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British TV Station Offers Downloads

Posted by timothy on from the put-your-license-to-work dept.

Richard W.M. Jones writes "Remember how the British just love to download TV? Well, British terestrial TV channel five has announced that it will become the first to offer TV programmes to download legally. Except that they don't quite seem to get it yet. They are offering here some videos from this car programme which apparently didn't quite make it to air, for the princely sum of £1.50 (about $3), in DRM'd WMV 10 format (mplayer plays them fine). Still, it's a start, and it looks like they're just testing the water. Hopefully they won't take the lack of response as 'proof' that there's no demand. There's more about this at the BBC's website."

3 of 332 comments (clear)

  1. "They don't get it" by Dancin_Santa · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They are trying to sell ice to Eskimos! Sand to scorpions! Dentistry to Britons!

    Well, that last one doesn't really fit the theme of what I was getting at. Which was: You can't sell something to someone who can get it for themselves for free.

    1. Re:"They don't get it" by Troed · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You can't sell something to someone who can get it for themselves for free.

      Of course you can. I'd very much like to go to one central place for music, movie and tv-series downloads where I know the quality of the content and that I indeed support the ones producing it. I'll happily pay for such a service.

      Not everyone here on Slashdot is 14 and thinks free downloads are cool.

      --
      it's in my head
    2. Re:"They don't get it" by asliarun · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I agree with you that the author's/director's cut is an economic deal, and should be treated as such.

      However, that doesn't change the fact that the whole creative business has been perverted to such an extent that the laws of economics no longer prevail. We currently live in such an artificial world that we've forgotten the real value of something. This is aided by the fact that a painting sells for tens of millions of dollars, a music album sells for over $20, and a 30 minute TV episode sometimes contains 15 minutes of commercials.

      The way things currently are, these creative works are priced as high as a customer can bear. Forget about economics or supply/demand for a second and answer this. How much is something really worth? For a manufactured product, the answer is fairly simple. Take the manufacturing cost (plus R&D cost), add a 10-50% margin, and you'll get a fair value for a product. Economics only kicks in when you want to figure out the exact margin, based on competition or lack of it.

      The price for a creative work can be determined similarly as well. The only difference is that the R&D cost in the above example is substituted with the royalty that the creator should get. I don't pretend to be an expert, but my rough calculation tells me that the current prices of books, audio CDs, movies, and paintings are a complete perversion of the above calculation. $20 for a audio CD cannot be justified by ANY real means, especially considering the fact that the same creative work was priced 1/4 a few years ago.

      This is my objection to the current system. Barring that, issues like the monopoly of distributors or authors getting a raw deal are just by-products of this screwed up system.