that will never, ever be achieved. So long as operating systems have BYO software and people can encrypt files there is no way to actually identify what people are consuming.
A good example is Steam which simply made consumption a convenience--you pay and you get what you pay for easily, quickly and without hassle. This is what has to be tackled in the world of media.
Which is why they go after the distributors or anyone they can claim to be a distributor. Kim.com didn't know what 100m people were loading into megaupload, but the service was taken down.
YouTube is one of the biggest sources of pirated content yet you don't see it being taken down or the owners threatened with criminal action. They have a grand bargain with rights holders instead. They help distribute rights holders material and act on take downs, but it doesn't change the facts that YouTube still has more media copyright content infringements than bittorrent.
So you have to atleast offer the functionality to enable rights holders a way to distribute their own material and collect royalties.
Yes, but in every case the stupidity lies with the right's holders. In the case of YouTube many TV networks could've negotiated themselves a pretty penny with worldwide distribution rights--if they made available all the latest TV shows 24 hours after air and charged 50 cents a pop people wouldn't bother with BitTorrent.
The problem is mostly that 50 cents a pop is great in concept, but in a lot of regions anything under a few dollars is prohitably expensive once you add transaction costs and overheads. Which is where bitcoin could come in at some point.
I don't think its a bad idea to have options for rights-holders, I just think trying to get them to actually use it would be fairly futile.
However, having said all that, if vTorrent is successful it will be different to the options that came before it because it won't be possible to take it down (in theory). Kazaa, Limewire, eMule, BitTorrent trackers (The Pirate Bay), Mega and all the other services that have come and gone all had central failing points.
We're now engaged in a race to the bottom, whoever does it cheapest, quickest and easiest will come out as the winner. Rights holders will have to adapt to the technology and not the other way around.
Lets hope that vTorrent launch is a success.