{"id":2779,"date":"2004-12-25T11:43:20","date_gmt":"2004-12-25T15:43:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/dbnews\/2004\/12\/25\/access-denied\/"},"modified":"2004-12-25T11:43:20","modified_gmt":"2004-12-25T15:43:20","slug":"access-denied","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/2004\/12\/25\/access-denied\/","title":{"rendered":"Access Denied"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n
\n

Hey, what’s up with Bit
\n Torrent? Although a little hit-and-miss, this technology and the various
\n front ends developed to make it easier to use, were the most reliable
\n way to download, er, review copies of music, movies and television
\n shows. For example thanks to bit torrent we can clearly state that the DVD-rip Chinese language
\n version of House of Flying Daggers is better quality than the VCD English
\n subtitles version, although it’s subtitles are difficult to understand
\n unless one reads Dutch. Actually, we have gotten lots of video snippets
\n this way which we have used in class to illustrate various aspects of
\n modern
\n American
\n culture
\n and language.<\/p>\n

We know that the RIAA and the MPA are putting
\n lots of pressure on hosting sites<\/a> and ISP’s to try to get a handle on
\n this exploding phenomena. It appears to be having an effect.<\/p>\n

Since early yesterday (Christmas Eve) we have
\n been unable to get a single torrent to hookup with any of our "peers". Normally,
\n we get a successful download about half the time, an operational inconvenience
\n which makes fishing for files somewhat akin to fishing for bass, albeit
\n with a considerably higher rate of success. We imagined that the technical
\n complexities and unpredictability were
\n what was keeping bit torrent in the province of the geeks and protecting
\n it from the full wrath of the copy police. Dream on.<\/p>\n

Our current hypotheses are:<\/p>\n