Time on "Pirates of Primetime"

binarydreams writes "Time has a pretty decent article on the capturing and trading of television shows on the Internet. The author gives a very good description of the capturing process, the people who enjoy the results, the future of PVR (focusing on the Replay 4000) and why the TV and movie industries are scared." This is just more of the TV industry coming to grips with what happened to the music industry. But it's important that the mainstream learns about it.

Comments

Oh...

[$0 31337]

"I know it's not legal," the college sophomore says, "but it's easier for me to download than it is to get HBO or cable."

Oh... I guess it's ok then. Whatever is easiest for you... God forbid you make the one phone call to the cable company or directv..

Re:Oh...

[HCase]

Actually, in her case it may well be that this is the only way for her to get the show with any ease at all. I'm also a sophmore, i live in a dorm, the college supplies the cable, but i don't get channels like hbo. If its not a standard cable channel there isn't any(short of setting up a dish in a neighbors room across the hall) way to get it. She may well be in the same situation.

Re:Oh...

[RazzleFrog]

Many colleges (including my alma-mater from what why sister told me) offer only certain channels and HBO is not one of them. There is no phone call to make. I also don't think they allow satellite dishes in the dorms.

Now that doesn't condone downloading the shows.

Re:Oh...

[uebernewby]

OK, so what about this: I live in the Netherlands, Enterprise doesn't air here until next year or so. I do, however, have a broadband connection. Guess what? I want to see that show so bad I'll just download it two days after it airs in the US. Illegal? Yes. Would I do the same thing if they'd give up that stupid "release in the US first, then UK, then rest of the world" policy of theirs and had Enterprise in NL, even if were, say, two weeks behind schedule? Probably not, as I prefer to watch TV on my TV.

Re:Oh...

[ackthpt]

Well, I have some sympathy in the regard that the broadcasters in my region have been swapping network allegiances to the point I now can watch, off the antenna NBC, NBC, FOX, CBS. So what do I do about the WB stuff I can't watch because they replaced the WB with NBC at one station? Yeah, I got hooked and now I wanna see it, but they won't let me.

Also, I'm rather torqued that after all this time and all this technology, I still can't watch foreign shows, unless they're (like BBC stuff on PBS) about 20 years old. Congress even passed a law, years ago, that prevents you from watching shows carried by a same network affiliate from outside your market. Great! My local station sucked and the other carreid lots of really good shows, but all I got was this black screen telling me how well I was being served by the government (goverment was supposed to be the servant of the people, now we see who they really serve) and broadcasters. The timing was never right for such a law and now its idiocy is compounded.

So, yeah, I do have some sympathy.

Re:Oh...

[decarelbitter]

Just my point. And to add to that (I'm .nl too), not only do we get to see stuff *way* later than say, the US; but we're kept in the dark about *if* we ever see it, and when. I know, it's about local (in our case national) tv-stations buying the shows from in this case Paramount.
But how come they can't buy it at the same time it gets shown in the US? Star Trek in all its forms has al large fanbase here (Voyager is even shown on primetime, which is quite unusual for a sci-fi series here), Enterprise would surely attract enough viewers to satisfy the advertisers. It's because of ancient behaviour like this people start trading tv-shows in the first place. The tech is there to show us Europeans things that happen on the other side of the globe in no-time. But no, they can't do that with tv-series. If at times like these the US entertainment industry holds on to ancient principles, I have no objection to people doing some trading of tv-shows online.

Re:Oh...

[sjhwilkes]

Absolutely. The media companies still have their heads in the sand, they need to wake up and see that the world's a small place now.
If they persist with region locks, and big time lags/price differences between regions they should expect people to bypass them and chip their DVD players and download the TV episodes they can't get.
My wife is American and I'm English, we've lived on both continents and either way one of us is downloading stuff - I'd happily pay a per episode fee to do it legally - of course I'd want to be able to keep the episode on disc or tape until it's released on DVD so streaming's not what I'm after.
I echo what others have said above, Napster happened because the music industry didn't step up to the plate with a solution of it's own. The TV networks (many of the same companies) are repeating the error.

Re:Oh...

[someone247356]

Um, maybe I'm just terminally dense, but...

If I tape a show with my VCR that's legal right.

If I run the TV signal though my Digital capture card and write it to CD-R that's legal too, right.

If I tape my daughters favorite show for her, because she has to work and give her the tape
when she gets home, that's legal.

If I run the TV signal though my Digital capture card and write it to CD-R and give her the CD-R when she gets home that's legal too, right.

If I don't own a VCR only a video player is it legal to have my friend video tape it for me and give me the tape when he comes in to work? (I catch the show in question, but I have to work during this weeks show)

If instead of a VHS tape, since I don't have even a video tape player he gives it to me on a CD-R. (being a proper geek I do have a computer with a CD-Rom drive) Isn't that the same thing?

If my friend lives in the same apartment with me is that legal? On the next floor? The next building? The next state? The next continent?

Why is it legal for me to tape Enterprise or the Simpsons, but illegal to have my friend in France tape it for me?

Why can I tape a show on my VCR, but if I tape it to CD-R that's a problem?

If the music stations don't want you to record songs off the radio don't air them. If television stations don't want you to tape episodes, then don't air them.

Here's one final quandary.

If I live in a frat house with 200 other guys and we get cable television service for say $50.00 USD a month. It's perfectly legal to hook it up to a large screen television and let as many people as can fit in the room all watch it together. Take that one step further, since in the US the cable company can't charge you per television for service (they are trying to get back to that with digital cable and the required decoder box rentals, that's why they'll hate to see digital cable decoders as ubiquitous as cable ready TV and VCR's), I can legally hook up 100 or more televisions to that one cable line. All legally. The fraternity can tape every episode of a television show and keep them in the television room of the frat house, now potentially thousands of people can watch this show, and we are still legal. So why is trading episodes of a show through the internet suddenly a problem?

.

Re:Oh...

[shut_up_man]

I feel your pain, man. I'm an New Zealander who grew up in Australia, living in the UK who wants to see American shows like The Family Guy, 24, Invader Zim, Reboot (ok, Canadian), Futurama and The Simpsons. Then there's the Oz/NZ/SA rugby season I'm missing out on, not to mention a thousand kickass Olympic events I'd like to see instead of the 5 minutes per day I get on Joanna McFrumpy, the British curling champion coming 165th in her event. The rest is whiny, depressing British soap operas and sleep-inducing soccer games.

Time to light up the broadband...

Re:Oh...

[Carrot007]

> But how come they can't buy it at the same time it gets shown in the US?

Not that i agree with it but this is because they want to see how popular the show is first (even some big budget programmes flop) the more popular it is the more they can then sell it for etc etc.

Though on something like enterprise this is pretty much irrelevent isn't it?

Damn the corperate crap.

Carrot007.

Re:Oh...

[Rande]

I'm an New Zealander who grew up in Australia, living in the UK

That's funny, cos I'm an Australian who grew up in New Zealand, living in the UK.

I DL lots of anime that I have no option to watch on TV or to even buy on video or DVD.

Plus of course Buffy, but I buy that on DVD whens it's available anyway, as I _much_ prefer watching things on the TV with decent sound.

Re:Oh...

[Anonymous Coward]

In some part of Asia here where even cable don't cover certain shows, especially sci-fi. I mean "woot, no sci-fi channel?" and we have to live with that.

Now that STTNG is on DVD, may be I can buy it over the net or something, remember the show ended in 1994? It's been 8 freaking years! So if I am going to buy Enterprise I have to wait another 8 years and for the rest of the world cable provider finished showing them?

For every black market there exists a big red sign saying "Bad marketing. Huge demand exists but you are missing out of it."

Re:Oh...

[RazzleFrog]

The difference is that you would be fine letting people borrow your tape of a show but if you gave everybody a copy of the show to keep then you would be getting in trouble. When you make a show available online you are allowing millions (not just the hundreds you are talking about) of people to download and keep a copy of the show.

I would also note that if you tried to split your cable signal to 100 TVs you would probably notice some serious degradation unless you use a repeater.

Re:Oh...

[protonman]

Exactly. And since it seems to be Dutch-ranting-about-television hour, I'll add my 2 eurocents.

What really, really, really, freaks me out is the "wrapping" of television series. After a while, the television station runs out of shows (long before the ending of the season, sometimes in the middle of a cliffhanger) and they continue blatently with reruns. The reruns will eventually get to the point where the previous run ended, and will *then* continue with new shows all nice and smooth and computer-controlled and without anyone knowing...

This killed Bab5, X-Files, DS9 and Voyager for me. With X-Files is got so bad I had the impression they showed new shows the odd, and reruns the even weeks...

Not to mention all the Christmas episodes that are aired randomly throughout the year....

But fortunatly I've got ADSL... ;-)

Re:Oh...

[royalblue_tom]

I'm sure every Red Dwarf, Black Adder, yadda yadda comedy cult classics fan ...

Re:Oh...

[ZaMoose]

This is precisely the sort of argument that The RIAA/MPAA hates to see. They scream "Revenue loss! Look at the poor 'artists'! They're losing money! And CD sales were down last year!"

I have yet to see a convincing argument based upon the law that deflects any of the points you've raised.

Re:Oh...

[orkysoft]

No, it was because you had already seen those X-Files episodes on the BBC.

Maybe the fact that Christmas episodes are aired throughout the year explains why some people leave their Christmas trees standing well into the new year :-)

Re:Oh...

[HCase]

well, she's probably not like me in this case, but if she is, then she's on co-op right now. I don't have classes because i'm working full time. That prevents sports and societies(most seem to meet during the week, and often while i'm at work) and partying most days because wake up time is to early to go to a decent one and wake up the next day. If i didn't spend more of my time on the computer or playing guitar and such i'd probably end up watching a bit more tv myself.

Re:Oh...

[someone247356]

Well repeaters and signal boosters are all perfectly legal.

If I let my friend borrow my tape, and he made a himself a copy and returned it that would be ok then?

So the issue, as you see it, isn't the action but the number of people?

So I guess the next thing we'll have to do is put a counter on everything in the library. Loaning out that video tape to 100 patrons is ok, but once we hit some magical number (100,000, 1,000,000) it becomes a crime?

Here's another hypothetical situation, can you please explain the difference to me;

UPN broadcasts "Enterprise" into lets say 2,000,000 homes each week. 1,500,000 of those homes has a VCR or a digital capture card and records this weeks episode. This is all perfectly legal right? How is that any different than if 10 people record that episode and "share" it with 1,499,990 "friends" over the internet.

The first is "fair use" the second is a horrible crime that must be stopped. There are still 1,500,000 copies of that episode in circulation.

That line of thinking seems to defy logic.

.

Re:Oh...

[RazzleFrog]

Well repeaters and signal boosters are all perfectly legal.

Never said it wasn't. Would make it pretty difficult on apartment buildings if it was.

If I let my friend borrow my tape, and he made a himself a copy and returned it that would be ok then?

Video tapes are kinda fuzzy all around. Just like music tapes there isn't as big of a concern about copying. If you had a digital copy of the show and your friend copied it then you may have a problem.

So the issue, as you see it, isn't the action but the number of people?

First, how I see it is not at issue here. I personally think the whole thing is ridiculous. I am explaining to you the way the industry, and probably the courts, would see it. Please don't believe that any of this is my opinion. Second, of course number makes a difference. Fair use doesn't allow for you sharing with large amounts of people. What is large is up to interpretation.

So I guess the next thing we'll have to do is put a counter on everything in the library. Loaning out that video tape to 100 patrons is ok, but once we hit some magical number (100,000, 1,000,000) it becomes a crime?

Again we are talking about loaning versus copying. The library is not making a copy for you so they are not doing anything "wrong." If I remember correctly it says somewhere on the agreement you fill out to get your library card that you won't make copies.

How is that any different than if 10 people record that episode and "share" it with 1,499,990 "friends" over the internet.

Well this is the fuzzy area when it comes to broadcast TV. If you include the original commercials with the distribution then you probably should be able to squeak by. When it comes to pay channels though you are up a creak without a paddle. Unless you can somehow prove that the only people downloading your file are subscribers to that pay channel you would have a hard time.

Now if you want my opinion on all of this. I think that anything that is broadcast for free should be free to rebroadcast as long as you include the original commercials. Anything that is PayTV should be off limits.

Re:Oh...

[issachar]

Congress even passed a law, years ago, that prevents you from watching shows carried by a same network affiliate from outside your market

You think that's bad... The CRTC up in Canada has a rule that says that if CTV (Canadian channel) is showing Friends, and NBC is showing Friends, our cable company has to show us two feeds of CTV and eliminate NBC. The net result is that you'll be whatching channel 12, and it'll say that The Simpsons is on next, but then the cable company will stop killing the NBC signal, and NBC will come on instead, and you record the wrong show. (So then you go and get it off Morpheus)...

Re:Oh...

[~Socrates]

Hang on, don't import the DVDs from the US, because that would be illegal too!

Re:Oh...

[someone247356]

Glad to hear that you think this is just as silly as I do.

You said:
"Video tapes are kind of fuzzy all around. Just like music tapes there isn't as big of a concern about copying. If you had a digital copy of the show and your friend copied it then you may have a problem."

But according to current law I could record to CD-R just as legally as I can to VHS. Also, doesn't the fact that I stripped out the commercials make it less of a copy and more of a derivative work? I mean the reason television stations even bother to air shows is to get you to watch the commercials. What they are selling are commercials. Since I have edited out the most "valuable" portion of what was aired at that time, you would think that there would be less of a problem.... ;> Like buying a book, but only copying the abstract on the inside flap.

Oh, silly me, I think I understand the problem now. People have found out how to do something cheaper, more efficiently, and more conveniently WITHOUT paying more for it.

Taping shows onto VHS and physically mailing them around the planet is slow, inefficient, and expensive. A lot of people still mail physical bootleg tapes of concerts or club dance mixes this way and have for years. I used to have a friend in another state record a television show for my daughter before that channel was available in my neck of the woods and mail the tapes to me. Digitally recording a show onto a hard drive and sharing it across the internet is faster, more efficient, and relatively cheap.

ATM's transactions are more efficient than paper checks, more convenient, and (at least according to the banks/credit unions I've talked to) cost the bank 1/10th as much to process as paper checks. Yet, I can still buy paper checks for about $0.02 USD each and have unlimited free checking, but to use my ATM card it costs me $1.00 USD each time I use it + $ ?.?? USD from the bank who's ATM I'm using (some places as high as $5.00 USD) for each transaction I make with the silly thing.

.

TV Shows being pirated

[arnoroefs2000]

To get an idea of the amount of TV shows being pirated, and the speed at which they get ripped take a look here.

Re:TV Shows being pirated

[bryan1945]

What's really shocking is that someone took the time to record and upload eps of WWF Smackdown and Voyager.

Re:TV Shows being pirated

[Lumpy]

first off, it isnt pirating. I am SICK of these scare words added to a topic to make it evil. Second, the nwtworks, etc.. are lying hard about any revinues they lose except for the pay-per-view or pay premium channels. off the air channels and other free non-subscription channels are losing nothing by this and in fact they are gaining as the show becomes more popular. This is just another example of CEO's and CFO's trying to squeeze the tit a bit harder to get more milk.
first the quality of the shows (example my collection of the entire shown invader ZIm episodes.) is horrible.. VHS quality at best. Which by the way is legal? I can tape the shows and trade them legally. and the shows are not being re-broadcast or sold for a profit which takes the profit from the company.

They have to OFFER something to lose sales of it. and they do not and never will offer the invader Zim collection on DVD (start your subscription for only $29.95 and recieve 2 more episodes each month... bullcrap)

nope, they lie, and they lie horribly.

Re:TV Shows being pirated

[Danse]

Hmm... but you can't download them there. How many people actually manage to download these releases?

old newscasts

[Ogrez]

Im reminded of a few years ago.. when I would see primetime newscasts about movies being traded in irc. I always liked the way you could tell the newscaster diddnt have a clue about what he was saying. aparently these "hackers" trade movies in the deepest corners of the internet, a place known as "irc". we have learned that these "hackers" deprive hollywood of billions of dollars every day as people "hack" and trade camcorder versions of movies even before they are released to the good hardworking peoples of america in theaters. so its a little easier than it used to be with vhs... like there are more than 2-3 shows on tv worth recording. unless someone has the entire first season of farscape for me?

Re:old newscasts

[moonbender]

unless someone has the entire first season of farscape for me?
I'm pretty sure that's available on Morpheus, and most definitively on IRC ...

Big Pussy?

[zerosignal]

The MPAA counted more than 5,000 locations on the Internet last year where people could download episodes for free. Using custom software to track copyright violations, it also found 4,000 sites for The Simpsons and 2,000 for The Sopranos. Big Pussy is not going to like that

WTF does that mean? Could someone explain to us non-Americans.

Re:Big Pussy?

[toupsie]

WTF does that mean? Could someone explain to us non-Americans.

It refers to the expanding waist lines of women that watch too much network television in America. We are getting too fat and that line is just a obscene, negative way to refer to these obese women.

Re:Big Pussy?

[warmcat]

Yes, but Big Pussy Sleeps With The Fishes... er...

Re:Big Pussy?

[SPiKe]

I'm American, and I don't even understand.

This could have something to do with me being familiar only with 'little pussy', as obese/big is just 'not an option'.

Re:Big Pussy?

[MeepMeep]

'Big Pussy' is the name of a character on the popular show 'The Sopranos'.

Re:Big Pussy?

[rhinoman455]

Big Pussy is a character on The Sopranos :)

Re:Big Pussy?

[Rude Turnip]

I think they mean Jack Valenti.

Re:Big Pussy?

[Rude Turnip]

I was going for the (+5, Funny) mod!

Re:Big Pussy?

[issachar]

and it was funny...

I would mod it as such, but I lost my mod privileges over this famous thread...

it had over 800 moderations attached to it at one point...

Fair Use

[commonchaos]

For me at least there is much less of a grey line in this area, I dont have a TV, so I've had friends tape shows, and go and watch them later. I have traded tapes. People have had VCRs for ages, and there actually are people who can program them. The industry has known this for a long time. Most people have a small collection of movies taped off of cable.

I hope that they can learn from the mistakes that the music industry made.

my 0010 cents

Difference from music warez being...

[weird mehgny]

...that TV shows get broadcasted once or twice, and that's what you get (it's not like everything gets released on video tapes...).

Re:Difference from music warez being...

[moonbender]

And IF they release them on tape/DVD they make it so ridiculously expensive - I think the price is 20 for 3 Simpsons eps on tape around here. Jeez. Even music albums have a better value than that.

Thank God!

[jdma]

This allows us (in Europe) to see some shows that we may not be able to see even if we have cable! Or seet it before (South Park, Futurama).

Piracy?

[toupsie]

The TV networks should be flattered that anyone would want to "pirate" their crap. It seems that as I get more channels on my cable system, the less quality I get. I can honestly say I do not watch one network show during PrimeTime outside of Enterprise and the Simpsons.

Its gotten so bad, I actually watched a History Channel show on the history of hand tools over the shows that were on CBS, NBC, Fox and ABC and I wouldn't even know what to use those hand tools for! Once the Olympics go off the air, I most likely won't be watching NBC anytime soon.

Re:Piracy?

[RazzleFrog]

The History Channel, Discovery and The Learning Channel are pretty much where my viewing habits reside. Not only are their shows better but they also repeat them often throughout the week so I don't have to be tied to the TV at a particular time. As somebody noted above, this is one of the biggest advantages of downloading shows. If you miss an episode of the Simpsons and you forgot to tape it then you have to play the re-run roulette. This is not a big deal for Simpsons but for a show like 24 it is awful.

Re:Piracy?

[mblase]

The TV networks should be flattered that anyone would want to "pirate" their crap.

You're willfully missing the point. It's not popularity that makes money for the networks, it's advertising, which online pirates strip out, or VHS/DVD purchases, which *probably* aren't being made.

Unlike MP3 swapping, there's a HUGE difference between watching a quarter-screen pixelated copy of a show and seeing it on my 32" television, but that's clearly not a big deal for many viewers, and in any case, it WILL change as technology and bandwidth progresses.

The networks are losing money on this, and that's why they're upset. They don't care if you watch it, they only care if you watch it with the commercials in.

Re:Piracy?

[Waffle Iron]

Would you be "flattered" if I stole your wallet? Same concept, different medium.

Bzzzt. It's not like stealing your wallet. It's like making an unauthorized copy of your wallet.

IP 'Piracy' is not theft. It is copyright infringement.

Re:Piracy?

[sql*kitten]

It's like making an unauthorized copy of your wallet.

Like copying credit card numbers and magstripes, you mean?

Re:Piracy?

[toupsie]

You're willfully missing the point. It's not popularity that makes money for the networks, it's advertising, which online pirates strip out, or VHS/DVD purchases, which *probably* aren't being made.

How is this any different than me hitting the fast forward button on my VCR? Anyways the only commercials that seem to be on TV are drugs that cure one disease but end up with so many side effects that the commercial spends most of the time listing those. The worst part, they don't even tell you what the drug fixes.

Take Diapamil and wake up to life! Diapamil may cause bloodshot eyes, irritable bowel syndrome, sleeplessness, cancer of the sphincter and in some cases death. If you breath an oxygen and nitrogen atmosphere, please consult a Doctor before taking Diapamil. Diapamil is not recommended for those already awake to life. Diapamil should not be used by people that are abusing dihydrogen oxide.

Re:Piracy?

[ncc74656]

The networks are losing money on this, and that's why they're upset. They don't care if you watch it, they only care if you watch it with the commercials in.

I haven't paid any attention to TV ads in years. Even before I got my TiVo, I used VCRs to timeshift everything I watched...and I buzzed right past all of the ads. What makes the network execs think anybody is watching the ads at all?

Re:Piracy?

[toupsie]

Then why don't you remove the fast forward button off your VCR?

Re:Piracy?

[toupsie]

Would you be "flattered" if I stole your wallet? Same concept, different medium. Get real.

Please explain how copying a TV Show is the same as someone hitting me on the back of the head and stealing my wallet? I don't open my wallet up to everyone that walks by and show them the content within it. I keep it inside my coat pocket so it is protected from prying eyes. TV Networks are sending an unencrypted signal through the air and are begging me to pick it up and view it. There is no disclaimer or contract before the show that requires me to view the commercials. If they don't want you to copy the show, the should either encrpyt it or sell it on a media they can control.

Also, does a TV network have a right to control my memory of the show so they can make sure I remember the commercials along with the plot line?

Re:Piracy?

[toupsie]

Perhaps you are just getting old?

Guess so. All the "women" on TV and in the Music Industry are starting to look like jailbait -- or maybe they all are. I am now a "Thirty-Something" and no one in Hollywood and TV Land gives a damn if I am entertained anymore.

Re:Piracy?

[Aexia]

I'd have to imagine that most of the people downloading TV shows do so because they can't see the original broadcast.

So what's better: someone seeing the program and becoming a fan or someone not seeing the program at all?

Re:Piracy?

[Esgaroth]

Probably because when advertisers put ads on tv, people start buying the things they're advertising. And they're not actually trying to get you to pay attention to the ad. They merely want you to be aware of the name.

If you walk into a corner store and see two brands of something you want, which one do you choose? The one with the name that you've heard of. Despite the fact the contents of the package might be identical. You've heard of this brand so you 'trust' it.

Re:Piracy?

[moonbender]

What makes the network execs think anybody is watching the ads at all?
Studies, polls, etc. Lots of people do still watch ads.

Re:Piracy?

[moonbender]

Huh? It still doesn't qualify as theft. This is copyright infringement, no matter what way you twist it.

Re:Piracy?

[moonbender]

No, as in copyright infringement. Look up the definitions. Illegally copying information is not the same as stealing stuff in the real world.

Re:Piracy?

[Anthony Boyd]

So what's better: someone seeing the program and becoming a fan or someone not seeing the program at all?

Whichever the content owner decides.

Re:Piracy?

[Waffle Iron]

As someone already pointed out, they make money from commercials... when someone downloads a show and watches it without commercials (as I've done with enterprise many times) it degrades the amount they can charge for commercials...so, you're the dumb motherfucker, not the guy you responded to...

What you describe is called copyright infringement. You describe the basis behind why copyright infringement is not legal. Your particular example may or may not fall under fair use. Either way, it still isn't theft. Now, reread this paragraph again and again until you understand.

Re:Piracy?

[HBergeron]

The history of handtools? sounds intersting, when is it on (and on and on and on and on - this is the History Channel after all: "If it's good enough to show once, it's good enough to show a hundred times")

Re:Piracy?

[dossen]

Thank God Sex is not licensed under GPL or everyone would get to watch! -- me

Only people you choose to give it to (and whoever they give it to...). But they could all help make it better! ;-)

Re:Piracy?

[Tackhead]

> The TV networks should be flattered that anyone would want to "pirate" their crap. It seems that as I get more channels on my cable system, the less quality I get. I can honestly say I do not watch one network show during PrimeTime outside of Enterprise and the Simpsons.

And that is the fundamental problem with the TV networks.

In the 50s and 60s, you watched networks. Just as there were Ford people and there were Chevy people, there were people who watched "NBC" or "CBS" or "ABC".

Today, I don't know anyone who gives a rat's fried patoot what network, nor even what channel, their programming is on. We watch shows, not networks.

And that's why the woman in the article won't pay for HBO. She doesn't want "HBO". She only wants to watch "Sex in the City", and if she could pay $1/month to watch 1 hour of HBO's programming (that is, the new episode of "Sex in the City") a week, she would.

But she can't. Because HBO doesn't work like that. Because the cable system doesn't work like that. The whole notion of "broadcasting" (and this includes "niche channels") is that you fill the pipe 24/7 with content, charge your viewers for all that content, even though they only want one or two shows you offer.

It's not quite the same as the RIAA model of "put one good song on the album, the rest can be filler", because your idea of filler might be my idea of content. (That is, some folks watch highbrow channels for the Shakespeare, others for the war documentaries, still others for the Red Dwarf reruns ;-)

But the practical effect is the same -- an end user buys a subscription to a channel in order to get the hour or two of "good stuff" per week that they care about.

Cable makes it worse, of course, in that underlying technical restrictions have created buyers used to buying "packages" of 10-20 channels at a time in order to get the 2-3 channels that carry the 4-5 shows you watch. It's not like buying a whole CD to get the one song you want, it's like buying a whole box set!

Now comes the 'net - we bypass the high-level middlemen (cable/satellite operators) and the low-level middlemen ("channels") to allow an individual to get the product ("shows") they actually want. In effect, the 'net makes the traditional distribution system ("shows" aggregated onto "channels" and sold in "packages of channels") obsolete.

The woman who says "Fuck that!" and downloads her Sex in the City isn't saying "Fuck copyright".

She's saying "Fuck the dumb distribution system".

Re:Piracy?

[phlegmofdiscontent]

What about shows that are no longer aired, but are still traded, such as the Comedy Central episdoes of MST3K? And what about shows that are soon to be taken off the air, such as Family Guy and Futurama? Except for the episodes released on DVD or VHS, there is no more money being made by unbroadcast episodes, and therefore no money is being lost. Therefore, trading of defunct shows should be perfectly legal.
As for trading of currently airing shows, I'll not get into that. I'll just wait until someone comes forward with some hard data, like the RIAA did, to show that the networks are indeed losing money.

Re:Piracy?

[toupsie]

It was interesting but I still wouldn't know what to do with them. Check out the History Channel web page to find times of broadcast. I really like the History Channel, Discovery and TLC (except for the Maternity Ward - ick!). Its like PBS without the losers begging for money so I can watch Bert Wolf cook something I can't pronounce.

Re:Piracy?

[Mr. McGibby]

Unlike MP3 swapping, there's a HUGE difference between watching a quarter-screen pixelated copy of a show and seeing it on my 32" television, but that's clearly not a big deal for many viewers, and in any case, it WILL change as technology and bandwidth progresses.

Just get a Matrox G400 with TV-Out. The DVD-Max feature will automatically display any video displayed on your monitor that uses overlay on your TV.

Re:Piracy?

[jslag]

Like copying credit card numbers and magstripes, you mean?

know anyone who broadcasts their cc# over public airwaves?

Re:Piracy?

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Like copying credit card numbers and magstripes, you mean?

Like copying the bills.

Re:Piracy?

[Cruciform]

Anyone who does telephone banking with their credit card company?

Lions 1 - Christians 0

:)

Re:Piracy?

[jslag]

Anyone who does telephone banking with their credit card company?

Takes a bit more work to intercept a phone call (esp. on a land line) than a TV station broadcast, don't you think?

Re:Piracy?

[MrBomb]

Piracy?! BULLSHIT!! The people who taped these shows on either DVRs or who are using DVR software on their PCs ARE NOT THEIVES OR PIRATES!!! They have watched the commerials, sometimes several times since some commerials are shown twice or three times! Why waste your hard drive space for 15-20 min of ads that have already been watched?!

Re:Piracy?

[SSJ2 Labsuit]

I am now a "Thirty-Something" and no one in Hollywood and TV Land gives a damn if I am entertained anymore.

Strange... I recently found myself thinking along the same lines, except I'm 20-something. It used to be that I could turn on the TV on any weeknight and find something "good enough" -- not great, but enjoyable in some way. Now, flipping through TV Guide is about as interesting as reading a dictionary. Perhaps it has less to do with demographics and more to do with a universally increasing rate of suckage.

Or maybe TV is about as bad as it ever was, and I am making a logical scope violation. Maybe it's not the world that's changed, maybe it's me. I still prefer to end the day by sitting in one place for at least an hour to be entertained in a non-interactive way, as a means of ushering in sleep (I think most daily TV watchers do so for similar reasons.) But that doesn't work if I don't like what I'm seeing. Reading sometimes works, but that's often too "active" an activity for the purposes of winding down.

TV works best, perhaps because of the similarity of the experience to a dream state.

Re:Piracy?

[Cruciform]

Sorry, I meant on a cell. My bad.

Re:Piracy?

[metamatic]

Damn right! I'm sick of being ripped off for all the news and sports channels that I literally never watch, just so I can get BBC America, Discovery Channel, Cartoon Network and two or three other channels.

What I want is BBC1, BBC2 and Channel 4. I'd pay for those. In fact, I'd pay what I'm paying now for the 200 channels of crap I never watch. I'm sure the cable company would make more money. Unfortunately, they can't concieve that there's a better way to do business.

Looks like they have been r00ted.

[PrimeNumber]

In Napster's heyday, pirated TV shows were a rarity on the Net. But that changed with the advent of broadband home connections, $40 TV tuner cards that snap into your PC and cheap ways to store data. Looking for episodes of Friends? The MPAA counted more than 5,000 locations on the Internet last year where people could download episodes for free. Using custom software to track copyright violations, it also found 4,000 sites for The Simpsons and 2,000 for The Sopranos. Big Pussy is not going to like that!

Someone no likey this article.

Re:Looks like they have been r00ted.

[J. Random Software]

Or maybe he's a character on the show.

Re:Looks like they have been r00ted.

[Guppy06]

"The MPAA counted more than 5,000 locations on the Internet last year where people could download episodes for free."

... as opposed to watching the broadcast for free?

The networks already got their money, and they didn't get it from the viewers. The advertisers paid for the broadcast and there shouldn't be anything more to ask for (unless they want to take the position of cable companies where they charge both the advertier and the viewer). If the networks don't feel like they're getting enough money then they should be talking to the people that actually pay for it, and if the advertisers won't pay any more than that's your problem, not mine.

The shows are being broadcast whether I like them or not. My TV received those broadcasts but either wasn't on or was focused on a different channel at the time. I also have the right to record such broadcasts whether I watch it at the time of recording or not. While it's true that it's copyrighted matieral, giving the networks the ability to control what they themselves distributed to anybody and everybody free of charge is ridiculous. If this keeps up will the networks attempt to have a say in the affairs of TV and VCR manufacturers to "help the networks defend their rights?"

Consumers don't want to play by the network's rules. In a capitalist society it is the network that must adapt to the situation, not the consumer.

Re:Looks like they have been r00ted.

[RazzleFrog]

How nice it is to take stuff out of context. If you read on you would see that 2000 locations held Sopranos episdoes. Sopranos is on HBO which is a subscription based paytv service. Every person who chooses to watch Sopranos by downloading instead of subscribing to the services is taking money out of the pocket of HBO.

Re:Looks like they have been r00ted.

[RazzleFrog]

Very true. If they can't subscribe then they aren't taking the money out of their pocket directly from subscriptions. Of course, HBO does issue the full season on DVD two years after airing so those people should go out and by the DVD's when they are available to them to make up for getting it for free.

Re:Looks like they have been r00ted.

[bigmouth_strikes]

Actually, the money *does* come from the viewers. If people watch it on TV instead of downloading it, the ratings would be higher and the advertising fee would be higher. The networks only get what they're entitled to, with respect to their share of the viewers.

As with music, the providers should facilitate viewing the programs through your computer. Media will be on-demand, and trying to hinder that is doomed. They should recognize the need for time-shifting TV using your computer.

Re:Looks like they have been r00ted.

[Guppy06]

As anybody with a dish capable of receiving in the C-band can tell you, we're all getting HBO for free. The trick is just getting around the macrovision...

Speaking of which, would it still be illegal if I uploaded an episode of The Sopranos still encrypted?

Re:Looks like they have been r00ted.

[Guppy06]

The last time when what I watched made an iota of difference in what a network makes on advertising was the last (and first) time I watched a TV that had a Nielson box on it, about ten years ago.

And even if I did have a Nielson box in my home it's only on one television. And if I'm watching television in a different room (say, on my computer) I still don't count.

Re:Looks like they have been r00ted.

[RazzleFrog]

No because at any given time you both only have one copy of the DVD. If you proceded to make a copy of the DVD then you would be cheating HBO.

Paradox

[ackthpt]

Networks and broadcasters want shows to be popular, producers want shows to be popular, when they are popular they want to control how they are popular, which if you've read /. over the past months, is unpopular. The golden goose who pays for it all is the sponsor, which they want to protect, but since many people are already paying for cable, why not just add a tariff so viewers pay to watch the shows, thus getting rid of sponsors. But wait, they're greedy enough to want it both ways, so they'd have viewers pay and still stick them with commercials and yet not want them to make copies to edit out the commercials to watch when is convenient or interesting to them.

I wonder where TWAOL is planing to take what they've got...

Re:Paradox

[RazzleFrog]

You are confusing Basic Cable with Premium Channels. With basic cable you are partly paying for the physical service of cable and partly paying for the licensing of all of those basic channels. A channel like the History Channel only gets a small part of what you pay each month.

With a Premium Channel like HBO you are paying a specific subscription for that service. Most of that subscription goes directly to HBO. That is why HBO doesn't have commercials.

Re:Paradox

[Zocalo]

The problem with your theory is costs, and the (dead tree) magazine industry has a similar situation. It costs more to produce an episode of a given show, or pay for the rights to air a given sporting event etc., than the potential audience alone will bear. So they need the advertising subsidies to reduce the costs to the viewers.

I don't know what the figures are for the studios, but I did see a comment in a UK PC magazine once that to produce the same content without any advertising at all would increase the shelf price from £5 to £25. Quite a hike. Would you be prepared to see your cable/satellite bill go up by the same percentage just to lose the adverts? Plus the additional amount to cover the costs of those who say stuff it and cancel their subscriptions?

I'm guessing that for the majority of viewers the answer will be a resounding "NO WAY!"

Re:Paradox

[J. Random Software]

Most of the shows the article mentioned don't even require basic cable--they're regularly broadcast to everyone within range.

Re:Paradox

[ackthpt]

So that theory is for every 30 minutes of tv (20 show, 10 commercials) the average viewer must buy, or convince others to buy ("As Seen On TV"), £20 worth of product from the aggregate advertisers. Who's spending all that money? Certainly not me, I rarely buy what I see advertised on TV, particularly now that I make the biggie bucks, rather then puny sum I had when I was young and impressionable.

Hmmm...

Re:Paradox

[ramb]

Because networks are not in the business of producing quality entertainment for your enjoyment. They are in the business of selling your eyeballs to advertisers, the cheapest programming that will get you to be on the couch is the stuff they will show. What I can't understand is why people pay to have that crap pumped into the house. I figure that if they want me to watch it they should string the cable and provide me with starchy snacks. Obviously I don't have cable. I get two stations.

Re:Paradox

[RazzleFrog]

Except of course the very first one - Sex and the City. They also mentioned Sopranos.

Re:Paradox

[rtkluttz]

Why not LET them have it both ways. Why is it that when marketing people get involved that the word "compromise" becomes forgotten?

Heres an idea... charge a SMALL additional fee to end users to help subsidize ads. Then reduce ad fees to advertisers and tell them up front that some people will choose record and remove ads.

Only in the digital world to advertisers think that there is some dictum straight from God that ads MUST be viewed. In any other medium there is no guarantee to the advertiser that their ads are viewed. They must simply learn to live with it.
.

Re:Paradox

[maxpublic]

So let's see...corporate society finally wakes up to the fact that *everyone* timeshifts and virtually no one watches commercials. Shitty TV shows are pulled off-air because there aren't enough suckers to pay to watch them now that no one makes those useless commercials anymore.

What's left? Pay TV! Y'know, like we have right now on digital cable - watch a show or six hours of shows (depending) for $2.95. Or series just like "Sex..." on HBO, produced within a budget but still popular.

Exactly how is this a bad thing? If this were to replace the 'basic cable' service my bill would drop to $3 a week, $12 a month - alot less than what it is right now. Even for the addicted, say 18 hours a week, that's still only $36 a month. (Anyone who watches more TV than this needs to be cleansed from the gene pool).

Not only would you have pay-per-view and pay-per-block, but specific pay-per-channel as well - again like HBO and Showtime. Once more, how is this bad?

Oh, and if anyone argues that this somehow 'disenfranchises' the poor, please - pull your head out of your ass before you walk off that cliff. There is no Constitutional right to entertainment, and the "Jeff Corwin" show hardly counts as 'necessary education that can't be obtained elsewhere' (although he's certainly nice to look at).

Max

Re:Paradox

[kmellis]

This is really the whole point. The consumers of the product (TV shows) are not paying the entire cost. It's all of the consumers of the products advertised on the TV shows that are paying for the shows. Ideally, they would be identical sets, but in practice they're not. In practice, the cost of producing television programming is collectively spread around to all of the consumers of products that are advertised. Advertising costs are mostly hidden and ubiquitous. That's why we're willing to pay them.

When the costs of programming are directly passed on to the consumers of the programming -- as in HBO or theatrical releases -- it's usually more than people are willing to pay, if we compare shows of similar quality (or, at least, production costs). "Friends" is paying each regular cast member one million US dollars per episode this season. There are a lot of movies that have budgets less than the 10 million or so that each "Friends" episode must cost this season. If an episode of "Friends" was released theatrically, would anyone pay 6 or more dollars to get in? Thought not. And that's not the worst of it: most movies produced aren't even paying for themselves -- they're essentially subsidized by the one big hit in five that does.

As you say, magazines subscriptions don't pay for the magazines -- ads do. People rarely are willing to pay directly for content -- it seems like it's too expensive.

By circumventing the viewing of television advertising, fans of TV shows are effectively destroying them. Every time someone watches a DivX version of a TV show that they otherwise would have watched as a broadcast, it's lowering the Nielson ratings for the show and consequently lowering the amount of money advertisers are willing to pay. Play this scenario out to its logical conclusion, and we're looking at the demise of ubiquitous, expensively produced video entertainment. That very well may be a good thing, but anyone that thinks that they can have the current status quo and the free-trading of TV shows on the net is flat wrong. Something has to give.

Re:Paradox

[ackthpt]

The networks don't want to protect their sponsors, they want to protect their ratings.

Oh, they certainly do want to protect their sponsors. The ratings are used to negotiate advertising costs, this is where the networks make their earnings. Fail to look after the one who pays the bills and they'll go elsewhere. This is particularly why network news frequently tiptoes around bad news about big advertisers, or buries it altogether. Defense attorneys aren't the only ones adept in the use of the word "alleged".

Re:Paradox

[bief]

I'm guessing that for the majority of viewers the answer will be a resounding "NO WAY!"

I think that's total hogwash! There are many media business models that self-support without advertising support. You just have to look at the book industry, the video game industry and the motion picture industry to realize that people will pay for quality entertainment without commercials. We shouldn't be asked to subsidize outdated business models by legislating digital rights management.

Re:Paradox

[Zocalo]

Sorry, but your counter examples don't wash. Do you think a book costs more than it's cover price to produce? A video game? Or an audio CD, video or DVD for that matter? Now compare that with "Friends" which runs at nearly $10m an episode to produce - that's a lot of revenue to recoup from airing. Do the math - $220m dollars per series / viewers = cost to those viewers to watch in a pay per view scheme. Friends might survive because it's a very popular show, but an awful lot of other shows would come in below the profit line and be canned, many of which are probably the ones that the typical /. reader watches, because we seem to like a lot of "cult" programs...

Don't get me wrong, I think DRM as it stands sucks big time and we've got this whole mess because no one bothered to drag copyright legislation into the digital age in a timely and effective manner. The crux of the matter though is that if the studios can't make a profit on a show then they won't make it and people are getting confused by two totally seperate and unrelated issues with regard to downloading episodes.

There is the issue of "copyright" and there is the issue of "piracy / loss of revenue". If you download an episode of show x, have you really deprived the studio of revenue? In truth the answer is probably not - you would have most likely have watched it (and the ads) when it aired, and if you couldn't have downloaded it would have recorded it instead. So all you have done is changed the media you taped it to into one more convenient for your use instead of encoding it yourself. Where the studios are losing money however is when the people who have recorded or downloaded episodes don't by the "official" releases of the show when they are released. The problem is that this has not really been settled in the courts yet like happened when video recorders first arrived. The way things stand at the moment, I don't see that the studios have any beef with the people who download the episodes / MP3s or whatever (even if they would like to). Any potential cases would rapidly become "fair use" issues and they stand to set a precedent that they would prefer to avoid no matter what, so they grey area is not ideal but preferrential. However, distribution of movies/MP3s without approval *is* a copyright infringement, hence the attack dogs going after the likes of Napster and sites offering episode downloads.

Re:Paradox

[kmellis]

Of course it doesn't. But I'd wager that the largest portion, by far, of the people watching captured TV shows live in the same markets as the TV shows they're watching.

Relative statistics?

[mydigitalself]

...it pried open a Pandora's jewel box: Last year CD sales declined for the first time in a decade.

it would be interesting to see the % fall in this versus the general economic downturn. otherwise its a meaningless statement.

Re:Relative statistics?

[copec]

I thought cd sales went up for the years 1999 and 2000, and only declined after napster got shut down. Thats what I remember reading somewhere anyhow.

Re:Relative statistics?

[Oliver Defacszio]

That may be true -- these statistics tend to change based upon the political stance of whomever references it. It's amazing how that works.

Re:Relative statistics?

[huie]

Wasn't there an unofficial (read: not really in the news, but the people who could do the most about it knew) boycot around that time?

And the RIAA, which also knew about it conveniently forgets to mention it when they talk about depressed sales.

Of course, I think I first heard that here, so take it for what that's worth :)

Re:Relative statistics?

[Lumpy]

you also forgot that the number of RIAA members ritually murdered in fields stayed the same as it has for the past 5 years. while the number of visitors to the moon dropped by 100% over the past 50 years.

remember this is media, and they are talking to the general public.. accuracy and truth have no meaning in the news when it comes to statistics. It never has and never will. The truth doesn't sell.

Re:Relative statistics?

[copec]

I was thinking the same thing. Reference a year that happens to be after napster was shut down, and say "look! cd sales are down!" When in reality they increased, and were increasing still until napster was stopped.

Re:Relative statistics?

[phaze3000]

Corelation does not show causation.

It's difficult to prove anything, but I strongly suspect that the downturn in record sales is strongly linked to the economic downturn.

Re:Relative statistics?

[Ig0r]

It's not even that they said CD sales are lower than before, it's just that sales haven't increased by as much as before.

Re:Relative statistics?

[copec]

I agree, but looking at the corelation, I suspect that napster had some positive impact on record sales during it's previous life.

Then again, as you stated, it's difficult to prove anything.

A missed opportunity

[RalphSlate]

I am against pirating stuff en-masse (i.e. Napster, posting on websites). One-off trading shouldn't be a big concern to the content holders. If I tape a show and give it to a friend, yes, that's illegal, but it's essentially insignificant because it's usually more trouble than its worth, its uncommon, and its a drop in the bucket. I doubt I'd ever be prosecuted for loaning a copy of Star Trek that was just on yesterday to a friend who forgot to tape it.

However, the prevalence of trading shows that there is a demand for this stuff. Why not make it available for sale? Who says that shows need to be off-the-air for a couple of years before they're made available? Who says that only the most popular shows should be made available?

Why isn't the distribution process streamlined so that printing 5000 DVDs for the 5000 people who want to see "Cop Rock" is still profitable?

There are plenty of TV shows that I would gladly purchase on DVD. I was happy to see "Buffy the Vampire Slayer, season 1" on DVD -- not because I want to buy it, but because I'm hoping that means that shows like "Kojak, Season 1" make it.

I suspect that the media companies are at a crossroads. Do they sell their content and possibly ruin the repeat-TV market, or do they hold it close and risk people trading it among themselves?

Ralph Slate

Re:A missed opportunity

[revscat]

You make a valid point. The question that I continually ask myself in regards to the pirating of content is: If it can't be stopped, what do we do? There seems to be the possibility that all these new technologies have for all practical purposes rendered copyright useless, especially since the people who trade these items do so for free.

I don't have a good answer to it this problem. I don't mind seeing the production companies, etc. make money on their products. But the fact remains that there are untold thousands of people who rip & trade these things, and their numbers only increase over time. Do we punish them? Or do we recognize a new reality and change the system of reimbursement accordingly?

I lean towards the latter. But that's just my opinion.

- Rev.

Re:A missed opportunity

[banuaba]

Taping a show and sharing it with a friend is NOT ILLEGAL. It falls under fair use. It's the same thing (conceptually) as making a mix tape and giving it to a friend. You can legally do both.

Re:A missed opportunity

[Nurlman]

Why not make it available for sale? Who says that shows need to be off-the-air for a couple of years before they're made available? Who says that only the most popular shows should be made available?

Syndicators, that's who. The real money in producing t.v. shows is getting enough episodes of a show ordered that you can then turn around and sell them as a syndication package.

Think about it-- the major networks really only supply prime-time programming-- 8p.m. to about midnight. Everything else that shows on network affiliates (and non-affiliate stations) is either locally generated programming or syndicated stuff. That's why you get The Simpsons or ST:TNG showing every day on a given channel-- because the channel bought the syndication rights for that package of shows. Syndications of popular shows can reap a bloody fortune in revenues for the production company-- in the hundreds of millions of dollars for a reasonably successful comedy. (Typically because an affiliate in every market will buy a syndication package for a successful show, rather than having the network pay for it once for first-run.)

Anyway, the reason shows aren't released to video shortly after they finish their first-run is because the money to be made in syndication is so staggering. If Paramount sold ST:TNG videos of the most recent season's episodes 6 months after the end of each season, they'd have a much harder time pitching the entire series in syndication to the local stations-- after all, the fans of the show (who translate to eyeballs watching the local station's advertising) already have permanent copies of the episodes that are being offered as a syndication package.

That's why you're only seeing Seasons 1 & 2 of The Simpsons on DVD now: because the syndication package that features those episodes doesn't command much of a price from local stations any more. Fox (or, more accurately, Gracie Films, the producer of the show) waits to release videos until it has gotten maximum value from syndication of those episodes because syndication offers a bigger revenue stream than video sales. For shows that don't (or won't) make it into syndication (typically, you need in the neighborhood of 100 episodes or about 5 seasons to make it attractive to an affiliate who will run 5-7 shows a week), a video release can occur much faster. (Witness South Park, which Comedy Central knows damn well won't run on a broadcast station because of its content. You can buy videos of SP now, because those sales aren't cannibalizing potential syndication revenue.) Of course, if a show wasn't popular enough to survive for 100 episodes, it's unlikely to have a big enough market to make a video release financially viable. There may be 10,000 people who loved the live-action Tick series, but even if all 10,000 people buy the DVD set, will that cover the cost of pressing and marketing the discs?

Re:A missed opportunity

[Guppy06]

"If I tape a show and give it to a friend, yes, that's illegal"

I'm not sure it is. If the government or anybody else with a security camera has the right to record what goes on in public and more or less do what they like with it (distribute it to the Discovery Channel for documentaries, for example), why is it then illegal to record a free public broadcast and treat it similarly?

I could understand doing this with cable and DSS broadcasts, since the encryption and/or physical wire dictate a private medium. But VHF and UHF television broadcasts? Hell, the FCC says I have a right to tune in to any signals that reach me and as long as I don't have to decode it I'm free to observe the content, whether it be military communications, cordless phone conversations, Morse code conversations on HAM radio, or Enterprise on UHF channel 54.

Re:A missed opportunity

[madfgurtbn]

There seems to be the possibility that all these new technologies have for all practical purposes rendered copyright useless, especially since the people who trade these items do so for free.

I don't have a good answer to it this problem. I don't mind seeing the production companies, etc. make money on their products.


The problem for the book/magazine/record/movie/tv industries and the artists who work for them is:

1. Digitized media is virtually impossible to prevent from being copied and shared for free.

2. The cost of producing and publishing high-quality content is approaching zero. Anyone with some home recording equipment can write, record, edit, and publish their work on the internet without having to go through the large publishing entities.

This leads the conclusion that the market value of content will approach zero in the future. In the long term they cannot win the battle, but in the short term they can cling to their old ways of thinking, in which they can sell a $.35 cd for $19.95 because they have the legal monopoly (copyright) on that product. That's all that's happening here. In the long term they cannot win this war.

Eventually, rather than very few artists or companies making $millions, there will be a millions of artists making a little money each. Whether you think that's right or wrong doesn't matter, it's just the way it's gonna be.

Ten years ago, if I wanted to write a book and publish it myself, it would have cost thousands of dollars to print up a few copies, and then I could have had to figure out a way to get it Out There. Now I can do it for ZERO cost. Just like this post to /.

Copyright 2002, all rights reserved, madfgurtbn worldwide publishing, inc.

Re:A missed opportunity

[jmccay]

I could think of several older TV shows I would like to see on DVD, but I won't hold my breathe. The companies that are still around won't do it. Why should they pour their money in producing DVDs of older stuff when the can produce newer stuff and charge more? The industry just hasn't come to understand it's consumer like they think they do. Maybe someday they will learn.

Re:A missed opportunity

[RalphSlate]

• Of course, if a show wasn't popular enough to survive for 100 episodes, it's unlikely to have a big enough market to make a video release financially viable. There may be 10,000 people who loved the live-action Tick series, but even if all 10,000 people buy the DVD set, will that cover the cost of pressing and marketing the discs?

I think this may be a fallicy though. Don't the costs of recording the show, paying the actors & producers, and promoting it dwarf the costs associated with printing DVD's? Isn't "marketing" a poor excuse? If it was standard that all shows were available for purchase, then they are for the most part self-marketed. Heck, the simple act of the show being shown in re-runs is "marketing", similar to a song being played on the radio.

I know there's a cost to making something available on DVD, but c'mon, if people can do it from their houses and trade/pirate the DVD's, how is it that this can't be done on a larger scale for a lower per-unit cost?

True, royalties aren't paid on pirate copies, but could this just be a case of the media companies cost-accounting the head honcho's salaries all the way down to the cost of producing a DVD of Kojak and saying "it's going to cost us too much to press 10,000 copies of this DVD because we have 2 million in salary that we have to push to the cost model"?

Ralph Slate

Re:A missed opportunity

[roybadami]

I have to say that I would this really bizarre when I first found out about this.

In the UK (and the rest of Europe), there's a much shorter lag between a show being on TV and it coming to VHS or DVD.

It also leads to the bizarre situation that several seasons of a US show can have been released on VHS/DVD in Europe before even Season 1 is released in the US. (As is currently the case with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel.)

Re:A missed opportunity

[kmellis]

Eventually, rather than very few artists or companies making $millions, there will be a millions of artists making a little money each. Whether you think that's right or wrong doesn't matter, it's just the way it's gonna be.

Right. I have a story I haven't told in public before.

The day I got my first CD player, I knew which way the wind was blowing. "It's DATA!" I said to myself. Not long after that, I realized that once bandwidth was available, music would be sent as data over networks. This was about 1988, I didn't know about the Internet then.

In 1990, I got married to a young woman who happened to be heavily involved with many of the people in the Canadian music scene. She was a real go-getter -- her resume at 19 was more impressive than mine at 25 -- and it occurred to me that maybe between the two of us we could start a business that would be in on the beginnings of this inevitable trend. I won't bore you with the details, but my thinking was to establish a mail-order-by-computer-network (via CompuServe and the like) to get established in the retail music business etc., and to position it to be ready for the transition to an all-digital distribution. Here's the interesting part of the story.

I was aware that this would be a radical concept for the recording industry. My ex and I talked it over with a really well-connected guy she knew well, and he was intrigued. A few weeks later he called us to tell us that he was at a meeting with some the highest Canadian muckity-mucks of one of the big labels (I can't remember which one), and he brought this topic up. They were utterly, completely baffled. They had no concept of this, and what little they understood, they didn't like.

That wasn't why our little business didn't get off the ground, but it was very interesting.

The funny thing about all this is, is that what I knew was true ten years ago is just as true today: the making of money off of the manufacturing, distribution, and selling of plastic discs is going to end soon. But so what? What will happen is that the financial barriers for musicians making and distributing their music will come down, and choices will proliferate madly. What does this mean? It means that there will probably be a musician out there who does just exactly what I like, but I'm unlikely to find him/her among the vast array of choices. No problem: the recording industry, which has always been more about marketing then anything else, will turn their considerable expertise to profit by acting as the middlemen in this new world.

They haven't figured this out yet.

Re:A missed opportunity

[egeorge]

Thank you for the excellent, clear and thorough explanation of how the syndication model works.

I think that as time goes on and it becomes easier to get unauthorized copies of shows soon after the first run, the value of syndication will go down and the value of offering DVD's will go up.

Of course this devaluation of syndication packages is exactly what the studios are afraid of.

Re:A missed opportunity

[leob]

If I tape a show and give it to a friend, yes, that's illegal...

AFAIK, that's legal, as far as there is "sequential quality degradation", which is true for most, if not all, analog recording devices, and not true for digital devices.

Re:A missed opportunity

[The Cat]

This leads the conclusion that the market value of content will approach zero in the future.

Then there will be no content. It's that simple. Isn't that the big complaint about the Internet already? The value of the content isn't even zero yet.

Re:A missed opportunity

[madfgurtbn]

Then there will be no content. It's that simple. Isn't that the big complaint about the Internet already?

No way. The web is already the vastest collection of content ever assembled, and it's only a couple years old. The glib complaints of "no content" are simply untrue. Linux itself is a good example of the kind of high quality user-created content that will proliferate. Unfortunately, low-quality content will proliferate even more. View at -1 threshold for some examples.

Re:A missed opportunity

[The Cat]

Linux itself is a good example of the kind of high quality user-created content that will proliferate.

Sure. But most of the people working on Linux are either:

1) Employees of a company that markets Linux
2) People who have other jobs that work on Linux in their spare time.

There is a way for these people to support themselves, in other words. Now, if the goal is for all or most content to be hobby-level, that's fine for some people, but people are also going to want some variety, and they are also going to want professionally-produced content.

Besides, the value of Linux is far from zero. I've paid for at least four boxed versions (IIRC).
Professionally-produced content has to be valued enough by the marketplace to pay for it, or there won't be any, unless the grocery stores, utilities and mortgage companies suddenly make their products free too.

Re:A missed opportunity

[madfgurtbn]

Now, if the goal is for all or most content to be hobby-level, that's fine for some people, but people are also going to want some variety, and they are also going to want professionally-produced content.

Well, I wouldn't say it's a goal. It's just the way it's gonna be. Anyone who wants to record a song and put it out there now can do it. It is a fundamental shift in the way music gets heard.

There will still be many people who will be able to make a living as artists, musicians, and authors, but if you want to be a published author, you now have the option of publishing worldwide for zero cost and without ever getting a rejection slip in your life. If you and your friends want to produce a sitcom, you can do it in your home and upload it for anyone to see. The large media companies no longer control access. When I was a kid, there were three tv channels, now there are hundreds. Soon there may be thousands. Just a couple years ago, if I wanted to listen to a radio station in Paraguay or Pakistan, I wouldn't have been able to. Now I can stop typing for a moment and find one--I can listen to any of thousands of online radio stations, some of them professional and some of them are just kids who love a certain kind of music and know how to stream content to the web. It's a different marketplace than it was when I was a kid in a small town that only had two radio stations--one country and one top 40. There are thousands of options for listening to music; and just as importantly the barrier to entry has been lowered to almost zero.


Besides, the value of Linux is far from zero. I've paid for at least four boxed versions.

Yes, but if you went to M$ or Apple to purchase all the equivalent software that you would find on a couple of RH cd's, you would pay hundreds or maybe a couple thousand $. I know there are still gaps in the usability of OSS, so it's not an apples to apples comparison, but you also have to remember that that RH cd can be freely loaded on to a thousand boxen if you wish.

The OSS model may transfer to certain types of online collaborations. Animation comes to mind. Maybe screenwriting. I don't know if the kind of music I like to listen to would be the same if the musicians weren't in the same room, but ya never know.

Positive Propaganda

[ciole]

This is great to see.

It's positive depictions of sharing like this that will sway public opinion. Everyone liked using Napster, but there was still a popular attitude towards sharing which thought of it as a naturally sinister and criminal act, akin to theft, thanks to longstanding propaganda from the BSA among other groups.

But this article could make people think "gee - i could really use all those old Gilligan's Island episodes."

Re:Positive Propaganda

[RalphSlate]

Sharing may not be a sinister thing, but Napster was to sharing as Robin Hood was to charity.

It's sharing when your friend misses Gilligan's Island and you loan him your tape. It's illegal when you take that tape and make it publically available to the world.

Even though you may choose to ignore this fact, Napster was so much more than "sharing".

Ralph

nyimes article

[asv108]

The New York times had a better article entitled "Black Hawk Download." I submitted the nytimes article a month ago but it was rejected. Since the story is over a month old it's only available in the Pay Archive. Does anyone know how to get free access to archived nytimes stories?

2002-01-17 13:49:49 Black Hawk Download (articles,news) (rejected)

awful

[vukv]

awful article... things that "journalist" forgot to mention are important: replaytv allows you to send file to other users 15 times and users who received the file can not send it again to anyone.

That makes all the difference in upcoming lawsuit. I find it hard to believe Sonicblue people didnt stress that out to him.

Copyright Trouble Of The Week

[wiredog]

Here's Dvorak's latest...

Re:Copyright Trouble Of The Week

[Tattva]

Wow, my heart is racing reading all this rebellion against the abuses of intellectual property holders. Great article, thanks. Mod the parent up, please.

Sometimes desire is not enough

[haplo21112]

Its not always possible to get a cable hookup to college Dorm room....I know it wasn't where I went to school...so just what the hell are those people supposed to do...

Re:Sometimes desire is not enough

[yndrd]

They're supposed to do the same thing other people do when they can't get something: get over it.

They don't have a right to television content.

If you're that desperate, go to a friend's house.

Re:Sometimes desire is not enough

[RazzleFrog]

You're correct that you don't have the right to Television content but also at hand here is censorship by the school. I know that most universities require non-commuting Freshman to live on campus (at least back in my day they did). They also only allow you to use their cable service. Considering that these students are now adults shouldn't they at least have the freedom to choose what they watch? Now this doesn't justify stealing but it does explain why it happens.

Re:Sometimes desire is not enough

[filtrs]

"WHAT??" you scream, "That's piracy too!" Yeah, Maybe.. but at least someone is paying for the damn show.

Not a very convincing argument. SOMEONE is paying for the show in any event. SOMEONE has to record it or it would never be on the net. The question becomes,"How many people are paying for the show and are they recording it for 'fair use'?"

Re:Sometimes desire is not enough

[goldspider]

Don't be so naive to believe that the majority of these piracy cases results from a lack of cable access. Perhaps it does happen sometimes, but I'm not inclined to believe that dorms that have access to broadband Internet connections don't have access to cable television.

Re:Sometimes desire is not enough

[RazzleFrog]

Now that is an intelligent response. So if I somebody is looking at schools they should look at their cable service offerings? I'm sorry Mom and Dad but I can't go to Harvard because they don't have HBO.

I also pointed out that as far as I know this applies to many colleges and universities. Since I went to a SUNY (State University of New York) school I can also assume that all of the other SUNY schools have the same policies. Many people, including myself at the time, couldn't afford to go to anything but a State school.

Re:Sometimes desire is not enough

[RazzleFrog]

Please reread the thread. But in case you are too lazy:

First of all, I never said that it was the majority of the pirating. The thread was discussing the student at a university who pirated Sex and the City.

Second, as so many people have pointed out besides me, they do have cable television but it is controlled by the University. You can't add pay channels like HBO and you can't get outside cable service or satellite.

Re:Sometimes desire is not enough

[Hamshrew]

I'm not going to defend piracy, but I should point out that many universities/colleges have a MANDATORY first year requirement of staying in the dorms. Even the one I graduated from still does this, despite the fact that they never have enough room for the new students.

Re:Sometimes desire is not enough

[tkrotchko]

Would it be okay for a friend to videotape it for them and then loan it to them to watch it later?

Or is it only okay to watch it as its broadcast?

I'm not being sarcastic, I'm just trying to understand the limits of fair use.

Re:Sometimes desire is not enough

[castlan]

Just a nit I have to pick, but 802.2 Ethernet is not a broadband medium. Cable is broadband, because you have "channels". A school that only has ethernet connectivity would be said to provide baseband connectivity.

-castlan

Re:Sometimes desire is not enough

[maxpublic]

How about sucking it up and moving on? The whining of college brats who can't get "Sex and the City" isn't particularly impressive as a reason for pirating.

Max

Re:Sometimes desire is not enough

[BiggestPOS]

well DUH! Thats why when people I know say "I'd love to have broadband like you" I respond with "I'd rather have baseband" Unfortunately broadband is becoming one in the same in the public's mind as "Fast ass Internet" and thats a real shame.

Re:Sometimes desire is not enough

[roybadami]

Broadband has two meanings.

Broadband (as opposed to baseband) means data is transmitted by modulated a (typically) RF carrier.

Broadband (as opposed to narrowband) means data is transmitted at high bitrates (where high bitrates, of course, is not well defined and to a large extent depends on context).

Re:Sometimes desire is not enough

[zangdesign]

If you don't like the school's policy on what is or isn't allowed, get it changed. But apathy about changing the policies does not automatically give you the right to do what you want. And if you are unable to change the policy, that still does not give you the right to flout it.

Otherwise, what the hell do we have laws for?

Re:Sometimes desire is not enough

[RazzleFrog]

I did say that it doesn't justify stealing it. I was only explaining why it happens. At no point did I say that they should be doing it.

Re:Sometimes desire is not enough

[geigertube]

Something else to consider in this situation is that HBO isnt getting this college students money, whether she d/l's the episode or not. In as much as laws/ethics are there to prevent harm to people, I dont see her making a poor ethical choice. There is no physical product being stolen, HBO is not losing an inventory that it could have sold to someone else. The only thing that is happening here is that she gets to see an show she would of had to have missed otherwise, short of finding someone else with HBO who would let her watch it.

Re:Sometimes desire is not enough

[ryanwright]

Would it be okay for a friend to videotape it for them and then loan it to them to watch it later?

Yes, would be. It's called time shifting and is no different than if she recorded it herself and watched it later. True, she's not paying for HBO, but her friend is, and if she went to her friend's house to watch it while it aired there would be nothing wrong with that. Borrowing her friend's VCR and recording it is essentially the same thing.

That said, what is the difference if she downloads it from Morpheus? As far as I can tell, there isn't any. I do see the concern: If everyone just downloaded it, HBO will lose money. I'm sympathetic to that. But on the other hand, it really is no different than if she drove to a friend's house and watched a recording that was made the previous night OR borrowed said recording for her own personal use - and both situations are perfectly legal.

There's got to be a common ground here somewhere, but I can't find it. Personally, I think if they flat out allowed everyone to copy their broadcasts, they'd make plenty of money. I'd even be willing to bet subscriptions would go up. Just once I would love to see someone try an open approach with their customers - I bet the popularity of the show would go through the roof, and with that popularity will come more subscriptions from people who want to watch it first, when it's broadcast.

All it takes is one person with a highly successful TV show to not only give up on copying, but to encourage it. Then you'll have real numbers. How about it, HBO? Are you willing to take the risk on "Sex and the City?"

Fair use?

[glh]

Wouldn't it be fair use to download the TV shows? I mean, if they are beaming the signal to your TV you should be able to do with it whatever you want in theory..

By the way, do "cappers" remove the commercials when they are digitizing it? I'm gonna have to check into this...

Re:Fair use?

[goldspider]

I suppose it's possible, with the exception of those shows (usually sporting events) which state that "This broadcast is property of . No portion of this broadcast may be redistributed or reproduced without the express written permission of ."

For all other shows, the ownership claim is probably hidden somewhere in the fine print at the end of the credits.

Re:Fair use?

[HerringFlavoredFowl]

My take ...

We the people provide our spectrum to the broadcast industry for use. We provide access rights to lay the cable that snakes through our streets. By providing this they provide us a 'service' that has value to use. By telling us how to use it, they act like they own what we provided them in exchange for this 'valuable' benifit.

Besides, radio waves containing bad shows hurts my karma and they need to pay me for the copper sheild on my head to block the garbage and damages...
TastesLikeHerringFlavoredChicken

Re:Fair use?

[CyPlasm]

FYI, most cappers remove the commercials.

I downloaded all of the live-action Tick episodes after I watched them on their original air-dates except for the last episode. Once I found out the show was being cancelled, I knew that I had to get them since my chances of seeing them in re-runs are nil.

Other shows that I've downloaded have been because I watched the original pilot episode and then the broadcast station decided to change its time slot 40 times or showing something else in its place.

Re:Fair use?

[sql*kitten]

By the way, do "cappers" remove the commercials when they are digitizing it? I'm gonna have to check into this...

You could "check into this" by reading the article, which says it takes about 5 minutes to strip out the ads, and an hour to compress the file suitable for distribution.

Re:Fair use?

[AnotherBlackHat]

I suppose it's possible, with the exception of those shows (usually sporting events) which state that "This broadcast is property of . No portion of this broadcast may be redistributed or reproduced without the express written permission of ."

By reading this post, you agree to pay me $50.00

That is, unless you believe that saying something doesn't necessarily make it true.

Re:Fair use?

[goldspider]

Your analogy, while insightful, isn't exactly accurate. There is no violation of copyryght law in reading/viewing/listening to something.

However if you could copyright your post, and I reprinted it without your permission, you would have legal grounds to sue me.

Re:Fair use?

[RatFink100]

Wouldn't it be fair use to download the TV shows? I mean, if they are beaming the signal to your TV you should be able to do with it whatever you want in theory..

Well are they beaming it at you? The majority of downloading happens because people can't get the show themselves - either because it's not being shown in their area, or because it's only shown on a subscription service.

I think to use 'fair use' as a defence you would have to show that you had access to it anyway - i.e. that it aired in your area or you subscribed to a cable channel etc.

This should be an interesting battle....

[sleeperservice]

The lawyers have to prove that this is markedly different from trading video-taped shows. Aside from 1 factor (the greater distribution breadth), I don't see how it is.

So the question they've got to answer is: why is digital media different from analog (i.e. tape) media?

Like I said, should be interesting....

Re:This should be an interesting battle....

[mydigitalself]

there are two differences. the first one you noted as the greater disitribution breadth. i'm afraid that you can't overlook this factor. if i put an episode of sex and the city on my ftp server behind my "little" dsl line at home, i could probably be able to distribute 3-4 copies an hour. to strangers. anywhere in the world. take the fact that they then get it and can do the same thing, you have an exponential growth pattern. without degredation of quality.

that's a big factor.

next is the fact that if you tape something on VHS, you have to put it on a physical tape. so, to reflect on the above example, i'd not only be restricted to taking 30 mins to copy 1 episode - but i've got to have 1 physical VHS tape per copy.

now i don't know whether or not the movie industry get a cut on VHS tapes or not - but this is why i reckon that AOL/Time Warner are in such a strong position with regards to this.

i pay £40 for my DSL line and £ 50 for my ITV digital (50-something channels of sport and reruns). if AOL/TW could charge me say, £ 60 for a combined service whereby i could stream stuff down from their network (yes i know, it needs to be BIG PIPES) i would so go for it.

Re:This should be an interesting battle....

[sleeperservice]

there are two differences. the first one you noted as the greater disitribution breadth. i'm afraid that you can't overlook this factor. if i put an episode of sex and the city on my ftp server behind my "little" dsl line at home, i could probably be able to distribute 3-4 copies an hour. to strangers. anywhere in the world. take the fact that they then get it and can do the same thing, you have an exponential growth pattern. without degredation of quality.

I see your point but, the critical question, to me at least, is whether or not this can be argued to be a significant enough difference to merit a difference in legal definition. Let me try to explain that.

Sure, there's a big difference between the shows on your FTP and copying shows to tape for friends. The distribution capability alone, on average, shows this to be a big difference.

However, one could argue, and lawyers probably will, that there's no difference here, theoretically, which is what counts. In theory, someone with free time, and money to buy more tapes could make many multiple copies of a TV show and then go out on the street (or to the office) and give them away. It is a fine line, to be sure, but is it 100% different in procedure from what you're suggesting with FTP? Probably not.

Besides, I imagine one of the clinching arguments might be (for broadcast, at least), that the broadcast is free for the viewer anyway....

Re:This should be an interesting battle....

[mydigitalself]

good point. but i was assuming that the RIAA turned a blind eye to the school-boy taping scenario because of its insignificant volumes and that even in that scenario they had a legal leg to stand on.

i don't know, i'm no lawyer ;)

Why is the industry scared?

[Navius Eurisko]

IMO, there are two types of people who trade tv shows:

1. People who have already seen the show and want to view it again at a later date. These people have already seen the ads from the commercial sponsers from the first airing.

2. People who are the fan base of the show. These people archive the episodes for their own enjoyment. These people also probably view the shows during their original airing rather than waiting for the show to appear somewhere over the internet.

Both populations of people have probably seen the original airing of the program with the commericals in place. The only valid concern I can think of from the TV industry is that sponsers may not pay for ads during reruns of a particular show if viewers already have copies of it to watch. But how many of us sit down to watch a rerun of a episode we have already seen? Unless it rocked, most of us I imagine probably end up surfing the TV during breaks anyways. Reruns really only serve the population of people who didn't see the episode in the original airing. It seems to me that the industry wants to keep this population away from recorded TV shows.

Re:Why is the industry scared?

[ultraw]

Your forgetting a large third group of people. The people who are big fans of a certain TV-show, but the show isn't aired (any more) where they live, or runs about 3 seasons behind where they live.

Also, movies are almost always first show in the USA, and 6 months later, the movie is shown in European theaters.

The movie industry could gain a lot more revenue if they released the popular movies (cfr Star Wars, LOTR,...) all over the world at the same time.

Re:Why is the industry scared?

[asv108]

Don't forget about #3

3. People who download show just for the sake of downloading

I've run in to plenty of people who download TV shows and movies they don't watch, but they download them anyway just to increase the size of their collection.

Re:Why is the industry scared?

[RazzleFrog]

You missed entirely the people like the girl used as the example in the article. People who download a show from a pay channel, like HBO, that they don't otherwise pay for.

Re:Why is the industry scared?

[the_rev_matt]

I recall this phenomenon from my tape trading days, where people would trade any artist/any recording quality just to make their trade list look more impressive.

My thought was always: I need to store/move/keep organized all that crap. I'm only asking for things I WANT.

Re:Why is the industry scared?

[Guppy06]

"The only valid concern I can think of from the TV industry is that sponsers may not pay for ads during reruns of a particular show if viewers already have copies of it to watch."

You mean then networks would have to come up with original content more often than two months out of the year? It's the end of the world, I tell you!

"Reruns really only serve the population of people who didn't see the episode in the original airing."

Their intent is to serve the networks. They get a profit from the commercials without having to pay the production costs of a new episode. Just a few bucks here to pay for the guy playing the glorified VCR. Personally I think that if advertisers pay the same for reruns as they do for original episodes then they're getting screwed.

Re:Why is the industry scared?

[nachoman]

4. People who download shows which you can't watch on TV anymore..

I fit into this category bigtime being a huge Doctor Who fan. I love the show. All 26 seasons worth. I have no way of watching this show where in Canada (maybe with satilite). The space channel carried it for a while a few years ago. I would be happy to purchase as many episodes as I could on DVD but I simply refuse to purchase VHS now (I have no VCR and it's old technology.

So far Warner (who has the rights to distribute Doctor Who for North America) has released 3 DVDs 1 story each (4 episodes usually). They plan on releasing 2 more in April. I have the 3 that have been released and plan to buy the other 2.

But what about the rest of the shows. It is illegal to download them off of the Internet. But it's either that or you don't get to watch them at all.

Re:Why is the industry scared?

[Fulcrum of Evil]

people would trade any artist/any recording quality just to make their trade list look more impressive.

When trading costs you little, and maintenance is likewise cheap, this is actually a good idea. You're betting that the guy who's got something you really want will want some strange thing that you've already got.

Re:Why is the industry scared?

[ymgve]

Another reason is that the world has more countries than just the USA. So the only resort for people in non-important countries (Like myself, here in Norway) is to get the shows from the net - or wait for YEARS (And that's only if we're lucky) till the shows come here. For example, ST: Enterprise won't be shown for atleast a few years here - the same with the new Babylon 5 pilot. So downloading off the net is the solution for me.

(A point that the networks should take note of: I'd GLADLY watch internet streams with those shows on, even if they'd been filled with commercials. I'd even pay a small sum for those streams if the selection of shows was wide enough. Hopefully, this won't stay a dream for long..)

Re:Why is the industry scared?

[Paradise Pete]

IMO, there are two types of people who trade tv shows:

There's a third: People who live in countries where the prime-time shows are unavailable. In Costa Rica, for instance, the US networks are available on cable except for the prime-time hours, during which those channels are blocked.

poor Vdub

[Niadh]

The article mentioned VirtualDub... It's now only a matter of time before the Television Industry starts to sue Avery Lee for helping to pirate millions of dollars in TV episodes.

Thanks Time magazine

[Commienst]

I never knew the Kazaa network had Sopranos.

Napster

[Psmylie]

I like how this article seems to want to tie a decline in music sales to Napster, and not to the fact (Ok, it's actually my opinion) that music seems to really suck right now.

Re:Napster

[HCase]

Yeah, that and the economic downturn. Odds are that the music industry is doing just fine comparatively. Maybe if the larger companies start putting out decent music instead of more prepackaged garbage it'd sell.

Re:Napster

[mjh]

I like how this article seems to want to tie a decline in music sales to Napster, and not to the fact (Ok, it's actually my opinion) that music seems to really suck right now.

Or how about the possibility that the decline in record sales coincides with the shutdown of Napster?

Re:Napster

[SnoopDobb]

Yeah... From the article:

>Last year CD sales declined for the first time in a decade.

Hmm.. Last year (or 2) the stock market declined for the first time in OVER a decade. Causation, can't say. Correlation, I'd be surprised if it didn't have SOMETHING to do with it. Also all the bubblegum pop crap they released for the last 2 years.

Re:Napster

[eples]

I like how this article seems to want to tie a decline in music sales to Napster,

Well, "Time" is owned by AOL-Time Warner, who also has a huge amount of record labels under it. The connecton I draw is real.

Re:Napster

[sulli]

Well, it is published by AOL Time Warner, which owns Warner Music. Consider the source.

A simple solution ...

[HerringFlavoredFowl]

A simple solution would be for the TV Network's to make the shows avaliable (with adds) on a bunch of fast servers. For pay per view type programming, have a subscription style service ... All they need to do is follow the p0rn industries model and they will be rolling in the dough

Trying to enforce at what time a person watches a show is silly. Not to mention controlling and repressive.

TastesLikeHerringFlavoredChicken

Re:A simple solution ...

[Ender77]

I don't think that would work. Every time a company has tried to make an subscription model of something that most people can get free has Ususally failed. Considering that anywone who would use this service would have to have high bandwidth for reasonable download speeds is another nail in the coffin.

Re:A simple solution ...

[jswitte]

I was thinking just the other day (actually, a week ago..) that this would be a wonderful business opportunity. So, somebody have a truckload of money for LOTS of bandwidth, storage space, and really fast MPEG encoders? Oh, and a legal team to make the suits see that this could possibly make them a lot of money?

Jim

Re:A simple solution ...

[RazzleFrog]

Sorta like HBO On Demand?

Re:A simple solution ...

[shut_up_man]

I agree. The TV networks have to understand that they have to build their system now or the volunteer-based net system will gut their industry, the same way Napster and its brethren tore chunks out of the music business. Yes mr studio exec, we know there's no perfect way to beat the cappers and leechers... but if you don't at least try SOMETHING, you're hosed.

Re:A simple solution ...

[Heironymus Coward]

A simple solution would be for the TV Network's to make the shows avaliable (with adds) on a bunch of fast servers. For pay per view type programming, have a subscription style service ... All they need to do is follow the p0rn industries model and they will be rolling in the dough

not the networks, the syndicators. remember, they are the ones the studios are really making the series for.

studios sell one season of a show to the networks with the option to repeat. the next year, sell it to the online syndicators, who could charge each user $15 for, say, 5 gigs of traffic per month, plus an extra $3 per gig over quota. sort of a rip-off, but the syndicators would make money, the studios would make money, and people would probably subscribe to such a service to get guaranteed quality on the rips. these would have to be ordinary MPEG-2 or DivX to be worth the subscription fees.

heck, the syndicators could even leave ads in. although maybe this would be bad, since the syndicators might opt for a proprietary format to force people to view ads.

it would be like paying the syndicators to be your VCR and time-shift for you. if they did this, the people we would hear complaining would be the VCR and TiVo/ReplayTV manufacturers.

Just?

[tcd004]

"This is just more of the TV industry coming to grips with what happened to
the music industry. But it's important that the mainstream learns about it."

Yeah, that music industry thing was no big deal.

tcd004

Re:Just?

[bigfleet]

Exactly. What do you mean what happened to the music industry? It's bigger than ever! Don't forget it's only single sales that are dropping, album sales are continuing to grow!

Somewhere an executive is crying...

[dasspunk]

Some exec somewhere is reading this article and getting all excited about all the pirated TV shows on the web (these are pretty good numbers he thinks to himself). Then he reads, "...edits out the comercials..." and says with a wimper, "these bastards have no souls"...

Re:TV is dying

[mccalli]

Why would I want someone else to decide when I want to watch something when I could download it whenever I want?

If you hadn't watched at least some of a series first, how would you know whether to download it?

This is always my big argument against totally prescriptive 'personal scheduling'. I have a TiVO box and think it's great, but still watch ordinary TV because otherwise how would I ever find out what's new in the world? If all I ever watched was what I'd told it to record, things would become stagnant very quickly.

Cheers,
Ian

My (off-topic) Experience with Jack Valenti

[KelsoLundeen]

I derive great pleasure by watching (and hearing about) the foibles of geriatric Jack Valenti. He's been around forever -- since the days of JFK in various positions, IIRC -- and is probably the the thing that's standing between the MPAA and forward-thinking, progressive movement.

This is off-topic, but when I was 9 or 10 I desperately wanted to get into films like 'Apocalypse Now' and the 'Deer Hunter.' I didn't want to go accompanied with my parents (I did, eventually) and so took the opportunity to write Mr. Valenti and short (and not irate) letter about problems with the MPAA rating system. Now, say what you will about a 10 year old going to see 'Apocalypse Now' (and make cracks about it not being a good film anyway, blah blah blah) it was one of those formative experience films -- and I understood that even before seeing it.

Anyway, I had the letter proofed by various people (my dad taught English at a local college, so it was easy to get a bunch of opinions on whether or not the letter was 'too shrill' or 'too juvenile') and wrote a variety of drafts. The gist was this: that the MPAA rating system (before the days of PG-13) as it existed in 1979 was unfair: that it should be up to parents whether or not their children could go see a movie unaccompanied. My parents *wanted* to see 'Apocalypse Now' and 'The Deer Hunter' and 'Coming Home' and -- a few years before -- 'Saturday Night Fever' -- so it wasn't a matter of me not being able to go -- it was one of those 'on principle' things: who is this MPAA and why are they making rules for parents on what they can and can't do with their kids? (Kids can go to movies -- but only if their parents are there, too. To me, it was absurd. I mean, I was watching stuff like 'Wild Strawberries' and 'The Bicyle Thief' and 'Walkabout' (yeah, I know, it sounds pretentious -- blah blah blah -- but that's the sort of world I lived in -- lots of good films, good books, and I loved every minute of it) so it was absurd that some guy named Jack Valenti was telling me I couldn't see certain films by myself.

Anyway, I wrote the letter. Wrote many drafts. Finally nailed it. It was a page long. Not shrill. Thoughtful, but fim. I mailed it off to him. (A friend of a friend got his actual address.)

And I *never* heard back. Not a peep. Not a form letter. Nothing.

I thought: well, fuck him. I knew it was a dumb thing to do -- sending off a letter of complaint. And I knew even then that I was raging into the chasm. There was nothing down there except the sound of my own voice. I knew that.

But I at least expected a response. Some inkling that after all the trouble I went through he'd at least "took note" of my complaint and thanked me for writing and understood my frustration but, ya know, that's just the way it was.

What does this have to do with the topic at hand? Not much except for the Valenti link. The fact that it's still -- after all these years -- Jack Valenti telling us what we can and can't do. And why we're wrong doing what we're doing. It's Hilary Rosen, too, over at the RIAA -- I know that.

But somehow my little experience 15 years (I finally realized) is emblematic of the whole problem with corporate giants: that no one, in the end, gives a fuck. The corporations don't, at least. The politicians try, sure. But they're hamstrung by Valenti and Rosen and all the lawyers fighting the 'Bleak House'-like endless legal battle: battling for years and years. The point of the case is all but forgotten. But they're still suing, still collecting their fees.

That first lesson in cynicism still rankles me to this day. I wonder if he ever even read my little letter.

As the owner of Planet Replay, my views.

[Tide]

I was interviewed for this article last week and I was sorely disappointed to read how sensationalistic is was towards sharing shows with the ReplayTV 4000 likening us to Napster. Napster traded what was known copyrighted material, bought by home users and illegally copied and sent to others. RTV on the other hand is basically a digital VCR, or timeshifting device. It is currently legal to timeshift, send to friends, and receive shows this way. No different than user a standard VCR and even slower depending on file size. The biggest complainers should be advertisers who pay big money to be on Friends. But really,I don't agree with that either. They take a chance that I will see there ad anyways. There is nothing preventing me with regular TV to just leave the room or turn off the TV when ads come on.

Check out my site Planet Replay for more information on Replay show sharing.

Re:As the owner of Planet Replay, my views.

[Catbeller]

Um, no, Napster did not trade materials, never copied anything, never sent any materials to anyone, and did not know if any of the material, particularly, was copyrighted.

Napster was an index of file names and locations. That's all.

The judge in that case was a dedicated champion of intellectual property laws, even if she had to create some for them to violate. She made a spectacular fool of herself by showing ignorance of the technology and personal animosity towards the defendants.

And the damage she created spreads outwards, like a tsunamic shock wave.

Re:As the owner of Planet Replay, my views.

[ryantate]

Napster traded what was known copyrighted material, bought by home users and illegally copied and sent to others.

First of all, the Napster trial is ongoing, so the legality or illegality of that network is still up in the air, as is the legality or illegality of the actions of its users. Judge Patel's rulings thus far have concerned the preliminary injunction that was, after much wrangling in the federal appeals court, finally put in place. She reached some initial conclusions that may or may not point to the final outcome of the trial, but the legality of the service is not established. Further, the company (last time I checked) offers as one of its key arguments the notion that sharing among users is protected by both the Audio Home Recording Act (1992?) as interpreted in the Diamond v MPAA (?) case and fair use doctrine of the overall copyright code. Someone please correct me if this legal stance has changed, I haven't followed the case closely since the injunction came down.

Second, Napster also used a time-shifting argument in fighting the preliminary injunction. It became clear in both the district and appeals courtrooms (I was there) that the judges found this a bit ridiculous, as the focus and technical structure of Napster was not oriented toward, say, sharing a file at home and downloading it at work, but rather distributing it to others.

Most importantly, is it reasonable to call the Replay 4000's sharing and especially timeshifting functions "no different than using a standard VCR?" I doubt even Sonicblue's own marketing department would agree to that bland assesment of their product, and I suspect that in an Amazon or epinions review you might disagree with yourself here. In terms of timeshifting, you have a device that is capable of skipping over commercials with a new degree of automation and of capturing a massive volume of shows and of doing so with, again, a new degree of automation.

As for sharing, it is quite different to be able to beam something to someone rather than to haul a tape to them physically. What's more, what you are beaming is much more easily placed onto a computer hard disk and shared at large, albeit by circumventing controls in the Replay unit. Either one of the traits taken by itself widely expands the circle of "friends" you are able to share with, and it is the line between friendly or scholarly sharing and mass distribution that is at the heart of the Napster case. The line is only a little bit more clear, IMHO, with Replay.

I am not agreeing or disagreeing with your legalargument, but you seem a bit quick to dismiss the paradigm-shifting capabilities of Replay, similarities (if only superficial) to Napster (and IIRC the article in question was talking not just about Replay but about how others use/abuse its files) and those who finance the production of free television shows (setting legal issues aside, I like the fact that while I'd have to pay ~$20 a month for Sopranos I get West Wing and 60 Minutes for free, and the chance society at large might watch just somewhat fewer commercials could harm the free programming model). I think it is possible to make a much stronger case for the machine if you attempt to grapple with these issues.

Cheers
R

Re:As the owner of Planet Replay, my views.

[rbeattie]

Okay, this is cool, but I need a more broad video-sharing FAQ...

What are the standard formats? MPEG-4? DIVX? Other?

How much degradation in content is there? Is it a postage-size stamp video or am I seeing VHS quality (bad but viewable) or DVD quality (great) content?

What's the common file sizes? Are we talking 300 Megs per 1/2 hour?

Do all these boxes have a standard format or do I need to translate the format from ReplayTV once it's recorded?

Where's the commonest source for this stuff? Morpheus? Gnutella? .RU websites?

Thanks,

-Russ

Re:As the owner of Planet Replay, my views.

[Tide]

You make some great points, and my initial post was a bit misleading on my part in regards to Napster. But I will point out some things.

It is faster to time shift and send a show via VCR and snail mail. Thats a fact for 90% of us ReplayTV users. Im currently receiving a show now thats 1.5 GB for 1/2 hour. With cable modem upload speeds and being able to send more than one show at a time it will take over 4 days for me to receive this file. I can't even pull down 2 shows at once (a bit silly, you can send many at 128k up, but only receive one at 1.5m down). Ive had my RTV for 3 months now and have received exactly 2 shows.

I'd also like to theorize a bit for the future. Even when broadband gets faster (say 2-3 years), TV still has the upper hand by only broadcasting in HDTV. Now that 1.5GB file is 15GB and we're all back to waiting 4-7 days for the episode of Sex and the City.

Commercial Advance is great when it works, its my favorite feature. But its such a pain in the butt when it doesn't. Ive had it skip portions of a show without my knowledge.

There have been some great responses to my post, thanks to everyone, its been an interesting read.

Re:As the owner of Planet Replay, my views.

[ryantate]

I must admit, I am amazed at how long it takes to move a show; it is easy to forget than on the PC you can mess with resolution and color depth and refresh rate to a greater extent. I am pretty lucky in that my DSL line can pull down 50KB/s (that's kilobytes) pretty reliably, and I've had it up to 100 KB/s even though i only pay for 384kbps, which probably works out to about 40 KB/s, so if I could find an equally capable peer I could theoretically get a show in 5 hours. In reality I'm guessing it would take at least a day =)

So speed is obviously a big limiting factor with Replay, and so I can see where this makes it less like Napster. But for many people it is likely easier to have a video just stream into the box rather than have to go travel physically to pick one upor package some snail mail. Myself, I would go nuts having my bandwidth hogged by Replay that whole time and just ask for a tape (or buy one on eBay or Target in the case of HBO).
I always suspected the commercial feature would have glitches, and I'm sure the broadcasters aren't cooperating with fixing that.

I think what MPAA is afraid of is the march of commercial progress -- SonicBlue looks like it is (gasp) actually giving customers what they want, and if they continue to do so (extra compression, simult downloads) many of the complaints will become less of an issue. re: hdtv, i think a company like sonicblue will likely offer the old grainy compressed resolution for a long time to come unless the bandwidth situation changes dramatically. assuming they remain in business.

overall good points
cheers
r

Re:As the owner of Planet Replay, my views.

[ryanwright]

What's more, what you are beaming is much more easily placed onto a computer hard disk and shared at large, albeit by circumventing controls in the Replay unit.

So? This should make the Replay unit illegal? You can do the same thing with a video capture card or firewire port & DV camera. Perhaps those should be illegal, too?

Re:As the owner of Planet Replay, my views.

[ryantate]

I never said the unit should be illegal, and I specifically said I was not making a statement about legality. I was addressing the statement was little different from a VCR when it comes to timeshifting and sharing.

Re:As the owner of Planet Replay, my views.

[joekool]

speaking as someone who makes much available, and downloads much:

format: if it's longer than a few minutes, divx, otherwise mpeg.

quality:personally I use 384x288, about half the quality of tv

size: at my settings, I get about 157 megs per hour, but I should really up that, maybe even double it.

pvr standards: all the boxes like replay and ivo use different standards, most which can't be played back on a computer, at present

source: everywhere--probably the most common is IRC, but personally, I can't get crap off there. gnutella and fastrack clients seem to work well for me, and also winMX. And most people find my stuff by searching the web and seeing what I have available.

C&D letter from the MPAA

[xjosh]

Here is a nice letter that someone from the MPAA sent to my news provider regarding the posting of a par file to a newsgroup. I'm still trying to get my head around how parity data for a part of a capture can be construed as copyrighted and infringing.

Perhaps instead of posting shows, 60-120 people should independantly review the shows and include a clip in their review.

Begin message:
----------------
From: MPAA@copyright.org
To: dmca@giganews.com
Subject: [DMCA #1604] Unauthorized Distribution of Copyrighted Motion Pictures (Reference#: XXXXXX)
Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2002 18:23:00 (GMT)
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Tuesday, February 19, 2002

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RE: Unauthorized Distribution of Copyrighted Motion Pictures
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Reference#: XXXXXX

Date of Infringement: 2/15/2002 4:32:43 PM GMT

Dear dmca@giganews.com:

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) represents the following motion picture production and distribution companies:

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We have received information that you are offering Internet access service to the above referenced account holder, who has utilized your services to post downloads to Usenet newsgroups of copyrighted motion picture(s) including such title(s) as:

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The distribution of unauthorized copies of copyrighted motion pictures constitutes copyright infringement under the Copyright Act, Title 17 United States Code Section 106(3). This conduct may also violate the laws of other countries, international law, and/or treaty obligations.

We request that you immediately do the following:

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On behalf of the respective owners of the exclusive rights to the copyrighted material at issue in this notice, we hereby state, pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Title 17 United States Code Section 512, that we have a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owners, their respective agents, or the law.

Also pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we hereby state, under penalty of perjury, under the laws of the State of California and under the laws of the United States, that the information in this notification is accurate and that we are authorized to act on behalf of the owners of the exclusive rights being infringed as set forth in this notification.

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------------

Re:C&D letter from the MPAA

[jeffehobbs]

Hey, thanks for all the crap.

~jeff

Re:C&D letter from the MPAA

[base3]

So, did Giganews give up your contact information to the MPAA?

Re:C&D letter from the MPAA

[xjosh]

Giganews received the notification from the MPAA rep, and in turn notified me. They basically said, "Knock it off. Do it again and you're terminated." (I'm paraphrasing, of course)

Re:C&D letter from the MPAA

[base3]

That's good to know--I'm glad they at least didn't give you up. Thanks!

Re:C&D letter from the MPAA

[rkischuk]

We have received information that you are offering Internet access service to the above referenced account holder, who has utilized your services to post downloads to Usenet newsgroups of copyrighted motion picture(s) including such title(s) as:

24 (TV)

These people have no clue, especially in this case. They should be OVERJOYED that people are swapping episodes of 24. Why? Because I think the biggest reason most people don't watch the show once they hear it's well done is that they feel like they're coming in halfway through the movie.

(In short, the premise for 24 is that it unfolds in "real time" - each one hour episode is an hour in the life of the show's characters - and that the 24 episodes will comprise a full day of suspense, intrigue, action, etc. as the plot unfolds.)

So strangely, if people are swapping episodes, it probably means they're getting caught up on the plot, and will likely increase the viewership of the next episode (more viewers = higher ratings = higher priced ads). But I guess common sense doesn't matter.

Re:C&D letter from the MPAA

[Cryogenes]

Movie posters on newsgroups typically split a movie into a number of rar-files, say moviexy.part001.rar thru moviexy.part050.rar and then add a few parity files (known as par files) for recovery of lost rar's, say moviexy.p01 thru moviexy.p05.

In this setup, each file contains exactly as much information about moviexy as any other. This is witnessed by the fact that a downloader is able to perfectly reconstruct the entire movie from any 50-file subset of this 55-file post (using a nifty program called smartpar which is based on the Reed-Solomon error correction algorithm). So, obviously, they are all equally infringing.

TV "ripping" software site

[arnoroefs2000]

Actually it's called "The Definitive DVD Backup Resource" :)

But you can find all the software (and some pretty decent guides) which the article talks about on this site, it's the best there is....

Once again, the Lawyer Response

[mengel]

Once again, rather than do something constructive like setup their own sites, where someone could download past show episodes (possibly with commercials) from an industry site, the industry sues people who are providing a service they don't bother providing.

It would seem to me they would want to encourage people to become fans of their shows, and make it easier for them to get past episodes, and get really involved with the show.

Wouldn't it be nice if, for once, the industry responded to something like this by putting up their own sites, letting you download past episodes, order CD-ROM's with a whole season of shows, etc., in other words, do a better job than the so-called "pirate" sites. .

Re:Once again, the Lawyer Response

[greenrd]

Once again, rather than do something constructive like setup their own sites, where someone could download past show episodes (possibly with commercials) from an industry site,

One problem with that idea. Some people would just download "Ad Timings" files from Kazaa or other filesharing networks so that they could automatically skip or even cut out the ads. Such files would only have to be a few bytes in length. You could even get opensource downloaders which do it all automatically.

Re:Once again, the Lawyer Response

[schon]

some people would just download "Ad Timings" files ... so that they could automatically skip or even cut out the ads.

There is always a technological answer - you won't stop people, but you can make it unpalatable.

How about showing the ads between random scenes? After all, they're not going to keep the ads from the original broadcast - they'll insert current ones. If they change where the ads are for each episode then an "ad timing" programs would be useless - they'd need to be continually updated.

Or adding the ads to the bottom (or top, or side) of the stream?

Even without this, most people would just live with the ads.

pr0n

[asv108]

These articles always talk about network TV and big budget movies, but what about the amount of copyrighted pr0n vids that exist on the net and p2p networks such as Morhpeus or Gnutella. In a college enviroment, most of the people I have introduced to these networks don't download movies or television shows, they download music, warez, and pr0n.

It seems like....

[DigitalGodBoy]

...that you could replace a couple of keywords with other words (such as "Replay" with "VCR") and you get the same argument that was put forth when VHS came out.

Re:TV is dying

[MeepMeep]

Actually, you could always ask around to see which shows are good, and THEN download it. It would be sort of like reading new books, most people won't get a book unless it is recommended or well reviewed...

So when can I pay for it?

[volsung]

I haven't gotten into the trading of TV shows, but I would be willing to pay for the ability to legally download select TV shows. I think an affordable service of this sort would do more to kill "TV piracy" than a zillion cease-and-desist letters backed by crazy laws.

Re:So when can I pay for it?

[Robotech_Master]

The sad thing is, if the MPAA were to do something like this, it would be so crippled with DRM and downloading limitations and format limits that it wouldn't be useable. It would be the same joke that those pay-for-download music services are now.

URL

[tiltowait]

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/17/technology/circu its/17VIDE.html

You just have to know the address, then you can get in through the free registration method. Although Google follows the nytimes.com robots.txt, enough people link to articles that the search engine has records for the URLs.

It they were only smart enough to release the DVDs

[martial]

The trick is that the TV/Movie industry :

1) does not release TV series on DVD (simple example of shows that have my interest are : Babylon 5, Quantum Leap, Malcom in the Middle, Batman Beyond, Addams Family (original B&W ;) ) ) ... so yes I understand that people are doing this ... note that Babylon 5 and Quantum Leap are showing on SciFi.

2) When they do release it ... they make sure to :
a) release it in 50 DVDs
b) only put two episodes on each DVDs
c) release one DVD a month

So yes I can understand why people do it ... now if only TV shows where released in a smart way ... a cheap one season box (like the Buffy Box, Sex in the City or Simpsons) then yes maybe I would be interested in buying the DVDs.

TV on Demand

[mini me]

The dream for TV was always to be able to watch any show you want, when you want. VCRs started this trend, but doesn't achive the desired results due to limitations in the technology. Due to other past technical limitations, no other device or provider could feasibly give TV on demand either.

This is all starting to change however. Instead of having all the shows in one central location, spread the shows around different homes across the world. This model was popularized by Napster and it works fairly well, ignoring the legal issues.

What the media needs to see is that things are changing. Their roles will become different, not obsolete. There is still plenty of room for them to make money if they embrace the technology and act fast. The music industry ignored online music distribution, and they lost out. Had they been a player in online music distribution then things would have been different and they wouldn't have to complain about lost CD sales after the demise of Napster.

If people use the technology to distribte media then that is obviously how they want to do it, and that is how they should get it. Otherwise they wouldn't use it. It's not fair to the consumer to be dictated on how they will enjoy their entertainment. If they want to watch a TV show recorded by someone else across the globe then it should be up to them.

I wonder...

[NiPNi]

How come no articles of this kind ever mention Neo-Modus DirectConnect (www.neo-modus.com)? I've used DC to download every episode of Farscape, Stargate SG-1, Enterprise and Futurama, and DC also offers way, way more data than Kazaa, Morpheus or any of the other ones.

Re:I wonder...

[NiPNi]

I don't know. To take down DC would mean taking down an immense number of hubs. They could of course take down one and make an example of it to scare off everyone else, but for some reason DC doesn't seem to get much attention. Maybe they simply don't know how to bring it down. Or maybe DC isn't widely used in the USA? I've noticed that most hubs are Scandinavian, and some are from other parts of Europe. But I haven't seen many located in the USA.

Oh, and I would like to add that as I'm living in Norway and most of the aforementioned shows don't even get to this distant and godforsaken corner of the world, me downloading them doesn't cause the TV stations much harm (not the American ones, anyway). Even if the shows do air here eventually, it won't be for many years, and they'll probably get time slots so ugly no one will ever hear about them, let alone see them.

Re:TV Shows being pirated - what's really scary

[ip_vjl]

If I were a network executive I'd definitely be scared by that list ... why?

It's not as much the fact that people are pirating, but that these people would rather download the numerous episodes of ALF than watch what's currently on TV.

Hollywood has been leading the best prevention against piracy by producing stuff that nobody would want to own in the first place. Who knows, maybe writing a good script would be seen as a breach of the DMCA because it would promote the desire to own and copy.

Responsible bootlegging...

[Exantrius]

DAPCentral is a site dedicated to keeping shows that are going off the air, permanently, without hope of getting DVD's released into some sort of permanent home. Well, more permanent than video tapes, at least. They only capture shows that are out of production, and the producers don't expect to release for sale...

Why can't they do something like this? I'd pay a buck or two to download legally my favorite shows (well, for a MST3k, less for a half hour show)... If they give fast speeds, I bet most people would be willing to pay (rather than deal with Usenet/IRC/eDonkey/Morpheus).

/Ex

Re:Responsible bootlegging...

[Exantrius]

Doh! first messed up link...

Try this one Digital Archive Project

/ex

We are not the customer

[Silverhammer]

As someone else noted, in the current scheme of television production and distribution, we the viewers are NOT the customer. We are the product that is harvested, packaged, and delivered to the real customer: the advertisers.

Once you understand that, the rest makes perfect sense.

Re:We are not the customer

[JPriest]

If I had mod points I'd mod this up

Re:We are not the customer

[LegendLength]

...and if I had titties, I'd play with them all day...

What half arsed journalism

[Commienst]

"The owners of Morpheus, Grokster and Kazaa, on the other hand, are expected to argue that since they don't use a Napster-like central server--even the indexing software is distributed among users--it is impossible for them to monitor the activities of the millions of people who use their programs."

Millions? Did they even check their facts.

Re:TV is dying

[Pentagram]

Entirely true. It's not a perfect analogy, but I don't pay some corporation to force me to read a chapter from a series of books before I decide what I want to read. Instead, I read reviews, take advice, scan through friends' books, etc.

If I wanted to read something differently occasionally, why wouldn't I just download some random stuff?

Don't even get me started about Farscape

[huntdwumpus]

The last 4 eps. of season 3 have already aired in the UK, but they won't air on SciFi Channel until April. There's really no choice but to download...(or fly to Europe).

Re:Don't even get me started about Farscape

[jakeblue]

Babylon 5 fans who watched the original run of the series had the same problem. US markets would see the beginning of a season, but since PTEN (original broadcaster) would only air new episodes during sweeps, the UK fans would finish the season before the US fans did.

If Morpheus had been around then, I would have been happy with being able to watch digital episode copies. As it was, I was able to watch the final four episodes of a season as taped in the UK via a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend connection.

Do you own a computer ?

[HP-UX'er]

That could start to sound like a scary question if the Entertainment Industry starts to go after individuals. Imagine that question being asked at retail stores when you purchase a PVR.

TV in Belgium.

[wimme]

Here in Belgium, we have 5 local tv-channels and they broadcast a lot of local crap (bad dutch soaps, dumb-ass comedy,etc...). The only SF show is Voyager, and they are three years behind.... The rest of the channels (we have 29) are german,french, turkish etc.... Most of the shows are dubbed (ever watched star trek in turkish ?). Morpheus etc... is the only way to get my weekly dose of quality SF shows.

And all this time I was thinking....

[qurob]

"Will and Grace" were the Pirates of Primetime!

Necratog

[LordKariya]

I've seen some of Necratog's encodes. I'm not sure what he's thinking, more or less sleeping with the enemy here. Best to keep the general public as confused as possible... " I use a hypothermic modulator to steal the signals from the broadcasting affiliate, then upload in 1.4 seconds to every user on Morpheus".. That'll scare'em.

It's all just time shifting!

[JoeShmoe]

There is a big difference between the TV industry and the music industry...the Supreme Court of the United States has affirmed our right to time shift televised content.

This means that as soon as a television station airs a program, I have the legal right to record that program to watch it at a different time or to watch it multiple times. So look at it these case situations:

A) Me pressing the record button on VCR to record content that will later be transmitted by coaxial cable to be viewed on my TV set = legal (Betamax decision)

B) Me pressing the record button on PVR to record content that will later be transmitted by coaxial cable to be viewed on my TV set = just as legal. If the courts did not see any distinction between existing media formats (Beta vs. VHS) then likewise there should be no distinction between media characteristics (magnetic tape vs. magnetic platters)

C) My friend pressing the record button on VCR to record content that will later be transmitted by coaxial cable to be viewed on my TV set = just as legal. Again, the courts did not specify that timeshifting only applied to the person making the recording. Otherwise how could sons setup the family VCR to record Days of Our Lives for technophobic mom? It's simple to see how it makes no difference who presses the button, the result is the same.

D) My friend pressing the record button on PVR to record content that will later be transmitted by coaxial cable to be viewed on my TV set = just as legal...combining case B and C.

E) My friend pressing the record button on PVR to record content that will later be transmitted by coaxial cable to be viewed on my monitor = just as legal...again the courts made no requirement for viewing device, whether tuner-ready television or single-channel monitor.

F) My friend pressing the record button on PVR to record content that will later be transmitted by CAT-5 cable to be viewed on my monitor = JUST AS LEGAL!...because yet again the courts made no requirement for trasmitting cable. Coaxial, Audio/Video, CAT-5, it's all the same as far as its purpose is concerned.

So working a step at a time from A (which we know is legal) it is trivial to show that F (what the article is talking about) is just as legal.

Now, I admit the issue is a little grey on pay-per-view and premium channels. I don't know if those things existed back in 1980 when the Betamax decision was written. But, even so, if I can go next door to watch HBO on my friend's TV, why can't I timeshift that same content to a time I'm in the comfort of my own home? Maybe my friend has HBO but I have the better TV/stereo? Again, these would be cases the courts could have mentioned but didn't.

The Internet changes nothing. My friends and I were recording shows for each other in high school back when Internet cost your $10/hour. The only difference the Internet makes is it becomes much more efficient...which is what progress is supposed to do.

- JoeShmoe

.

Re:It's all just time shifting!

[ejasons]

Just a minor nit...

It is not that we have the right to timeshift recordings, it is just legal for us to do so if we can figure out to do so (though the current reasoning as per the DMCA is that it is only legal if it isn't digital and there is absolutely no attempt by the originator to control access).

If the powers-that-be can figure out how to keep us from doing recording (as they have so far been able to do so far with non-broadcast HDTV), they are perfectly within their rights to keep us from timeshifting/recording/etc.

Re:It's all just time shifting!

[Kanasta]

I guess the difference is:

On the net, are you trading with your friends or strangers?

If they're your friends, then it's fine (F).

You haven't covered strangers in your argument.

Re:It's all just time shifting!

[JoeShmoe]

To quote Blanche in the Simpson retelling of A Streetcar Named Desire:

"A stranger's just a friend you haven't met."

Ha! But seriously...at least on IRC, the channels that form around shows like Futurama, Simpsons, Jackass, 24, Star Trek, Southpark, et cetera are all a pretty tight, close-knit bunch. The regulars all get to know each other. They all discuss the show and they trade items of interest back and form, like clips from unreleased pilots or deleted scenes. In theory it's possible for a total stranger to walk in and download an episode but in practicalty it doesn't happen very often because regulars get taken care of first. Begging leeches tend to get ignore or the boot.

Now with Kazaa and Morpheus...it's a little bit less clear. Whereas IRC is based on chat and file exchanges are secondary, P2P clients for the most part are the opposite. Napster and maybe Direct Connect are the only two that come to mind that have a topic based chat system to help people find other people interested in the same thing. Oh yeah, Filetopia too.

Still...in theory, there is nothing stopping you from talking with someone on Kazaa. I was once messaged by someone who had been searching for Tracy Ullman Simpson shorts and noticed I had the complete collection. Since he typically used Dalnet and I used EFNet, we would have never met if it wasn't for Kazaa and now we know each other pretty well (about as well as you get to know anyone on the Internet) and regularly trade clips and episodes with each other.

The bottom line? I don't think courts can decide what a friend is. I don't think Congress can legislate it. I don't think there could ever be a law passes that says I can only shared with the 20 people closest to me. I don't think the courts could say that just because you don't know someone's real name (just their handle) then it's not really a friend you can trade with.

- JoeShmoe

.

Re:It's all just time shifting!

[JoeShmoe]

Well, it's a tricky game of words.

Technically, I don't have the rights to make a copy of anything. But since the court have affirmed the principle of "fair use" then I effectively do have that right.

Here we have a law. Now, if the executive branch doesn't enforce the law, then it is as if the law doesn't exist. But let's say the law is enforced. Now, if the judicial branch says "you can't enforce the law in situation X" then for situation X, it is as if the law doesn't exist.

That means the battle is over what X means.

Regarding their right to keep us from timeshifting...I disagree and thing that (eventually) the courts will find this is unacceptable. In the 1970s, book publishers tried to put licenses on books to prevent a wide range of fair use activities (quoting without written permission, reselling, translation, etc). The courts affirmed the "first sale doctrine" which put an end to this practice. I think someday the courts (assuming they are immune from the influence of the copyright cartel, that's a big assumption) will do something similar for other media.

- JoeShmoe

.

I was thinking just that. I'd pay $1 per epp

[Stucco02]

I would pay up to $1 to watch a TV episode of my choosing without commercials. Hell they could sell year long subscriptions to the shows for half price. Sounds like a money maker. Everyone is so into using their credit card over the internet anyway.

I would have to say I'd rather download it than watch it streaming though. Streaming has too many complications.

You forgot number three

[mblase]

IMO, there are two types of people who trade tv shows

...and a third: people who don't get the channels, or can't rent or afford to buy the DVDs, but want to watch the shows all their friends are raving about.

Don't pretend that third group doesn't exist. The article mentions "Sex in the City" and "Friends," but if you go online you don't have to look far to find shows and movies that are only available in recorded format. People wouldn't be swapping ripped copies of anime imports or "Shrek" -- not available on TV but expensive on tape/DVD -- if that was the case.

Re:You forgot number three

[Hamshrew]

In my experience, most anime downloads are of the fansub type... not that there aren't 5 zillion DBZ episodes pirated on Morpheus, but show me a subtitled Star Ocean EX collection, and I'll be the first in line to buy it. Until then, I'll have to rely on Morpheus and people who actually know Japanese.

And yes, I'm hoping to learn it myself and import... but that takes time. I'm working on it ;) My point being that sometimes, it really IS the only way to watch a show.

Re:You forgot number three

[blues5150]

...and a third: people who don't get the channels, or can't rent or afford to buy the DVDs, but want to watch the shows all their friends are raving about.

Exactly, even if these people can afford to buy/rent the DVDs or cable channels. They might not bother if they can get the show they want for free. That's the just what the Entertainment people fear loss of potential revenue.

Re:You forgot number three

[poot_rootbeer]

Shrek on on sale for like $14.99. That's not "expensive" to anyone except children on fixed allowances. They've made it very very easy for anyone who wants a legitimate copy of the movie to own one.

There are some people who trade warez files simply for the thrill of trading warez files.

Re:You forgot number three

[DaAdder]

There's also a subgroup to the third category of people:

Us foreigners that might never get these shows, or if we do, get them years after they were broadcast, usually with nasty subtitles thrown on with no option to remove them.

Even IF the syndication allows for DVD release within a sane amount of time, half of the stuff we want to watch is either not released in our region coding, or if it is, it will lack the extra features and the quality of a region 1 DVD.

It's sad how often this happens.

It's also sad that the only way we can watch these shows is officially lableing us pirates in the eyes of the corporate world when we could gladly both watch the shows, ads included, and buy the DVD's were they available and up to standards.

I leave the the discussion of the morality in this up the more qualified and overly energetic.

peace

Would Shakespear complain

[dcocos]

What the networks and cable providers need to realize is that as technology changes so do they. I'm sure theater owners (the kind with _live_ actors) were up in arms when movie theaters started showing up.

Remember when VCRs became popular? It was supposed to be the death of movie theaters. I'm pretty sure they are still around and doing well I might add.

I have a suggestion for how the networks can still make money from their shows instead of commercials which are easy to pick out, sell more product placement in the shows, overlay 10 seconds of the show with the ad so that it will be far more difficult remove. Then buy some fat network pipes and some servers and encourage people to download the shows. While they are at it get into to the broadband business and make even more money! My guess is this will cost a lot less to maintain than the infastructure for tv, cable and satellite, and still a give them healthy revenue stream. Want to make even more money, follow the lead of Ximian and give access to the fast servers to people who pay extra for a subscribtion.

BTW If you are one of the major networks and you like this idea hire me, I even have ideas on how you can better track your viewers so you can really ding your advertisers! Just becareful if you don't hire I might just have to take you to court for stealing this idea.

Another perspective

[Minstrel78]

For the last year, I've been involved with a project to digitize and distribute a particualr television show. While not a capper myself (due to lack of appropriate hardware and access to source material), I help organize and manage the group effort. What makes our project different is that unlike the majority of these TV capping/sharing folks, we are not dealing with first-run shows here. Our object of interest is a program that ran for ten seasons during the 90s, which has a substantial following, but is for the most part completely unavailable.

22 out of a total of about 200 episodes are available comercially on DVD or VHS. Part of the final 3 seasons are currently in rotation, though is a very bizzare timeslot (early in the morning on saturday), and the first 7 seasons are currently not on the air, nor will they ever be due to legal issues surrounding the program. The costs to obtain the rights to syndicate the program are prohibative. These same legal issues make it extremely unlikely that the majority of episodes will ever be made available commercially. It simply doesn't make sense for anybody to try to sell them, because they will lose money.

The show, therefore, is pretty much completely lost to history. To its fans, it is arguably the best thing to ever be shown on television, an irreverent mocking of the very medium on which it presents itself. It is only preserved, however, due to the fans with enough forsight to tape the program throughout its history. Before we came along, there was an active VHS tape trading community built up around the show. The inevtiable problem with that is that VHS degrades over time and with successive copies. Not even the tape traders could effectively preserve the program, because eventually their copies would become unwatchable.

Our goal thus was to work with people with large tape collections to digitize their collections, and make them available via the normal online avenues, to fans who were not gifted with the forsight to record the program themselves, or were so unfortunate as to have not been fans of the program when it was on in the first place.

Our activities are clearly on poor legal footing, but is what we are doing wrong? Is it bad to make available the 70% of the program that is now essentially lost to fans or potential fans, and for which no entity has a commercial interest? I don't believe it is wrong. I don't believe that the creators of the program in question believe it is wrong either, so long as we don't proffit from the effort; one of the creators has indicated as much to us, in a discussion with him.

Unfortunately, under the current media regime, our current activity will not be legal until after the duration of our natural lifetimes, barring amazing achievements in medical scienece.

Re:TV is dying

[mccalli]

Entirely true. It's not a perfect analogy, but I don't pay some corporation to force me to read a chapter from a series of books before I decide what I want to read.

Fair point.

My counter-argument would be that my most common way to choose which books I want to read is to go to a bookshop and browse them. Second most common would be reviews (word of mouth or otherwise).

Now, putting my points and your points together, we seem to come up with the idea of a central repositary of TV shows from which we could randomly browse clips to decide if we liked it. I could then use my browsing method to decide, you could use your word of mouth and reviews methods to decide.

Seem like a good idea?

Cheers,
Ian

What happened ?

[AftanGustur]

This is just more of the TV industry coming to grips with what happened to the music industry.

And just what is it that happened to the music *industry* ??

As far as I know, the so-called "losses" from "piracy" are all theoretical, CD sales were never as high as during Napsters prime-time and there is nothing indicating today that the music *industry* is losing anything from people downloading free music.

The argument goes something like : "50.000 copies of GroupX were downloaded, that whould otherwise have been sold for 30$ a piece, that makes 50.000*30$ = 1.500.000 $ in losses", which is nonesense.

Test driving movies before you buy them.

[Numeric]

The quality on the Morpheus version are terrible, after downloading Chris Rock's Bigger and Blacker and relizing how much I enjoyed the movie. I went out and got the DVD. I found it more like giving the movie a test drive.

more aggressive commercial technology

[peter303]

TV advertisers will have to get more creative like web advertisers and embed commercial messages in the content itself- like those annoying network logos. (I oppose this.)

Re:more aggressive commercial technology

[bman08]

that's how they used to do it on the old variety shows. the cast would just turn out to the camera and talk about ovaltine, or Milton Berle (I think) would sing about texaco as part of the show.

Re:My (off-topic) Experience with Jack Valenti

[micromoog]

(-1, Annoying Pretentious Bastard)

strange

[cballowe]

Well -- I've never pirated any T.V. shows myself, but I can see many reasons that it shouldn't be bad to download a copy of a show.

• It's cheaper than buying a VCR, i.e. If I can't be home to watch a show when it's broadcast, downloading it seems like an appropriate option. (I don't care if I download the commercials or not, I'll just fast forward through them like I would with my VCR)
  
• Poor reception, i.e. I get poor reception of broadcast signals becaus of the location of my residence and it isn't worth the $40/month or whatever it costs now for cable just so I get a clear picture on sunday night to watch ``The Simpsons''
  
• Watching at work, while I know it's not appropriate at some jobs, sometimes there's some downtime at work and watching old episodes is a pleasant way to kill the time
  
• It's broadcast originally, whats the difference to them whether I set up my own measures to make archives of the airwaves available to myself or save some resources and use the mechanisms that other people have supplied? (I understand being upset about premium content like HBO or PayPerView stuff, but the networks really shouldn't complain -- they don't have anything in place to prevent people from getting it off the air)
  

Hold on a second!

[dbc001]

How is this illegal? Is it illegal to tape radio shows and trade them with friends? Is it illegal to record TV shows and trade them?

And why dont the stations just release their own versions with the ads in them? Wouldnt that solve all the problems?

dbc

In response to her article

[Ryan Barrett]

I shall be sending this email to Time: In reply to the above assuration in your article on file sharing, please could I make this VERY valid point: a) FACT - Napster Started in 1999 b) FACT - CD Sales in 1999 and 2000 UP c) FACT - Napster Removed "Pirate" MP3s in 2001 d) FACT - Napster "closing" massivly reduced MP3 downloads e) FACT - CD Sales DROPPED in 2001 Napster was shutdown for the majority of last year. This was reflected by the DECLINE in CD sales and a massive decline in MP3 downloads Napster itself was responsible for the GROWTH in CD sale during the previous two years (1999 and 2000). The quality of MP3 music is very low. Even what is claimed as "CD Quality" is actually no better than the quality of cassette, and is certainly vastly inferiour to FM radio. A CD-quality MP3 is litirally a 10th of the quality of a CD recording. The free and easy availablity of MP3 songs to be downloaded at a decent speed allowed customers to "try before they buy". It introduced them to new bands whom they would never have heard of before. Then - confident that the artist was actually capable of making good music - customers bought their albums. I'm an example of this form of marketing: before napster, I was very reticent to spend £15 on an album. At that time I had about 20 albums, of which only 5 were any good. The other 15 albums were crap - I'd heard one song by the artist on the radio, and bought their album expecting more of the same - but sadly that was usually not the case - the record company had robbed me of my money by portraying their wares as quality, when infact they were tripe. Now I have a collection approaching 250 albums. Why? Because I've been able to listen to bands recommended to me by people on the Internet - when I've heard a good song I've been able to listen to other songs by the same artist to see if they're any good. Since Napster has shut down, I've not bought many albums. Why? Because there's no way I'm going to pander to the record companies and be forced to buy masses their fraudulently marketed low-quality wares just to get the odd good album. All the evidence points to the fact that I am not unique: as you stated in your article, CD sales have decreased since the demise of Napster. Sadly, it seems that your article has failed to draw the logical conclusion to these facts. Best Regards, Ryan

Re:In response to her article

[jd142]

Point D is speculation. Correlation != Causation.

What needs to be done is a valid statistical study of Napster users to gauge cd purchasing habits before, during, and after Napster's heyday.

Anecdotal evidence on /. does not equal a valid causal relationship. I have yet to see anyone point to a study that verifies a causal relationship between Napster usage and cd sales.

why she does this?

[gerf]

I'm a student as well, and at my university, we have a school run cable service that's free. we can't get any other channels like HBO and showime or whatever. so, it's impossible for us to get sex and the city legally (unless we buy a slew of DVD's.. even if they have all the episodes...yeh right) BUT, we have this nifty network, ranked something like 21st in the country by yahoo. so, people can download episodes. is this so wrong? legally, probably yes. morally and ethically? probably not.

Daria on DVD...PLEASE!!!!

[MsGeek]

There are plenty of TV shows that I would gladly purchase on DVD. I was happy to see "Buffy the Vampire Slayer, season 1" on DVD -- not because I want to buy it, but because I'm hoping that means that shows like "Kojak, Season 1" make it.

I want to see the entire 5-season run of "Daria" on DVD. So do a lot of other people. There is an organized drive to get "Daria" out on DVD: it can be found at http://www.the-wildone.com/dvdaria/.

One way this can be helped along is by buying the DVD of "Is It Fall Yet?" the first "Daria" TV movie. Research by "Daria" fans in the UK has found that even though the DVD is marked "Region 1" that it is in reality regionless, able to be played on any DVD player or DVD-ROM drive. This is a Good Thing (tm) and suggests that anyone, anywhere in the world should go out and get the DVD.

I would give a link here but there are too many people with too many beefs against too many online merchants to where if I linked to anyone I'd get people upset, and Powell's doesn't seem to carry DVDs anyway. Just go to your favorite video online site and search for "Is It Fall Yet?" Or ask at your local video store. Since Viacom still owns Blockbuster (ugh!) they might be a likely suspect.

Another TV product that I would love to see on DVD is the TNT original movie "Pirates of Silicon Valley." Time-Warner has put it out on VHS but has yet to put it out on DVD.

The media companies need to either start RAPIDLY putting out TV content on DVD or face more of this so-called piracy. I thought that the Sony vs. Universal Pictures decision found that there was a right to not only time-shift TV programs but tape trade stuff taped off the air provided no money changes hands! So what's the fsckn prob? No profit is being made on this, and most of these programs don't have a legit video/DVD pipeline anyway. No bread is being taken out of anyone's mouth.

Re:Daria on DVD...PLEASE!!!!

[DanThe1Man]

You can download most of first four seasons of Daria here. http://cronus.spaceports.com/~alphatv/daria.html

What about content no longer available

[KerosX]

In general I am opposed to pirating video or audio content. However, in the case of most TV (broadcast) shows there are more then a few reasons you might want to download your show from the Internet that I feel are more then valid.

1> That crappy VCR that you own missed an episode because for some reason the network BHBs decided that the best time slot for your favorite show should be 3am on Monday morning and you didn't know. Of course the best way to fix this is get a Tivo!

2> By some miracle there are more the one show you want to record at the same time and your not going to be home. And of course the UPN show that you didn't record isn't going to be played again until hell freezes over. Of course you could just buy another Tivo.

3> You've heard of this amazing show that a bunch of your friends from back home are talking about, but the area you live in doesn't get that network. Of course you could send your friends a Tivo, ask them to record it for you, and have them ship it back to you.

4> You are a huge fan of a certain show and the possibility of all the episodes being released on DVD are slim to none. There have been a few gems of a TV series that I've wanted to go back and watch, but their not available on VHS/DVD/Beta for purchase, rental, or syndication. In this case the solution is a little trickier involving sending your new 2000 hour Tivo back in time.

"Of course that's just my oppinion, I could be wrong." DM

Economics

[leonia]

From http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~hgs/internet/advertisi ng.html (bottom), the advertising revenue per viewer is about 0.6c/ad/person (rounding up for inflation). If an hour program has 20 ads, this means that each lost viewer costs the TV station and/or network 12c. They could charge a quarter for an ad-free version delivered on demand and be well ahead of the game, purely financially.

What if?

[virtros]

So what would happen if the producers just made them available to the public (via the internet) with the commercials still in them. Or even provided on demand streams? there would be little need to pirate them because they would be freely available. You can't really pirate something that is freely given away...you can just mirror it. This would save me countless hours of DivXing friends (bleck!) for my girlfriend cause she has to watch it. (god knows i've tried to ween her off that #$%@ing mental fodder)

virtros

Things to remember...

[Lumpy]

in the 1970's the broadcaster and networks complained and screamed that VCR's were going to destroy their industry.. It was stealing money from them and destroying their business... they lied... In the 1970's the broadcasters and networks also screamed that Cable Television was going to destroy their industry.. it was stealing their revinue from them and destroying their industry.. They lied again. in the 1980's the broadcasters and networks screamed that sattelite Tv companies were stealing their customers and revinues and it would destroy their industry... They lied again.

They did this in the 90's with Digital Television. and Now they are doing it about PVR's and digital tv shows on the internet.

you know what? with their track record in the past of lying... it's safe to instantly assume that they are yet again .... lying...

Nothing new here...

[fred911]

1st we had smoke signals...
then we had telegraphs.....
then it was telephones......
then we had radio...........

We used to use the sneakernet to trade our favorite music on tape. Now we have compression
algos and connectivity.

There *IS* nothing new here. It's just quicker
and more convenient.

........ move on now..

Re:TV is dying

[moonbender]

I have a TiVO box and think it's great, but still watch ordinary TV because otherwise how would I ever find out what's new in the world?
Papers? Radio? Net news?

Whether you agree or not

[way0utwest]

it's not legal.

These shows are broadcast with the intent that there will be commercials viewed. These commercials provide the payment for most of these shows. I know it's different for HBO or Showtime, but that also is paid for by subscription. If too many people "trade" these shows, then the economics of the system get upset and less stuff get's produced.

None of the excuses I've seen listed are valid. And they are excuses. Don't give me this "most tv is crap" stuff. If you don't like it, don't consume it. "They don't rebroadcast it for xx years" or "they don't sell VHS/DVDs" are also not excuses. That is what the networks and producers/distributors have chosen to do.

Timeshifting has been declared legal. For personal use, not re-broadcast or re-distribution. Even giving a copy to your neighbor is illegal. And morally wrong. Your neighbor can come watch your copy. Or you can lend him your copy. But to give it to him and keep your own is "re-broadcasting" or "re-distributing" or whatever. If you remove the commercials, then you are altering the content and definitely breaking a copyright. If it's illegal to do with someone you know, it's definitely illegal to send copies to people you don't know.

If you don't like it, don't consume it. That's the best solution. That is how you let them know. By stealing it or violating copyrights (not sure of the best definition for it), you are creating a different problem and breaking the law.

Now before I get flamed, I agree with you. There are missed opportunities for the networks. If they could do pay-on-demand for episodes, maybe $1 a show, they'd make a good killing. Even if they sold the DVDs, there would be $$ to be made. Personally I don't record things or burn copies or collect episodes. I have kids and no time to worry about it. But that doesn't mean I shouldnt be able to timeshift things and watch them later. It doesn't mean that I shouldn't be able to save a copy of "Barney" from a broadcast for my kid to watch over and over. However, I shouldn't be providing this for every kid in the neighborhood.

It's ridiculous to read in the article that this young lady doesn't get cable because it's too difficult. Big, steaming pile of horse excrement. She's cheap. You have NO right to tv or entertainment. You have to pay (for the TV, the cable, whatever). And by the way, you pay for TV with the commercials.

By violating copyrights, you are impeding the progress of the system. Stop consuming and write the networks. They will learn to "sell" copies of the shows cheap, and in a more efficient manner to make money. Right now, with all the digital stealing/violating of the content, they barely want to sell in legitimate channels, let alone develop new ways to distibute content.

Re:TV is dying

[MeepMeep]

Whoops, I wasn't reading your original (A/C?) post properly...

I was actually responding to mccalli!

I think you said "If I wanted to read something differently occasionally, why wouldn't I just download some random stuff?"

Of course you can - but you have to spend time (well, at least a few minutes) downloading, par-ing and decompressing random stuff. BUT, television offers a super-easy, brainless way of skimming through random shows - just click that remote! And it only takes a few seconds...

Instead of dying, maybe television will simply become a way to preview shows that you can download the full series for off of the web?

Listen up Movie and TV Industry...

[NanoGator]

I'm a busy guy. I work a lot of extra hours. I can't base my life around TV Timeslots. On top of that, some of the shows I like to watch get preempted too easily. *cough futurama cough*

I think a lot of people feel this way. It's a huge hassle to get TV shows off the net. The valuable ones are the ones that you can't see on TV anymore! I can't see the Tick anymore. There's 7 seasons of MST3k I'll never see on TV again. This is why people turn to the net!

This isn't widespread piracy, it's a new market opening up! It's a market where people want shows when they're ready to watch them. It's called Video On Demand. If the TV Networks would realize this, they'd very quickly find a way to meet this demand and make a profit on it. Until they do, they're going to lose to PVRs and the Internet.

I refuse to call downloading an old ep of MST3K piracy because I have NO MEANS to see it otherwise. Dilbert? Nope. The original Transformers Series? Uh uh. I can't even go buy these shows. Until you provide me with a reasonable way of acquiring these shows to watch (i.e. fill up digital cable with TV show reruns or something like TV Land), then don't go bitching about anybody doing it. Your 'lost revenue' is directly related to your own shortsightedness, not because people want to steal.

And what if you *can't* see the show?

[edremy]

I like Futurama. I want to watch Futurama. I can't watch Futurama on my TV, since I don't get TV reception at my house (hills+trees), cable doesn't run there and I can't get network programming on my satellite dish. (Waiver pending, but I've already been denied once.) So if I want to see it I have to pirate it. Ditto Family Guy.

I can't be the only one in this boat. The one good thing is that I now realize how useless network programming is: other than the two shows listed, Monday Night Football and the Olympics there's nothing on that I care about.

Pffft

[HunterZ]

If they want me to stop downloading TV episodes off of the Internet, they're either going to have to:

A) Pay the local TV stations to upgrade me from a "grade B" coverage area to something that lets me pick up more than 1 channel on my homemade Jesus-mount antenna, or

B) Pay my apartment place to give me free cable. No way am I gonna pay for cable that has 3 all-sports networks but not the Sci-Fi channel! WTF?

Anime too

[cryptochrome]

The situation is similar for anime here in the US. Rather than waiting years for a particular show or movie to show up (IF it shows up) in the US, independent groups of fans capture, subtitle, and distribute them for free.

They generally dub to high bitrate and high resolution DivX files, which are viewable on most any computer that has the processing power for it, but still not the same as doing it on TV. The quality of the subtitles has also become increasingly good - even professional - over the years. Of course these are watchable for anyone that speaks english, and there are other groups who work with other languages too. In fact the most difficult part is the trading and distribution of these files, which is pretty haphazard and often results in corrupted files since there is no error checking and correction, and the fact that you watch them on the computer rather than the TV (which is acceptable to many).

So the moral of the story is? TV, movie, and video producers - get your asses together and make your products available to anyone and everyone in the world at the same price simultaneously (within a week of each other), or quit your bitching. It ain't piracy if it ain't available in the first place. And if you don't want to put money into a translation, give people some way to add independent subs/dubs to it.

Re:Anime too

[Monte]

TV, movie, and video producers - get your asses together and make your products available to anyone and everyone in the world at the same price simultaneously (within a week of each other),

Why? Their scheme is working beautifully! Let's say some anime you really liked was available in the US, but it costs 15% more than what the locals pay for it. Would you fork over the dough?

The market sets the price. I see no reason to expect that to change.

or quit your bitching. It ain't piracy if it ain't available in the first place.

Oh please. Lack of supply doesn't justify piracy any more than it justifies your going to Japan and holding up an anime store.

Re:Anime too

[cryptochrome]

The locals pay $0 for most of their anime, since it's on TV. Incidentally, 15% of $0 is also $0. I would have no problem paying that.

Nor would I wouldn't mind spending slightly more for anime when it does cost (movies and OVAs), in the relevant context. That is, if I can see it in the theater or rent it. I hardly ever watch anything more than once, so there's never any point in me buying the videos.

Oh wait... you mean to say there ARE no anime movies in the theaters, except perhaps a few arthouse releases in big cities? That the only anime videos at my local rental locations are a couple of the best films, hentai, pokemon, and a handful of ancient titles? And that all the anime that is on TV is heavily edited and dubbed? Hmm. So, should I watch anime a week or two after it comes out with good fansubs and decent quality, or wait years for the same title to come out edited for my protection with crappy dubbing and dubtitles. What to do, what to do...

What people so often fail to appreciate is that "the market" is about more than just the price. Companies are free to let their actuaries pick prices for the maximum possible profits, and take as long as they want to do so, but the more people they leave out in the cold the more people are going to find ways to get it at prices they WILL pay. That's why black markets happen. And it the companies weren't so busy maximizing their profit equations, and instead charged at a fair price accessible to all, no one would bother to create the markets that undermine their carefully calculated strategies.

Re:Anime too

[Monte]

What to do, what to do...

You've already made your decision obviously - what I object to is your rationalizing that because you can't get your anime fix it's perfectly acceptable and right that you should pirate it.

There is another answer, which is legal and moral: Get over it. The world does not owe you entertainment.

Re:Anime too

[cryptochrome]

I fail to see how my tendency to spend as little money for the most product is any less moral than industries tendency to get as much profit for the least product. I'm simply treating them with as much respect as they treat me. And I find it hard to take copyright law seriously lately, which industry has been litigizing and lobbying into their favor, away from its original purpose of promoting the progress of science and the useful arts.

The entertainment industry does not owe me entertainment. (The world doesn't owe me anything, nor I it.) But neither are they owed control over their immaterial creations.

Digital dreams

[darklink]

Every one has a digital dream. Something they would like to see happen. Personaly mine is a real stable and supple 5mps board band. And that is just short term. The problem is ethics , and inforcing of ethics so that not only do persons that pirite but also large companys do not take advantage of populas.

Some times i cant watch tv , I have to watch DVDs becouse the amount of commircals take up so much its hard to follow the plot of a show. I have watched gundam X on the computer and enjoyed it.
I couldn't get a dvd of it or else i would have.

A few more things have to happen before one can really say this is a true threat to tv though.

1.Higher speed dependable connections.
2.Large and or better file flormats.
3.A system to suport the shows.

To support the larger and or more fequent downloads people have to share and well they have to have a good high speed connection or else 30 mins of video tolls up to 10 years in download time. Maybe we need a better , maybe we need it stronger. Privacy, dependable , larger pipes. once this happends it is going to be hard to stop even movie trading.

Point two. As for this i have downloaded some real player flormateed things , and the screen is the size of a postit note. If you enlarge it is to grainy. after this experiance i started going for the larger downloads. The quality needs improvment. MP3 has come along way , now video is in demand. how long till we get high quality digital streams? TV quaility is not the best but it isnt the worst. and how will this be affected by HDTV and dtv? how will it be ratified. Could you infact copywrite protect digital shows?

Third.
Could you set up a company where when you pay for cable you could spend 10 bucks more to elementate commircals? I mean there trying to add more as is. This is just a new annoyance to me. I would pay for ad free cable. I like tv and i like some of the shows that come out. I dont like making starving artists out of them but i also do not enjoy corparate time warner making me pay for more commical time if i go with cable or dss.

So far i support the swapping becouse i cant get some shows out where i live at the moment. I dont even mind the commircials if i get content i would enjoy watching.

This will be one to watch.

dg

Re:TV is dying

[mccalli]

Papers? Radio? Net news?

Entertainment, not news shows...

Cheers,
Ian

for PERSONAL use only

[RatFink100]

Copying for personal use is fair use.

Copying and sharing with another is not.

Re:for PERSONAL use only

[bort13]

Bullshit.
IANAL, but I can read the code. Title 17, Section 1, subsection 109:
Section 109. Limitations on exclusive rights: Effect of transfer of particular copy or phonorecord

(a) Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106(3), the owner of a particular copy or phonorecord lawfully made under this title, or any person authorized by such owner, is entitled, without the authority of the copyright owner, to sell or otherwise dispose of the possession of that copy or phonorecord.

[e.g. I can even charge for the cost of the tape and my time spent taping it. In 107(4), it specifies that Fair Use by anyone is considered in relation to "the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work." As long as I'm not significantly hindering business, I'm free to make personal copies and distribute them to friends.]

And 106(3) says:
Section 106. Exclusive rights in copyrighted works
Subject to sections 107 through 120, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:
[snip]
(3) to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;

So, to recap: TV Networks broadcast copyrighted content under 106(3), I make a VHS copy for personal use under 107(4), and I give it to friends under 109(a) at the reasonable cost of $0.

Why the industry is scared and why you should be.

[Erris]

It's scared because it wants you to have to watch hours of crap everyday. If you could get what you wanted, when you wanted you would not be tempted to wait for something worthwhile and you would continue to soak up hours of adverts every day. This will destroy their revenue stream because their affiliates would no nonger be able to charge.

Their only recourse is to own the internet itself and forbid all "servers". Gee, that kind of looks like the new Cox.net Terms of Service. Time/Warner AOL ToS anyone? I suppose the Bells will co-operate if the cable companies keep people from using their bandwith for long distance voice comunications. M$ might make some money collecting extortion fees from various media companies to protect content with the new XP EULA and Digital Rights Denial Patents. Looky there, all the big publishing interests CAN be happy with new technology after all. What a deal, all use of your bandwith is stripped, you computer is a TV.

Kinda sucks life. All I want to do is run my own mail, and share pictures of my two month old girl with my friends and family. No can do, those tools make me a Pirate and endanger the profits of major publishers. I don't watch TV.

Using Slashdot as a source...

[raindog2]

I always wondered how reporters were able to canvass for hackers in this kind of story; it's hard to imagine them hanging out on IRC channels asking for interviews without getting /kicked pretty fast.

But I got an email from the author of this Time article a few weeks back after I mentioned getting all of B5:Crusade on two CD's in a /. post. It went to one of my spam-catcher addresses so I didn't see it until much later. I was surprised, though, as the story seemed pretty balanced considering it appeared in an AOLTW property. And it probably reads better with a guy like "Necratog" editing out commercials in vdub rather than some schmuck from Albany, New York ;)

From: anita_hamilton@[no, I'm not that cruel]
To: webmaster@kudla.org
Date: Thu, 07 Feb 2002 23:40:35 -0500
Subject: TIME Magazine Interview request

Hi Rob,

I noticed that you posted a message on Slashdot about how you were able
to save Babylon 5 shows, convert them to digital, edit out the
commericals, and burn them onto CDs. Well, it turns out that I too am
writing a story about this topic and wondered if you could tell me more
about how you did it and how easy it was.
Would you be interested in talking on the phone for a few minutes about
it? If so, I wondered if we could talk sometime Friday or Saturday. It
should take less than 15 minutes total.

If you are interested, please let me know when is a god time for me to
give you a call.

Thanks for considering this,

Anita Hamilton
Staff Writer
TIME Magazine
212/[xxx-xxxx]

Re:TV is dying

[Thing 1]

I have a TiVO box and think it's great, but still watch ordinary TV because otherwise how would I ever find out what's new in the world?

I have a ReplayTV (a couple years old, model 2020), and I almost never watch live TV (I watched CNN live for a couple months, but "the war" is mostly over now, at least until we invade Iraq).

However, I've been catching new shows that I like, such as "24" and "Smallville" (damn them for scheduling those at the same time, I had to dust off my VCR!).

How? The former through advertising -- I use the 30-second skip button for commercials, but networks have gotten smart enough to put commercials for their upcoming shows in the advertising slot immediately before the show comes back on, and I generally rewind to see those ads. (They're also smart enough to put movie commercials first rather than, say, food or cleaning products which I would skip over. I almost never go to the movies, but it's nice to know what titles will be available to rent in a couple months.)

Smallville I had heard about, but a friend's recommendation started me watching. Back when "24" was broadcast Tuesday nights, then re-broadcast on Friday, I would record it on Friday and get Smallville on Tuesday.

So for a couple years it hadn't been an issue, but it's now looking like dual tuners must be in the next ReplayTV-type device I purchase. (Friends and Family Guy is a tough battle for Fox; perhaps they want to kill FG by putting it up against Friends? In my view Friends has been going downhill, so I don't both to VCR it.)

This got a little long, but I'm just showing through my own anecdotal life that the problem you describe is easily solvable without resorting to watching live TV.

Oh, and I wouldn't have thought to watch The Tick except that I saw it mentioned and discussed here.

Dear MPAA, RIAA and TV Execs

[t_allardyce]

I may have come to your attention that you are beeing affected by piracy. Let me make this clear: You _are_ f*cked, you will loose to piracy, and there is nothing you can do about it. We will carry on buying Tivos, and we will build our own if we have to, we won't stop filesharing and we won't stop pirating. If you try and design protection systems, you will fail - there are thousends of people who will spend months breaking your puny systems and some of them are probably the jokers who designed them for you and took your money LOL. You can't ban the Internet, you can't stop people copying what they can see and you can't control our lives. As far as most of us are conserned, we don't care if piracy is wrong, get this: WE DON'T CARE. You will probably loose money and eventually, some of you could even go out of business, we don't care. Big actors and singers won't be able to afford their limos and drugs, we don't care. Infact, there is currently only one way you can pursuade me to stick with you, that is give me TV that is such amazingly hi-resolution, and quality, that i won't want to watch inferior versions from the internet.

We've Been This For A Long Time . . . Sort Of

[Beatnick]

Look how many sites already exist where we can find snippets of sound or sound/video already well long before the Napsters, etc. Sites like those haven't been "policed" to shutdown. I can name several right off the top of my head that have been up for 4+ years.

You may be on to something....

[WinPimp2K]

Also, does a TV network have a right to control my memory of the show so they can make sure I remember the commercials along with the plot line?
They do not have a right to do so, but by broadcasting "content" that is strongly reminiscent of the nonliquid end product of a mammilian digestive tract, the commercials may be more entertaining and therefore memorable. Or have we already forgotten what TIVO told us about the replay habits of Superbowl fans. (If they are such fans of the freaking game, why replay the darn commercials and not the "big plays"?)

At least, that is my paranoid take on the topic

Cable providers and anti-trust

[General_Zipper]

In the final chapter of his book "High Stakes, No Prisoners," Charles Ferguson discusses the anti-competitive behavior of cable and telecom companies. This issue is a perfect example of his point (which I will paraphrase since I'm not as brilliant as he is).

Here we have a clear public desire for digital access to programming and what is the industries response? Litigation. Do you think cable companies are looking at ways to beef up our internet bandwidth (which would truly benefit consumers) or provide these services in a fair (and legal) way that would also make them a reasonable profit? Doubtful. Ferguson argues that cable providers don't understand the internet and fear it, and I think he makes a good argument.

Together with the phone companies, these industries have no desire to provide either faster internet access or lower costs for the consumer. In their view, doing so will lead to more program piracy and hurt the phone industry as voice-over-IP makes them obsolete. Neither industry is in a position to reshape themselves to handle this (not so) new technology.

Why isn't Justice looking at these companies?

Viewing figure information

[Rogerborg]

For those interested, in the UK, viewing figures are collated by the Broadcaster' Audience Research Board. The system monitors minute by minute (catching commercial hopping), and it also fingerprints VCR recordings, and identifies them when they are played back. BARB figures are collated nightly, are available the very next day, and BARB also takes great care to ensure that their sample viewers are demographically representative.

The trouble is, new technology is a real pain for them. The UK has been slow to jump on the channel-explosion bandwagon, but we're there with a vengeance now. Viewing figures are currenty in a real mess, partly because BARB was stonewalled on getting access to some set top boxes. In fact, it's an open secret that their figures for digital TV have been pretty much a big old guesstimate for the past couple of years.

Nobody likes that. BARB doesn't like it, because their subscribers wonder why they're paying for the data. The networks don't like it, because advertisers assume that bad data means viewing figures are being overestimated (which appears to be true as the new BARB system comes on line). Advertisers don't like it, because they don't know how many eyeballs they're getting (and remember, they've been getting minute-by-minute, they do know when we're channel hopping).

And now here comes digital VCR's and looking forward, DVD recorders. BARB can currently fingerprint VCR recordings, but that's a no brainer using a simple in-line analogue device, like a non-invasive Macromedia. But digital, phew, that's a whole new ballgame. Who knows how Replays and TIVO's (and other digital tech) filters or compress information. Even if you can insert the watermark, it might be stripped or mangled on replay. It might give you garbage, or it might give you the wrong show. And if your sample viewer decides to plug in a PC with TV capture/out cards, god knows what data you're going to get.

I wonder if the big issue that networks (et al) have with digital VCR's is simply that they don't know what a very small number of people are watching on them. The BARB sample size is something like 0.025% of the UK population. It's possible that they don't really give a rat's arse about what the other 99.975% of us are watching or doing with them, just that they're screwing the figures for the sample group. After all, that's really all that matters to them, materially.

The concern might not be about what we're doing with new technology, merely that it exists, and they can't keep up with it.

Creative Business Models

[FreeUser]

A simple solution would be for the TV Network's to make the shows avaliable (with adds) on a bunch of fast servers.

Absolutely right.

The reason the Copyright Cartels (specifically the Television, Movie, and Recording industries) are running scared is because none of their current leadership has any skills at running a business in anything other than a coercive, cartel form.

Alternatives do exist, but they either don't have the imagination to explore them, or are so addicted to their own coercive power that they would rather destroy the most promising, democratizing and empowering technology to emerge in the last 100 years, the Internet, and our constitutional rights to free expression, rather than change their business models.

What business model(s) would work, you ask? For television (and, for that matter, movies) offering commercia laden television programs for free, exactly as they do now. Only, except requiring cable providors or broadcast stations to disseminate their product, they can do so via the internet (and without middlemen).

Offer the same content for a nominal fee (say $1.00, or 1 Euro) without any commercial content.

Mark each downloaded copy with registration information (the user's name and IP address they downloaded to). That is all the copy protection that is required, and it works beautifully (if not perfectly) in the digital world of software. People are much more reluctant to share illegal copies of software that are marked with their identity in some fashion than they are anonymous products (such as clean rips from a firewire port).

None of this is perfect, but it is very workable and people would eat it up. Their revinues would, if anything, increase over time.

Similar approaches could be used by the recording industry, if they were intelligent enough to get their heads out of their asses and stop persuing copy prevention schemes which have been demonstrated both empirically and mathematically to NOT work, and instead embed the purchaser's name and/or ip in the audio stream itself.

Unfortunately this requires imagination, flexibility, and both business and technical savvy, something that is woefully lacking at the upper levels of the copyright cartels. They would rather simply purchase laws from our cheaply sold congress, and shred the constitution in the process.

Re:Creative Business Models

[Timmeh]

Mark each downloaded copy with registration information (the user's name and IP address they downloaded to). That is all the copy protection that is required, and it works beautifully (if not perfectly) in the digital world of software. People are much more reluctant to share illegal copies of software that are marked with their identity in some fashion than they are anonymous products (such as clean rips from a firewire port).

Well, what's stopping me from running it through virtualdub, removing the watermark or whatever. The only way they could get around that would be to brand your IP somewhere. If it was just in the corner, I'd be tempted to just crop it out. If they made it so big that you couldn't crop it out without missing important parts of the show I know I wouldn't stand for it; the same way I wouldn't stand for a FOX logo taking up a quarter of my television screen.

So yeah, you're right in saying that none of this is perfect, but I just don't see any way of it really working out so that both the content's creators and viewers are sufficiently satisfied.

Re:Creative Business Models

[roystgnr]

Offer the same content for a nominal fee (say $1.00, or 1 Euro) without any commercial content.

When I digitally record television on my own, it takes me maybe five minutes to cut out the commercials. At least one person downloading your free commercial laden programs will decide that a dollar is worth more than five minutes of his time, and the commercial-free copy he makes will then be available for everybody else as well.

Similar approaches could be used by the recording industry, if they were intelligent enough to get their heads out of their asses and stop persuing copy prevention schemes which have been demonstrated both empirically and mathematically to NOT work, and instead embed the purchaser's name and/or ip in the audio stream itself.

This is called a "watermark", and the recording industry is putting a lot of research into failed attempts to figure out how to make such an embedding unremovable, despite the fact that such a thing seems to be mathematically impossible.

Re:Creative Business Models

[FreeUser]

At least one person downloading your free commercial laden programs will decide that a dollar is worth more than five minutes of his time, and the commercial-free copy he makes will then be available for everybody else as well.

[...]

This is called a "watermark", and the recording industry is putting a lot of research into failed attempts to figure out how to make such an embedding unremovable

You make my point for me. The recording industry, indeed all of the copyright cartels, have their heads placed firmly, and deeply, within their intestinal tracts.

Call it a watermark if you like ... such embedding of licensing information has been used by commercial software manufacturers for over a decade. They don't have to be impossible to remove! If it is merely non-trivial, that will suffice. You will never stop determined copyright violators who are technically savvy. Never. Not with a thousand DMCAs, not with a million Hague Conventions, not with a billion lawsuits. Probably not even with summary execution (and even if you could, who would want to live in such a world, merely to protect the profits of a few outdated cartels?).

99% of the users would not be willing to share their recorded copies of broadcasts or movies with anyone other than a close friend or family member (which is legal in most jurisdictions outside of the ever-more-draconian United States), if their name is attached to the recording. 99% of said users won't have the knowledge, patience, or inclination to go hacking into a video or audio stream to remove their identity.

It is simply a license stamp, as has been done for years. It works remarkably well with software, despite the fact that a hex editor will allow you to remove most such identifiers.

Why? First, because there is possibly a record of sale of such and such serial number to such and such a credit card, so removing the identity, or "watermark" if you really want to use that inaccurate term, doesn't guarantee the software can't be tracked back to you if a copy appears somewhere else and, two, people would rather feel secure and just not distribute something illegally if there is even a small chance they'll get caught.

The DMCA, Watermarking, encryption, all that nonsense is unnecessary. It won't stop the serious copyright violators, and the casual violators will be stopped by something much simpler: a serial numbered copy of the software sold to them, with the explicit inclusion of their identity to drive home the fact that, if a copy of their recording appears somewhere on the net, the might be tracked down and held accountable. It has worked for years, in a medium where copyright violation is trivial and has been a fact of life for years.

Re:TV is dying

[castlan]

I have yet to use any PVR services, but from what I understand they can make recommendations of shows that you are likely to enjoy based on your viewing habits. I am not sure if you can opt out for privacy reasons. But a better alternative to stagnation might be to turn the TV off now and then.

-castlan

Decline of CD sales

[Hostile17]

Last year CD sales declined for the first time in a decade.

This was my favorite line in the article. It blames the decline of CD sales on music sharing, but misses the more obvious cause, Bad Economic Times. It may be true that people are getting thier music online rather than buying the CD, but given the choice between spending $20 on a CD, which probably has 1 or 2 songs I like, and buying food for my family, or puting gas in my car, guess what, I'll download the 2 songs I want, buy food for my children, and fill my gas tank. If downloading the music wasn't an option, guess what, I still wouldn't buy the CD. Maybe if the Music Industry would allow us to buy singles, either online or on CD, at a reasonable price, I'd be inclined to skip my lunch one day (my lunch, not my childrens) to buy the 1 or 2 songs I like.

Not a missed opportunity

[royalblue_tom]

> will that cover the cost of pressing and marketing the discs?

That's missing the point - those 10,000 people don't need marketing to, as they will actively hunt down the product. It's a case of the pressing - if it were available, I just ring the owner, send him the X dollar/pound/euro tarrif, and they'll send me a copy.

I can appreciate the syndication argument, but it doesn't hold water with the hard to find, "not worth our while to produce on DVD/VHS" shows. So they get "made available" through other means.

And, of course, then people think, since that was OK, we can do it for mainstream shows. And now the "it's not worth our while" crowd suddenly take note. But its too late.

And isn't that just a shame ...

And for all that, I'm still not in favour of people ripping off popular, premium (not aired to public) shows. But if it's broadcast to the masses - then it's fair game (gone public).

Easy:

[big_groo]

Study. That's why you're there. You'll thank me in 10 years.

This is NOT Napster

[namespan]

While this is peer-to-peer trading, there are several important differences from Napster.

First of all, there really wasn't a large-market device for capturing _broadcast_ music (I've often wondered why, because the number of times I've heard something wonderful on the radio that I won't hear again for months or perhaps EVER has been waaay too many). There was no "time-shifting" argument.

Second of all, most of the available material on Napster was available for purchase. Yes, there were the live/bootleg/rare recordings, which I enjoyed as much as anyone, but I don't think that was the majority. Most of it seemed to be off of ripped CDs.

However, for a lot of the TV shows, there is no medium to rip from. The shows aren't available for purchase.

It's interesting that rather than see this as a great opportunity, TV studios get scared and try to wipe it out. There's quite OBVIOUSLY a market here, and filling it wouldn't be all that hard....

Actually its popularity

[Cyno]

It's not popularity that makes money for the networks, it's advertising

I think the price for advertizing on these networks is in relation to the number of viewers they have during various timeslots. Reasons why advertisements at the olympics or superbowl are so expensive, etc. Its true you can't make much money without advertising, but you can't make much money advertising if you don't have any viewers. And that's where TV is headed when broadband catches on. We'll be able to get a ton of content that interrests us without the commercial aspect. It'll kill their ratings and hopefully the cable networks. At least that's what I think.

Re:Actually its popularity

[roybadami]

And that's where TV is headed when broadband catches on. We'll be able to get a ton of content that interrests us without the commercial aspect. It'll kill their ratings and hopefully the cable networks

Unfortunately, you won't, since in the US most new content is largely funded by the networks.

What people want..

[nolife]

Do not underestimate the power of the people. The bottom lines is, when people want something, they will find it or create a method to get it in the form they want it in. With or without the so called innovation of the big players. MP3 and TV episode swapping are two perfect examples. I feel the big corporations and media giants are too far away from the public and fighting a loosing battle. They want to control what you watch and when you watch it. Much to thier dismay, this is not what the people want!! No amount of marketing and manipulation can change that. How many pay for play, streaming this and that business models are going to fail before they wake up? With the distibution snafu they created for media, how are they going to overcome the overhead to distribute and control on demand media at a cost that people will be willing to pay for it?

True, recording just feeds demand...

[aquarian]

...and that's what these morons haven't figured out. The kind of fan that records or trades for recordings is the one that will watch a second, third, or fourth time when the show is on the air, even if they have the recording. Their trading activity gets other fans involved, creating a cult around the show. This cult atmosphere just feeds on itself, and can keep a show alive long after it should have been planted.

Some of the most successful shows in the last 10 years- the X-files, Ally McBeal, The Simpsons, Friends, the Star Treks, have all benefitted from this cult of collectors and home recorders.

Hrm

[Timmeh]

The first shocker, of course, was the trivial cracking of DeCSS...

Cracking DeCSS? So who edits that rag? Malda?

A very simple solution to Hollywoods problem

[racerx509]

There is a very simple way to eliminate this problem. Make it free! While this may sound like slashdot FUD, just listen for a minute. If the hollywood studios were to set up high bandwidth servers, downloading/streaming videos at 1000kbps 1mb/s, and on down in multiple formats such as DiVx, Mpeg, Windows Media, Real and Quicktime, for free, I bet users would jump on it. WHile this may sound rediculous, here is the best part! Include commercials! Make it an exact mirror of the television broadcast! If I find a video online streaming/downloading from a t3, I'd rather leech from that than go on Morpheus. Likewise, I (and most people) wouldn't want to expend the time and effort to strip out a few commercials, when the content is so readily available. Another thing they could try is to put different advertisers in the webcast ala tv. Break the video up when streaming, at the normal commercial junctions and insert your own commercials. They can measure the amount of users downloading/streaming a video at specific times and voila instant prime time. Sell this time just like tv time to the highest ad bidders. Its just like prohibition when you think about it. Give people reasonable laws, and they'll obey them.

The thing that bothers me the most, is that they pay executives millions of dollars and I'm sitting here on my ass in my underware thinking this stuff up.

Germany

[Tomcat666]

In Germany, the episodes get voice-synchronized to German. I don't know if they do this in other countries too, but I don't like it for most of the time. Not only do we have to wait for 2003 to see Enterprise, it will also be with bad German translation again (although it's okay sometimes). I prefer watching the shows in English.

indeed...

[MenTaLguY]

Not funny. All of the tools that home users can use to create media can also be used for unauthorized copying.

We're going to start seeing all media creation tools taken from us if we're not careful.

My TV station doesn't play fair, why should I

[EvilBastard]

I live in Australia. They screened the first episode of Alias last week.

It was 7 and a half minutes shorter then the one I have on SVCD. I'd told around four dozen people to watch the show based on the preview that I'd gotten, and they watched a episode that was hacked to shreads.

The Buffy Musical is coming soon. That's going to be 9 minutes shorter then the one I have on SVCD according to the same station.

Channel 10 has once reportedly played an episode of the Simpsons without editing anything out, but noone has managed to prove it. Normally they edit around 40 to 90 seconds from each episode, including most Itchy and Scratchy jokes for the 6:00pm timeslot. They haven't shown Futurama in 2 and a half years.

For amusement, take a DVD of a normal film, and play it at the same time the same film is on TV. Pause for breaks, and 9 time out of 10 the TV show will finish before the DVD does, due to overcranking and microcuts.

We are talking about TV Stations that take 30-minute comedies, and show one episode, then half of the next episode to fill the hour, then next week you see the other half of the episode.

If the damn TV stations are not going to show me the full episode so they can get their 12 1/2 minutes of ads in per hour, then I'll just keep downloading the original episodes until they learn to break out of their "Show Must End at 8:30 / 9:30 / 10:30" mindset.

And if they keep increasing the amount and the VOLUME of ads, then that just means I'll burn the CD's and share them with everyone else, who then gives me their shows they got this week, and we all save wear and tear on our volume control.

If the vendor reduces the quality of the service they provide, I'm choosing to get the same product from another location, even though it's costing me $3-$10 per episode.

Re:My TV station doesn't play fair, why should I

[Bosconian]

Of course, the show may also be time-compressed. There was an earlier article on here or Geeknews about it, but 7-9 min is an awful lot--I don't think they can do that without chipmunking.

Re:My TV station doesn't play fair, why should I

[EvilBastard]

Nope, Alias was cut, other shows are being sped up though, and the pitch dropped again to avoid the chipmunk effect. That's only good for a few minutes in a normal film though

Alias had flat out *stupid cuts* like :

SVCD : Sydney goes running down stairs, sees steel door, shoots hinges, shouldercharges door open

7 : Sydney goes running down stairs, shouldercharges steel door open

SVCD : Sydney is shown dying her hair red to match the stolen passport, turning up at the airport, pretending to be an airhead at the counter then sitting on the plane

7 : Sydney is shown turning up at the airport with new haircolor, then is shown sitting on the plane

We are talking really obvious cuts for anyone who had seen the original episode before...

Oh well, time to burn another set of episodes 1-14 to spread around.

The Consumers just beat the networks to the punch

[Varr]

Note: This is an extremely long topic, so I cannot claim to have checked thoroughly to verify that this hasn't been brought up already, and if so, I apologise for my redundancy. Otherwise, read on...

It wasn't that long ago that the internet was big in everyone's minds, and the ideas of how this 'new' technology could be applied were coming fast and furious. One of the much touted ideas (I recall seeing several commercials from different companies demonstrating how this might work) was that of "TV-on-demand". The idea behind this being of course, that you could watch whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted, by simply requesting it.

You don't hear much about this idea recently. Possibly the networks/corporations don't want to take credit for an idea which has found realisation in a solution provided by the consumers.

It's a natural desire to have a show that is normally unavailable, or somehow inconvenient to be viewed at the time of broadcast, made available at a time convenient.

The networks and their sponsors may complain about the legalities of the issue, but what really eats them is that the consumers beat them to it.

Hey, I download the stuff.

[DJTodd242]

But I also buy the VHS/DVD's as they become available. Last year I was actively participating in getting every existing episode of Dr. Who capped.

Did I stop buying the commercially available tapes? Nope. As it's been stated, I'd rather watch TV on my TV.

But until the Beeb gets around to releasing the last of the Baker videos, I'll happily watch them in DivX.

The Time Site was Hacked

[ChenLing]

hehe...someone apparently made a somewhat subtle hack to the article. On the first page, about 2/3rds down, in the paragraph starting with 'In Napster's heyday, pirated TV shows were a rarity on the Net. '. Read the last sentence in that paragraph. :)

Why the poor need free TV

[pyramid termite]

Oh, and if anyone argues that this somehow 'disenfranchises' the poor,

It wouldn't disenfranchise them - it would simply force them to make their own "entertainment", possibly out on the streets. They would no longer be docile and preoccupied. They might even starting thinking for themselves.

There was a reason the Romans gave away bread and circuses ...

Re:Why the poor need free TV

[stubob]

And you don't see the correlation to network tv, radio and McDonalds?

All hail Constantine, I mean Bush!

Just two legit uses??

[symplegades]

As long as Sonicblue and Morpheus can demonstrate just two legitimate uses of their products...they could win their lawsuits

Am I missing something? I don't recall any "two legitimate uses" clause in the DMCA.

Does anyone know what they're referring to? And, if this "two use" exception exists, was it brought up during the DeCSS proceedings?

-Rene Ruiz

Re:Just two legit uses??

[J. Random Software]

The DMCA makes circumventing "effective" copy prevention a "crime" of its own--it doesn't matter whether the underlying use is infringement or not.

You are missing the point.

[natslovR]

People aren't just pirating crap quality tiny caps.

A 200meg VCD of a 'half hour' SouthPark episode will look just as good when viewed on your 32" television through your DVD player as the original episode would look when viewed on your 32" television but over your cable tv connection.

The only difference is once you've finished watching the VCD you downloaded off the net you can watch it again, rewind/fastforward, and there's no adverts.

While a lot of the stuff traded on morpheus may be crap quality, there are plenty of VCD/SVCD caps of TV shows that you wouldn't be able to tell the difference over cable tv, assuming that there is some deterioration in quality.

It's not just cartoons like southpark that look good. The VCDs I've seen of Sex&TheCity look better on my TV than the free to air broadcasts we get here in Australia, and i can see NO DIFFERENCE over the DVD of season 1 & 2 that I have seen. But maybe that's just me.

Re:You are missing the point.

[Grendel Drago]

Yep. Broadband + IRC + CD Toaster + APEX AD-1500 = Sweet Sweet Quality.

Re:TV is dying

[mccalli]

You certainly won't find out what's new in the world by watching TV.

Caused confusion twice now. I meant as in "What's new in the world of TV?". People do need to know this in order for viewing habits to change, otherwise "I love Lucy" would have lasted forever...

Cheers,
Ian

Third Reason

[N8F8]

People who work odd hours and find it easier do download the program than program the VCR.

Big Pussy?

[mgblst]

Using custom software to track copyright violations, it also found 4,000 sites for The Simpsons and 2,000 for The Sopranos. Big Pussy is not going to like that!

What's my wife go to do with all of this?

Follow the successful free software model

[Random Hamster]

The TV channels should give the programs away free, with the source code - er, sorry, scripts and shooting scripts, allow anyone to modify them and redistribute them free....

.... and charge for support.

Wherez da Warez?

[Grendel Drago]

Go on DalNet (#simpsons-central, #futurama-central, #x-files-central, #blahfoobar-central...)and either wait in one of those interminable queues or suck it up and donate half your cable-modem bandwidth as an fserve in exchange for sweet, sweet FTP access.

--grendel drago

Re:Wherez da Warez?

[Bitsy Boffin]

donate half your cable-modem bandwidth as

I wish, in NZ we can only get a capped cable connection (by capped, I mean after 5g of traffic in a month start paying 20c a meg (yes, MEG)).

I have found that the FastTrack network (Morpheus, Kazaa...) is now much more effective than queuing on IRC - just wish Kazaa would bring back the linux client.

not that accurate...

[issachar]

the article claims that you download a whole episode in as little as ten minutes. horse-hockey! Morpheus is quick, but not that quick.

Interestingly, I've seen a few websites that are posting entire episodes of shows claiming that since they are only thumbnails since they reduce the screen to such a small size. Interesting, but I'm not sure that's what the court had in mind when it said that thumbnails were legal.

Valenti = Ass

[Grendel Drago]

"We're fighting our own terrorist war," said Mr. Valenti, whose lawyers sent 54,000 letters to Internet service providers last year requesting the removal of copyrighted material from customers' Web sites...

And here I thought our "president" had a monopoly on the Terrorism Tie-In Business.

'Cause, you know, iSO-NeWS kiddies blow up buildings and shit.

Hell, you've got to watch out for all those college students, ready to tear open the throat of an unsuspecting TV exec.

Will someone explain to me why Jack Valenti couldn't find a more reputable line of work, such as peddling his ass for urine-soaked cigarette butts?

--grendel drago

cry me a river

[poemofatic]

Every person who chooses to watch Sopranos by downloading instead of subscribing to the services is taking money out of the pocket of HBO.

Every person who chooses to watch Sopranos by..

watching the show at their friend's house

borrowing it from a lending library

borrowing a tape from a friend

watching (future) reruns on another channel

..instead of subscribing to the services is taking money out of the pocket of HBO.

There is always a public space: libraries, friends, free boradcast outlets
...and a commercial space: hbo

Now hbo, when analyzing their market size, knows that the public space can cut into the private space, and so it adds services and convenience to offset this. It's not revolutionary to assume that changing technologies can expand the public space, and hbo needs to adjust their marketing startegy accordingly.

It cuts both ways, changing technology forced people to buy several copies of the same thing: vhs --> dvd, lp--> cd

And changing technology often creates entirely new markets: movies, radio, tv, cable

So sometimes the public space shrinks and sometimes it grows in proportion. It's not theft, it's not taking money out of anyone's pockets, since no one has a right to be profitable.

Cable owes it's existance to a cool new distribution medium, which definately cuts into the profits of the broadcast networks. boohoo. Note that in the beginning cable did nothing but recycle old tv leftovers.

Perhaps the tables are turning again, and now ISP's, websites which stream media on demand, and those who sell bandwidth/hard drives will cut into HBO subscription rates. boohoo.

other way around

[poemofatic]

actually, it's the ad revenues which drive up the costs.

There's nothing in the laws of physics that require that the cast of friends get $1,000,000/episode. That figure is determined by the add revenues. The only required costs are those for film, make up, food and lodging for the actors/producers. The other stuff is determined by market forces arguing over a potential revenue stream. Same for sporting events.

The many well produced foreign films, which were created in a different economy for under $100,000,000 testify to this. And magazines were highly profitable in the last century and they derived the bulk of their revenues from subscriptions. The only problem is when market forces inflate salaries and then revenues drop for the newcomers. The problem is from a time lag in a nonlinear feedback response, since markets are very chaotic. The costs inherent in the content or medium are very low.

Re:Um. That's not a high speed connection!

[porges]

Yeah, that guy's downloading, but the other guy's uploading, and he's being capped, which is common if not universal for home broadband connectivity.

Re:TV is dying

[Pentagram]

Seems reasonable. Wow - disagreement ends in consensus on /. :)

Capitalism! God I love it!

[Monte]

The media companies still have their heads in the sand, they need to wake up and see that the world's a small place now.

Ahh, but they do know this - that's why they put the region codes in there in the first place: different regions have different demand for U.S. content. So they have to sell low where there's not much demand, but they can crank up the price where there's a real craving. In order to keep the big-demand people from buying the low-demand (cheaper) disks, in go the region codes.

These media people are pricks, but they're smart pricks.

ATM fees

[Monte]

Yet, I can still buy paper checks for about $0.02 USD each and have unlimited free checking, but to use my ATM card it costs me $1.00 USD each time I use it + $ ?.?? USD from the bank who's ATM I'm using (some places as high as $5.00 USD) for each transaction I make with the silly thing.

You have "unlimited free checking" and you don't understand why the bank is charging you for using the ATM card?

If you use your card quite a bit you might want to find out how much a "free ATM" monthly-fee account would cost. You might save a couple bucks

Re:ATM fees

[someone247356]

Well, my financial institution doesn't charge me anything for a "Unlimited free checking account". So unless you know of a "free ATM" no monthly fee account, that automatically pays all of the fees that individual ATM machines want to charge, on top of what your bank does or doesn't charge it's still going to cost more than to use a check.

I think you are missing the point. The point is that ATM processing is an order of magnitude lower than paper check processing. Logically you might assume that banks would be trying to promote the use of ATM's by say not charging an ATM fee while slowly increasing the per check fee for paper checks. Instead, all they can see are huge profit potentials and a belief that if it is more convenient people obviously should be paying more for it.

If all of the banks had free ATM cards, most stores accepted them, and paper checks cost over $5.00 USD each to process, I bet with a year or two most paper checks would have gone the way of the eight-track.

That of course was an aside to illustrate the main issue, which was that banks, like record companies, insist on trying to charge more for something just because of its apparent convenience. Even to the detriment of their own efficiency.

.

Re:ATM fees

[Monte]

I think you are missing the point. The point is that ATM processing is an order of magnitude lower than paper check processing.

If I'm missing the point then you're missing the big picture. Let's say it costs the bank $0.02 to process a check, and $0.0002 to process an ATM transaction. Now whack the customer two bucks for the ATM access, and - well DAMN! The bank seems to be making money hand over fist on the ATM!

The downside would be that it's a cost to the customer that the check doesn't carry, but the customers WILL pay! The convenience of being able to stick a plastic card into a slot at any time, pretty much any where, punch a few buttons and get some universally negotiable Federal Reserve Notes out another slot is worth the two bucks to most people.

So it's win-win all around.

Re:ATM fees

[someone247356]

Well I for one have used a ATM about a dozen times in my entire life. What's the point of paying X + Y dollers for groceries, where Y may equal 25% - 50% of X for small purchases, when I can pay X + $0.02 for the same purchase.

The other thing of course, one that I believe makes it NOT a "win-win all around" is when's the last time you've heard of someone bouncing an ATM transaction? I can write a check for $1000.00 USD more than my checking account balance, but I can't pay for something with an ATM card that costs $1000.00 more than what is in my account. You would think that at the very least, merchants would be clamoring all over themselves to promote ATM usage.

I guess sticking those consumers who can't grasp simple math with profit padding charges more than makes up for all of the fraud that they have to eat.

Perhaps some consumers will pay, but myself, and most other people with a grasp of simple math and a desire not to be fleeced like so many sheep are sticking with our plain old fashioned paper checks, thank you very much.

expressive entropy

[castlan]

I am sorry, but I have to object the the term "narrowband" if it is going to be used to corrupt the definition of broadband. Your second definition of broadband is little more than an after the fact improvisation, based upon the commercial "buzzing" of increasing availability of network connectivity more desireable than traditional dialup access.

Buzzwords are nothing but noise, they generate "heat but not light", and are a general waste of time for those outside of the advertising industry. They also tend to make ignorant an otherwise informed consumer, and so should be avoided at all costs, less they take on airs of being legitamite information.

There are plenty of terms that will accurately describe recently available means of connectivity, including data over coax cable, data over datellite, and various forms of Digital Subscriber Line data over POTS copper cabling. Unfortunately, "Broadband" is the term that the predatory psychologists known as "marketers" have chosen to corrupt. With each passing day, language is further abstracted from expression...
"free" means "gratis",
"hacker" means "vandal",
"peace" means "war",
"freedom" means "slavery",
MMII is MCMDXXXIV

-castlan