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Reputation Matters Among File Sharers
from the it-still-matters dept
Slate has an interesting article about someone (or a group of folks) under the name aXXo who is the "biggest name" in BitTorrent and consistently offers up high quality movies on a variety of BitTorrent platforms. Apparently, when aXXo uploads something, it's likely to become one of the top BitTorrent downloads on various sites. Since I don't use BitTorrent (or any file sharing system), I wasn't aware of this, but find the situation to be quite interesting. The fact that reputation "matters" in the file sharing world, definitely seems like something that moviemakers can use to their advantage.
If you have a somewhat obscure movie, and want more people to see it, rather than just putting it up for download, you're probably better off getting a "trusted party" to put it up for you. As the article notes, even the obscure movies that aXXo uploads become top downloads, because people trust aXXo, and trust is a valuable quality -- even in unauthorized file sharing. In some ways, this is similar to the whole "mixtape" phenomenon, where DJs put out unauthorized mixtapes that often are, technically, copyright infringement. Yet, the top DJs are so valuable that many record labels actively push their songs on them, knowing that if they include a song on a mixtape, it increases the popularity (and marketability) of the musicians. You could easily see the same thing happening with movies and other content as well.
