Battleangel

It does seem like a sellout when your first read the headline, but …

Boing Boing - MPAA, Bram Cohen announcement today in Hollywood - BitTorrent has set up a process with the MPAA by which DMCA takedown procedures for infringing content will be “expedited.”

If an MPAA member sees their copyrighted content in the torrent search engine at BitTorrent.com, they will now be able to ask BitTorrent to contact the party responsible for the infringing content or tracker in “a more expedited manner” than previously in place. BitTorrent will also remove the offending item from search returns at BitTorrent.com.

The announcement seems primarily aimed at expressing good faith and neutrality with Hollywood, to lay ground for future paid content distribution agreements with both the motion picture and recording industries. Neither Cohen nor Glickman would estimate how soon such a deal might be in place — but when pressed, Cohen said “soon.”

Thus, now that it has stopped referring users to illegal content, MPAA can’t go after it with the law as it did other P2P networks following this summer’s Supreme Court decision in Hollywood’s favor in the Grokster case.

So essentially, unlike what AP claims, this wont be frustrating anyone. Many in the business section seem to hint that they actually believe people use BitTorrent.com as some sort of hub or at least that it is a vastly popular way of finding trackers. It is neither.
And, you can’t both be in the search engine database AND be removed for offering “copyrighted” materials. The database is also very poor compared to say Torrentz.com and other BitTorrent search engines. But it saves Cohen a potential legal headache and shows good faith.

Also, the likelihood that the major business papers will now NOT refer to Cohen as mentally handicapped and generally dysfunctional has increased tremendously. As for the rest of us, we continue to happily exist on the fringe of society.