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.

Comments

TV piracy is next?

[Carrot007]

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.

Re:TV piracy is next?

[gilesjuk]

Definitely and when you see the ludicrous cost of DVD boxsets for some TV shows you can see why.

Re:TV piracy is next?

[Anonymous Coward]

I download 'lost', 'the daily show', 'the batman' and 'justice league unlimited' -- none of these shows are available in the uk, and if/when they become available I *will* watch them (on my big widescreen tv rather than my laptop). If some of these shows are bought by the BBC they won't have adverts in them anyways.

The big problem seems to be loss of revenue through loss of advertsing but how hard would it be to come up with a hi-res format that allowed downloads but inserted adverts (in the normal course of the show, not banner ads) based on the end-users geographic location? Surely something like that would appease advertisers and downloaders (and there will always be those that prefer to watch these things on TV at set times - me for one). Course if something like that did exist you couldn't accuse people of theft (not unless they skipped through the adverts)

- pj

Re:TV piracy is next?

[Anonymous Coward]

XboxMediaCenter

I watch the LOST hrhd (960*580 resolution) on my Sanyo PLV-Z2 projector in hidef. In Europe - where we don't even have HDTV yet ...

How on earth is local TV supposed to compete with a vastly superiour, and fully legal in my country, product?

Re:TV piracy is next?

[bampot]

This guy is making the assumption that people want to download shows in the first place

Me, I'm going the other way because it just occurred to me I'm paying £XX/month for:

• Far too much 3rd rate trashy "reality tv" crap
• Far too many "foreign" programs bought in (no offence to the US intended)
• 20 mins of adverts per/hour. If I pay for it, I shouldn't have to watch adverts.
• Even with 6 zillion channels there is never anything on
• on-screen graphics, (and the possibility of this space being used for advertising)
• reaching for the remote to turn the volume down every time the adverts come on. I'M NOT STUPID OR DEAF. IT WON'T MAKE ME BUY YOUR STUFF.

Just recently I've found myself watching program A, then the adverts start. Rather than watch them I channel-flick and start watching program B. Then forget I was even watching program A until more adverts come on.

Damn.

Re:TV piracy is next?

[schizacopf]

I have been doing the same thing. However, in my area, they have recently upgraded their network. So we now have Entertainment On Demand, with HBO and Cinemax On Demand. Now I get to watch all their programs at my liesure without any adverts or their selected times.

Re:TV piracy is next?

[BlackHawk-666]

I also do exactly this. I hate watching TV because of all the ads and the fact that each pay channel usually only has 1 or 2 shows that are worth watching, forcing you to buy the whol damn lot just to get the few shows you want. I opted out years ago and started downloading instead. My time is worth something, and if I can see a movie with a running time of 90 mins in 90 mins instead of 120 mins that 30 mins I just saved right there - and no, I'm not incontinent and don't need a four minute toilet break every ten minutes.

Lately, I have really been upping my anime fetish, and the shows I like aren't even available in the US in most cases, let alone the UK, so I download fansubs and buy the DVD's when/if they get released.

But why buy the DVD's when I downloaded it already for free? Because I still believe content creators should be paid.

Re:TV piracy is next?

[shufler]

While you may think $40 for an entire season or two of a TV show is ludicrous, I find this perfectly acceptable. At a bare minimum, a season of most shows is usually 13 episodes. At around 22 minutes each, you're buying 260 HOURS of programming you probably enjoy (no one buys the Friends DVD if they can't fucking stand the show).

Considering you can buy a lot of 2 hour movies for $30-$40, buying TV episodes is clearly a better use of your money (13 stories vs 1 story, and both usually have the "Special Features," which I must admit, I don't watch since IMDB uses these in the Trivia section).

There are tons of shows that were around during my childhood, or even before that, which would be a PERFECT product to sell on DVD, but they haven't yet, probably due to licensing. Some people would say that the TV producers are waiting for the next medium to come along, but that's silly, as anyone who has multiple copies of the Star Wars trilogy will tell you that chances are, someone is more than happy to shove the movies down their throat on a different media (VHS, Laser Disc, DVD).

Not to mention, that either with the DVD, or downloading the episodes, I get the option to watch as many episodes that I want, when I want instead of becoming a slave to when the TV stations and advertisers feel I should be watching TV.

Re:TV piracy is next?

[boaworm]

Well, you mention $40. Tried buying Star Trek TNG on DVD ?
Amazon retails them for just over $100 /season. (including their 25 % discount). That would make me pretty poor if i'd buy the 7 seasons.

Perhaps Friends is cheaper as you say, but that's not true for all TV series.

When someone tries to charge something like $700 for some plastic material with IP produced in 87-94.. i think that's close to robbery. (Not that i can use that as an argument to steal it, but nevertheless, i understand those who do).

Re:TV piracy is next?

[Sai Babu]

This attitude re:copying TV is akin to that of the fat ugly broad who bitches you out and calls you a pervert because you happened to glance at her in her string bikini.

Re:TV piracy is next?

[Tassach]

$700 is also probably a lot less than you would have to buy for the rights to all those shows, so you should be thankful that DVD brings an otherwise UNATAINABLE creative license to you.

Yeah, but it's a lot more than a spindle of DVD-Rs.

FYI, it is still *LEGAL* to record a TV show for your personal use. If I want all 7 seasons of TNG on DVD, all I need is a video capture card, SpikeTV's broadcast schedule, a simple shell script, and a small investment of time to edit out the commercials and burn the disks. If Paramount wants me to PAY for something I can *LEGALLY* get for next to nothing, they have to make it worth my while. Better image quality is a start, but it isn't worth an order of magnitude price difference.

$100 for the WHOLE SERIES RUN is a more realistic assessment of the real value -- at that price it's almost worth it to me to get the nice box set rather than collecting the episodes over the course of a couple months.

Re:TV piracy is next?

[badasscat]

How about not having the damnned annoying spike logo in the corner, the stretch and squish games they do with the image, the commercials and parts of the show cut out because the 45 minutes of program time (15 mins for commercials) that was done back in the 80's and 90's is now too long for the now 17-20 commercial times we now have.

I don't remember if Spike does that but Sci-Fi channel cut out many parts of the original Star Trek to make room for commercials.

Spike clearly advertises that their Trek is "uncut".

Anyway, though, your point allows me to perfectly illustrate my point, which is that it seems to me there's a perfectly acceptable solution to TV "piracy" staring TV execs right in the face and they simply fail to acknowledge it.

Make all TV shows available for download, for free.

TV execs will look at this and say "bah! It's our IP! You don't just give IP away!" Well, yes you do. I don't pay anything for over-the-air broadcasts (even in high def!), and while I do pay a cable bill, that bill's going to the cable company for maintenance of the infrastructure - it's not going to the broadcast TV networks (or even to most of the cable networks, who are ad supported). Most TV stations give their content away gratis every day of the week.

I don't see why a TV station couldn't put whatever bugs they want in the corner and include commercials with their downloads (people will find a way to skip them however hard they make it to fast forward, but then what else is new? People have been doing that for years with VCR's, nevermind TiVo). The perceived value to advertisers shouldn't be any different, because I mean look. Either downloading is a small issue and therefore it shouldn't matter either to advertisers or the networks, or it's rampant and growing, in which case those advertisers would at least want the chance to reach all those eyes, rather than just sitting on the sidelines while ad-stripped copies of shows float around on bittorrent sites.

Now, there would be issues to work out with affiliates, syndicators, etc. who sell their own advertising, often locally. But so what? Issues can be worked out for the good of the industry; it's actually a rather minor change in how TV business is done in the grand scheme of things. You work out some sort of revenue-sharing deal and voila: done. And of course, TV still needs to be broadcast live before it can be downloaded, so the affiliates still get their local advertising in anyway.

One quick example - I remember when the Jon Stewart Crossfire interview aired, and afterwards there was a big story about how more people had shared and downloaded a digitized version of it than had actually watched the show in the first place. This is an extreme case right now (though it will happen more and more over time), and CNN was completely pissed about it, but I saw more than one journalist suggest that instead of whining about it, CNN could have driven people to their web site and could have promoted the show a lot better by simply making it available for free download themselves. I don't see how you can really argue with that - the downloads happened anyway, wouldn't it be better for the network to get some traffic and marketing out of it themselves rather than just ceding that market to the file sharers?

If TV shows were available for free download from network web sites, very few people are going to take the illegal route in stripping out the non-program material and then sharing them on file sharing sites. Sure, some people will, but those are the same people who'd rip or download the DVD's and share them too; they're pretty hardcore pirates, and they're not going to pay for your stuff regardless. It seems to me the idea is to keep the 99% of viewers who aren't pirates from becoming pirates, not to convert the 1% who are pirates into paying customers (a futile goal).

Of course, DVD's would still be made available at some future date, sans commercials and

Re:TV piracy is next?

[Catbeller]

Software exists to remove network logos. It's annoying that they put them in, but they are doing it intentionally to mess up your recordings. So smear it out.

Anyway, HD-DVD's are coming soon. Present DVD's are downrezzed from about 525 lines to 480. Why buy fuzzy recordings for high prices when soon they will have full-rez versions available?

And you can download most popular programs NOW using Bittorrent -- in HD format, wide aspect ratio. And make copies. Which HD-DVD's wll not let you do.

They simply won't make a decent product at a decent price. If we want to see Buffy in her hidef glory, we'll have to do it ourselves for a while. For free gratis.

Re:TV piracy is next?

[Firethorn]

Making it available for download (with commercials) would be a legitimate business strategy. Heck, you could even go the iTunes route and sell it for a minimal cost w/o commercials. I know that I'm almost at the point of hooking a computer to my TV to replace the DVD player, and start ripping all my DVD's to a HD, so I don't have to go searching for movies. Just don't make it so annoying that the pirated versions are easier to use. That's what doomed the earlier music programs. And Ebooks. Definatly the Ebooks. I only get ebooks from baen, which comes in five formats, including HTML & RTF. How much more universal can you get than that?

Or price the DVD's low enough that people are willing to pay the money for the added convenience(Yes, I know it varies), legality (yes, it's worth money!), quality, and features. Also, release them quickly enough that the pirates aren't providing a product that's otherwise unavailable. Heck, that's happing in the movie industry right now.

You look at Farscape. They actually made so much money from the DVD sales that they made a Direct to DVD season! How messed up is that? Not really, ultimatly speaking. I'm not willing to pay $40 a month for cable/dish when the only channels I'd really watch would be the cartoon &SciFi channels. $40x12=$480 a year, which can cover about 4 season DVDs. Doing without a Tivo/VCR gets me another. Which I can watch at any time (I work long&unusual hours), as often as I like, rewinding and whatnot.

Re:TV piracy is next?

[Dread_ed]

I summed up your complaints in one (run on) sentence...

"There aren't enough good writers to make enough good shows to fill one station with good programming for 24 hours a day, seven days a week, much less 250 of them." --Me

Sometimes I think that they run the commercials to distract you from the horrible programs you are mesmerized into watching.

Re:TV piracy is next?

[Snaller]

I don't see why a TV station couldn't put whatever bugs they want in the corner and include commercials with their downloads (people will find a way to skip them however hard they make it to fast forward, but then what else is new? People have been doing that for years with VCR's, nevermind TiVo).

And it would be easy to make a 'custom build' for the user. Require users to create a profile. On the server each act is seperate, based on the users profile they select the commerials (which of course are prerendered) auto join the lot and allow people to download. If you get something with commercials you feel are somewhat relevant to you, you would probably be less inclined to skip them.

It's a bit late

[Anonymous Coward]

I've only been downloading tv shows from p2p networks, and that's going back a few years as well.

Re:It's a bit late

[DaHat]

Programs airing over seas and then in the US months later is also IMO a major reason for tv 'piracy'.

SciFi frequently took very long mid season breaks in airing Farscape in the US... all the while they continue airing on SkyOne.

SciFi does this often sadly... the new Battlestar Galactica series, 'coming to SciFi in January'... has already aired 5 episodes on SkyOne.

Not that I download such things... but I wonder if SciFi's slowness to broadcast could be considered inducement of copyright infringement... thousands of geeks saying "I don't want to wait 4 months to watch the episode just because of where I live legitimately".

I love TV

[koan]

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.

Re:I love TV

[leonmergen]

Because otherwise you would have to pay $99 a month for your cable...

Re:I love TV

[kfg]

If I have to pay 49$'s a month for cable why do I have to have commercials.

For exactly the same reason that you have to pay $49 for a cable internet connection but websites still have ads on them.

KFG

Re:I love TV

[miu]

In my country cable is a lot cheaper than in america and it also has no advertisement.

I'm gonna be an asshole here and ask the obvious question - sure it may be commercial free, but is there anything worth watching?

American TV is a wasteland - but there is so much money floating around that occasionally shows get made that I like (course those do seem to get cancelled awfully quick too). And someone must like those stupid reality shows and boyband infomercials.

TV episodes from BitTorrent

[My Iron Lung]

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?

Re:TV episodes from BitTorrent

[Chicane-UK]

Lots more lawsuits perhaps?

Re:TV episodes from BitTorrent

[My Iron Lung]

Lawsuits at first, but like the copyrighted music swapping industry, it's never going to be stamped out. The music industry is already learning that they must embrace mp3s or die, and someday the television industry is going to have to wake up and smell the coffee as well. Between TiVo, the internet, and broadband internet, how can television advertising stand a chance? True that the percentage of people actually watching televion must be huge compared to the number of people watching TV shows off the internet.. but as the technology becomes more easily adapted and readily available, there are going to be a lot less people viewing television commercials.

Re:TV episodes from BitTorrent

[Random_Goblin]

Unfortunately, the TV companies will probably try to wrap it up in some evil DRM to prevent other people cutting the ads out and seeding the high-quality ad-free versions.

I know this is perhaps a controversial view on /. but DRM isn't evil per se.

There is nothing wrong with a company wishing to protect its investment, and to be paid for its product.

The point at which it becomes evil is when it is used a vehicle for out-dated commercial models.

I believe most people would rather have a legitimate copy of something rather than a pirate, and would even pay money for that legitimacy. The problem facing owners of digital media, is HOW MUCH money are they prepared to pay. If the cost is too great, $15 for a CD, people will quite happily justify piracy to themselves.

I also think many IP owners fall into the mistake of thinking that better DRM will enable them to keep their prices higher. But as we all know once someone finds out how to crack their security, the high prices serves to fuel the market for pirates.

As an aside, having watched american adverts and english adverts, i notice a huge difference in approach. Correct me if i'm wrong, but in the US an advert treats you like a moron who will buy anything cause a guy with white perfect teeth say's it will change your life.

In the UK, our advertisers pander to our sense of intellectual superiority. Here the message tends to be, obviously we as advertisers know YOU are far too clever to fall for our marketing, but here is a clever and amusing advert, which you can pretend not to be influenced by. For an example of this sort of english ad check out some of tango's ads.. compare them to coke or pepsi for example who would have you believe a coke/pepsi can save the world... Tango on the other hand asks you to "come and have a go if you think you're hard enough!"

In my experience lots of british people like watching adverts, (tango's website lets you e-mail the ads to people). The challenge faced by TV producers now is not to try and stop this new technology, but work out how to make it work for them. Making adverts that people don't mind watching is where i think their future lies.

Re:TV episodes from BitTorrent

[complete loony]

Yeah, but you're not going to stop them from ripping the content of the airways anyway. So why bother.
Put adds in, but make it trivial to download the contents legally. Build this and they *will* come.

Re:TV episodes from BitTorrent

[Darren Winsper]

I like a clever and witty advert, but to say lots of British people like watching adverts is a bit of an overgeneralisation. The problem is that for every advert that's witty and clever, there's 10 that are complete shit. Plus you have the problem that the clever and witty adverts get overplayed and thus become irritating.

Re:TV episodes from BitTorrent

[Random_Goblin]

not so much the double dare, more the feel smug and pretend it's not influencing your decisions.

Oh we also get the this product is amazing and will change your life ads too, but there is a large group of very post modern ads.

I'm not sure if it's just a cultural thing, for example Pot noodle (probably work safe, but you may need to reasure people it's not a porn site), a noodle snack food, who's new marketing campaign is based on the premise "it's filthy but you love it". The website is a parody of a porn site, the ads on TV follow the theme that this snack food is dirtier than most sexual vices.

I think pot noodles core market is students and truckers, who know full well it's rubbish food, but is quick and easy for lunch, or when you come back from the pub... I don't think you could run the same ads in the US, and i think it's a bit deeper than just cultural translation, i think it's an acceptance that an ad is by its very nature dishonest, lying sales speak, but even knowing that, there's no reason why you can't use that public knowledge to your advantage.

Re:TV episodes from BitTorrent

[poptones]

I believe most people would rather have a legitimate copy of something rather than a pirate, and would even pay money for that legitimacy. The problem facing owners of digital media, is HOW MUCH money are they prepared to pay. If the cost is too great, $15 for a CD, people will quite happily justify piracy to themselves.

I think you may have an antiquated notion of "legitimate." If a tv program is shown over the air it is not "piracy" to record that show or even to rebroadcast it. The show has been run on the public airwaves - how is it "piracy" to enjoy the show again? Some of the corporate mindset might argue otherwise, but i think that in itself just furthers the point about antiquated notions.

Correct me if i'm wrong, but in the US an advert treats you like a moron who will buy anything cause a guy with white perfect teeth say's it will change your life.

Funny you should mention that, since one of the better ads on american tv (I think) is for a certain chewing gum that promises fresh teeth even through the most extreme happenings. They're hosted by a cute blonde with a british accent - sound familiar?

There's an ad campaign for Hewlett Packard printers that is based entirely upon one special effect. The effect is so cool I find myself smiling every time I see one. It won't make me buy an HP printer, but it will make me watch the ad and even look forward to the next one.

Last night "The Apprentice" devoted an entire show to a project involving Pepsi. To launch a new product called "Pepsi Edge" the teams had to design a new bottle and ad campaign to go with it, then present it to about 100 of Pepsi's marketing team. Thirty minutes of people talking about Pepsi, hyping Pepsi, drinking Pepsi and bouncing off the walls - then off to the boardroom where someone who didn't love his Pepsi enough was fired. Pepsi commercials, Pepsi bottles, Pepsi cups, Pepsi, Pepsi, Pepsi...

Last week it was designing an ad campaign for Levi's jeans. The Donald even brought out his latest trophy-wife-to-be to give us all a closeup of how great her ass looks in Levi's. And the poor folks who forgot "Levis is all about making your ass look great" got fired.

You could cut out every second of commercials, but to cut out the sponsor you'd cut the entire "heart" of the show. Hell, you wouldn't even have a show.

Last Sunday it was "American Dreams," where Dad gave Son a shiny new '66 Mustang to welcome hm home from 'Nam. Mustang ads on the TV, Mustang billboards; uncle wants a Mustang for Christmas. Again, you'd cut out half the show getting rid of the sponsor.

Now, why would any of these production companies (and their sponsors) NOT want these programs "shared?"

Re:TV episodes from BitTorrent

[Random_Goblin]

did they really get complaints for that? that was a brilliant set of ads. Mind you the numbers of people that have to complain in order for a tv broadcast to be considered offensive is stupidly small. I seem to recall thing with 10 or 20 complaints being pulled, which compared to the number of people that watched them is quite disturbing... I mean more people than that believe david icke for goodness sake.

pot noodle are putting disclaimers on their websites now though. This one from natural noodling nearly made me wet myself laughing.

"If you're under 16, you shouldn't be here. You should be hanging out in shopping precincts with your mates."

Re:TV episodes from BitTorrent

[Tim Browse]

As an aside, having watched american adverts and english adverts, i notice a huge difference in approach. Correct me if i'm wrong, but in the US an advert treats you like a moron who will buy anything cause a guy with white perfect teeth say's it will change your life.

Yes, because, gosh, we don't have any ads like that on UK TV, do we?

Give me a break. For every witty tango or yellow pages ad, there are 10s of crap ones that are just like the ones you describe. Just because some car manufacturer spends a lot of money trying to sell you a lifestyle, doesn't mean it's an ad I want to watch, or that it appeals to my 'sense of intellectual superiority'. In addition let me just say Currys, Dixons, Linda Barker, DFS, Yes Car Credit, any advert for cleaning products, Asda, Safeway, etc. Let's call those exhibit A.

There are stacks of ads on UK TV that are just "This exists! Buy it!" ads. They aren't fun to watch.

From my experience of American TV ads, it's more in what's being advertised (or the ratios). My reactions were that the most common US ads are about pain killers, car financing (that was how I learned that US cars are never advertised with the ticket price - it's always "$X down, and $Y per month!"), personal injury lawyers (although we have that in the UK now too, yay, sarcasm ends) and anything that involves the phrase "America's Favourite {Product/Service}", or an attempt to include the word 'America' in the product/service name (e.g. AmeriHealth, etc).

That last one is weird. I know of the stereotype that Americans love their country blindly, but I didn't realise just how much the US marketing companies rely on it. Then again, judging a country on their TV ads is a risky proposition, because you're assuming the population buy into everything the ads say. As I said, it's more interesting and meaningful to look at what is being advertised.

The oddest ad I saw in the US was an infomercial for the Orlimar Trimetal Golf Club (or similar - pretty sure it was that, they said the name about a zillion times while I was packing in the hotel room). It was based purely on the fact that if you're no good at golf, then your career is over because your boss will think you're worthless. If you accepted that tenet, the infomercial made perfect sense. I didn't :-)

And one of the cleverest ads I ever saw was from the US - the Pepsi ad set in the future where a teacher is showing children round some ruined buildings, and one of them finds a classic Coke glass bottle and asks what it is. The teacher says something like "I have absolutely no idea." Inspired :-)

In summary, I'm British, and I don't like watching adverts. Luckily, I have a Tivo, which helps out greatly with this.

I accept there may be people in the UK who like watching ads, but they're probably from the set of people who tune channel 1 on their TV set to ITV, and call magazines 'books'.

Damn, there's that intellectual superiority again :)

Ok

[cubicledrone]

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.

Re:Ok

[malfunct]

Nope, they are being broadcast at the cost of you watching the commercials (or at least going to the kitchen long enough for those commercials to get over). Moreover, because advertisement costs are based on show ratings (in a way), even if you watch the show with commercials the network doesn't get more money for it. Mostly people cut the commercials though so that doesn't even get viewed.

You know what the savior of the networks will be? IPTV that allows you to pick whatever show you want to watch at the time and inserts new relevant ads in it. It would have any shows from that network that are in syndication (you wouldn't get tonights show today, but you might be able to get last nights show). Anyways, this would totally allow the network to get the full ad value out of the download stream without burdening you with a super big charge for show you download through IPTV.

Re:Ok

[Mance Rayder]

They're being broadcast for free in the first place. What's the difference?

Commercials. If advertisers know their audience won't see their commercials, they lose incentive to invest in advertising, and the networks lose money.
I don't think it's a big issue yet, but it might be someday soon. I'm personally frustrated as hell with how long it takes to get shows to DVD -- I can understand why others tire of waiting years for a single goddamn season, then putting out $60-80 for it.
Television networks can avoid the same mistakes the RIAA has made by adapting to technology and setting up a legal alternative to piracy before television piracy begins in earnest. If they start churning out DVDs now instead of infuriating the consumer with slow marketing to squeeze every drop of money possible out of each season, and dare I think it lowering the insanely high prices on these DVDs, I can see television shows becoming far more profitable than they are today. Imagine, if they sell the latest episode online or mail-order DVD for, what, $5 after airing it? (Probably less, but then the average twelve-episode season wouldn't cost $60.) I can see them making some serious money.
But that would require that the status quo change, so, yeah, hold your breath.

iShows

[VC]

Seriously. Id pay £1 an episode of most shows i watch, and thats way more than they make on ads.

been doing this for ages

[xirtam_work]

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

Re:been doing this for ages

[Anonymous Coward]

Sg1/Atlantis will probably broadcast a week early here again...

We don't take the mid-season break you do and for the last 2 years we have ended up an episode ahead by the time it starts in the US again

Re:been doing this for ages

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at all the posts in response to parent post!

Damn near every one of them mentions downloading television shows initially but later buying the DVD box set!

This is the same thing that was shown time after time in regards to downloading music. People downloaded songs but later bought CD's of their favorites!

I expect exactly the same response from television executives as we got from the RIAA: more and more cries about how piracy is killing their bottom line, lawsuits against their customers and, eventually, embracing stupid, restrictive DRM measures.

Will they ever learn?

Old Idea

[Lesrahpem]

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.

Re:Uh, no.

[Freexe]

Your missing the point, if everyone is downloading ad free tv shows instead of watching tv shows with ads, then they are losing viewer and thus ad renvenue

Advertising

[eMartin]

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 reasons why people do that

[fobsen]

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.

authorized downloads with ads inserted?

[vinsci]

From the article:

For the real solution, media moguls might refer to Chernin's first rule of survival -- the one about consumers wanting control, choice and convenience. Logging onto the Net and quickly downloading your favourite show in HDTV fulfills that principle. Until makers of entertainment can satisfy this desire, the piracy fight is likely to keep getting bloodier.

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.

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.

Re:authorized downloads with ads inserted?

[lamona]

The difference between broadcast and download is that when a show is re-broadcast NEW ads are inserted. When you download, you re-watch it with ads that are out of date. Think about how rapidly products change -- car models last a year, household products seem to be on a six-month schedule, and there's a new frozen or boxed food-like product every week, it seems. It's of no use to the companies that you see these ads a few months later much less a year or more later. If the shows are paid for by advertising, that advertising has to be up to the minute to have any value. Downloading is the opposite of this model and requires a different kind of payment. No, I'm not trying to justify their fear of downloading, just explain why downloading with ads doesn't fit their revenue model.

TV is actually worse than movies...

[Kjella]

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

Re:TV is actually worse than movies...

[cockroach2]

You forgot

B: "Yes, but somehow the dialogs don't really make sense."
A: "Oh, you've been watching the $LANG translation..."

Seriously, some shows (eg. "Friends") have been translated so poorly that you can hardly watch them, and most TV stations don't use 2-channel sound.

Re:TV is actually worse than movies...

[Gadzinka]

TV providers seem to have missed this little thing called "globalization".

You misunderstood the term. Globalisation is for corporations to maximise their profit.

Globalisation is not for you (vide the intention of dvd region coding), and your attempts to use globalisation for your convenience or profit will meet strong oposition and prosecution with new laws written especially for that purpose.

Robert

Re:TV is actually worse than movies...

[Anonymous Coward]

in norway, nothing is dubbed (if that is what you mean by translated). there are subtitles though, which can sometimes be pretty funny, like when some brainiac mixed up invincible and invisible in their star-wars translation

Re:TV is actually worse than movies...

[rcs1000]

Spare me the anti-capitalist bullshit.

Globalisation is aided and abetted by consumers and workers (who *gasp* are the same people). You buy a French wine in the US... you're supporting globalisation. Heck, you read a US web-site like Slashdot in the UK... that's globalisation.

Globalisation is an inevitable consequence of a levelling of the playing field (Indian programmers can now compete with US ones; good for them) due to falling costs of transporting goods and information. You can erect barriers if you like (Bhutan has), or tear down the technologies causing globalisation - but don't forget that when you buy a Sony TV, or a Dell PC, or a piece of Fench brie, or a Gabriel Garcia Marquez book.

Yep, you're supporting and encouraging globalisation.

Corporations have a duty to their shareholders to make money. This is nothing new.

Re:TV is actually worse than movies...

[NardofDoom]

Or a pair of Nikes made by 10-year-old slave labor. Or a shirt made by a woman who is chained to a sewing machine twelve hours a day. Or a little piece of plastic crap made by someone in China who doesn't have political or religious freedom.

Globalization wouldn't be so bad if there was a level playing field, as there is between Japan, Europe and the US. But it is wrong to support regimes and companies who stomp all over human rights and environmental policies to lower costs a few cents so their shareholders can buy that new yacht.

Corporations have a duty to their shareholders to make money. This is nothing new.

And governments have a duty to their subjects to protect them from tyranny, or be overthrown. Our country is founded on this principle. Why do we support China and Indonesia and Saudi Arabia with trade when they don't provide their people with basic human rights?

Re:TV is actually worse than movies...

[fmaxwell]

You won't have a job if the corporation does not make a profit.

That's clearly untrue as National Geographic, a non-profit, employs hundreds, if not thousands, of people. Other companies that just break even employ countless thousands of people. Also, you ignore the fact that most firms are already profitable before they start outsourcing.

Company X has a CEO who makes $7million/year. They outsource software development to India to save $5million/year. They could have cut the CEO's salary to $2million per year and kept the U.S. development staff. What outsourcing does is make a tiny percentage of senior management rich while driving down wages for the bulk of the workers.

Other people developed new skills and started something called the industrial revolution.

So what will be this generation's "industrial revolution"? Where should the out-of-work software engineers be channelling their energy? Be specific. Many of these people are watching their bank accounts dwindle as they try to put food on the table, so they don't have time to spend going down dead-end roads.

You can cry about it and get left behind, or you can continue to develop skills that will allow you to feed your family.

What skills should a software engineer develop to compete with people who can live comfortably on $6K/year? What skills will allow him to maintain the standard of living that his family currently enjoys? Should he go back to school for four years to get a law degree or an MBA? While doing that, should his family live in van in the Walmart parking lot, maybe with the wife turning tricks to pay for food? What happens when the kid gets sick and there is no insurance during those four years with no real income?

I'm tired of the right-wing making vague comments about learning "new skills," "creating value," and other hollow, Limbaugh-esc crap. It's like the idiotic "work smarter" malarkey that managers spout when they set unrealistic deadlines. They don't have a real answer, so they try to blame the workers for the bad situation.

P.S. My job is not directly threatened by outsourcing in any way, so don't try to personalize it. And don't try to portray me as someone only concerned with my own self-interests -- I am not a Republican.

Re:Uh, no.

[Paska]

Call me a little biased, but I still see no problem in real life even if this was widespread. Prime time in Australia are your, Home and Away, Friends, your soap operas, renovation shows galore. Grandma's from Sydney to Perth tune in every day, and every single day for 20 years to get their fix of Bold and the Beautiful. I can say you're not going to be getting these people to Bit torrent anytime soon.

Aslong as someone is watching a show, and their will always be. Then advertisements companies will pay up the money.

Plus, afterall most of the stations money comes in on prime time live events, which afterall aren't on BitTorrent until after they are aired.

Hey, not going to buy cable

[sgant]

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.

Evolution

[thrill12]

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...

Re:No DVD

[vrai]

This is where I have a problem with piracy. If it's a choice between not seeing something because it hasn't been released in your territory, or downloading it from the internet; then I can see why people would download it. The publisher has left a gap in the market and the internet has filled it. But to pirate something that is available for sale in your territory, simply because you're too much of a cheapskate to pay for it; that's the moral equivalent of stealing.

For the record I paid the Amazon prices for my B5 collection (about 160GBP in total) and it was well worth it. If you like a series then you should at least pay the asking price to watch it.

Actually I have tried.

[Impie]

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'm seeing a trend in the posts

[aussie_a]

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*

Instant solution

[Cynikal]

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...

German TV forces me to do it

[mikrorechner]

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.

Re:No DVD

[foxtrot]

For the record I paid the Amazon prices for my B5 collection (about 160GBP in total) and it was well worth it. If you like a series then you should at least pay the asking price to watch it.

Sure. If they're willing to sell it and one wants it, by all means, one should pay for it.

On the other hand, if they're willing to broadcast it over the air (or on cable) for free, but then not sell it, I have a hard time thinking it's somehow eeeeevil to go download a "pirated" copy. It seems so simple to me: If you want to make money from it, sell it. If you don't sell it, you sure as heck shouldn't be surprised when the people who want it get it from somebody other than you...

-JDF

Re:Question

[TheRaven64]

The important question is; is it actually illegal? If I subscribe to a TV channel that broadcasts a show, fail to watch it, and then download it, was that illegal? If I record it on a tape or a TiVo-like device and watch it later, then it was not illegal (under time-shifting rulings). The internal workings of a VCR and a TiVo are very different, but they are treated by law as black box devices that allow a broadcast TV programme to be time-shifted. A computer connected to the Internet is doing exactly the same thing - time-shifting a programme that has been broadcast. The only difference is that it operates retroactively (i.e. you can choose to time-shift something after it has been broadcast, rather than before, which is usually more convenient).

The next question is; if this is legal, what happens if you download it before it is aired, but don't watch it until afterwards? Again, from a black-box user's perspective, this is no different from using a TiVo or a VCR. In fact, it is more similar than the first case, since you are performing the time-shift action before the airing as you do with a VCR or TiVo. I would very much like to see this defence used in court. If the court views it as legal then it could almost certainly be extended to include any song that has been broadcast on public radio or film that has been shown on TV.

Of course, the question is moot if you are downloading things that have not been broadcast on channels you to which you are subscribed.

Someone needs to contact these idiots....

[arock99]

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

There's advertising and then there's advertising

[gorbachev]

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.

Availability

[Xolotl]

As has been said by some of the earlier posters, a lot of shows are not available in many parts of the world, where they would have an audience but for whatever reason the local networks are unwilling to show them.

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

Need to embrace digital media distribution...

[TheRealStyro]

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.

Why is this even a problem?

[Gyorg_Lavode]

I'm sure I'm not the only one in this thread to say this, but why in the world is this even a problem? Why don't the TV companies just put their channel's major series on their websites w/ the commercials. Most people who download shows don't do it because they don't like the commercials, they do it because they aren't sitting at the TV when it shoes, (I'm sorry Cartoon Network but I just can't be infront of the TV at 11:30 every Saturday to watch Full Metal Alchemist, and my GF can't be infront of the TV to watch desperate housewives whenever it airs).

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?

Re:It's their own fault.

[mpe]

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.

This is also a good way for a broadcaster to lose viewers who would otherwise be watching "live".
I suspect what most people want with TV series is a fixed timeslot with episodes in the order the writer intended them to be in.

Other reasons...

[totoanihilation]

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 ;)