Business/Economic Checkpoint 1 (Mike Fischer)

This is Mike Fischer with the update from the Business/Ethical side of the project. As Guen mentioned, our group has looked at a couple articles in the New York Times and one in particular was very helpful. The article entitled "Software Exploited by Pirates Goes to Work for Hollywood" discusses Bittorrent's new program that will offer downloading of music and media files by using Bittorrent downloading. However, unlike Limewire or Imesh or some of the illegal downloading search engines, Bittorrent's new software is completely legal as people will be forced to pay for each thing they buy. Though there are many other similar places to download media files like Walmart.com and Movielink.com, Bittorrent's new software will enable the downloads to be done much faster. Financially, the two major issues that face Bittorrent are whether or not the iTunes users will leave to use Bittorrent and whether or not the illegal downloaders will start paying for files using Bittorrent's peer-to-peer software. These are two major opstacles as iTunes has sold more than a billion dollars of digital software and many people who are able to download illegally have no real motivation to begin paying for what they can get for free. However, Bittorrent believes they will be able to make a dent in the market and take some of these customers away from iTunes and help the huge piracy problem our Internet is littered with today. Bittorrent has taken in $30 million in ventured capital and plans to make their move soon. I will keep you all posted with how the Bottorrent project is able to move it's way into the illegal downloading market and become a legitimate competitor to iTunes.