Mininova does legitimate content distribution
It is not often that you might think of a site like Mininova as your best friend ever, but with their new offering of a legitimate content distribution system, people that own copyright might just end up having access to a distribution channel for electronic goods that rivals just about anything else they can find.
Digital goods have one good thing in their favor, they can be uploaded anywhere, and then shared anywhere. If you are a small music person, an application developer, even a book writer, the key to getting buzz is to get the goods into a distribution channel that has many members. If you are ok with giving something away for free, and many book writers, small bands, and smaller application developers do give their stuff away for free via eBooks, web sites, MySpace, sourceforge, and other traditional download and use sites, then the addition of Mininova as a distribution point just makes perfect sense.
Best of all, it is free.
Even better than best of all, with 35 million visitors monthly on Mininova, and getting a slot on the top of the list that visitors will look at when they hit the site, if you are willing to give it away for free, bypassing the bittorrent distribution channel is counterproductive to getting the word out on your project.
Many companies including TOR are giving stuff away for free in relationship to ebooks. Musicians are already comfortable with giving their music away for free, the business model is changing towards that direction as well. Programmers have been giving away decent quality programs away for free since the computer was invented.
It also looks like this is catching on and being used, the featured category where your distribution content would go already has a decent uptake.
And it shows up in the prime slot on the front page, as the first entry.
Not a bad deal, and opens up a content distribution channel that people will see, and looks like they will use. All the torrents in the featured portion have good quality seeds, and look like they are active, with the ability to quickly download them. No waiting to complete the download like many torrents already out there.
What is interesting though is that is also a way for Mininova to survive if they get sued. They are offering a legitimate way to compete against systems like MySpace, ITunes, and uses an interface that many people are already familiar with. By offering legitimate content, they also help support the increasingly competitive user developed books, music, and media that in many ways is more entertaining than what is happening on TV.
Tags: Mininova, featured, content, torrent, bittorrent, p2p, awesome, deal, must, upload, book, now, news
As a blogger on the subject of productivity for writers, I’m intrigued with your discovery of BitTorrent as a distribution channel — and I’m particularly intrigued with your free eBook about selling books via Amazon.
While I consider myself fairly knowledgable about computers and the internet, I must admit that I’ve never gotten into BitTorrent. With the stimulus of your ebook, I went to to Mininova. First I read some of the FAQ — and discovered that the Linksys router on my home network prevents use of torrent feeds — YIKES.
I’m wondering if your ebook is available elsewhere. I’d like to read it — and to link to non-bittorrent feed in my blog. I hope that you will see the comment and get in touch with me at my email address.
THANKS