Email updates

Here are emails our group has used to determine our arguement: (newest on top)

Who is the person in charged of making money? I personally don't understand at all how a BitTorrent style system could ever be profitable. What do people purchase when they select a movie or song from the all new iTunes that relies on bit torrent? Do they get a torrent file from an Apple sponsored tracker? What if someone were to create their own torrent and use their own tracker system?
Apple can't register the file to a single user, since the same exact file is being passed around throughout the "swarm" of users in bits and pieces. Because of this, the video file cannot be encrypted using Apple's conventional .m4v algorithm, since the torrent users in the swarm will not have the original user's key, and thus will not be able to decrypt the purchased video. If the content is decrypted however and not registered to a single user, it can be passed around to everyone. This means that the entire video section of the Apple iTunes store has to be recreated to address this issue, which not only would take time and money, but would probably result in problems concerning users not being able to understand the new interface.
For the reasons mentioned in my email, I believe that we should be against using BitTorrent in the Apple iTunes store.
Justin Wickett


But, that movie is from 1990 - through my limited knowledge of bittorrent older stuff is always going to be slow. Could we see how fast a new movie comparison might be? This would deefinitely be a disadvantage for apple using bittorent bc when movies fall out of popularity they are going to be slow.
hayley

I have never even used bit torrent before. I just downloaded The Hunt for Red October on Bit Torrent and Apple iTunes store. It took me 7 minutes to download the 1.4 GB movie from Apple, whereas my BitTorrent client still has 19 hours remaining... If you do the math, I think the answer is pretty straight forward. I will write a mini-paper tonight concerning the advantages of Bit Torrent, and discuss my findings. My friend also claims that I can watch the movie as it downloads from Apple, but I wont be able to watch while it downloads from Bit Torrent. Do you guys have any experience downloading illegal music and videos? Is this true? Thanks
Justin Wickett

I can go either way pretty much also.
- Hayley

I think by our check tomorrow we are supposed to have our main argument for the proposal. Personally, I could argue either way whether or not we should tell Apple to do it or not. Hayley or Justin, what are you guys thinking? If you tell me what you are thinking (to use the bittorrent system or not) then I can go ahead and make economic advisements. Thanks!
Brady