I'd LOVE to see more content producers distributing their own content rather than giving money to middlemen. I am not sure if this would also work for people that DON'T have their own TV show but just start doing things. Maybe something akin to "openers" on concerts would work. Bundling less known content in a "pay what you want" basis.
Although I agree, I'm not sure this distribution method scales as is. I just sent Louis 5 bucks, downloaded the video, copied it to a USB drive, and then hooked it up to my Roku. I'm fine doing that ad hoc process occasionally, but if I got most of my media this way it'd get old very fast.
Surely there is a better way to distribute this stuff such that it doesn't take away the nice advantages and gives most/all the money to the artist too?
My mileage varies. I love that I don't have to let some "platform" like iTunes or Steam put its tentacles in my computer in order to get an individual piece of media.
It's pretty close to that now. I have an RSS feed hooked up to µTorrent that automatically downloads new items I add to my RSS feed (in this case it's TV shows from a private tracker website) or newly available ones from my existing list of favorites. The downloaded files get stored to a folder on my Drobo which I could hypothetically have Plex scan and add to my media library. Instead, because I'm anal about my media sorting, I manually move them to folders by movie/show/season/artist/etc that Plex scans. But that's overkill. Plex then makes my media available on my big TV through my Mini, my bedroom TV through my jailbroke AppleTV and on my mobile devices through the Plex iOS apps.
If the market ever allows for a consumer-level product to achieve this (my solution is very geeky) and it works well, it will be successful.
You're totally right, but those optimizations to this process don't become economically feasible until more than a few people are making a living this way. Sending Louis CK $5 right now is a simple way to make it possible for him to be an example for others in his industry, and thus create a market for the type of product you are talking about. So you've already started solving your own problem, and you didn't even write a line of code!
I'm really glad he did this. I picked up a copy, and in fact am quite glad when I can actually purchase DRM free content. I take a principled position against intellectual property, but that doesn't mean I don't support artists - I just don't endorse monopolies. Hopefully, overtime as more and more artists release content themselves the middlemen will go out of business and we can move towards a more free society.
To those who might wish to "torrent" this video: look, I don't really get the whole "torrent" thing. I don't know enough about it to judge either way. But I'd just like you to consider this: I made this video extremely easy to use against well-informed advice. I was told that it would be easier to torrent the way I made it, but I chose to do it this way anyway, because I want it to be easy for people to watch and enjoy this video in any way they want without "corporate" restrictions.
Please bear in mind that I am not a company or a corporation. I'm just some guy. I paid for the production and posting of this video with my own money. I would like to be able to post more material to the fans in this way, which makes it cheaper for the buyer and more pleasant for me. So, please help me keep this being a good idea. I can't stop you from torrenting; all I can do is politely ask you to pay your five little dollars, enjoy the video, and let other people find it in the same way.
Wow. His simple tone belies the brilliance in his writing here. I seriously doubt he just spent 5 minutes scribbling this out as an afterthought. He gets a few key ideas across:
- he doesn't understand torrenting and so is helpless against it
- he cares about his viewers more than taking advice about DRM
- the video is owned solely by him and not some soulless corporation, and you're directly hurting him by torrenting
- you'll destroy his faith in mankind if you torrent
- five dollars is nothing compared to all that!
All of which combines to make you feel like a huge asshole for even considering pirate bay - in the nicest possible way. This type of thing makes a lot more sense than DRM in his case, and I bet it's a lot more effective too.
Definitely. The only reason I bought it was to support DRM free content, not because I was actually particularly interested in it. If this was standard practice I would not just be buying for the novelty.
That said, I definitely think it is possible to build a scalable system that works, it just needs some innovation.
The answer to that is complex, but worth considering what happens without it. A perfect example would be the Bill Hicks guest appearance on David Letterman that was not allowed to air because the material was considered too sensitive.
You haven't needed a PayPal account to pay through PayPal since at least 2005. Unless the merchant disables "Account Optional", it's just a run-of-the-mill credit card payment form with an option to log in to the side.
But PayPal makes it as inconvenient as possible for non-members. The form is extremely long and if I recall correctly, doesn't work with Safaris Auto-Fill feature.
That's all it asks. That's exactly what everyone else asks for. The merchant can even pre-fill all these fields but the card info before sending the buyer to PayPal if they filled them out on the merchant's website already.
It's especially weak to make such a complaint based on your "recollection" while you're two pages away from the actual payment form for Louis' show.
He didn't know he could pay with paypal without joining it, now he knows it.
Other HN-ers might see this post, realize they don't need paypal, and go back to buy the video.
IMO this shouldn't be down-voted.
p.s. I know I could have just upvoted it instead of writing this useless post (Which I'd understand if you downvote me by the way), but I thought my point would be clearer with a message rather than a battle of upvote/downvote.
It's not worth complaining about a couple of karma points when I have thousands. And to be fair they downvoted me before I realized my mistake.
I'm not familiar with this artist, but I wanted to see it out of simple curiosity because he seems to be an artist who puts fans ahead of profits. People like that usually produce high-quality work.
>>HI. I’m Louis CK. Can you please take this down? This show is a work in progress and was not intended to be passed around the internet. I have absolutely no problem, personally, with file sharing, and if you take everythign [sic] I have on the market on DVD, CD, and put it up for free downloading, I don’t care. But this is an artistic and personal request. Please take this torrent down. thanks.
LCK
I'm a huge fan, but professing total ignorance of all things technology reminds me of being in the fourth grade. Luckily for him doing an IAMA on Reddit doesn't involve performing sex acts on a donkey. Seriously, either he's become one of America's most successful standups in spite of his complete naivete, or he's a lot more shrewd than he's making out.
Actually, if I remember correctly from his interview on the WTF podcast, his father is a programmer and Louis was always pretty technologically adept. E.g. he edits his TV show himself on his MacBook.
why not? He already got paid a significant sum by the ticketholders at beacon theater, so all he has to recoup is the cost of producing the special, which he did largely himself.
The marginal cost of distributing an additional copy of his work is minimal, and his pricing reflects that, and makes people more likely to pay for it rather than steal it.
Can you elaborate on why you don't think this is a general solution?
Even then, you're looking at similar economics. HBO is willing to pay you $X for your special because you have an audience that is worth (at least) $X to them.
For a lesser known artist or comedian, you lose the power of the distribution channel, but you gain in margins. The opportunity for cross-promotion in the form of an opening act is still alive and well, and I don't see why it can't continue in a digital form.
I'd argue that if someone isn't 'quite as good', then they don't deserve anyone's money. The biggest problem with the music/movie/entertainment industry today is that all of the backing is behind 'sellable' artists, not talented ones. Take all that promotion and marketing and brainwashing away, and you have a group of entertainers being judged on their true merits. I think thats fair - I don't really understand how anyone else wouldn't.
Louis CK spent nearly 15 years in the wild as a hack comedian before he found his voice, according to his own commentary. We wouldn't have his excellence now if it weren't for him being able to keep himself fed through his work while not 'quite as good'.
You're missing my point, completely. Louis CK deserves his place today precisely because he spent 15 years struggling. In my comment above, I took issue with a plethora of entertainers out there today who _didn't_ have to struggle, who leveraged sex, image and brand names to get to where they were. It is this harsh reality that makes so many artists give up while they're not quite as good, so I applaud Louis CK for being one of the few who weathered the storm and eventually found their place. They deserve their success more than most who have it.
You're missing my point: if there was no money if you had less than stellar talent, we wouldn't have most of our stellar talent. If there was no money for Louis CK when he was in his crap phase, he couldn't have stuck at it long enough to 'get it' and go stellar.
When I said you were missing my point, I wasn't saying your opinion is wrong. You're actually pointing out another injustice altogether, rather than disagreeing with me. Look back to my original comment. I took issue with the Justin Biebers of the world getting too much of the pie. You took issue with the Louis CKs of the world getting too little. We don't have conflicting opinions here, and they don't need to be mutually exclusive.
Someone (you or another user) is down-modding my comments, and i can't really understand why. I feel they contribute to the discussion (a feeling confirmed by the simple fact that you've engaged with and responded to them). Judging by your profile, it seems like you too are against the idea of down-modding simply because you disagree with an opinion. If you are the one down-modding me, I'd consider that both hypocritical and shameful, but I'm not one to jump to conclusions, and will happily give you the benefit of the doubt.
On the downmodding thing, the only thing to do is thicken your skin. The moderation system here is bloody stupid, inferior to moderation systems from 10 years ago. I'll not rehash my further arguments against it, you've already found them :)
It's completely a generalizable solution. From upstart standups who tape their open night sets for YouTube to seasoned comics with tv shows and HBO specials like Louis CK and David Cross (who similarly self-produced his last special "Bigger and Blackerer" by asking his buddy to tape 2 of his sets, though he didn't self distribute), this model absolutely works.
Louie's just doing for comedy what have been doing for years, recording the concert and selling it at the end of the night or online for more than they'd have made otherwise through traditional distribution deals.
I bought this purely to support him for being brave enough to release it DRM-free. Currently watching it and trying not to snort my drink over my laptop due to laughing too much.
I enjoyed Curb - I made it through one and a half seasons - but I couldn't continue watching it. I may just have a low threshold for enduring discomfort, but Curb just keeps pushing and pushing the cringe meter. For Louis CK, it's about what happens WITH the discomfort. Curb, to me, is a DISPLAY of discomfort that is funny to a point, but then just has very little redeeming value beyond that.
Another example of the same dilemma would be Ricky Gervais - I really enjoy his comedy specials and stand-up work, but I couldn't watch the original Office or something like Extras. It's funny alright, but if I have to pause it for the cringe to go away every other minute, it just looses focus to me. Cringe->Funny is a proven vehicle these days, bit it's to a point where I find it a little too simple, really.
Anyhow - Louis CK (and, to a point, Gervais in his stand-up) glances at the cringe and then opens up a world of insight around it that is way funnier than just having the cringe meter top off every thirty seconds.
An awful lot of it is, yes. I suspect it has something to do with what John Cleese once coined to be the Brits' paramount desire to just make it into your grave without being embarrassed once.
I know exactly what you mean here. I also sometimes have trouble tolerating cringe-comedy situations although seemingly not as bad as you.
I actually used to get very uncomfortable while watching some Shakespearian comedy-of-errors plays. The type where the audience knows something that the actors don't. Makes me want to shout at them which is I guess the point however I feel like it is not an enjoyable type of anxiety.
Perhaps it is the engineer/nerdy part of us but I really don't enjoy watching people make mistakes.
Yes, I do think that is the case. I also just, very plainly, don't see that much craft in drama-from-ignorance. Sure, "x knows something that y doesn't, subsequently y runs into a number of cringeworthy encounters" does make for drama, but if somebody saying "no y, actually, it's THIS" would destroy the entire plot from thereon, I find the whole setup a bit stale.
Same goes for "x is a twat, situations involving x will make you cringe" shows - there are only a few like that which I can tolerate and they make a huge effort to assign enough other redeeming qualities to x to make up for it. For Curb, I do like Larrys character, but after a while, it seemed like he existed solely to feed the cringe.
And yes, I have it bad. The last episodes of Curb that I watched, I permanently had my finger on the space bar. Sometimes, I would have to pause it for periods of time that were longer than the show itself.
This gives me so much hope....I think we are going to see a revolution in Art and Media as more of these guys start getting "it"...The days of Big brother and his army of douchebag MBA's is soon going to be over!
I recommend reading his explanation of why he did it the way he did (meaning DRM-free and based on trust), even though he's been advised not to.
It's very earnest and has a feel of "listen, I created this. You're likely to like it. If you give me a bit of money, I'll give you access to it. You can do whatever you want with it, but just keep in mind that I worked and paid for it being made."
a.k.a what Louis CK would probably sum up as "just don't be an asshole, ok?"
The worst that's likely to happen is they ask him to send a copy of ID and a bill with his address on it, he faxes it over and the account is unlocked the same business day. Does it seem unreasonable that a payment processor should want some evidence of the account holder's identity (much like banks are required by law to collect) once they're in a position to pay out tens of thousands of dollars?
> Wait until paypal sees hundreds of thousands of $5 payments and a balance over $100k
A lot of the account freezings happen when the receiver of the payments isn't distributing an actual product (donations, fundraisers, etc). Louis could very easily provide the details of all the downloads, confirming delivery of the product.
I've enjoyed much of Louis CK's content without a chance to put some money in his pocket. So I've bought this.
$5 feels like a good price point. I don't think I would have paid $20, especially if I knew that he would only be getting a small fraction of that. Bonus points for making it a 1.2 GB h264 encode. I hope this works out great for Louis and makes other people want to try it.
If the success of NiN's "Ghosts I-IV" was not sufficient, I doubt that one will be. It's a long walk, uphill, on a 10G planet, of a slope the size of Olympus Mons.
Chromium crashed during my first attempt to download the show and then I ran out of free disk space the second time (yeah, SSDs are a bit too small).
Anyway, my point is that starting a download and then only getting a couple of MBs shouldn't really count as using a download slot. On the other hand, I don't know if it's possible to check how much data has been transferred using existing technology. He seems to be using Amazon CloudFront.
Ideally it'd work where they generate a URL for you that works for 24 hours or something like that, or they give you a one time url, but you can generate as many as you'd like for 24 hours. If for instance they see someone generate 100 or 1000 or something they can then revoke their permissions.
Based on the tone of Louis CK in his description, I would try sending some feedback on the problem... he appears receptive. It's only been available for one day so far, so I imagine he would appreciate a chance to improve the system.
Based on the tone of Louis CK in his description, I would try sending some feedback on the problem... he appears receptive. It's only been available for one day so far, so I imagine he would appreciate a chance to improve the system.
I bought this not only because Louis CK is both awesome and hilarious, but because I really, really want his "method" to become more widespread. I know it's a long shot, but I hope so many people buy this because of how he's released it that it garners some serious attention towards the issue and proves that restrictions like DRM are actually hurting the applicable industries.
I hope he pulls it off and if anyone can it's someone with as much credibility and talent as Louis CK.
I feel like I'm getting a bargain at $5, knowing how much enjoyment I'll get from his material. That couldn't be said for the majority of studio-supported/produced mind-numbing crap out there.
Sa-da-tay!
Well DRM helps nothing to stop a video from being torrented, so why bother with it.
I think Louis CK is smart enough to understand this, and with this personal appeal will probably sell better than using the usual methods.
I bought a copy because of this. It's nice to support the artist directly especially when the video file finally is as good as the versions you usually find only on torrent sites (no "you criminal" warnings eg. like on store bought DVD:s. Nice way to thank those that have actually paid for the content...).
Just bought it. While I'm really happy to support DRM free content, I must say I am somewhat disappointed that you can only download it twice.
"PLEASE NOTE that you can only stream the film twice AND you can download the film twice. Once you start a stream of the film, your stream will be active for 8 hours. Once you have exceeded your streaming and download limits, you will need to purchase the film again to stream or download it again. However once you have fully downloaded the film, you are of course free to watch it as many times as you like. "
I think it's on AWS. So whatever that buys you on Amazon.
The 2 download limit made me worry about disconnecting or restarting the download. I also can't make my download manager open more than one connection, in case that locks me out of the content I just bought. I think it should be higher, but I understand that he can't give away too much bandwidth without cutting into his profits.
For amazon cloudfront at the most expensive tier it buys close to 42 GB but then there would be no profit in sending the file 34 times (someone said it was a 1.2 GB file).
It makes sense to me why he is only allowing a few downloads otherwise a few extreme users could take up all his money just by streaming.
So if you bought it and exhausted your download limit, just torrent it. Or just buy and torrent it in the first place to save a little extra for Louis.
I think his use of the word "torrent" (which he admittedly does not fully understand) was a proxy for "watch this video without paying for it." I doubt he understands seeding--and even if he does, you can simply turn seeding off.
BTW, to whoever downvoted enneff's reply: this seems senseless. I asked for a polite explanation, he gave one, and it's an interesting point of view (even though many of us may disagree with it).
Just look at it as an example of an artist taking his work directly to the public and sidestepping the overhead and hassle of traditional digital media distribution models. That's cool, isn't it?
If you don't like his comedy that's fine, but he's a nationally recognized performer with his own show. I think that elevates his status just slightly above "just some guy", don't you?
He also shoots and edits his own show (Louie, on FX) using a RED camera and his own laptop. He famously fought for total editorial control of his show (to the betterment of all of us viewers) and now he's not even taking a step back when it comes to distribution. Good for him
169 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 164 ms ] threadSurely there is a better way to distribute this stuff such that it doesn't take away the nice advantages and gives most/all the money to the artist too?
If the market ever allows for a consumer-level product to achieve this (my solution is very geeky) and it works well, it will be successful.
I'm curious to see what happens, hope he gives an update of some kind.
To those who might wish to "torrent" this video: look, I don't really get the whole "torrent" thing. I don't know enough about it to judge either way. But I'd just like you to consider this: I made this video extremely easy to use against well-informed advice. I was told that it would be easier to torrent the way I made it, but I chose to do it this way anyway, because I want it to be easy for people to watch and enjoy this video in any way they want without "corporate" restrictions.
Please bear in mind that I am not a company or a corporation. I'm just some guy. I paid for the production and posting of this video with my own money. I would like to be able to post more material to the fans in this way, which makes it cheaper for the buyer and more pleasant for me. So, please help me keep this being a good idea. I can't stop you from torrenting; all I can do is politely ask you to pay your five little dollars, enjoy the video, and let other people find it in the same way.
Sincerely, Louis C.K.
- he doesn't understand torrenting and so is helpless against it
- he cares about his viewers more than taking advice about DRM
- the video is owned solely by him and not some soulless corporation, and you're directly hurting him by torrenting
- you'll destroy his faith in mankind if you torrent
- five dollars is nothing compared to all that!
All of which combines to make you feel like a huge asshole for even considering pirate bay - in the nicest possible way. This type of thing makes a lot more sense than DRM in his case, and I bet it's a lot more effective too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkptz2YfZik
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vf340K_Ed0o&feature=relat...
I fullheartedly support comedy as a form of free speech that should not be influenced by sponsorship.
Remember: Nothing is free. If something is "free", that's because it's you that's being sold.
- Credit card number/expiration/code
- Billing address
- Name, e-mail and phone
That's all it asks. That's exactly what everyone else asks for. The merchant can even pre-fill all these fields but the card info before sending the buyer to PayPal if they filled them out on the merchant's website already.
It's especially weak to make such a complaint based on your "recollection" while you're two pages away from the actual payment form for Louis' show.
He didn't want to join paypal, fair enough.
He didn't know he could pay with paypal without joining it, now he knows it.
Other HN-ers might see this post, realize they don't need paypal, and go back to buy the video.
IMO this shouldn't be down-voted.
p.s. I know I could have just upvoted it instead of writing this useless post (Which I'd understand if you downvote me by the way), but I thought my point would be clearer with a message rather than a battle of upvote/downvote.
I'm not familiar with this artist, but I wanted to see it out of simple curiosity because he seems to be an artist who puts fans ahead of profits. People like that usually produce high-quality work.
"It's nothing, I just wanted to say hi! Hope everything is going well for you!"
https://buy.louisck.net/terms-and-conditions
"WE DO NO PROMISE THAT THE SITE OR ANY CONTENT, SERVICE OR FEATURE OF THE SITE WILL BE ERROR-FREE"
http://www.zeropaid.com/news/86011/comedian-louis-ck-asks-mi...
>>HI. I’m Louis CK. Can you please take this down? This show is a work in progress and was not intended to be passed around the internet. I have absolutely no problem, personally, with file sharing, and if you take everythign [sic] I have on the market on DVD, CD, and put it up for free downloading, I don’t care. But this is an artistic and personal request. Please take this torrent down. thanks. LCK
I'm going to be doing an IAMA on Reddit, Monday around 1230pmEST I don't know what IAMA or Reddit are, but I'll be doing that.
awesome bunch of geeky-openness from ck.
This is not a general solution.
The marginal cost of distributing an additional copy of his work is minimal, and his pricing reflects that, and makes people more likely to pay for it rather than steal it.
Can you elaborate on why you don't think this is a general solution?
This works for him because you, and i, know and (probably) appreciate his humor, and he's going to make some money from it.
It's not going to work for someone who's not quite as good, and rely more on having that product actively sold to you ...
For a lesser known artist or comedian, you lose the power of the distribution channel, but you gain in margins. The opportunity for cross-promotion in the form of an opening act is still alive and well, and I don't see why it can't continue in a digital form.
Someone (you or another user) is down-modding my comments, and i can't really understand why. I feel they contribute to the discussion (a feeling confirmed by the simple fact that you've engaged with and responded to them). Judging by your profile, it seems like you too are against the idea of down-modding simply because you disagree with an opinion. If you are the one down-modding me, I'd consider that both hypocritical and shameful, but I'm not one to jump to conclusions, and will happily give you the benefit of the doubt.
On the downmodding thing, the only thing to do is thicken your skin. The moderation system here is bloody stupid, inferior to moderation systems from 10 years ago. I'll not rehash my further arguments against it, you've already found them :)
Louie's just doing for comedy what have been doing for years, recording the concert and selling it at the end of the night or online for more than they'd have made otherwise through traditional distribution deals.
Excellent way to discover a new comic I'd say.
Another example of the same dilemma would be Ricky Gervais - I really enjoy his comedy specials and stand-up work, but I couldn't watch the original Office or something like Extras. It's funny alright, but if I have to pause it for the cringe to go away every other minute, it just looses focus to me. Cringe->Funny is a proven vehicle these days, bit it's to a point where I find it a little too simple, really.
Anyhow - Louis CK (and, to a point, Gervais in his stand-up) glances at the cringe and then opens up a world of insight around it that is way funnier than just having the cringe meter top off every thirty seconds.
I actually used to get very uncomfortable while watching some Shakespearian comedy-of-errors plays. The type where the audience knows something that the actors don't. Makes me want to shout at them which is I guess the point however I feel like it is not an enjoyable type of anxiety.
Perhaps it is the engineer/nerdy part of us but I really don't enjoy watching people make mistakes.
Same goes for "x is a twat, situations involving x will make you cringe" shows - there are only a few like that which I can tolerate and they make a huge effort to assign enough other redeeming qualities to x to make up for it. For Curb, I do like Larrys character, but after a while, it seemed like he existed solely to feed the cringe.
And yes, I have it bad. The last episodes of Curb that I watched, I permanently had my finger on the space bar. Sometimes, I would have to pause it for periods of time that were longer than the show itself.
It's very earnest and has a feel of "listen, I created this. You're likely to like it. If you give me a bit of money, I'll give you access to it. You can do whatever you want with it, but just keep in mind that I worked and paid for it being made."
a.k.a what Louis CK would probably sum up as "just don't be an asshole, ok?"
Not wishing for it to happen - but realize it's PayPal.
Now if we can just get him to be making jokes about PayPal, that I'd pay to see.
Which several hundred million people use without having their accounts locked.
Wait until paypal sees hundreds of thousands of $5 payments and a balance over $100k
- especially if his account is relatively new - unless his people were smart enough to pre-empt this with them.
I don't see anything to poke fun at.
A lot of the account freezings happen when the receiver of the payments isn't distributing an actual product (donations, fundraisers, etc). Louis could very easily provide the details of all the downloads, confirming delivery of the product.
$5 feels like a good price point. I don't think I would have paid $20, especially if I knew that he would only be getting a small fraction of that. Bonus points for making it a 1.2 GB h264 encode. I hope this works out great for Louis and makes other people want to try it.
If the success of NiN's "Ghosts I-IV" was not sufficient, I doubt that one will be. It's a long walk, uphill, on a 10G planet, of a slope the size of Olympus Mons.
By size I meant length, not angle (and completely forgot to talk about angle on the way). Sorry 'bout that.
'though at 10G planet, 200 miles at 5˚ should be plenty fun to walk.
Anyway, my point is that starting a download and then only getting a couple of MBs shouldn't really count as using a download slot. On the other hand, I don't know if it's possible to check how much data has been transferred using existing technology. He seems to be using Amazon CloudFront.
I don't see this as being unreasonable, especially for $5 with no licensing or DRM or anything around it.
I feel like I'm getting a bargain at $5, knowing how much enjoyment I'll get from his material. That couldn't be said for the majority of studio-supported/produced mind-numbing crap out there. Sa-da-tay!
I bought a copy because of this. It's nice to support the artist directly especially when the video file finally is as good as the versions you usually find only on torrent sites (no "you criminal" warnings eg. like on store bought DVD:s. Nice way to thank those that have actually paid for the content...).
"PLEASE NOTE that you can only stream the film twice AND you can download the film twice. Once you start a stream of the film, your stream will be active for 8 hours. Once you have exceeded your streaming and download limits, you will need to purchase the film again to stream or download it again. However once you have fully downloaded the film, you are of course free to watch it as many times as you like. "
The 2 download limit made me worry about disconnecting or restarting the download. I also can't make my download manager open more than one connection, in case that locks me out of the content I just bought. I think it should be higher, but I understand that he can't give away too much bandwidth without cutting into his profits.
I disconnected twice while downloading and emailed the customer support address and they just replenished my downloads.
It makes sense to me why he is only allowing a few downloads otherwise a few extreme users could take up all his money just by streaming.
I confirm that it is a ~1.2GB file (the file is precisely 1,199,666,893 bytes)
By fetching this video via torrent you (generally) must seed it, therefore making it available to others who may or may not have paid for it.
Two downloads and two streams seems reasonable to me.
BTW, to whoever downvoted enneff's reply: this seems senseless. I asked for a polite explanation, he gave one, and it's an interesting point of view (even though many of us may disagree with it).
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_C.K.
Just look at it as an example of an artist taking his work directly to the public and sidestepping the overhead and hassle of traditional digital media distribution models. That's cool, isn't it?
http://gizmodo.com/5658621/how-louis-ck-shoots-and-edits-his...