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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.
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.
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).
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?
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Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
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
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.
The industry SHOULD and COULD adapt to this by offering their own high quality copies of TV episodes via BitTorrent.
The TV companies would be in control of their content again and would be free to include advertising. This is a whole new distribution medium for them with virtually no operating costs (due to the highly distributed nature of BitTorrent). Any revenue generated by advertising in this channel would be total profit!
I would be happy to download "official" torrents that included ads rather than take my chances with dodgy video and lipsync etc.
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.
G4 Hackintosh
Heck, I can beat that.
SKY is running the new Battlestar Galactica seried already - which won't start airing in the US until January 15th.
Meanwhile, I'm *cough*told*cough* you can get up to episode 6 online.
Not really.
The advert revenue on cable allows the cable company to reduces the cost to the subscriber*, effectively the cable subscriber is paying for their subscription in two ways: money and viewing time.
With cable internet it's a different kettle of fish: the subsciber's $49 goes to the cable company, but the revenue from the advertisement doesn't go anywhere near the cable company, it is used by the site maintainer to pay for bandwidth costs. In this case the cable internet subscriber is paying their subscription and the costs of a third party.
The two cases aren't really equivalent: the former is a simple trade of one cost for another, the latter is two costs - one from the cable company and one from the website owner.
* as long as you assume that the cost of the subscription really is > $49. Which it probably isn't, but such is the way of business.
You're right. This is nothing new. I don't watch TV, so only got into Buffy when a friend asked me to download some episodes for him, as I had adsl. This was a few of years ago when broadband was quite rare. I ended up watching them with him and was hooked. Since then, I've bought six boxed sets of Buffy and Angel DVDs and am planning on buying more. Another case of piracy leading to sales that they wouldn't otherwise have had.
*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!
I have crappy reception, a larger monitor than my TV, and I have the option of downloading Enterprise in HD, 6 months before the episode airs in Australia. I don't have to wait until 10:30pm to watch it either.
Channel 9, what do you seriously expect me to do?
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 have a friend who managed to tape every episode of st:tng, now if he were to transfer those to computer and clean all the comercials out watch them off the hard-drive, how is his result any different than someone who downloaded those episodes?
How is one copyright infringement (for him), where the other is leagaly allowed time-shifting which the supreme court upheld as fair use. Or rather how does it make sense to have the distinction.
The tv show's producers made thier money by selling advertising when it was originally broadcast. Unlike movies (well recently they've added blantant comercials, and they've had 'product placement' for some time) which derive thier revenue from theatrical release and sales of individual copies.
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
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.
Lately, I've found that many stations have begun syncing their commercials with each other so that you can't do that anymore. When there's a commercial on...YOU MUST WATCH IT...