Yesterday we covered the hell out of the announcement that BitTorrent's Bram Cohen and the MPAA's Dan Glickman had brokered a deal to keep pirated content off of Cohen's popular P2P network. Here's a roundup of what people having been saying about the deal elsewhere on the web:

  • Brad Hill: "This is how I interpret what the MPAA really said today: “We could crush BitTorrent.com because it is functionally identical to other torrent search engines that we have crushed. We want to be friends with Bram Cohen because he utters politically correct statements. Therefore we are neutering his search engine instead of crushing it.”"
  • Xeni Jardin: "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."" [part of a whole package at BoingBoing]
  • J.D. Lasica: In response to NY Times headline "Web Site Agrees to Help Curb Access to Movies - "Well, that's nice of the "Web site" BitTorrent. Has this reporter ever been on the Internet? You have to wonder."
  • The Bad Comedown: "The most pointless development in the MPAA's ongoing war against piracy."
  • Sacred Cow Tipping: "This will kill BitTorrent, this will drive some young programmer to program some BT-killer (btk, hey that would be a good name....) and then all of the media groups would then go after them, until they make that new protocol into a limp image of their former self...like napster."
  • For What it's Worth: "This all boils down to search engine results. The BitTorrent company will censor its own results. If this moves Bram one step closer to a deal that lets him use his protocal to dish up media under a business model, whooppee, good for him."
  • The Movie Blog: "Generally think the MPAA is run by a bunch of idiots... but give credit where credit is due. Any idea that has the MPAA try to fight piracy by WORKING WITH people (like in this instance) instead of blindly prosecuting their market base fans is a good idea. Will this solve the problem? No way... but it's one step... and a good one I think."
Did you come across any other notable takes on the deal? If so, pass 'em to the front of the class, kids.