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?

[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?

[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?

[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

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

[nano2nd]

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.

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.

Uh, no.

[Paska]

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.

TV Piracy is a godsend...

[absolut_kurant]

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.

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.

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: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.

Ahem, hello? http://tvtorrents.net/

[JPamplin]

*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