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TV Piracy is Next
Blackfire writes "Why is a TV executive so agitated about online pirates? Because he, like most media
honchos, has seen the scary numbers indicating that the next big craze in illegal file-sharing is
not music, not movies, but television." Frankly I'm amazed that movies caught on before TV since there's so much more TV, and they tend to be smaller files than movies.
See that over there?
That is the boat, you have missed it.
Seriously, this has been going on for years.
I remember downloading auful real encoded southpark season 1 and 2 episodes on dial up. ICK, that was painfull.
+----------------- | What is the question!
I've only been downloading tv shows from p2p networks, and that's going back a few years as well.
When I can download it with no commercials, that's how I get my dailyshow.
If I have to pay 49$'s a month for cable why do I have to have commercials.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
If they would put MacGyver on DVD we wouldn't have to download the episodes illegally.
If I download DVD rips of TV show compilations, who's sales am I supposedly hurting? Does it count as both DVD and TV piracy? I just want to make sure I know who's gonna claim I hurt their sales by downloading what I never would have bought.
Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin'.
It's true. I don't even make the effort to watch shows at their designated times anymore. I'll go and download the latest episode of CSI in about 15 minutes and watch it with much higher quality video and sound, and no commercial breaks. How will the industry adapt?
They really need to talk to their children's friends more. Stay in the loop, dude.
I've gotten sick of trying to record shows that shift around without warning. Nothing is more frustrating to come home and watch a tape of Enterprise only to find out it's been bumped for the Bachelor.
Screw it.
Now, with the help of eDonkey, it's bit torrent plug-in and tvtorrents.net, I can watch the shows when they come out, and I can pick up episodes I missed or grab an entire season. (I'm a third watch fan and ended up missing the first four episodes, so I downloaded them, makes a bid difference.)
If they don't want me to "pirate" tv, then come out with real video on demand.
Sorry, I don't buy this crap. I used to work in Win Television (Australia's largest regional television station, 7million viewers) and I can say that privacy was not even a minor concern.
The major concern executives are having, is trying to ensure video tape operations do not put in commercials into the wrong aspect ratio, The shows airing on TV do not mean crap to the executive, it's the commercials paying his wage.
I was trained to make sure, in the worst case situation. That the commercials go to air, even if that meant the TV show itself was just one nice black screen.
They're being broadcast for free in the first place. What's the difference?
And yes, people have been and will STILL PAY and PAY WELL for DVDs of shows they can get for free. Been to Best Buy lately? They've got about 40 yards, five shelves high of television shows on DVD that have been available for FREE broadcast almost continuously. Can't keep them in stock, even the shitty shows.
Non-issue.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
Seriously. Id pay £1 an episode of most shows i watch, and thats way more than they make on ads.
Official GOD FAQ.
my friends have been downloading american series for years because we haveto wait ages for them to show in the UK. also you need cable or satelite to get many of the new shows and tennacy agreements do not allow you to put up a satelite dish in most instances and cable tv is only available in limited areas.
I watch enterprise, SG1, atlantis, alias, etc. before they're shown on tv over here. eventually when the dvd's become available i end up buying quite a few of them as well. i don't think the studios are loosing anything major whilst this is happening. in fact they're building a bigger fan base than they would have anyway. it's the tb stations that loose out on the advertising revenue
The reason movies caught on before TV is because generally the two work differently. A movie you have to make a conscious choice that you want to watch it, you have to take steps to watch a specific film. TV is something you might flick on to see if there is anything interesting on.
Also 90% of TV is very low quality crap, so why would anyone waste their bandwidth downloading it. Films caught on before TV because they are much more 'worthy' of the bandwidth. Most of TV, with the exclusion of the occasional good documentary or high quality series (think 24, Friends, Simpsons, etc) is 'throw away' stuff that you watch mindlessly and forget about, and none of that stuff is something you'd ever download voluntarily (or randomly).
How about the situation when I have no posibility to see the show or I missed it?
I'm not a big downloader myself - work policies prohibit BitTorrent etc and phone calls in South Africa are too expensive (even locally) to download great whopping amounts of data from home.
I do know many people though who have episodes or full sets of various TV shows, and offer them to me all the time. They've been doing that for years - I can't really see that this is anything new, especially if we're already doing it in my sleepy corner of the globe.
Of course, just because a (relatively) few people do it now, when they become shared with the same regularity as music, that's when they become the next craze. Perhaps the TV exec's are perfectly aware that it already happens - what they're scared of is when it becomes huge.
Daar is nie 'n lepel nie
Is there anything interesting enough on TV to be subject to piracy ?
"Yay, I'm going to put TV commercials on P2P networks ! I'm a l337 h4x0R !!"
(my god...)
This has already been an issue once. I don't know if anyone else does, but I remember the frenzy about people being able to record television using a VCR.
All that aside, what do they really have to lose from people recording TV shows and showing them to other people? It's not like all TV is pay-per-view or anything like that. Yeah, so people who don't have cable or satellite might see some TV without paying for a subscription. These people wouldn't be paying for a subscription anyway, so no one is really at a loss. If anything, I think it might cause people to be more likely to switch to cable or satellite.
movies _didn't_ catch on before TV.. you can find a torrent for almost any tv show (but mostly fiction and reality crap) every week. 4 years ago it used to be mostly people from europe who didn't get the shows on their tv, downloading from IRC (or southamerican, in my case).. Now, with the widescreen episodes captured from HDTV on nice fast torrents, who knows?
--
Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
You mean I can watch my SG1 without Tivo AND without paying for cable?!? Oh nose! No commercials too!?!?!? Oh nose! And I don't have to pay for a $80 set of dvds with just one season?!?!? Oh nose! You mean I can find any show on irc?!?! Oh nose! I can watch shows that haven't even aired in my timezone yet!?!? Oh yes!
Why can't all fpga/microcontroller manufacturers just release free optimizing compilers???
Actually, it's no surprise to me why TV hasn't been popular with pirates. There's no incentive to pirate episodes of The Simpsons or Family Guy or Futurama when they can be seen, full-screen, full quality, in syndication, or, with the help of tivo, any time you want. Television is piped into one's home relatively free, with no download times, no partial/misnamed files, and no risk of prosecution. The only real reason for piracy is convienence, since the average college student, for example, has a computer and broadband, but no TV. Also, collectors may want an entire series, or a show that is no longer being broadcast. I doubt TV piracy will ever explode like, say, music downloads, since it's a product that's available for free, but there is a market of desire, and, as people discover the availability, TV downloading will grow just as music downloading has, leading to collections of more songs than most people could ever afford to buy on their own.
Remember, there were no nuclear weapons before women were allowed to vote.
Hmph...."next big craze in illegal file-sharing", eh?
What the hell? How is trading copies of broadcast television shows illegal? Since when is it piracy to copy and share copies of tv shows THAT ARE ON TV? I pay my dues in cable bills, so how the hell is it illegal? Recording shows to VHS has been done plenty of times - and you'd think they'd want you to watch the shows again and again....I don't see the logic or the losses involved here. Either way you end up seeing the show (commercial free or not)...
TFA states that people will have "no need to spring for satellite feeds or specialty channels" Hell, some specialty channels are a waste anyway...I mean, who needs 6 ESPNs, or 5 Discovery channels, or 10 friggin HBOs? I think some people would still hang on to their channels anyway...Its still a hell of a lot easier (for most) to watch tv at 6 than download and play clips offline. They make it sound like everyone's going to drop their cable services and rely on the downloading and recording of one lone pirate with an eye patch and a rouge TiVO....
TFA also states a line about "In his forum speech, Chernin said: "Consumers need to understand that stealing is wrong, and there are consequences." "
When the fuck did free use become a dirty word? Stealing? Bah!
What a good way to start Thanksgiving leftovers...
-thewldisntenuff
My MythTV HowTo
Does this mean letting the guy next door borrow your TiVo files is illegal ?.
I thought that recording shows and viewing it at your leisure was a Good Thing (tm) for TV shows ?.
I reach home at 11:00 PM at night, how'll I watch the 5-7 pm comedy slot ?.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
Mr. Media Executive? If you're looking for a "major concern," how about the fact that most of the shows suck harder than an industrial vacuum hooked up to a gas turbine?
Have you watched the shit you're shoveling lately? It is awful. Face-down in bubbling warm shit awful. It's enough to make a brave man weep into a PA system.
And then the commercials. Oh great humpity fuck, some of the commercials on television are enough to make someone want to projectile vomit their shoes for a 90-yard touchdown. It wouldn't be so bad if they weren't broadcast at intervals more frequent than a dry-heaving hummingbird. And yes, most of the people watching have already re-financed their house eight times this week.
Try working on the quality, there, Captain Meetings. Maybe then people will actually watch your channel.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
You could whatever cable channel IT IS that is leaving IZ on my friends' Tivo.
No, I don't mean the ads that people get to skip by downloading TV shows.
There are several TV shows that I first saw online (either from File sharing nets, torrents, or Winamp TV stations), and then started to watch on TV, mainly because I missed the first season or so and got to catch myself up.
If I hadn't seen them that way, I never would have gotten hooked in the first place, and whether I downloaded them or not, I wouldn't have seen the original ads.
I also certainly wouldn't buy a DVD set for a TV show that I've never seen before, but I've bought a couple for shows that I originally downloaded. I've got all of NewRadio on my computer, and I can't wait until they finally get around to releasing the set.
With a movie, you download it, watch it, and maybe if you REALLY like it, you go and buy it anyway. With TV, it's totally different. You get hooked, and come back for more (usually on the TV). You can easily make CDs for friends and get them hooked too (I got a whole bunch of people to start watching Arrested Development that way).
It's free advertising. They are morons if they don't see that.
There are now so many channels out there that the networks ought to be grateful that anyone is watching a given show. It would be to the advertisers advantage to give away dvds of the shows and the included ads, since not everybody will skip through the commercials.
No way I could otherwise watch unsynchronized TV shows (I live in Austria), there isn't even the option of e.g. watching the Simpsons in English here (except waiting a few years for the DVD release). So much subtle nuance is lost and so many glaring errors are made in translation it's not even funny. Very frustrating. My thanks to all Americans making their TV shows available via Bittorrent.
Yes.
It is too late. Fans of each television program have been trading episodes for a long while. It is especially great when you can watch television programs that are aired on premium cable channels that require subscription (such as HBO's fine in-house programs). Often you can also find episodes of shows that are no longer aired and which have not been released on DVD.
For example:
I'm living in Germany and I don`t have any opportunity to watch the series in the original language. You probably won't understand how horrible it is to watch a translated comedy-show compared to the original one. Wordplays: gone. The quality of the series itself is simply not the same.
Another thing is that we have to wait for a long time until the new series from the U.S. are translated and running on TV here. (for example: The last season of "Sex and the City" is still running here. Or "Scrubs": Season 4 runing in the US - still waiting for Season 3 to start in Germany.)
I'm sorry for being unable to support my favourite series in the US by watching the channels they are running on, but i simply don't have an other chance to do that.
Since we're all way ahead of the curve here, (let's face it TV shows have been around on P2P networks for ages) let me take this opportunity to announce the Next Big Thing:
Sheet Music piracy.
After all, everything else is being shared already.
Introducing Cleffster a P2P utility written in C# especially for the sharing of scanned sheet music.
(And if that network really exists I'll eat my tinfoil hat.)
So TV executives are scared that we might actually want to burden others with the garbage they vomit daily into our living rooms free of charge anyway.
Well, maybe I'll just stop watching TV. Nothing but crap on anyway.
What we need is an industry supported downloadable TV service. Adverts are a non issue for me and I don't even care if they're inserted into my downloaded shows. Downloading TV is the only way that I can get english language content here in Italy. It also provides access to shows that haven't been released on DVD yet.
Seriously, I bought season 1 of Twin Peaks on DVD the day it was released. After watching it with my girlfriend she wanted to see season 2, but there's no DVD. So I downloaded it, quickly and painlessly. When it comes out on DVD I'll be buying that too.
Ads could be inserted with an overlapping, rolling, three-week schedule, for example - at any time there'd be - say - three different torrents of the same show, differing only in ad contents. The ad contents would get updated on a weekly bases then, thus serving fresh ads all the time, while not breaking away too far from the well-working torrent distribution model. It's been said many times before: all other industries would be overjoyed by getting free distribution of their product - how long until the TV industry figures out how to do ads online and start providing free highquality downloads?
By the way, you can watch a recording (in various formats) of Larry Lessig's interesting and entertaining talk on Free Culture in Helsinki in May 2004 here.
Trusted Computing FAQ | Free Dawit Isaak!
true enough, this has been going on for years. true enough that tv shows are broadcast for 'free'.
but when some many people are downloading shows that tv companies are also trying to make revenue from via dvd sales - then they will start to make an issue of it.
in the uk, tv isn't free. you have to pay a licence fee. there may be issues with people downloading these programs, watching them on their pcs, without having a tv licence. admittedly, this is probably a tiny minority - but it is possible. however, in the copyright/piracy mudfight, money is the underpinning agenda.
up until earlier this year i used to think that piracy of movies, tv shows and music was just a minor thing - not very many people doing it. but even i was amazed by the amount of people actually involved in this and the extent that they were involved.
Television might have some lasting value in syndication but it is far more transient than feature length motion pictures.
Television get's their money from the first run on the network it was created for, and then possibly, later as syndicated series.
For the most part, TV does not translate to VCD, or DVD sales--some does but most doesn't. So TV doesn't see themselves hurt as much by piracy as the film industry.
and theres a lot of good quality Television out there too! Taxi, The Odd Couple, Sharpe's Rifles, Lovejoy, discovery channel/Nova specials
theres also a lot of TV shows worth watching again, that just arent _readily available_ to obtain a copy of, without file sharing. i know this isnt a TV show but, for example, the original Hitchhikers Guide radio series cannot be shipped to anywhere in North America.
How about a subscription service for TV shows, for a season, priced the same as a magazine subscription.
I do not think that a TV show gets more ad revenue than that per show for my eyes.
The only time I downloaded a show is because my VCR missed it, and I think that others download for the same reason or unable to get the broadcast where they are at.
This is way overblown, and like the RIAA, looking for an excuse to deploy stormtroopers.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Major TV series are usually broadcast in the US well ahead of their UK and european dates. When "Enterprise" first aired in the states, months ahead of its arrival in the UK, there was considerable traffic in DivX copies of the episodes. The same thing didn't happen with the latest series of Stargate because of the lack of reasonably small copies.
The "protection" that DVD producers have to stop the US discs playing outside the US didn't stop online sharing. Now the same thing is happening with regionally transmitted TV.
The TV producers are also worried because so much content goes on on subscription channels, so free access costs them profits.
It interesting that the BBC, who provide programs free here in the UK are worried by transatlantic access . They are about to provide free access to their program archives but have two problems..
1) The UK taxpayer pays for the programs to be made and expects that non-UK viewers should pay for access.
2) the BBC is very good about paying appearance money to actors appearing in old programs reshown on TV. They want to find a way of compensating actors for online distribution.
Paul
www.opencouncil.org
Open
TV providers seem to have missed this little thing called "globalization". I'm from Norway. I talk to people from US, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Switzerland regularly. Imagine the following conversations:
A: "Have you seen [movie title] yet? It's really cool"
B: "Cool. I'll go to the cinema next week and see it"
A: "Have you seen [TV series] yet? It's really cool"
B: "No. Come ask again in a few years, when it'll be on TV here. That is, if it is popular enough to be internationally sold at all. And if it is priced so reasonably that some TV channel picks it up."
A: "Wanna download it from me?"
The movie industry has understood this. The TV industry has not. Gun, meet foot.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
"people are ignoring the old notion that you watch your program at 8 o'clock when CBS or NBC decides you should be watching it." (Mike McGuire of Gartner.)
.ca country makes me think this is a Canadian article, and wonder if Canada is as behind telly shows as the UK is. Why then are these Canadians making such a fuss about Hollywood's lawyers?
I've been doing that for years with my video tape recorder. What's changed? That I can borrow a recording from a friend on the other side of the world in HD? Not really new.
I'm in the UK, so I have to wait for US-made shows to make it to our networks. The
And why aren't they advocating that the networks and studios run their own high-quality download sites?
How will the industry adapt? Implement the content on demand stuff for everyone, and don't complain if the people who are downloading the shows can't get access to it otherwise! If we can sit in a couch all day and get our shows on demand from the touch of a button i doubt we will be trying to download it from the internet and spend tons of money on bandwidth and hd space. Seriously, the guy who wrote the article has no idea what he is talkig about technology wise or "trend" wise. I think this whole file sharing this is a big case of the companies sueing like little babies because their product doesn't meet the standard anymore and they are too dull or fixed on the good ol' days that they can't come up with better ideas.
I remember at one point in the UK they were trying to enforce people to only store a recorded show for 30 days and then they had to erase it. Obviously this would be impossible to enforce with a VCR but now that Dixons have stopped selling them I guess we'll soon see PVRs with DRM that will auto delete shows after a certain number of days.
Summation 2
I don't even own a TV anymore - it truly is an "idiot box"
.. and .. I think I'll go now ...
I'd rather visit Slashdot and, er, well, erm write messages like this
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
comes out the same day as the TV show, at high quality, and minus the commercials.
Why would i watch it on TV?
I don't watch TV at all. Also, Thieves-R-Us...sorry, I ment to say Comcast, is in our area but to put up basic cable...this is BASIC cable...they want 50 bucks a month! Oh, and when I used to have Comcast, I might as well have been a non-entity with them in the customer service area. Actually had a rep tell me that if I didn't like their service, I could cancel it...which I promptly did on the spot.
My antenna doesn't reach any local channels, yes, I'm in the boonies...yet I have 3mbit DSL. So, I watch one program a week, and I download the show "Lost". That's it.
Sorry, but I'm not paying Comcast 50 bucks a month just to watch one show.
Hey ABC, want to put commercials in? And still get paid? Offer torrents of your programs on your website of all your shows WITH the commercials still in them...and I'll download from there. I have no problems with commericals.
They are missing out on a HUGE opportunity here.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
I watched the last season of 24 via BT because it wasn't on a telly channel I could watch. I've bought the DVDs. I'm told the torrents were in breach of copyright, and that I'm not allowed to download them.
I claim I timeshifted the start of my copyright license...
There is clear evidence that the execs are getting worried about TV sharing. Recently one of the head honchos behind the new Battlestar Galactica posted to a message board appealing for users not to download the show (which is getting rave reviews in the UK/Ireland) but does not air in the US until January.
An interesting point here, is that they are not just worried about people stealing intellectual property, but they are worried that people looking at shows before they air, means that actual Nielson figures will not reflect how many people actually watch the show -- very relevent for Sci-Fi.
Link to that post:
message
It's 'Time-shifting' ;-)
Exercise caution when modding this message up: the author acts like a jerk when his karma is excellent.
/from article /end
Earlier this month, the FCC came through, ruling that broadcasters would be permitted to embed a computer code, known as a broadcast flag, in programming. Makers of consumer devices capable of receiving digital broadcasts will now have to include a card that will allow viewers to watch and make personal copies of shows on VCR or recordable DVD player, but not to share them over the Internet.
how would this be done? if you can copy it, you can share it right? or will my dvd-player know the AV signal its sending to my tv is not infact going to my tv but my video capture hw? if so how?
i do not see this thing ever working unless they get control of the entire pipeline, that is unless
it becomes illegal to own hw that dos not support this computer code thingy.
"Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest." - Denis Diderot.
RE:"and they tend to be smaller files than movies."
:^P
even smaller when you edit out all the commercials
wheres the torrent of his speech?
http://www.suprnova.org/
Scroll down to "TV Shows" .. And this is just for today ..
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
Can't remember the story, but this article was great
Prefered quote
"The only thing holding broadcasting together today is inertia, marketing, and copy protection"
Get with it - or get shut out...
What TV probably cannot stand is the fact that people will now filter away all inferior quality products that this medium keeps sending out (including commercials - and bad gameshows). It's just those products that will *not* get pirated - and it's just those products that tend to form the majority of television today.
People downloading television shows (or series) want the creme-de-la-creme of television - and they want it all: 24, ER, CSI etc.
Instead of keeping these television series off DVD to make sure the (international!) re-broadcasting rights are safe, television-producers should choose to publish the stuff on DVD almost simultaneously as they do on television. Waiting almost 4 years (ER) for the DVD is way too long - and will promote this kind of behaviour even more.
As for the choice between DVD and pirated series: I would choose DVD - it's all-in-one, has the same standard of quality and it contains useful commentaries and background information.
But please, if you do publish a DVD, don't be a cheap-*** and skip the music because the rights cost too much - either give it all or keep it all...
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
I'm wondering what the BBC makes of this. A while ago i read they were planning to put parts of their archive online for [free] download for UK viewers only (Although i presume foreigners would be able to obtain copies eventually). We pay the licence fee, they show the programs ad-free. If we want to watch again, we either have to have recorded it or buy it on DVD/Video. Well, i'd rather download a decent quality copy and treat it as recording. It's just easier to find shows online and i can try out new series', see things i missed (and won't be on DVD, like one-off documentaries) and it is much easier to store.
Currently i watch the News online through the BBC website, and often their documentaries and other shows that they put online (Panorama, Question Time). These are very poor quality, although with these shows i'm interested in the content and not the picture.
the problem is manifold, but mostly centers arround advertising probably being the biggest reason TV runs. . instant international distribution, they can't stagger releases, and can't *sell* show X to network Y in county Z (for as much). . They can't monitor how many people are actually watching, this is needed for advertising purposes, as has been said before they don't actually give a damn about the programs for the most part, just that their advertisers know their ads are being seen. . VCR's record bad quality copies that don't get MASS distribution, encodes don't really have that problem, something like 90% of the people downloading them wouldn't consider going DVD for quality improvements. yes DVD sets sell shitloads, BUT the world runs on greed and the companies are of course convinced they'd sell a lot more if it wasn't for online encode distribution. . Your cable subscription I'd guess goes to your cable company alone, not the network/channel that gets most of it's money from advertising, and even if not , less is not the new more. . The producers of the show will get their money from the network, based on how large an audience they think it will get TO SELL ADVERTISING. . And no they don't like TIVO/PVR's either, so any 'how is it different' arguments wont stand, they've been trying to do something about them since day 1, as the first thing people do with them is skip the adverts, the next is hack them, take the eppisodes off with no loss of quality and distribute them. . they've waited way to long to be doing something about this imo, but it won't stop them from trying now as they won't want to succumb to the radical changes in the industry such things hearald. it's taken far longer, but it's basically going the way of the internet. banner ads no longer generate any real revenue, people are desperately trying to find alternatives to keep their sites off the ground. however the TV companies are in a much better position to try and force things round to a more convinenet settup for them.
The other day i'm flipping through my 250 channels of quality programming...
2-13 local stations
14-24 spanish stations
25-40 shopping stations
41-50 food network, discovery, history channel
51-60 nick, disney, cartoon network
61-70 chinese stations
I was curious about these "extra" stations I didn't really give a crap about. I don't speak spanish, I don't speak manderin, I don't shop on home shopping club, and I don't care about a good %50 of the channels on there. It's just way too much to sift through, and the interface just moves way too slow.
Why do I need all this crud? Why do I need to buy a "package" that gives me channels i'll never watch.
I have a few things that I like to watch. Adult swim on cartoon network. (since toonami is miguzi now, daytime went downhill) I like the things that come on discovery channel from time to time like modern marvels, and I like my local news. That's it, nothing more.
I'd be more than happy to pay for just those channels/programs, instead of all the waste I have to pay for. I have a feeling we're just a few years off from this type of content delivery.
I live here in austria, where many of that tv shows of the world wont be broadcastet. So i get the chance to see things i couldnt see otherwise.
I
Target the adds.. ask the viewer for their vauge demographic information and give them adds they might be more interested in. Don't bundle them in the stream, bundle a player to insert them in the middle at run time based on who's watching (or do both, providing a non-drm add laden stream for easy playback, and a controlled player with targetted adds). Then provide a premium service with no adds.
I don't want to see adds from US companies I can't possibly buy anything from even if I wanted to.
Let people vote on the adds, give the add companies feedback. Maybe then the add companies will learn how to sell their products in a more interesting fashion and the quality will improve.
Here in Australia most adds on free to air tv are actually quite clever. There is a lot less air time (since there aren't many channels), the peak viewing period actually gets some good adds.
Yeah I know people will have privicy concerns, so make it voluntary.
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
Sky TV (Rupert Murdoch's UK satellite service) has never been pirated to the same extent as the encryption is unusually hard to break. ITV Digital used the Canal+ system, which was cracked wide open. In a nice twist for conspiracy theorists, Canal+ later tried to sue Sky in the belief that they had funded the hack - and it was a really, really deep tech hack involving electron microscopes - which was perpetrated by an Israeli lab.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
I know why you are saying this - let's put in ads and television will be happy. Afterwards, there will be tools to strip the ads again and we will be happy too.
Why put the darned things in in the first place ? Only a few people will be able to use the tools at first - and the majority will find that all internetmovies will soon be bugged with horrendous amounts of commercials.
I am willing to buy a DVD of the product or pay for it in a regular way - but I must keep the right to skip those ads.
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
I have tried to get SciFi, SkyOne and other channels here in Sweden that send the content I am interested in but it was virtually impossible.
I even asked a retailer when I was in London if it was possible to be a subscriber when I lived in Sweden and he said no.
I pay for the channels I look at here in Sweden, don't get me wrong now, and I would gladly pay to be able to see SciFi/SkyOne etc as well.
The result is: I cannot get Battlestar Galactica/Enterprise/Stargate etc here in Sweden in any other way other than downloading them from the Internet.
I really have another userid as well
The submitterseems to over look a couple of thing when saying this. First: TV capture cards (to record the TV onto the computer) were pretty rare, and still are, as opposed to DVD player (to RIP a DVD movie) are much more common. And it's pretty recent trend for the companies to sell TV shows on DVD compared to movies on DVD.
and that is if the episodes were made available online (with any price modal they want) then many people here would stop pirating their content. They're even willing to use THEIR OWN BANDWIDTH to help make this possible (bit-torrent). Many non-geek piraters would love this as the fear of a virus becomes nill.
Now if only the companies could see this *sigh*
An executive of a major distribution company/conglomerate sees the demographics stagnating in their area of entertainment or communications.
First thing they do is ask,
`Why are we stagnating? Why, despite more people being born everyday, don't we see more consumers?'
Of course, s/he conveniently forgets that:
Yes, people are downloading movies, tv shows, games, books, and anything else that can be broken down into a digitised form for easy distribution. That's what people do. We like to have it quick and easy when possible.
`I want it now! No! I want it yesterday, with sugar! And ice-cream! And f'cking bells on!'
Executives need to learn, and learn fast, that we are slooowly sick of being consumers. We want to be customers again.
The old bastards have the tools at their disposal, the Internet being the biggest and most obvious, but they won't use it, probably not even in my lifetime, and I'm only twenty-eight.
No, they won't use it for the same reasons we will get things in ways they don't like.
`I don't want to think about how the money system or banking or accounts f'cking work, I just want you to give me money now! No! I want it yesterday! With sugar! And ice-cream! And f'cking bells on!'
The wheel keeps turning round-and-round, and I keep falling into the ground... Over and over I reach for the sky, and some beligerant bastard forces me down... Round-and-round we'll never stop, give me money for that copied movie or I'll call the cops...
* You'll have to do the /. search, I've been drinking vodka, and watching Black Books, and listening to Rob Zombie. :)
His name is Robert Paulsen...
Recently the great and glorious Beeb-beeb-ceeb started working on a codec intended to enable torrent-style netcasting of shows.
/serious/ channels, they have this freedom.
As one of the (only?) free-to-air public funded
"Nation shall speak peace unto nation" - no wonder Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell hated them.
Justin.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
> the Next Big Thing: Sheet Music piracy.
You can start eating your hat, there is a lot of pirated sheet music in
P2P networks. Search ED2K for "aberdeen" oder "piano pdf" for a starting
place.
How about you give me a website or something where i can watch my favorite shows when i get home from work (at 4am), even if its 3 weeks or even 3 months since the show aired. let me download the show in hi def quallity, put whatever commercials you want in it (dont go overboard), give me a source to get it from at 300+k/sec, rather than the horrid 30k/sec i get off a p2p server, and give me a way to catch that eppisode i missed 3 months ago, or even watch the whole series when *I* have the time. or does the concept of flexibility and catoring to your customers' needs a bit too far outside the box?
i am a tv subscriber, i am your customer, if you dont provide me a viable means to watch what i want to watch, when i want to watch it, i will find someone who does. the only question for you is are you going to piss and moan about it, or will you join the 21st century and continue to do bussiness with me and people like me? whether you like it or not, unless your job title is "old wooden shoe maker" you are in an industry of changes, where the survival code is adapt or die off...
I am a couch potato, and this is my manifesto...
Most TV programs are sold through syndication to TV Broadcasters who then sell advertisements. Normally you have your block of times when all the "hit" programs are on shown. Commercials shown during this time are more lightly to be watched or recorded then at any other time. On a VCR it's not as easy to edit out the ads (as VRCs with this function were stopped a while back).
Why will TV die? An example of one show is the current series of Joey the Friends spin off. At the movement this can't be seen in Ireland or I believe the UK as the Syndication costs were too high and not worth the risk. People in those countries can only see this TV show if they download them off the web or have someone tape the show and then ship it to them, back in the day I saw many a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode this way.
The world has moved on from TV, Radio & VCR as a way mass-distribution. What do the TV people expect when people can't view what they when they want to watch it!?! Why should they be discriminated against? Why should someone in Ireland have to wait and not get to see the show at the exact same time as the people in the US? I bought my copy of Half-Life 2 from Steam as I knew come 8am GMT I would be able to start playing the game like anyone in the US. In fact this even worked out better for me as I got a goodnights sleep before getting up for my marathon gaming session.
I can't wait till the day when I don't need a TV or TV-Tuner card in my PC. I would love to be able to go direct to the Broadcasters' homepage and view the show online, using the same type of format as VALVe Steam pre-purchase downloads. Select the list of show you want to watch then download them. They sit on your PC till it's validated from the main web server for viewing.
I'm a busy man, I want to watch these shows at my convenience. The current format doesn't meet this requirement so I don't watch any TV beyond the News. There are other ways I can get to see what I want to see. I choose convenience over the current programming schedule.
*A friend of mine* has been enjoying http://tvtorrents.net/ for a while now. And, yes it is the best thing - No TiVo, no ads, HDTV quality and usually 350MB per hour of DivX encoded video. Plus you can search.
;-)
Just check the site the day after airing, and pull down the torrent. The HDTV-LOL versions are some of the best for Galactica, Lost, all the hot shows.
According to my friend, that is.
JP
Stiny! Get me a danish!
"Frankly I'm amazed that movies caught on before TV since there's so much more TV, and they tend to be smaller files than movies"
I'm sorry, but then you must be a little thick - to hold back the stronger terms I'd say were fitting.. Of course movies caught on first, it's a pay-per-view kinda situation (and a pricy one) that can be avoided, where TV is closer to public domain. Most people just tape the shows they want to watch, you can't do that at the cinema (well you can but that's illegal too anyways) - I dont know anyone who cancelled their cable subscription, because they could now download every show they want to watch - I DO know people who dont go to the movies anymore cos they can download every decent feature..
It's a financial issue for the most part. If I were loaded, I'm not sure I'd ever even consider bothering with downloads.
People are just not interested in watching a show at a specific time tv programmers set anymore.
I don't understand why people watch shows with ad breaks every 10 mins anyway, totally kills the atmosphere.
Since the VCR people have already been copying shows to watch them whenever they want, ffwd-ing the ads.
Also TV programming is usually terrible. We know what shows we like, and if we can't see them when we want to because there's no dvd out, it'll be downloaded.
The TV business model is old, for live sports events and such it will still work, but for shows it's just not going to pay off anymore.
Sample this!
I was under the impression that there were special laws granting permission to redistribute copies of publicly broadcast material. Was i misinformed?
If there aren't, there aught to be. The public airwaves are ours.
You're already seeing product placement in the actual tv show. The ads are where much of the money comes from and since downloaded versions of shows cut out the ads I'm sure you'll see more and more product placement in a show than before. I believe this has become more common ever since devices like Tivo have become available, which is a very similar concept... watch what you want, when you want and ad free.
Moved away from my home a few years ago, and quickly discovered TV shows available on Bittorrent. Now I can watch all the shows I left behind in Canada and aren't playing in Europe (or are playing but delayed at least 1 season). I don't even turn my actual TV on anymore unless I'm piping an AVI to it.
TV studios really need to adapt to a "worldwide" audience.
Following on the model from the cable TV companies, some years ago there were internet entrepreneurs who launched internet TV. Basically, like the cable companies, they were merely rebroadcasting. The beauty of internet TV is that it's global TV. Very valuable, in my opinion. It would mean anyone anywhere in the world could see what was going on in the rest of the world. In theory, people might understand each other and their world a little better. It would also provide an infrastructure for personal TV 'stations.'
Unfortunately for the internet TV companies though, the climate wasn't the same as it was when the cable companies started up. The networks sued them out of existence. (The companies I know of were Canadian. What they were doing was legal in Canada. The government believed it would be like when the cable companies started, and would create a new industry.) Watch the dinosaurs cling to life - again.
Anyway, that would have made TV piracy redundant. It also throws into question just what is meant by piracy today. Perhaps internet TV will be resurrected as a solution - when the networks are in control, it's a solution - when the networks are not in control, it's a problem.
If I want to watch something, I want to use MY player, the player I chose. Besides, if they bundled a player, what's the bet that it would be Windows only?
Or is it a completely manual process to get these files?
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
I also download TV episodes from bittorrent, but I see it as an act of self-defence. Most US (or British) TV shows are dubbed so horribly for German TV, they make you want to puke.
Not only the voices (I could tolerate that - there are only so many good dubbing artists), but also the translation - it gives a whole new meaning to the term "lost in translation". I almost smashed my TV to pieces once when I watched a dubbed episode of Futurama, and they translated "Dungeons&Dragons" with "Drachen und Kerker", "Deep Blue" with "Tiefblau", "urban legend" with "Vorstadtlegende" and so on. All literal translations that don't make *any* sense in the context.
So, if I want to watch a bearable version of these series, I can either wait a few years (2-5) for the DVDs, or download them right after they are out in the US. Easy choice.
Sorry for the rant, but this is a pet peeve of mine.
"Oh, a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-my-own-Grandpa." - Dr Hubert Farnsworth
Yeah, but on the other hand TV mostly sucks.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
....anything that's been released on DVD already. So, I'll catch up with shows I've missed, or try out new shows that I never knew were on; but I won't download something I can buy.
Bittorrent saved my skin on time. I forgot to tape "American Dreams" for my wife, but rather than be murdered, I got it off bittorrent (and now I'm interested in the show again as well).
Dear TV-execs, rather than legislation/law-suits/etc... how about you **gasp** ADAPT?
People who are addicted to it are incredibly boring.
.. but because they've so successfully been brainwashing generations of consumericans, this isn't even really on the horizon ... yet.
TV executives ought to be more concerned about clans of people getting together and making their own media
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
No danger of me pirating TV shows when they all seem to suck so badly with a few very limited exceptions (The Hitlery Channel, etc.)
When I turn on the television-- very rarely for the last 18 years-- I'm astonished by how horrible the shows are. Every time it seems to have gone downhill, from bad to worse to worse yet. That goes for cable, normal TV, everything.
Wouldn't mind pirating some really bad crime dramas from the 1980s, such as "It Takes a Thief" and other drivel of that nature.
If they want me to consume modern television in any form, they've got to make it better.
An aside: it blows my mind that they've got people paying for programming with commercials now, on cable.
When cable first came out, I remember the big selling point for it was that there were no commercials. They did that of course to build the brand, and now that they've got 90% of american households hooked up, why shouldn't they turn the screws by making you watch commercials too?
Intolerance for ambiguity is the mark of the authoritarian personality.
Yeah, I pirate Star Trek: Enterprise.
I'm german, the german synchro sucks big time, and I do not want to wait until the TV honchos allow me to pay about $80 for a season on DVD.
Waiting a week for the next show is essential for my being interested in a TV series.
I would pay a moderate fee per download, if that was at all possible.
Nobody writes jokes in base 13. - DNA
Something I've always wanted to see (and for awhile, thought Wal-Mart[1]) was television episodes available for purchase either the next week or the next day after it's aired on a DVD-1 or DVD-2 sized DVD (these are like those semi-cool mini-CD's you see, DVD-1 can hold 1.36 GB and DVD-2 can hold 2.47 GB). And I don't mean a crappy 4:3 non-anamorphic release, but a release based on the HDTV airing of the show with the fully Dolby Digital treatment.
Sell this for $1-3 (dumping the price in half after, say, a month or so) and I'd probably buy television episodes that way (even if I did watch it). There's something like 24 episodes per season, that works the cost out to (to buy a full season)--
24 x $3 = $72
24 x $2 = $48
24 x $1 = $24
And in these smaller formats (especially DVD-1) they can get away with using a lower bitrate, reserving the higher bitrate for their season packages at the end of the year.
I'd be willing to bet if they sold television shows like this that you'd see piracy curbed. Especially if there wasn't any advertising during the shows, but there was advertising (that you couldn't skip past) at the beginning of the show (say, two or three 30 second commercials).
[1] Wal-Mart had a little display off to the side of their new DVD section that had TV episodes on a single DVD-5 disc (which was shrinkwrapped in a cardboard holder, no plastic case and no frills). They had first episodes for a couple of relatively recent TV series such as E.R. and others. The display said to check back every week for new episodes (which at the time I took to mean "current"). Unfortunately it's just been old episodes as far as I can tell.
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
Still, with the advent of Dual layer burners and DeCSS, you can remove the region codes of the DVDs you own pretty easily.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
"If only the Music companies sold tracks online for, say, 99c"
Now:
"99c is a rip-off!"
I'm sorry. Your argument has no credibility.
The TV companies have been too slow to bring us TV on demand over the internet so it's no surprise this has filled the gap.
:)
Infact I've been using UKNova (uk tv bittorrent site, tho it's down today...) pretty much as a UK TV on demand service. After all I pay my licence fee
You don't have to get your ass raped by the cable companies for $80 a month when you watch 3 hours of TV a week.
You can watch 3 hours of TV in 3 hours, not 4 hours (w/adverts).
You can watch it when you want as often as you want.
You can watch series in ORDER when the network execubots decide that the storyline isn't that much of a big deal anyway.
The new series of the simpsons will air here in 2006 and the BBC isn't nice enough to tell you when a new series starts or what days it's going to be episodes or play them in order. (Here they just have a rolling run of every ep and insert the new ones at random.)
Id be willing to pay a pound to whoever held the rights per hour of TV I watched (in fact I already do, since I pay my TV license fee which equates to about £0.66 per hour of TV I watch in a year) but in return I expect it to be convenient and on demand. If not fuck you I'll just steal it and have it my way anyway.
Beep beep.
Of course people are downloading tv-episodes, it is the only way to see them often. Especially at the moment when I am working in Switzerland, and have no access to anything else than french channels. Lost, Stargate Atlantis, Farscape, Babylon 5, Jeremiah, Earth: Final Conflict, Dark Angel, Andromeda, Enterprise, Firefly is just a few of the series I am/have been watching by downloading. Babylon 5, Farscape and Dark Angel I have in addition bought on DVD.
Like the music industry is finding out, if they provide the content themselves, most people would rather pay a small fee and avoid legal complications - but right now there is no alternative. I'd be interested in buying the latest episode of my favorite programs for a buck or two if I miss it's broadcast premier. I'll buy the DVD's of a lot of stuff (babylon 5, stargate, trek, farscape, buffy etc), and I'll video record other stuff for viewing later, but I want copies of all the programs on my favorite TV station's website, pay a small fee and just grab it permanently and legally. Right now the only way to get these things (without poxy adverts!) before the DVD release is illegally. Please can we have an alternative Mr. Studio executive? Oh, and might mention it would be another way to make money from us...
Fuck Tolkien!!
I'm sure this has been mentioned on Slashdot before, but the BBC have seen this coming and have actually made quite a clever gimmick out of it. They are working on a system right now that will allow viewers to essentially time-shift their viewing by using P2P technology. The idea being that viewers run a P2P app on their computer and can download any programme from up to a week ago. The load is shared around the network, with the BBC feeding new programs in after they have been broadcast. Of course, they'll be building some kind of DRM into the whole thing. From what my friend who's working on it told me, they will allow viewers to see a show up to a week after it's been broadcast. This idea came from a discussion they were having about P2P users pirating TV shows, and how it would affect them. I think it's quite a clever idea and one that conforms to their commitment to the license-fee paying public.
There's a zone 1 "collector edition" that would suit you just fine.
One complete season on 5 DVDs, with and without laugh track.
I can find it here, you should be able ton find it in UK.
Hey, there's even a zone 2 version at amazon.
You didn't look very hard, did you?
In my opinion, Scientology is a cult you should avoid.
I see a fair amount of bollocks here. An 'old' thread by now but I am dissaponted to see such a lack of interest. TV programmes have been being copied for a long time and the new worry facing execs/sponsors whomever is probably real wiht new technologies making it easier for 'us' to weed out the shit we don't want. I would be happy to only see the actual show without even having to programme the VCR/DVD to record -ads. Warezed Angel, Iron Chef etc would rule! Click click. No more bullshit weith the remote at the beginning of the week. A major imepiment to the number of viewers of advertisments would be seen here.
The only reason i download tv shows is because none of the dutch networks actually broadcast many of the shows> I miss out on many good american tv shows like futurama, the simpsons and adult swim, cause no company actually buys the rights for them, i have been watching reruns of the 4th simspons season for over 6 years, so it becam very attractive for me to download those other 14 seasons with one 35 gb torrent
perpetually dwelling in the -1 pits
South Park episodes have been on the Internet ever since the show started. That's since, what 1997? And other shows have been available for years.
That was way before movies started circulating.
On that note, perhaps someone would care to torrent:
- It's like you know
- Nightingales
- Los Dos Bros
If companies won't release their material to us then they should lose their copyright over it and it should be turned over to the general public as a free-for-all.Visit Snowflake Showers
Suprnova without the ads: http://project-2501.net/php-scripts/suprnova-lite/
No paska, Sherlock!
... in Italy!
Probably the worst television programs I've ever had the misfortune to watch - let alone re-watch!
Go on, shoot some fish!
It's hard enough for suprnova to keep up with the load when it's not being slashdotted. Oh, and it wouldn't be a good idea to keep filesharing sites one the down-low or anything. Hey asshole, why not let people find it on their own?
I've been wondering for a long time why they don't simply set up a well-working torrent tracker that serves torrents with real, paid ads inserted in the material. This should work great for TV-based media, which is mostly prepared for hosting ads anyway.
A possible argument that the networks may use against this - people collecting downloaded shows will not want to buy the DVDs. They could of course offer lower-quality torrents, but this would simply drive people further towards the unofficial HDTV rips and the like. These are of course fully ad-free, and some of the "HRHD" (Hi-Res HD) XviD rips come equipped with AC3 sound.
Having said that, high-quality, official torrent releases would offset any losses in DVD sales through advertising revenue. The really big fans will probably buy the DVDs in any case, so there will likely be no great loss.
Official torrents could also be quite attractive in that the networks could easily provide some very fast seeders, thereby ensuring that the torrents stay consistently "strong" for much longer. Current TV torrent networks are very good, but can be a little inconsistent at times.
Most newbie computer users will also tend to gravitate towards the official torrents, which are likely to be better publicised.
Overall, I think there is some merit to the idea. One last issue would involve the problem of preventing worldwide distribution - if the networks want a show to be US-only. This of course would also be a rather silly excuse, because the Internet would allow producers to reach markets in which their show would otherwise have not been seen. Ads could even be specially targetted on a per-country/region basis.
About a week ago (im in the UK), i cancelled my TV license? the reason? I just moved into a new place and after 3 weeks still had NO inclination whatsoever to plug the aerial into the TV... and still don't.. .so i thought fuck it, I'll just download stuff when I want it.
Downloading may 'kill the movie business' (yeah, right), but it CERTAINLY will NEVER kill TV . tv is that thing people slob in front of if theyve got nothing to do, its the thing people get addicted to... downloading stuff will always be a computer guy's 'thing'... it's unlikely to ever be mainstream...
I'm living in Japan and as such, I have two options: either download the newest shows (now via bittorrent, before via IRC) or miss out on it. The American TV we get here is usually 2 or 3 (or more) years older, and there is virtually NO british (or other) tv available. If I could download at $1 a show would I? maybe, for something along the lines of Deadwood or Carnival. I would have to pass on Joey and reality TV.
It's accepted by broadcasters in the UK that people do not actually watch advertisements. On the satellite station UKTV Gold, one of the "advert break intros" actually invites viewers to put the kettle on, and one of the "outros" suggests that they may be feeling better after returning from the toilet!
I bought the set and I pay the licence fee with money I earned with my own hard graft. And as far as I'm concerned, that gives me the right to watch what I decide, when I decide, where I decide, with whom I decide. Everybody else had just better deal with it.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
FOX, if you don't want people to download Malcolm in the Middle why have the last two episodes had the first HALF preempted by a bunch of washed up jockos jawboning over great tackles of the day?
Much the same could be said about breaking Scott Peterson alerts, car chases, and 5-minute elaborations in detail about severe thunderstorms 150 miles away.
Broadcasters don't respect the value of their own product.
none of these shows are available in the uk
In addition to geographic unavailability, another good reason that people download shows is that they don't own a television at all.
I offer myself as an example. About a year and a half ago, I realized that the only show I enjoyed was The Simpsons. The rest was a regrettable waste of time.
So I freed up space in my house by getting rid of the box itself, freed up personal time to do interesting things, and thanks to robotolabs' Simpsons torrents, I still get to watch this Sunday's episode of The Simpsons without having to wait the decade or so before it comes out on DVD.
If it wasnt for the threat of file sharing as they called it I never would have tried out Buffy, Stargate SG1, and Smallville. If it wasnt for buffy i never would have tried Angel. If it wasnt for Stargate SG1 i never would have tried out Stargate Atlantis. Because of file sharing I have purchased all 7 seasons of buffy the day it came out, same goes for 7 seasons of Stargate, 3 of smallville, 4 of angel....thats money they never would have seen otherwise
Now I'll be able to capture classic movie-of-the-week fare such as 10.5 and share the pain worldwide! *rolls eyes*
Note to TV execs: you don't have anything worth watching the first time, much less the twentieth. Rest easy.
btefnet.net/ is a similar site. Thanks to it (and tvtorrents) I haven't watched Australian free to air TV for many, many months
Real programmers don't comment their code. It was hard to write, it should be hard to understand.
There's an interesting article on engadget on using a combination of bittorrent and RSS to get a tivo-like system on your pc that will download shows automatically for you.
http://www.tvtorrents.net/ is THE TV source.
Usualy it takes one (or group of) geek, to modify device, and upload first copy to seeds.
This could be the reason why it is suddenly making headlines. The article has been doing the rounds recently and I guess getting some peoples attention.
It is a bit annoying because I have been using this exact method for quite some time, but now that everyone else has a step by step guide to it, they are having a 'slashdot effect' on my favourite rss feeds, and it is drawing attention to the tv episode download scene, which can only mean lawsuits are just around the corner.
For me I feel I am justified in downloading some of these shows as they are never going to make it onto tv over here (the UK), for example Survivor, which is in its 9th season and not one episode has aired here, so it is highly doubtful they ever will. Maybe though if the UK companies use bitorrent file popularity for research, they might see which new US shows are popular with UK downloaders, and will buy them to air here.
but I watched the whole first series of "Greatest American Hero" from a torrent a few weeks ago. It took a whole week to download, though, so much for BitTorrent being quick!
Yes, this has been happening for years, and somehow the media companies will have to figure out a way to make money. The problem is simple - when you donwload a show, the media companies don't know that you are watching. Family Guy is a good example of this - a lot of people love this show, but almost none of them (that I know) actually watched it on TV. Though we definitely all have our mpegs...
Perhaps the DVD profits made up for it?
One of the biggest advantages of watching downloaded television shows is that the people who create these files usually edit out the ads.
An episode of The Simpsons, for example, usually runs between 20 and 22 minutes, including the intro and end credits. (I suppose you could skip both of these and save yourself an additional minute or two.)
Television is already such a big waste of time, why waste more with meaningless ads for productions you don't need?
http://btefnet.net/ is a similar site. Thanks to it (and tvtorrents) I haven't watched Australian free to air TV for many, many months
Real programmers don't comment their code. It was hard to write, it should be hard to understand.
No text.
EX-NAY on SUPRANOVA-NAY!!!!!!
I'm convinced that the RIAA and MPAA has Slashdot accounts, and just lie in wait... "Oh, look, a cool new technology that vaguely threatens our self-centered view of the world...EXTERMINATE!!!!"
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
It seems to me like people were pirating Japanese Television (read anime) long before people started pirating movies. I guess there is the whole Fansubbing legal grey-area and that this isn't really a concern of American TV execs. I guess the big key with TV piracy seems to be availability. People in the US pirate Japanese Television, people in the UK pirate US Television. I think it all ties back to one thing that has been mentioned about 50 times on these forums. Why not make the TV available over the net legitemately. If the price is right people will pay for it where its not available. I watch so few shows that I'd probably be better off paying a dollar per episode than I would paying the cable bill every month!
Who haven't seen anime digested and censored? The problem is most anime aren't meant for kids here, in Canada, because the subject matter is too mature for all adults who think all anime are toons for kids. So what do these idiots do with these anime? They market them to kids and then cut scenes and euphemize "disturbing" ones. As if voice dubbing, poor translation, and also sometimes changing the plot aren't enough to ruin anime.
Fansubs are mostly the best, if you don't know Japanese, unless you like anime junkies' translation of "massive child porn event," or some such. ^_^
It is on in the UK, but no due till January in the US.
PS I hate the Way Sky One sticks there damn logo in the upper central portion of the picture. I can't believe people who pay for this don't get annoyed and tell them to take a leap. I can handle the lower corner like everyone seems to be doing these days...
Two years ago i saw a few episodes of Buffy in Madrid, and being a nerd and all, i was hooked (even with every show dubed in spanish, and i don't know spanish (Cordy was sooo nice... mmm :P)).
Now i went back to Iceland and wanted to see the show! I was very late as it had been on a subscription channel for a few years. so what do i do? i downloaded it! i was happy, i got my fix of buffy. now they don't air it anymore so series 6 and 7 are missing.
then Angel came to my attention. hmm.. the local TV station didn't even consider airing that show! so i downloaded that too! i was happy, very happy.
the people that are loosing money here are the local stores that are renting these on VHS, not the TV stations. as i don't have a VHS player, i don't really care.
now i think TV can be much better then most movies, with shows like Arrested Development (not aired in iceland), Lost (not aired in iceland), Firefly (RIP) (not aired in iceland), and Enterprise (aired in iceland, but it's behind in schedule) I'm very glad to have the internet!
i think i would like to pay-per-view i i could get any movie or show in my TV, if i could get it faster then on P2P.
I think everybody would be happy if the TV stations would just go with the flow, adopt and offer the people what the people want!
I'd agree with this, except for the fact that Suprnova can't be regarded as insider knowledge in any way at all. MPAA, RIAA, you can bet they monitor suprnova traffic. It's probably the most popular and widely known file-trafficing site on the net.
For years I kept asking my cable company to break their packages. I only wanted to pay for the few channels I watched. I didn't want to finance the Golf channel to get my motorsports channel. Just desserts I say.
:-)
Now I only download TV. My cable is gone.
Why don't I download Music?
Quality is variable, can't find what an old guy likes in a sea of Brit Spears wannabes. Otoh TV quality is better than my local cable used to be. Besides I bought all the Rush and BoC, so I am set for music.
TV quality is better than cable, it is more convenient to watch. As it was I had given up watching many series because the network programming was so screwed, I could never find the damn show anymore (stargate starting aroudn season 6)
How about movies:
Ok I have DL one or two really bad movies just to see how bad (Van Helsing). But for the most part I prefer to watch in theater or Rent the DVD. It is a good experience and convenient. Esp now with net renting services like Zip or netflix. I would much rather rent it than try to find the DVD version in full size and spend 2 days downloading it.
TV DL is something I would pay for if equitable...
Yeah, I'm sure up until that post they had no idea it existed.
and by the way, it'd be "ixnay on the uprnovasay."
Product placement is playing an increasingly common role in TV programming these days. There's no reason to have any commercial breaks on shows like The Apprentice, for example, because the whole episode is already an ad in itself.
I'm sure the TV moguls will conveniently forget about that when they eventually end up buying a legislator or two to fight the "new" TV piracy menace.
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
Sorry, the GP actually wanted to pay 99c for online music during the Napster-era, and now reckons 99c is a rip-off? Or are you confusing two disparate groups?
I'd be prepared to pay, say, 99c for the latest episode of, say, Enterprise. I'd not be prepared for you to tell me I have no credibility when other people don't share my sentiments.
This is where the serious fun begins.
I live here in Holland and can give you a few very good reasons tv piracy is going mainstream:
1)Bandwidth (duh). Seing how bandwidth has increased considerabely, tv shows are the new mp3s. Where before you would spend 20 minutes downloading the newest single from your dialup, you can now download the latest simpsons episode.
2) Compression Techniques. Thanks to divx you can now download series at very good quality with reasonable sizes (20 minutes is 140 MB with decent compression). With mpg you need at least double the size for decent looking compression.
3) Bittorrent. Your bandwidth is my bandwidth. Episodes can also be listed in sites/rss feeds and quality can be assured.
4) Commercials. Too many, too long, too irritating. Why should I have my viewing experience ruined by commercials? How come the BBC don't have any and still produce programs of superior quality to their American counterparts?
5) Release Dates. I wanna watch Sopranos and I wanna watch it now. Not tomorrow, not next week and definately not when the series are finally releases here in Holland (ie: Couple of years).
6) Quality of TV. Need I explain this? TV really is a waste of everyones time. Why should we have to sit through all those shity programs just to get to the couple of gems that are made? Much better to download the episodes and watch them when you get home from work to relax. That way you can spend the whole evening doing something useful instead of sitting in front of the boob tube.
These are just points from the top of my head. I'm sure I could think of a couple more if I had the time.
What is all comes down to is that the TV stations have to adapt. Suing everyone wont help. There will always be people distributing this over the internet.
A good compromise would be for the studios to set up portals where people can download the episodes direct, without commercials for a subscription fee. Fail on any of the above stated terms and people will download the episodes from bittorrent sites instead of from you.
Anyway, these are just my $0,02
If its EVER publicly broadcasted in the receivers market, how can you call it piracy if they download a copy of the SAME show from the SAME source..
I consider that time-shifting.. Just because you didn't record it that particular night, shouldn't mean you cant get it later.
Same goes for music too. If it was on the radio, and you download a radio copy later.. it still should be legal.
I guess until they can mandate pay-per-view rules on all broadcast audio/video. They we are all screwed anyway.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The main reason why tv hasn't caught on as much for downloads, compared to movies is the VCR. Yes I know we have all been downloading series for years. However in the US, you generally can see repeats later in the week, or turn on your VCR or Tivo. So you will see what you want. So in one of the largest internet economies the VCR saves many people from downloading. Whereas movies take forever to arrive on DVD and there is a price to pay for them.
In the rest of the world downloading of a serie generally happens after someone has grown to like the serie and then gets frustrated with the fact that it isn't broadcasted anymore, or they have to wait for 6 months to see part two of the cliffhanger episode. In general, but not always a tv-serie only becomes popular in a country after it has been broadcasted, whereas word of a movie travels fast and all around the globe.
I hope I make some sense
Use Adsense for Charity
Never even occured to me that there might be a 'turn off laugh track' option on the DVD (I'd been looking for a release marked 'UK version' or something). I wasn't even sure, on reading the link, that that allowed it till I saw the reviews at the bottom.
;-)
Thanks!
Justin
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
This is particularly true of the SF shows such as Start Trek, Stargate SG-1 etc. which are often considered "niche" compared to comedy or soap opera. As an example, where I live, the local networks either don't bother to buy the shows or sometimes buy one season, show it at a ridiculous time like 11am or 12pm, then axe it while complaining that nobody watches it (happened to SG-1, Voyager, Nikita). Unfortunately that way everbody loses.
What the producers don't seem to understand is that they could actually profit from putting these shows online themselves, bypassing the local networks, either at a nominal fee (one or two USD) or even with advertising included (which could be generated automatically and targeted to the downloaders's region). Alternatively, using Bittorent or the like their bandwithd and distrbution costs would be minimal and they could push mechandise (T-shirts, DVDs whatever) as a profit source.
With the right model there is a a huge market and a lot of money to be made, just the networks seem to be stuck in a mental rut, anthe rest of us download TV rips
i remember recording tv shows in vhs so i could watch it later and i think that was not piracy and if i borrrowed a recording, that was not piracy too, now why should downloading from internet be piracy ? after all i am just borrowing a recording.
following the tv piracy line of thought isnt microsoft selling software with the only purpose of piracy (media center)?
Assuming a $40 monthly cable bill and the low estimate of 40 hours of TV watched per month, you get $1 per hour.
A 90-minute movie costs $10 or so in the theatre and $3 or so to rent - rates that are double or higher the (elevated estimate of) per hour cost of watching TV.
Combine this with the fact that movies are more entertaining than TV and that TV shows are more easily recorded for personal usethan movies, and I'm not that surprised that movie-sharing is more popular than TV-sharing online.
"Even for Slashdot, that was a very obscure reference!" - Anonymous Coward
But, what about IP logging and automatic e-mail to district attorneys and RIAA lawyers? Hmm?
Create. Destroy. Enjoy.
The only reason that they can reach out and sue people, etc. is that inorder to obtain media, one has to connect to a set service such as kazaa, etc. and so leave an IP address behind. No matter how advanced the P2P service, there's is always a way to find the downloader if they really really want to.
At present, it is not realistic to e-mail songs, movies, and TV shows because the attachments are too big for normal e-mail accounts to handle and too large for most PCs to deal with without crashing.
At my work, every now and then, some idiot tries to e-mail a bunch of MP3s to himself or a whole movie and our entire e-mail system goes butts up. Even so, recently, the instead of dying when this happens, the files do get through but at the cost of drastically slowing down the system instead of killing it as was the case a year ago.
But, in the next few years, e-mail attachments of a gig or more won't be a problem or even significant and PCs will be running multi-gig processors. E-mailing your buddy the latest Enterprise episode will be be trivial. Remember how, a few years back, even just sending a large jpg would tax your system?
It is easy to image P2P "networks" consisting of anomymous google e-mail accounts or the like, and this would be the most simplistic method. Between creative use of e-mail and networks of friends exchanging things, we might in the next couple of years finally be able to kill of the MPAA/RIAA dinosaurs once and for all.
All these entertainment groups need to embrace digital media distribution instead of trying to fight against it. They need to have produced content available in a digital media distribution format within a short time of releasing content to the general public. If an album is released then the high-quality song files should be available for paid download within a short time after. Every book written should be available as a pdf (or somesuch) and downloadable within a year of release of the dead tree version. Every movie released in theaters should have a DVD (without advertising!) following shortly. Every TV series aired should have a DVD (without advertising) released within a year after original airing.
Entertainment groups should be required to embrace and fully utilize digital media distribution, not vilify it.
A whole episode of a TV serie (such as Enterprise or Futurama) can be a few gigabytes, especially if you download it in HD (my favorite). Imagine downloading every Simpsons episodes. You'll need more than a few dvd-r's and a lot of free time to watch them.
printf($randomline(sigs.txt) \n "-- "$randomline(authors.txt));
-- myself
All they have to do is use strait bit torrent downloads encoded in the same or better quality than the people ripping them, and make them available when the show ends. Hell, put a small add saying "Friends telling you what happened before you had a chance to watch? See this show on FOX every Monday at 5:30!" or whatever at the beginning of each show. The people that are going to skip the adds are the same ones in the bathroom while its showing so what exactly is the problem?
I do security
Lets see... quick peek on kazaa, edonkey and the like turns up about ever tv show I'd like to watch.. quuick roaming of usenet turns up newsgroups with the most recent episodes of almost any series you might be interested in..
Now tell me, how is this anywhere new?
If the TV broadcasters don't like it, they shoudl cosnider a few things first.
- Many TV programs I am interested in are not broadcasted on any channel I can receive here.
- Those that are broadcasted here are often showed at impossible times.
Fix those 2 issues (the later is very simple, just actively support time shifting instead of trying to oppose it, and the issue is gone) and people have very little reason to pirate TV content.
Why not release the shows on the net?
I would pay if the price was good for a show providing..
1: I could download it and watch it as many times as I like (like VCR).
2: I don't have to jump through DRM hoops to watch it.
3: The price is right.
4: NO ADVERTS. Or the ability to skip over those adverts.
I rarely watch TV now, but then I rarely download anything as well (don't have the bandwidth for it all the time).
However releasing the TV programs can be benificial. For example I bought the FireFly box set based on watching one downloaded version.
Too bad this site is blocked in China. Sorry, not the site, but the trackers they put up. And its not blocked from this side either. 95% of all torrent sites work perfectly, this one doesnt. digitaldistractions works, so I get most of my TV there. But there is heaps on tvtorrents that I want and cant get, because they cant get their sh it together.
one thing that people dont tend to share or "pirate" are sports games. you never see any nba games in any of the suprnova.org or tvtorrents.net websites. wonder why that is though. Occationally you see some old classic games like the 1990 nba all-star game, or contraveral ones like the pistons-pacers game last week - but almost never current regular season games. they dont show phoenix suns games in east coast canada :(
my blog
I've always wished to find someone who would broadcast some American channels like Comedy Central, as I'm not able to see those channel here in Sweden because I can't have satellite where I live. Streaming that to the Xbox using XBMC would be a really good option, and I'm not saying I wouldn't be able to pay for it. Perhaps even the broadcast companies should look into that option...
All the TV corp has to do is fool the Advertisers with figures and complicated power point charts.
There are neilson ratings and other things, but no one really knows exactly how many people viewed a certain ad at a certain time. Some companies have teh tech to make guestimations, but it's not perfect as say... Web banner views.
Speaking of which... With ad-block and firefox using ads for websites (pop ups and banners)will start to go the way of the dodo.
Unless of course webmasters get nasty and link dynamic graphics within the same directory as the sites content making wild cards usless and even make the text graphics too making viewing content impossible by anyone using adblocker.
I've long gotten bored of television. It takes up my internet time. Thanks to competition, I'm no longer committed to paying for cable. I dropped paying the $30/month to just spend the $45/month for my cable internet. I came to the realization that the TV is just an idiot box. With high speeds and relative easy access, I can get any television shows I have an interest in wasting my time thought I'd rather waste my times watching DVDs and anime fansubs. I use to have a handful of shows I would grab but now I only bother with The Simpsons. My consumer money still purchases the TV Box sets or I just rent them. I know to advertisers & TV Execs, my eyeballs are a valuable commodity since I fall in the 18-49 male demographic (wait.. let me check my drivers license to see if I still am.. yep I am). If they want my eyeballs glued to their hoarding products, be sure to work on subliminal product placement that is becoming common while I'm watching their shows.
TV piracy has been going on for awhile now. About a year ago I did a search for pirated South Parks and found at least 20 websites with entire seasons. If TV exeutives want to stop this they better be quick.
If i pay for my tv cable connection, why shouldnt i be able to download my favorite episodes w/o the stupid crap i dont want?
If im allowed to tape them, TiVo them, why cant i download them?
This reeks, as usual, of corporations wanting more and more money and not caring about the people they step on to get it.
"It's probably the most popular and widely known file-trafficing site on the net."
What second to Usenet?
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Advertising is only the surface of the mind-control. The main body of the messages which drill into your brain while you are being hypnotically opened by the fine-tuned strobing of the CRT are built into the fine shows themselves.
How can you tell it's working. . ?
Look at the Ukraine: As of two days ago, they ALSO had a fraudulent election split almost exactly down the middle. And when the criminal element there tried to say, "We won. Now go back to your homes," the citizens there had the balls to gather 300,000 people strong in front of the parliament buildings in freezing rain and demand that the criminal leadership step down immediately and that the guy they actually voted for be put in. The country is on the edge of un-civil war, (or they were yesterday; I've not reviewed the situation yet this morning.)
In any case, Ukrainians have many, many more balls than the fine people in the U.S.
Now how could this be so?
I'll tell you. It's a hundred things really, but a brief sampling of the list include. .
Flu shots filled with brain-damaging extra goodies like Mercury making people slow, tired and STUPID.
An education system pushing the deliberately broken 'food pyramid' at kids, which makes people fat, over-starched, slow, tired and STUPID.
Cell phones which addle the brain, making people slow, tired and STUPID.
Hyper-promotion of electronic entertainment, not the least of which is television with it's moronic messages and distractions making people slow, tired and STUPID.
How do you steal an election? Diebold will get you the fake numbers, but if you want to stop the people from storming the halls of government to tar and feather a criminal psychopathic 'leader', you need to make sure that they HAVE NO BALLS.
Free television is great. Only the chumps in marketing give a hoot. As long as people are watching the flicker-box, the Powers That Be are laughing. At you.
Because you are slow, tired and STUPID.
-FL
Here's how. First of all, there will always be couch potatoes who actually watch the television and are so brain-dead that they actually watch the commercials. But that's not the point. The following is:
If advertising is placed directly in the television show, for example, through product placement, then the more the show is copied--that is, you stop thinking of it as being pirated, but as merely being copied--the wider the distribution of the advertising, and the more the television channel and the makers of the show can charge for the ad and product placement.
Ever seen that Jim Carrey movie where he lives in that huge dome and his whole life is a television show? Suddenly, characters would hold up a product in mid show and talk about its merits, right in front of him, and he didn't understand what the heck was going on. At first glance, that appears a cheap and stupid way to do it, but think of how valuable it might be. Consider this: No more commercial interruptions. The commercials become part of the show itself. Product placement, characters talking about a product or service... these are the easy ways to do it. A more sophisticated way would be to write the show around the products being advertised, and to do it in such a way that it doesn't detract from the show.
Example: Ever seen the commercial of the guy who will "Fight for you" if you're in an accident? So... make one of the show's characters get in an accident in one episode, call that lawyer, and then show how that lawyer kicks some legal ass and gets them serious money for their injury. Ever seen those plumbing commercials? Have a show where everything goes wrong with the plumbing (it could be made very comical and funny) and show the plumber showing up on time, smelling clean, and fixing the pipes. How difficult could that be? People will pirate, er, copy this stuff, increasing the distribution of the ads without costing the network anything; it would eliminate the need for lawsuits because the behavior would be desired by the company; and consumers would feel better about being able to do so without getting busted. Kind of in the same way that many /.ers feel good about copying free software.
In other words, information wants to be free. So instead of trying to fight it through artificial means that only cause problems, why not leverage this inherent property of information to:
- Eliminate commercials as we know them today
- Place the commercials into the show in funny, amusing, or subtle ways
- Eliminate the legal problems associated with fighting piracy
- Increase revenue without significantly increasing cost
It's not that hard, people. All it takes is for those aging, gray haired executives who have NO IMAGINATION to think outside the little square that their minds have been squeezed into.In other words, I've figured it out:
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
Wouldn't that be your fault? That is, unless you actually worked for Clinton and lost your job when he left office. Grow up. Get real. Get a job and shut the fuck up.
A great venture back about 4-5 years ago was ICraveTV.com (now a dead link). See http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,33093,00.ht ml for an article on it. This was a Canadian company which started broadcasting real TV over the Internet. Of course, there were some legal issues which they failed to work out, and got shut down for it.
Nonetheless, this brought legitimate TV with its ads to people around the world.
Ultimately, the more circulation of these things the better, as popularity grows through word of mouth. I TiVO a lot of my programs nowdays (HD PVR) but every once in a while can miss a good episode of something that happens to be online (also good for university students without TVs).
Viewers are wasting their own bandwidth downloading/uploading, just find a player that inserts ads as you suggest and we'll be set.
http://english.aliant.net/home.jsp offers TVonMyPC over their DSL lines, which just rebroadcasts about 20 TV channels into Windows Media and lets local users of their DSL network to subscribe and watch it. Now just to bridge the gap between this and time-shifting and we won't need downloads...
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
I wouldn't place usenet first :)
Here's an idea:
If the network execs want me to continue watching their shows (more accurately, their adverts), why don't they grant network waivers to sat customers?
I live in a fairly small college town with large cities 100 miles north and 65 miles south. We have one in town tv station. In order to pick up any network besides CBS, we have to buy cable or put up a large directional antennae on the house (which my subdivision won't allow). When I tried satellite, only one of the 6 networks (Fox) granted a waiver to get the network feed on satellite.
So why do I download HD West Wing episodes? Because there isn't any other way for me to get them without paying the monopoly cable company $80/month. If the nets want me to watch their commercials, grant my DirecTV/Dish/Voom distant network retransmission waiver.
Long live P2P.
When did the Slashdot editors buy into content distributor terminology?
No TiVo, no ads, HDTV quality and usually 350MB per hour of DivX encoded video.
That's Mr. XviD to you!
But I agree. Anything from lol,fov,vfma,q for hdtv/pdtv are great. There are actually groups out there that spends too little time and create crappy encodes.
Quality over speed, Crimson, quality over speed!
jeesh man, Bush has been the worse thing for the economy, how can you blame his company going under on him?
now, lick his scrotum, if he's in to that sort of thing, and shut the fuck up yourself. retard.
Actors get paid more when they are "reshown"? That's insane! It's not like they did any more work.
The American TV industry is missing a major reason to download their shows: Some people just CANNOT buy the programming. At any cost.
Overseas TV fans who speak English download the shows because they want to watch their favourite stuff
a) In English (no dubbing crap)
b) At the same time it airs, not a few years latter
I would be more than happy to pay for the same contents that a regular DirectTV subscriber. But I just can't, so I either download the shows or I'm stuck with whatever the TV station airs. I believe they are premiering Buffy season 6 in a few weeks.
I would buy karma from ebay but I'm not sure I can trust the seller.
Both were illegal but I can't really remember reading in the newspapers about someone being arrested or sued for recording a show on tape and passing it around.
Is it just me or what? Coz millions people more can see that one Enterprise episode, we are doing illegal stuff?
Casette tapes vs MP3 / Ogg
Video tapes vs DivX / Mpeg
But it really must be my own blonde dutch dumbness to think like this.. Unless there are people who understand what I just wrote down....
-- Sig: OMG WTF BBQ. PHP, SQL and XML R0xx0rz
Fans of anime etc that are non japanese basicly don't have much choice other than to rely on dc and torrents to get subtitled ( fansub )animes. Of course some of the biggest hits will be out on DVD long after. I havn't seen much action taken by any of the Japanese companies making these shows, probably because they know that most of their fanbase/customerbase ( for eventual merchendise and dvdboxes ) abroad wouldn't even exist without fansubs. This is sort of the reverse I guess to the situation of people not wanting to see dubbed shows and therefore dl raws from US( not that I ever would watch dubbed anime over subbed )
Actors learnt from the Startrek fiasco and now insist that if the studios are going to make money from repeats then some of it will come their way as well.
The BBC, apparantly operating to a higher ethical standard, chooses to reward even thos radio and TV performers who have no contractual right to a repeat fee. Even when the BBC is repeating in-house productions at no real cost, it uses an estimate of how much it would have cost to make a new program to fill the time being filled by the old one
Paul
www.opencouncil.org
Open
I heard somewhere that they use Suprnova and other BT sites as a kind of ratings source to tell them what shows they should be pumping up product placement in.
Or someone does that and sells it to the ??AAs. Personally, I think that's a pretty ingenious idea. They'd get their advertising dollars and the more people download their placement-infused content, the more they can charge for them.
Doesn't everyone win there? Doesn't work for music, of course...
+++ATH0
If this was true, Cable and satalite TV would cost 19.99 for everything.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I think we're gonna see an increase in product placements...
Grissom'll be analysing forensic evidense when suddenly he'll look at the camera and say "i love bugs, but that doesn't mean i like getting bitten by them. get raid!".
There was a big fracas in the 19th century about player piano rolls.
h tm
from
www.lespagesauxfolles.ca/Academic/chap04.
The Software Act began the erosion of a basic distinction between copyright and patent by suggesting that useful objects were eligible for copyright. In judicial cases such as Diamond v Diehr (1981), the court held that 'when a claim containing a mathematical formula implements or applies that formula in a structure or process which, when considered as a whole, is performing a function which the patent laws were designed to protect (for example, transforming or reducing an article to a different state of things), then the claim satisfies the requirements of [the copyright law].'
This finding ran against the grain of the long-standing White-Smith Music Publishing Co v Apollo Co decision of 1908 where the Supreme Court ruled that a player piano roll was ineligible for the copyright protection accorded to the sheet music it duplicated. The roll was considered part of a machine rather than the expression of an idea. The distinction was formulated according to the code of the visible: a copyrightable text must be visually perceptible to the human eye and must 'give to every person seeing it the idea created by the original. (ibid)
The analogy of a computer program to a player piano seems apt, since both are basically sets of instructions for a machine. The 1981 court decision uses some torturous logic in order to essentially overturn the previous court's decision.
The reason the election was never challenged has less to do with the public, and more to do with the leaders. If Kerry and the Democratic party are quick to admit defeat, and silent about possible fraud, you can't expect the people to go out and start a riot on behalf of them, can you?
At least in 2000, Al Gore put up a bit of a fight... And you know what happened? People were out in the streets, around city halls, holding signs, yelling, etc. to get their man into office.
I don't know how any of your posts ever get modded up at all. I have to imagine your OTHER
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
TV piracy isn't as big as the pre-release leaks are far less common, and so by the time it comes out on torrent etc., the big fans have already seen the programmes.
Plus, downloading a film means you don't have to trek to the cinema. Downloading a TV show means you don't have to press the button on the remote.
It's a commerciGAK! Whomp!
You give it away for free (in America, at least), over my public airwaves.
And then you get angry when I give it away for free.
Hypocrites!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
isonews has had a TV rip section dating all the way back to 2001 - back when the only HQ stuff was Simpsons, Futurama and Family Guy.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
I compare US television adds with telemarketing. One call a month would have been livable, but noooooo, they had to keep chiseling away with more and more calling until legislating a national do-not-call list was the only solution.
Since a legislative solution could never occur with TV adds, it looks like we're going ahead and solving the problem on our own with technology. It did't have to be that way. It's not like I didn't use the mute button a long time before Tivo and MythTV either.
The foreign TV I'm most familiar with is Japanese. Sometimes the fansubbers leave the commercials in. I'm so appalled by the brevity and unobtrusiveness of these commercials I actually do imitations of them at work when people complain about advertising.
Here's my impression of the comercial for Bandai, a Japanese toy company:
Me (deep Japanese sounding voice):
BAAAANDAIII !!!!!
Me (punchline):
That's the WHOLE commercial !
Okay, maybe it sounds plausible, but as my subject says, do you have any evidence for this conspiracy theory?
Oh, yeah, right, they're suppressing the evidence too.
Tag lost or not installed.
That'd be like saying "taping songs off the radio is radio piracy".
Haha not quite.
I don't really watch or pay attention to commercials to begin with. If I'm watching a show and commercials come on, I either leave the room to do whatever I need to do, or I flip to another channel.
The point is: I'm not watching them either way.
So... what exactly is wrong with downloading TV shows? You can't say "Well the Ads pay for the shows." That's true overall, but not from me since I don't watch em.
Besides, I pay $$ for my cable, and if there's a show I wanted to see that I missed, it's not "oh well, just wait till it's on next time." Screw that. I'll go download it. If they aren't broadcasting it, then they aren't losing anything.
For example, the south park "shit" episode. CC won't air that again and aren't making revenue from it, therefore, I can download it. Yeah yeah, I don't care what the law says, I'm using common sense with this one.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
Recording artists are paid per CD sold or radio play. Why? It's not like they did any more work to sell 1000000 than 10. Authors are (typically) paid per book sold. In the creative industries people are less likely to be salaried and more likely to be paid, essentially, on commission. The more popular your art, the more money you make.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
While we were chatting about this...
My girlfriend's browsing my library of TV series, which are stored in seperate folders in the root directory of a linux fileserver.
Suddenly she pipes up, "Ohhh, you've got Lost *and* Found, I didn't know there was a sequel, is it any good ??"
I can download a few hours worth of programming in DivX format in a relatively low time-frame. When monthly bandwidth usage becomes less of a concern, why not offer a package wherein for $30/mo I can set my 'puter up to pick shows I want from TV-guide, download them, and watch them when I get home from work. Not much different from what's happening already anyhow
The main issue is probably commercial revenue. If you *really* want me to see a few commercials, drop the price a bit for packages with mandatory commercials, or perhaps throw them in during the loading process as a quick clip.
I love it, Malcom in the Middle always gets pre-empted by Football on the east coast, so what choice do I have other than downloading? In fact, the high quality 180MB widescreen HDTV-sourced Xvid copies look so much better than the analog version I get on cable, that I am going to download all Fox shows this way rather than watching them or taping them on my DVR. I can't get our local Fox in HD because the station is owned by Sinclair who won't give it to any cable systems to carry.
I wouldn't be watching the commercials anyway since I DVR everything, so I don't really see how downloading is any different.
Good DRM is when a company can stream or upload you a file over the net - much like a video rental - allow you to watch it, and not worry that you'll dump the thing into a file and stick it on KaZaa right away.
Bad DRM is when you've bought a disk or an "unlimited use" file (download), but can't watch it on another machine, burn it to CD, etc.
DRM as a method for hindering illegal activity is good. It's when it hinders legal activity as well that it's bad. In the first example I really can't see anything being hindered at all, since the file download is a "rental" you have no more rights to copy/dump the file than you would a Blockbuster rental. In the latter it's a pain in the ass because you should be able to use your "purchase" as you see fit (withing your own domain of ownership)
Subject says it all.
Many of the better shows that were on in the 1990's have been cancelled and replaced by crap.
I haven't seen much of anything that would be worth the temporary hard drive space, let alone the bandwidth. Or even the time to sit and watch.
In short - they WISH.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I an not always around to watch the TV show at 7PM, so my choices are either wait for a rerun, wait for the season box release or download it and watch.
The scheduling of shows is just as much of a reason to download a tv show as say commercials. This calls for more on-demand tv, and I demand it.
Ohh and I don't use Tivo, and never will.
How in the HELL has it been modded 'interesting'? Please re-mod to 'Flaim Bait' as this is obviously what was meant... or maybe +3 Funny.
You are cordially invited to move to the glorious Ukraine and enjoy your new found paradise for the remainder of your days.
From the /. story blurb:
Frankly I'm amazed that movies caught on before TV since there's so much more TV, and they tend to be smaller files than movies.
As the subject says... TV programs have traditionally been "free" over the airwaves. Cable has changed that only slightly - you pay a monthly fee, but other than PPV, any incremental TV watching you do is "free" (or it seems that way - it's like an all-you-can-eat buffet diner, encouraging you to consume as much as you can to get your money's worth). To see a movie you have to pay to enter a cinema or pay to rent/buy the tape or DVD. So pirating a movie gives you the idea that you're getting 'something for nothing' whereas with pirating TV you're getting 'nothing for nothing' (and not just Seinfeld).
In a way, it makes movies more 'respected' as IP than TV, as evidenced by comments here that "it came over the airwaves to my TV, why can't I download it?" I don't see as much justification for copying movies.
The answer to that question is the increasing reach of The Long Arm Of Copyright Law (that got even longer thanks to Mickey Mouse), which states that the creator of an artistic work as all rights to how that work may be copied and disseminated. Many think it ain't right, and many are just ignoring it or are just plain ignorant of it altogether. But it's the law, and whether it's right or wrong, until the law is changed (not likely in my lifetime), the people who do this (UL or DL unauthorized copies of TV or movies) are breaking the law.
Tag lost or not installed.
Good shows now have a global audience without them having to spend extra money. I watch more anime fansubs than regular US tv. Other people here download rather than wait a few years for the dvd to become available in their country. You'd think there would be something they could take advantage of rather than panic and try to stomp new technology out.
:-)
People wouldn't try so hard to skip US commercials if they weren't total overkill. When I watch live using MythTV I hit the pause key and wait ten minutes so commercial skip works, and that's for a "half hour" show. I've seen Japanese TV ads when the fansubbers leave them in. They're so brief and nonirritating compared to the US ads it's almost appalling.
The reason I went to tv-torrents rather than MythTV is that the quality of the Comcast broadcasts in San Jose is really poor. No one at work is happy with Comcast either. You'd think that this would come up as an issue with TV execs, and not just the fact the hdtv downloads are available.
Another thing that the guy quoted in this article seems to be unaware of is timezones. This year I've been able to download The Shield and start watching before it even came on in California. Guess it was recorded and encoded on the east coast.
Another good reason, too, is that some areas (even in the same city) cannot get some channels. For example:
;)
I live about 15 minutes from a friend of mine who gets the Space channel (canadian version of Sci-fi) for free with his basic cable service. Me? I can't get it at all, not even if I wanted to pay for it. Why? Because my neighbourhood is considered a french neighbourhood by the cable company, and thus we don't want any sci-fi in English. Let's forget the fact that most of the people I cross on my street speak english.
So there is no way for me to watch sci-fi on tv, even if I wanted to pay for it.
What I used to do is to get my friend to record shows for me, and then swap video tapes with him, but that was troublesome for him, and also unreliable ("oops, I forgot"). So instead, I cut the middleman, and download my weekly sci-fi fix.
Finally, another reason to download shows is that TV is 4x3, and I have a 16:9 TV. HDTV isn't available here yet, and the image quality from my cable provider is piss-poor (fuzzy, grainy, washed out). So while I do watch a show live when it airs, when I'm away I no longer bother recording a show, because I can get a widescreen image, and better quality (than broadcast) by downloading it later.
Now what I would truly dig is an iTunes Music Store for buying single episodes of a tv show. Then I could ditch the cable company entirely. Because seriously, 30 bucks a month for about 20 channels, all airing reality tv shows? I could really live without.
Anyways, that was my 2 cents worth
I pay a ridiculous amount for my cable TV every month. What's the difference between setting my VCR to timeshift a TV show, and letting someone else do the timeshifting for me?
If Music downloading is outright theft, TV show downloading is outright not. I've paid to watch that show, whether they like it or not.
It's been a long time.
I like to download the TV shows I am never home to watch on TV. It's like having a Tivo on my home PC plus the commercials are out.
:)
Also some of the time you get the show a little bit earlier because the people who get the TV snag it off the feed to the broadcast station (sometimes). It's usually only a day ahead and it's only some shows but it's frickin cool spoiling someone favorite show.
Im just a meanie
Solosoft.org - Your Online Resource to Nothing
Admittedly, it's geared towards anime, but check out The Pirate Anime FAQ. They've got a lot of nice little tips such as areas to watch for false logos, not to mention some common-sense rules of thumb such as episode to disc ratios (As they state, a typical ratio is 2-3 episodes per disc. If you're getting Seasons 1-7 and they list only 14 DVDs, it's probably pirated and there's a good chance that you're getting a lower-quality product.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
The key to future success for media companies, television stations and cable MSOs in Video On Demand.
"Streaming" television will always be around: an array of multiple channels 24/7 with a set schedule that continues whether you're watching it or not. Not everyone wants to sit down in front of the TV and tell it what they want to watch. They just want to turn it on and for there to be something there. They want to flip around and don't care if they access The Daily Show halfway through. They don't need to see the entire show beginning to end. So TV as we know it will basically always be around.
But VOD will suppliment it. DVRs such as TiVo put the power on the client end - in the viewers' home. This has some advantages. The data is stored locally so the consumer has much more control over it: They can fast forward through commercials, burn to DVD, etc. But it also has limitations over a server-side solution such as VOD. With VOD, storage space is basically limitless. Instead of having 2 million people record an episode of Seinfeld on their local DVRs, the episode could be stored once on a VOD server and all 2 million people could access it.
So instead of telling your DVR "Record Seinfeld whenever it comes on" and that having to wait as those episodes are sent to you once or twice a day and worrying about the old ones getting deleted due to space, you can access the Seinfeld section of the VOD server and have every episode in front of you instantly.
This is MUCH more appealing to the average consumer (read: not Slashdot crowd) than the DVR model. And there's no "downloading" of anything involved either. If your cable company includes this powerful VOD option for free, why go buy a DVR?
Now I understand that Slashdot geeks will not trust anything they don't build themselves. I know BitTorrent will never fall and that there will always be pirated media floating out there. But content companies don't care as long as the masses are using what they want them to use. And I think this VOD system is the most appealing for the vast majority of TV viewers out there.
Also, since the data is now on the server end, the operators have more control. They can more easily force viewing of commercials. And you can't "flip away" because if you go to another channel, your current VOD selection will pause itself, so you'll have to watch the commercial eventually. DVRs won't be able to record the VOD stuff for you, because they can impliment a system where the viewer has to "Enter the 5 digit code" they see on the screen to access the VOD section. Yahoo and some other websites do this now to make sure it's a real person on the other end and not some spam bot.
On a positive note for consumers, this will allow commercials to be catered directly to the viewer, not just the show they're watching. So it could improve on commercial targetability and hopefully introduce some shorter commercials and less time per hour dedicated to commercial breaks.
Macintosh humor! MacComedy.com
I understood (please correct me if I am wrong) that things broadcast over public airwaves could be legally recorded. If so, how is any of this wrong? Or is this just common practice and not law as all?
I thought public airwaves meant public property. Can someone shed some legalese light on this?
I can't see how TV sharing is illegal by any stretch of the imagination. You could record stuff you wanted to watch later (or again) decades ago, and though the equipment has changed, you could also easily edit out commercials.
The only even remotely relevant argument I can see is that people who don't pay for cable/satellite can get cable/satellite programs anyway. Frankly, I think this problem lies in the lap of the service providers. Cable a la carte anyone?
Glog!
Broadcatching is one of the coolest new uses of RSS and the huge availability of TV shows available as Bittorrents.
Think of it as Tivo for your computer. Simply construct some well crafted regular expressions into an RSS Importer plugin for your favorite multi platform Bittorrent client and you're good to go.
Buy yourself a quality 400GB HDD and store up a plethora of the shows you like ready to watch when you are.
Here's a great step-by-step how to, should you need it.
Word or two of advice: it's a good idea to learn how to build some pretty precise expressions or you will end up with a number of different version of the same show (format, compression etc.).
Unlike you, I'm not an anonymous coward and I do have solutions:
1. Eliminate tax incentives for companies that outsource.
1a. Tax American companies on their foreign subsidiaries' profits just like they are taxed on their domestic profits.
2. Collect larger unemployment insurance payments from profitable companies that layoff U.S. workers. The amount could be based on a formula that takes profit margin, number of workers laid off, and average pay of laid-off workers into account.
3. Collect a per-laid-off-worker retraining fee that would be put into a fund to provide government-assisted training to laid off workers.
4. Give preferential consideration for government contracts to companies that minimize outsourcing.
5. Require that companies inform U.S. consumers when their phone calls are being transferred out of the country (e.g., "please hold while your call is transferred to our call center in Bangalore, India"). Also require that telephone representatives provide their actual names. If a person's name is "Ramanpreet," "Suryanarayanan," or "Priyamvada," then don't allow them to identify themselves to a caller as "Jim", "George", or "Sharon." These requirements would allow consumers to make informed choices on their purchases.
6. Require that companies comply with U.S. labor and environmental laws when they open plants overseas. If it's wrong for Nike to hire a 14 year old child in the U.S., then it's wrong for them to do it in Vietnam. If it's wrong for General Motors to expose a worker in the U.S. to asbestos, it's wrong for them to expose a worker in Malaysia to asbestos. If it's wrong for Mattel to pollute the air from their U.S. plant, then it's wrong for them to pollute the air from their Mexican plant.
There are many more things that can be done and, obviously, details to be worked out by legislative bodies before the suggestions that I made could be implemented. But I've made suggestions rooted in ethics that could help a lot.
How does it work now? Do the producers of shows see some of the ad profits, or just the networks/cable companies?
What's to stop the show's producers from posting their content directly online in some sort of pay per episode scheme? That would seem the ideal thing to me, cut out the money-sucking middlemen, and deliver a high-quality version of the show directly to the consumer via the internet for, say, $1 an episode.
There's a reason why people have been copying programs for years... as Mike McGuire was quoted in the article "people are ignoring the old notion that you watch your program at 8 o'clock when CBS or NBC decides you should be watching it."
Gee, I wonder why.. maybe... because people live in different time zones!! I, like many others do not get to watch some possibly good shows because they don't come on at the same time here as they do there... I am not going to quite a day job just so I can watch this years greatest TV show.
And... Why would I want to spend $100 on a box set (per season) of a show that might suck!! and all because I couldn't watch it when "they" wanted me to?! Not to mention, TV shows are not ment to be watched more than once.. let's face it... they are funny the first time you see it and that's it..
... in Soviet Russia, products don't need to be advertised! :)
- Leon Mergen
http://www.solatis.com
There is only one reason for Google to exist: they give you what you ask for. If you search properly, they give you relevant information. They don't throw popup ads in, annoying banner ads, etc. They don't allow advertisers to artifically dope the rankings.
...once upon a time, it cost a lot of money to set up a television station. You had to have capital (this is capitalism) to spend on an infrastructure. Lo and behold: RSS/bittorrent facilitates the infrastructure by asking the viewers themselves to provide the bandwidth. If I were a TV exec who came up with the idea of offloading the infrastructure costs to the consumers, I'd be an evil overlord genius. ...so the solution is for a startup, who hasn't invested in the infrastructure, to make some good content, DRM it, and sell it for $1 per download. If it's like 90% of the crap on TV currently, it probably won't go too far. If it's quality content that strikes the consumer as being relevant, it just might stand a chance in a relevance-driven world.
Relevance is the new definition of value. When CDs were full of crap tunes accompanying one radio-quality single, people rejected the CD-based pricing model. They wanted the one single - that was the relevant piece of information. The rest was crap, and you probably wouldn't find people downloading the filler crap on a CD as often as you would find them downloading the singles.
The internet is driven by a relevance model. It's obvious with search engines and less obvious with mp3s, but it clearly still applies. Television is no different. When you watch TV, you want to see the show you're watching. Are commercials relevant? No. Does a better option exist? Yes. Tivo and RSS/Bittorrent both provide more relevant content than broadcast/cable/satellite.
Will the old television model ever be competitive? Yes, assuming they adopt the stance that consumers want relevant content. They are beginning an uphill battle if they want to sell inferior content as a competitive alternative to a superior content delivery mechanism.
The solution?
?/o
Studies have shown the way to reduce office theft is not just to increase the penalties for stealing, but to REDUCE things that can be used to justify the theft to the individual... i work long unpaid hours, the company is a faceless corp... the company can afford it etc.
Let's face it, unless people are stealing PCs and photocopiers (which is going to be damn hard to get away with in the same casual manner), the company is going to bite the cost of the stationery rather than reduce hours, pay more, or treat their staff as human beings.
Seriously, if I was a pennypinching amoral fuck, it'd be a no-brainer. Stationery just isn't that expensive (even accounting for the bloated prices in your average office stationery catalogue).
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
you had me at #!
I've lost track of the number of Anime series/movies that I've downloaded, watched, and ended up eventually buying the DVD of.
Heck, Anime companies have made statements that amount to "Sue the pirates? Heck, no, they're our best customers!"
Most of them don't even pay macrovision to turn that bit on for the "copy protection" because "We don't believe in paying money for something that doesn't help the business." It doesn't stop piracy, it doesn't increase sales (actually decreases them!), and it annoys the legitimate customers.
I don't read AC A human right
PARENT IS FUCKING RETARDED
Yeah I hear Itunes is failing miserably.
What second to Usenet?
Usenet was number one for a long time, but it's a distant also-ran these days.
Seriously, who still gets unfettered access to alt.binaries.* now? Maybe some college students do, but it seems that most commercial ISPs either charge an extra $10-20 per month for the binaries groups, or don't carry them at all.
0 1 - just my two bits
yet us Canadians can't even see it on TV yet. No wonder viewers will download what isn't available... the internet has made timely, global distribution a necessity for content producers (be it television or film - remember when there used to be staggered movie openings around the globe? oh wait.. they still are... silly studios -Wake up and smell the new reality)
How long until daily shows like Sportscenter and The Daily Show start showing up on torrents?
notice how all the same movies play on all the different channels at slightly different times of the month.just watch TBS as they are prolly the biggest offenders of this.right now in hollywood ....."less for more"
TV "piracy" is a logical response to too many commercials and not enough meat.
Well, actually I was referencing this most recent election, but you know, the first one might indeed more accurately be described as the one which was stolen. This most recent was not even fought over by the opposing candidate, so what do you even call that? --But it is interesting that you should immediately jump to the conclusion on your own as to which election I was talking about, --seeing as you supposedly don't think it is true. .
As for mercury in flu shots. . . What can I say? There IS mercury in flu shots. --And in many other vaccines as well. There is no debate as to whether or not this is true. It is an accepted fact. It's on the ingredient list. Look up 'thimerosal', the trade name for a mercury-based preservative. The fact that mercury causes brain and nerve damage is also wide accepted as factual. I'm not sure what you're finding exception with here. .
How in the HELL has it been modded 'interesting'?
My post was probably modded interesting because it raised relevant facts which some people were not aware of and presented them in a way which attempted to demonstrate their importance to current thinking. Whether my post was interesting or not, clearly, depends on one's point of view. You, for instance, found the claims to be outrageous enough to respond. --And they are outrageous, but also true. Which certainly makes them interesting, don't you think?
You are cordially invited to move to the glorious Ukraine and enjoy your new found paradise for the remainder of your days.
I don't need to. I'm not an American. --I'm not saying that civil war is a pleasant sounding thing, but I do say that I respect those who would rather fight for their freedom than pretend that they are free while living lives saturated with lies.
Good luck to you.
-FL
If TV Execs were smart they would be excited about downloading episodes.
Seriously. Release some DRM technology whose ONLY purpose is to make sure that comercials can't be edited out, and bam, they could be releasing episodes themselves.
Think about it. A commercial slot on "friends" airs once, only once. However, if it was downloaded, that commercial is seen EVERY single time there is a viewing. Right away that increases the advertising exposure. (Which = more revenue for Producers).
Infact it will probably increase the exposure. Right now viewers must choose between competting shows in competing time slots, or during times when they may be otherwise occupied. "Download and watch at your leisure" guarantees that viewers always see the shows they like. Which means they always see the advertisments/commercials. It probably is a BETTER (ie. more effective, more money) system that what we currently have.
Downloading movies is one thing, since they are "for pay" only. However TV is "free", and runs mainly on advertising. Downloadable content actually improves advertising, so it's the perfect match.
In response to A. Episodes being hacked to remove commercials and B. People just fast-forwarding commercials. The answer to that is simple: yes they will be hacked, but average joe downloader won't care about the commercials, and will just download the official ones. And about fast forwarding? Doing that for commercials requires some precision, anyone who tries to do that using computer playback software knows, that the precision just isn't there. Sure you can move through big chunks at a time, but to try and get to a specific "minute" is very difficult.
So most people won't bother with fast forwarding, and will just watch the commericials, like they do with normal tv.
Aggies
First off, none of this is conspiracy theory. I'm simply referencing stuff anybody can look up. These aren't contested items. They're just ugly and as a result tend to be ignored by people who don't like ugly things.
Mercury in your flu shot. . .
--Mercury in vaccines
Food. . .
Back in 1991, the first Food Pyramid Guide was slated for release in the U.S. This was delayed because of the outcry from various sectors in agriculture. The guide was re-designed by politicians and released the following year.
--1992 Food Pyramid corrupted by USDA and Agricultural interestes
Cell Phone EM. . .
This one is a huge subject, with many studies I might reference. Anybody who wants to learn about it can do so quite easily these days. This article is a reasonably well-written piece I chose for it's capacity to communicate the basic elements of how microwave EM can affect human physiology and psychology. It is not the final word on this subject by any means. Further investigation is up to you.
Television. . .
.
Television has a powerful impact on the way the brain functions. Nobody argues the fact. Here is one quote which sums it up neatly. .
--Article found here
Here is a larger data base of information on this subject.
So. . .
I know my first pos
I agree, if I record my favorite episode of South Park then I can watch it whenever I want. If I downlad my favorite episode of South Park then I can watch it whenever I want. What's the difference?? Tv exeutives are being stupid and greedy like they always are.
A lot of people use file sharing as an alternative to a VCR. The miss a show, so they download it, especially if it's the continuation of a "to be continued" episode and won't be shown again for months.
What I think they ought to do is offer legitimate bittorrent downloads of tv shows with commercials inserted.
"I'm sorry for being unable to support my favourite series in the US by watching the channels they are running on, but i simply don't have an other chance to do that."
You know what? I'm reading all these "I can't get this were I am" posts, and I'm also reading all the "My jobs gone somewere else" posts in the past.
Am I the only smart one around here who's thinking "Business opportunity"? All BitTorrent's going to do is garner you a movie, TV, or music file. Make enemies, and just make everyone's life painful. Plus you'll still be unemployed, and poor.
Going into business however will garner you money in which you can buy the product (amoung other things), AND make a lot of geeks happy. Plus the rich and powerful will be glad to see you.
So once again why aren't geeks (whom are suppose to be smarter than the average bear) jumping for the opportunity. Has years of P2P dulled everyone's senses?
I'm all for setting up a national map of weekly DVD trade meets.
Bring a DVD. Trade. Whatever you want.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
And yet, what do most people us this wonder for? Porn. Movies. TV shows.
I'm not condemning it. It's human, and humanizing all this technology is a good thing, but, in the grand scheme, it's terribly funny to me.
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
"With the right model there is a a huge market and a lot of money to be made, just the networks seem to be stuck in a mental rut, anthe rest of us download TV rips"
I have no idea why this keeps getting modded insightful? Insightful is when your model can account for everyone who wishes to buy your product. Not an elite few with broadband connections, decent computers, and the funds to support both. Even if I was a bushman out in the middle of nowere with an iPod? The music still has to get to me. A radio WITH a CD player plus cassette player can be bought for much less. And it doesn't have a steep learning curve. Also to boot I can be out in the middle of nowere, or in the big city, and have movies, and music, plus TV beamed to me AT NO COST.
I can go to STORES and get non-degraded copies, in a nice package (in a medium that'll last longer than a cheap burned disk) without waiting long periods of time (I could be doing other things...like making money to buy other nice things), tying up resources that could be better utilized elsewere ( Like discovering the cure for canser).
"But what if I had recorded every epsode that was BRODCAST for FREE over the air? The difference is only in mechanism, not result."
I wonder if you all really think things through?
Does the phrase "This program has been edited for content, and to fit in the allotted time. Viewer discretion is advised." DVD's usually don't have all that. So continue to be proud of your downgraded, and butchered copies on cheap discs that degrade over time. The rest of us will spend money to get the good stuff. And support the artist to boot.
What if the networks used the basic idea of Launchcast; user can get free access with lower quality and ads or can pay a monthly subscription for ad free higher quality content. Obviously the size of a video file means it could not be streamed like a song, but the basic idea still works. In addition, when the user signs up for a free account they must enter their location, which allows the network to provide local commercials thereby satisfying their affiliates. This system would be even better if each network was simply considered a channel and all channels could be accessed from the same location. Finally, for those who want extra features they can still buy the DVDs of the show. The only remaining question is how the DRM would be setup to allow users to burn the file to a DVD, but prevent people from uploading the hi-def "premium" pay files to a peer-to-peer network. Also the files would need to be setup so that the commercials could not be edited out of the free files, which would defeat the purpose of having a pay service.
Personally, my favorite was in Chobits. One of the pirate versions changed fansubs for the last two episodes, resulting in some truly egregious translations. The funniest part was that one of the episodes was reminiscing on prior events, which meant you could see the contrasting dialogue. My favorite mistranslation was translating a shouted "hentai!" into "metamorphist!" for the final episode rather than "pervert" as in the original episode.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
I have a friend that agrees with your friend!
Broadcast television is offered free of charge to the end-user, and even cable is offered at flat-rate. Why can't the same model be put into place here (free downloads of the stuff with ads in it?) Yes, some people will get up and go to the bathroom or grab another cup of coffee during the ads. Yes, some people will fast-forward through them. Yes, some people will take them out, remove them, and share them. This has been going on since they started broadcasting TV, and has not stopped advertisers paying to be featured yet.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
the service is there and it's being used
sure not every media loving computer user is useing the service.
but then i'm sure there are people who steal from the 99c store.
and didnt itunes change the 99c rule
isnt it 8$ for 1 song you like and 4 you prolly will not like
Just how many trucks were hijacked?
What?
Seriously, this has been going on for years.
Exactly... It's gotten to the stage now where most of the TV I watch comes from the net. And the reason why? TV here (in Australia) sucks. We're years behind the US. Hell, we're still getting new episodes of Voyager.
if the xbox had tv-in capabilities then sh!t i would be all over the the Simpsons and Futurama and other shows.
Why don't you check the economic statistics for yourself instead of spouting off your bed-wetting, left wing drivel? Given the same stats with a liberal democrat in office, you'd be praising the president as the best thing ever for the economy.
Why are you so filled with pure HATE that you can't see straight? Oh, I forgot. Only conservatives are capable of hate. Sorry. Your case must be because of some mental condition.
Damned fool.
Your message implies not just that all these various things are true, but also that they are related, and there's a person or group behind them, orchestrating them. That's what I mean by conspiracy theory.
Tag lost or not installed.
Some of my friends in Vancouver, BC were downloading Stargate from the US because the networks in Canada were a full year behind. What's amazing about that is Stargate is filmed in Vancouver!
I live in a house with cable tv ($70 per month) and ADSL (256k down/64k up, $49 per month) - AUD. I would love to upgrade my ADSL to 512k/128k ($69 per month) at the expense of tv, but other members of the household don't agree. If they knew I could download the shows, however, and watch them on tv via a tv out cable (the computer is next to the tv) without advertising then perhaps I would have an arguement. We predominantly watch free to air programming. Sports are essentially the only thing that keeps us on cable tv.
You do realize that...
a. A responsibly-priced set will cost about $10-$15 per disc
b. Some sets take more discs than others, especially when people want special features which, IMHO, are just a couple GB of expensive waste
c. There's so much TV out there that stores cant take all the box sets, so releases have to be delayed more and more just to make sure a store will sell it
Here's how it would go...
I make a couple seasons of show X.
Now, my producer wants to put out DVDs. However, for some myrad reason they forgot to put video rights in my contract - so, they have to spend time in negotiation for the rights, which drives up the cost per set a bit.
The producers complete the discs, and woo hoo! It's only a $30 2-disc set! But wait, we forgot all the special features and we cant fit them on the disc without sending quality to heck. 2 extra discs there, meaning a $60 set, and that's if we didnt have to buy more rights.
Now, we've completed the discs, and we wanna get this thing out to market. However, we have to wait, since all our replication plants are maxed out with Shows Y and Z sets. So we delay it a month until Show Z's done with replication.
If you havent noticed, there has been a lot of churn of boxsets, however since there is a large amount of studios it looks like they arent churning. Okay, so we've got about a million sets of Show X, but we cant sell it since Shows Y and Z are still hot on the market, so releasing it means no one would buy it, and Rival Producer 4 just dumped Show D4 sets. So we delay another 2 months.
By the time we've finished, we have to find a day that NO ONE will release on just to retain good opening-day sales.
So you can see that since EVERYONE wants sets, AND special features, it's overloaded the video market to critical mass.
Now, I will accept my award, accolades, and -1 Flamebait now.
I have numerous reasons I consider virtually water-tight to believe that they are indeed related, but I'm afraid I cannot share the best of those reasons. All I can do is to point at the crimes and suggest that people ask how it could be that such a stacked deck could come into play. --And then to follow the strings back to the hands.
I recognize that correlation does not proove causation. --But to ignore correlation when the balance of convenient events tips beyond a reasonable measure is foolhardy. Simply put, correlation IS often linked to a related cause.
But no, I cannot proove to you that which must be discovered personally. Knowledge isn't free. One has to expend effort to seek it. I have already found my way. Your way is your problem.
-FL
Actually I remember Matt Stone and Trey Parker giving an interview saying they liked that people were downloading episodes and didn't have a problem with it...
Though I dont doubt that comedy central wasn't so happy..
"Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything" -- Josef Stalin
You just have to want it badly enough.
I haven't had a TV for a little over 5 years and people think I'm some kind of freak. I have trouble getting people to do all sorts of other things for me, but as soon as they find out I don't have a TV, they start offering to buy me one or give me an extra one they have. No one EVER wants to buy me an external DVD burner...
Even some of my more tech-savy friends don't want to be bothered downloading TV or movies. They'd rather just look at their (TV) box or buy bootleg DVDs to watch on their 40+" TV instead of downloading stuff for free over the cable internet connection they're paying for.
I don't know how it is in other countries, but here in the US, people want to turn on the TV and watch it. Anything else is too hard...or requires too much of a "paradigm shift".
That's how the TV industry will compete. Those of us on Slashdot (and similar places) are a minority.
I think your point makes an excellent point.
If it weren't for access via the net I never would have forked out $70 (Australian) per season for Futurama, or a bit less per season for Family Guy, Aqua Teen Hunger Force and so on.
Riddle me this, TV execs: why, when I *could* just stick with downloading from BitTorrent, have I gone out and purchased every season of the X-Files, Futurama and the Simpsons? Answer: because once I have choice and flexibility (e.g. DVDs, which I can watch any time), I don't actually WANT to pirate this stuff, I want to pay for it at a reasonable rate and own it in a flexible form. However, with no DVDs and in some cases no access to TV broadcasts, I am left with the choice of not watching your wonderful (ahem) shows, or committing heinous crimes against humanity by downloading the odd episode.
Read Pynchon.
But what'll happen to "World's Funniest Commercials #26"?
The mind boggles at the concept of 42 minutes of Dick Clark shilling Pepsi Blue while introducing the random-B-grade-celebrity-with-humourous-anecdote of the week...
What part of "a well regulated militia" do you not understand?
It hasn't once been broadcast in Australia since it's first run, and there are no dvd boxsets for it... so GO CRY ME A FUCKING RIVER YOU DUMBASS MEDIA COMPANIES I REFUSE TO PAY FOR YOUR SHIT WHEN YOU FUCK ME. & YOUR ADS SUCK!
gawd its not "piracy" that's something done for profit this is merely a hobby. I relied on p2p to get Roswell and Enterprise episodes because we didn't have upn in the area. This is clearly another case of the media business trying to squash any new change rather than adapt themselves.
I don't have television service anymore, I just download the weekly episodes of all the shows I watch...usually in HDTV (Some even in 1080i*drool*), which I wouldn't have gotten even WITH my cable service, and I STILL don't buy any of the shit in the commercials that would have otherwise accompanied the shows. Boo-fragging-hoo.
;P)
I don't really see the point of crying about people downloading shows that are on BROADCAST TELEVISION. (Or people removing commercials, as I'm betting the two issues very closely related in the minds of the TV execs) Cable, okay...maybe...premium...yeah, I understand that... But BROADCAST? And no, they aren't going to lose DVD sales. The people who would keep vidcaps in lieu of official DVDs when they come out, probably wouldn't have bought the DVDs in the first place. They're merely upgrading from the use of a hojillion VHS tapes.
One of my major addictions is West Wing... I've actually made custom season 5 DVDs from high-quality SVCDs I got off usenet, so I can watch them along with all my retail WW DVDs... And you can bet your ass I'll STILL buy the retails when they come out.
(I will however concede that of all the shows I watch, West Wing has the lowest-priced boxsets at around $30-40 a season, CSI gets excessive at $60-70)
This habit of mine (Downloading shows instead of watching TV) evolved from my downloading raw vidcaps of the latest anime, every week. With so little on US television that interests me, it's a no-brainer. (And btw, despite my strong feelings concerning dubs and poor translations, I STILL buy my US-licensed anime DVDs too. Feel free to cite me whenever you need to debunk someone's BS piracy argument.
Anyway, my point is... What exactly are they afraid of? Loss of DVD sales? Hardly. Anyone who's a fan of the show will buy the DVDs just for the extras, if nothing else. Lost commercial revenue? That's FAR more likely.
Maybe if they made commercials that didn't make me want to destroy all life on the planet, that'd almost be a valid argument... As it is I have half a dozen remotes that have b0rked mute buttons (Actually wore the traces and pads right off the board!), from having to mute every commercial break to avoid being aurally assaulted by braindead shit aimed at the lowest common denominator. (Usually at much higher volumes than what you're watching)
Gee, think maybe THAT'S why people remove commercials? Because they suck? Because they're annoying? You mean there's not some deep, dark, criminal motive behind it? OH-FSCKING-NOES MR. TV EXEC! YOUR WORLD IS ENDING!!
I OWN THE FIREFLY BOX SET, AND ALL TV COMPANY EXECS CAN BURN IN HELL!
(You'll have to excuse that last part, the caffeine is kicking in.)
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
TV is ad based. Movies are not. Thats the whole point for the VCR. If I download a TV show, it has advertisements in it. So who is losing money?
I have done it.
Stargates and Battlestar because they air other places first, If they would air here at the same time I would not download them.
Now I do still watch the shows when they air in the US and in the case of SG1 I have every season on DVD (only 50 each StarTrek should learn something about priceing)
I don't normally pirate music, or even movies. I find it wrong. However, I do download tv shows, which or technically free if I turn on my TV when the show is on. However, I use bittorrent to download the latest episodes that I like.
It's just so damn convienent. The only thing I don't like, is that the ads are removed, call me crazy but the ads are how the shows make money.
If the tv networks were wise, they would make it easy for us to download their shows with the ads so that we have a legal means of downloading the shows. It's not like it's hard to set up a tracker or anything.
Commercials separate from the show's content aren't necessary.
(||) Nehmo (||)
Try this
Yeah, the economic statistics show that Bush has lead this country into the shitter while giving all his rich friends a big whopping tax cut.
No hate here, just fun-filled facts.
Well, as far as I'm concerned the original series of Star Trek should be in the public domain by now. They've made more than enough money from their temporary artifical monopoly and now the work should be returned to the commons. I guess that's an argument for another day, though.
You bastard. I wondered why I couldn't get to suprnova earlier. :(
True. I've been downloading loads of FoV stuff lately, and the quality is amazing for a 350Mb file with ~40 minutes of video. High res, almost no artifacts.
.wav file before encoding.
I just wish they'd encode with CBR audio, as half of my apps don't like the VBR MP3 encoding they use. Particularly TMPGEnc, which I use for converting to MPEG2 for writing to DVD-R. I have to use VirtualDub to rip the audio to a separate
The Networks need to wake up and smell the burnt toast. While not quite TV on demand, it's close enough for the average user who doesn't need cable to watch most anything being offered.
Considering what people are currently paying for digital cable, this market has been ripe for the picking for years. The Networks might want to stop trying to figure out how to maintain control of their existing markets and start thinking how they will continue to exist in the future... perhaps without turning their customers into criminals.
A steaming cup of soykaf would be real wiz right now.
The real pirates are the so called 'content producers' who overprice their goods. That said, I bought all seven seasons of Star Trek Next Generation, all seven seasons of Star Trek Deep Space Nine, and all of Voyager, Star Gate, and Star Trek original as soon as they come out. I recorded all of the voyagers on VHS and most of the STNGs, but the 'boughten' DVDs are high quality. I do this for myself. I have on intention of ever selling them. I will never be without Star Trek no matter when it is cancelled by whoever. Neither will my grandchildren. Hardly any one has a full collection in my town. I know, for my stores typically only ordered one or two of each one. I watched every day for them to appear and over the space of five years got them all. Yes I have oriental patience. I even have an oriental wife whom I love very much. I will keep my old VHS collection of hundreds of tapes as well. No one will collect data on my for buying them as they were all bought with cash and no personal hackable information about myself was ever given out. I am a nobody, invisible; I even sat by this house with a open wifi and used it to mail this to slashdot. War drivin yep. No one dare call me a 'pirate' for taping them as they came freely into my home over the free air and laden with commercials. I am sure because of the commercials that I missed some of at least the early content, and that is one reason besides quality of picture and sound that I bought my collection.
No one can own the air any more than one can own an idea. To try to do so is the utmost lunacy. It is the kind of lunacy that will cause a war someday. Maybe your children will die so that the children of Gates and Ballmer and Allen and Trump can steal even more blood money than they already have....in some future war.
Indeed, but there isn't much that's vague about suprnova. It's blatently a threat to their current profit making model.
SAILING MISHAP
It's not the nets that have control over the waivers, it's the stations. Go bitch at them.
FC Closer
I was trained to make sure, in the worst case situation. That the commercials go to air, even if that meant the TV show itself was just one nice black screen.
Or that the tv show itself is pre-empted by special news bulletins.
It happened recently when Arafat died. I was watching a network TV show with a friend and it was interrupted with the news. I'll bet the network policy is to wait until commercials aren't playing on the air at all when they break in with their news bulletin.
It happend concerning Arafat in 2004.
It probably happened concerning Regan back in 1981.
It probably happened concerning Kennedy back in 1963.
The only exception to the rule appears to be 2001-09-11 -- the major neworks were in 'CNN' mode for a few days after the event with around-the-clock coverage with no(?) commercials.
To commercial driven TV:
Commercials are king -- Money Talks!
Nothing else matters....