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MPAA Targets TV Download Sites
KenDaMan writes "ZDNet.com is reporting that the MPAA is targeting websites that serve as traffic directors for BitTorrent swaps. From the article: 'Continuing its war on Internet file-swapping sites, the Motion Picture Association of America said Thursday that it has filed lawsuits against a half-dozen hubs for TV show trading.' Apparently it is OK to record TV as long as your aren't sharing it."
Apparently it is OK to record TV as long as your aren't sharing it.
No shit, fucknuts. Distribution of copyrighted material is illegal, not owning it. Did you run home from kindygardin just to post this stupid shit to slashdot?
Oh shit. I forgot. I'm on slashdot where people form dumbass opinions on things like this all the time even though they clearly know nothing about the topic of discussion.
And, of course, the editors put this stupid shit up on the front page so you fat, floppy, friendless fucks can sit around screaming and flailing over some perceived injustice (oh noes! They don't want me to steal their hard work!) until you have a thin film of dorito-colored spit coating your screen and a lapful of slurpee.
You're all dumbasses.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
Well, yeah, that's what the law says. Whether that's right or not is a different matter.
That should be "You're aren't sharing it."
I thought the MPAA only dealt with movies? Are they just going after TV sharers for the hell of it?
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
TFA has a list.
"The six sites sued Thursday include ShunTV, Zonatracker, Btefnet, Scifi-Classics, CDDVDHeaven and Bragginrights."
Apparently it is OK to record TV as long as your aren't sharing it. Think you could loosen your grip on the obvious just a little? It's starting to turn a little blue in the face...
pooptruck
From TFA:
The six sites sued Thursday include ShunTV, Zonatracker, Btefnet, Scifi-Classics, CDDVDHeaven and Bragginrights.
I don't own a TiVo, but using BitTorrent I've been watching HDTV quality shows on my PC for about 3 months. Man is it sweet. I hope those **AA bastards lose. When are they gonna learn to adopt a new distribution system rather than beat it with fancy lawyers.
And they only added Btefnet after finding it in a slashdot reader's post
*looks around sheepishly for not reading it fully before posting*
To see Piratebay.org's response to their letter!!
It is technically legal to download anime that's copyrighted in Japan but not yet licensed in the USA.
However, if the sites in question are not holding the actual torrents, then they should be able to claim to be news organizations. Being a 'News Organization" is open to massive abuses. Look at Jeff Gannon. Still I wish them luck.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
I hope they don't find out I'm a fan of the Gilmore Girls
So, my mom calls me in a panic the other day. My dad forgot to record one of her favorite shows, and it was the series finale, and she really wanted to watch it.
What are her options? Hope they repeat it in a few months, buy it on DVD in a few years, or maybe locate someone who has a copy? All of these options are pretty iffy.
I have another choice, though: Break the law downloading it to make my mom happy. Why can't the TV people sell it for download themselves so my mom can be happy legally?
(Insert the "your mom" jokes below.)
They should be thanking us for taking their garbage out. How many quality TV shows are there? How many really? One in every hundred?
Most TV Shows these days are advertisements anyway. They don't want us to distribute ads?
I downloaded the latest Apprentice because I missed it. I'm in Korea with no VCR and I was out of town that night. How the hell else am I going to watch their show? They DO want people to watch their shows, right?
Just another example of these people dropping the ball and trying to fight technology. Hell, if they were smart, they'd offer their own shows with commercials for download. If they came up with a system that was as fast and easy as bt which had commercials, and maybe even more reliable, I'd probably get that version and watch the damn commercials anyway, or at least, pay as much attention to the commercials as I would if it was a regular broadcast.
But instead, these guys are like creationists, dragging us kicking and screaming back into technologically backwards times when we've already gotten a taste of enlightenment. Good luck with that. Idiots.
This stuff happens all the time. I'm sure that people are still using VHS tapes to record their favorite shows and loaning the tape out to their friends. Heck, if I knew that I was going to miss **insert random TV show here** on a given night and my wife wanted to record something that aired on the same night at the same time on a different channel, heck, I'd find a friend of mine who would either record onto tape or DVR the show and give me the copy on tape or DVD. When will the **AA farknuts learn?
Sadly, btefnet is on the list. Where will I get The Daily Show and Dr. Who if they go down?
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
btefnet sure is on the list. ... where the shows have already aired and are already in the public domain. It's rather interesting that they go after the bittorrent trackers and users that record shows to distribute on these trackers, and not the people who record onto VHS etc. and lend it out to their friends.
if the show has already aired then i can't understand what the issue is. As far as i understan, the MPAA can only take action on sites within the US
Does this mean that one form of recording is more acceptable than the other and does it mean that if i record to another medium and then transfer to a digital format that its O.K.
Apparently it is OK to record TV as long as your aren't sharing it.
uhmmm... Yeah. That is what the whole debate over fair use, and backup copies is about.
It's okay for me to use it for my own personal pleasure, but it isn't alright to rebroadcast it to the world.
And we wonder why every mass-market electronic media outlet is DRM'ed to the gills.
welcome to slashdot!
....in japan! then, yer welucu3 heRE!
nobody here ever reads teh articles, but 1f u can port hot grtis down natale portmans pants
not quite
(and the fact that I'm writing this means I didn't do the modding, or it'd be undone, of course)
And just before the series finale of "Lost" too ;)
We're not even halfway through the first season screening down under, and I have a crack-like addiction to the series. It's shameful, I know, but some primal part of me really digs the idea of being stuck on an island with Maggie Grace
No you were not the first to post the list, you were off by a minute if you want to get technical.
your cutting into our way-f'n-overpriced dvd boxset profits
1. They make it clear that it's not an official version.
2. They ask that the file be deleted once a US/English version is available
3. And most important they generate interest in the titles that the producers can point to and say 'hey look at how popular that anime is on the fansub nets, we should be able to make a killing in the regular market!'
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
Clearly there is rampant downloading of TV shows. Although the big companies are having a hissy fit about it, to me it is a sign that there is a huge untapped market, much in the same way as the napster phenomenon was indicative of a market for legal downloading mp3's (which iTunes took advantage of). All they have to do is this:
1: Offer fast TV downloads for free, or offer legal torrents.
2: Include the advertisements in the shows, and track how many people download them.
3: Profit!!!
ShunTV has been taken down, the home page now links to a PDF from the MPAA.
Forgive my language, but those MPAA motherfuckers!
"Was it a millionaire who said 'Imagine No Posessions?'" -- Elvis Costello
I think it's actually quite funny. The parent comes in and "corrects" some grammar to something that is obviously incorrect. Then a bunch of grammar Nazis jerk their knees and come in and correct him. THEY HAVE BEEN TROOLED. THEY HAVE LOOSED. THEY SHOULD EATHER HAVE A NEICE DAY OR FUCK OF AND DYE.
I share. That cool guy over there shares. That hot chick, she shares too! Doctors share. Artists share. Judges share. Priests, milkmaids, garbagemen, executives, teachers, uncles, mailmen -- they all share. Old and young, smart and dumb (dumb, but nice!), people with good taste and people with conventional likes and dislikes; Chinese and Amsterdamish, Black, Brown, Yelllow and Red, Whites too; young girls (giggling), pippled-faced boys, pregnant women, bearded professors -- they ALL share!
:)
Isn't it about time you shared too?
Have a nice day -- AND SHARE!!!
Apparently it is OK to record TV as long as your aren't sharing it.
:rolleyes:
Yeah, that would be the whole "for private home exhibitation only" clause you saw scroll by when watching rented movies.
Really, would the fact you are distributing the program for free interfere with the studio's business of selling the series on DVD? I wonder...
When I hit the "submit" button there were to parent posts and NO children in either of them.
.01 seconds faster then mine. It doesn't make me redundant...it does however make the moderators stupid.
His "submit" button was
Apparently it is OK to record TV as long as your aren't sharing it.
Duh? Television shows are still copyrighted material. Distribution is not your right after recording it. Fair use only applies to personal use of the recorded show.
Apparently it is OK to record TV as long as your aren't sharing it.
When has it not been this way?
Recording something you can legally watch = fair use rights
Sharing copyrighted works = copyright infringement
Apparently it is OK to record TV as long as your aren't sharing it
Well, to be fair, that is the law.
Being that TV show downloads have been available for quite a while I just want to know:
Is their any reason to believe that these downloads are causing people to watch any less TV?
Being that TV show downloads predate DVD sales of TV series do the Companies have any proof that downloads affect their sales?
Seriously, the average person downloads a TV show because they either missed the episode (or liked the episode enough to want to see it again) and aren't willing to wait months for the season to be over to see their episode (or the years until a DVD is available for sale).
I actually work with the guy who runs the server for that site. I just IMed him -- interestingly enough, he said he hasn't gotten anything in the mail yet.
:(
Funny too -- on Tuesday he told me how lucky he felt not to have received a C&D yet, given that the server is in New York. Although this says he's be sued -- not just receiving a C&D -- which he calls "really bad bad news"
We're just college students who want to imbue the wit of Jon Stewart, that's all!
Of course it's legally OK to record TV for your own consumption - that's a fair use of the copy you were given by the copyright holder. It will be good news when the copyright holders associations (primarily the MPAA and RIAA) acknowledge that fact explicitly. Especially now that their (MGM's, really) lawyers have acknowledged it in their Supreme Court arguments.
And it's not legal to make a copy beyond that use. The right to copy is what "copyright" restricts to its owner. However, there are other fair uses of personal copies that should be protected in some online sharing that is exactly like in-person sharing. Our right to bring a record to a party, and listen to it with friends (and friends of friends), is protected. As is our right to loan our copy to a friend. If one of those friends makes a copy while they have temporary access during a protected sharing transaction, that copy is illegal - the unauthorized copier is breaking copyright law.
Those scenarios are fair not because of any feature of the physical copy, or the physical proximity of the friends. Rather, their recognized fairness is in recognition of the ancient tradition of friends sharing music, which the recent "temporary" artificial monopoly created by copyright didn't dare infringe. So our right to share music that way, in a shared simultaneous experience with friends, should be protected. If we're both tuned into a simultaneous stream of my music, that's fair use that's new only in the "space-shifting" feature, which doesn't define the sharing experience. The sooner we get the traditional fair use boundaries defined in terms of new technologies, the sooner we'll all be enjoying those familiar scenarios using the newer, freer media. And the sooner copyright owners will be reaching modern markets which want to use their material fairly.
--
make install -not war
Right, you post a redundant post, say it's not redundant when it obviously is, and complain about getting modded down, and it's the moderators who are stupid.
This reminds me entirely of napster and lokitorrent. It changed nothing. While annoying, this is as dumb as shooting one guy out of 1000 charging over a hill and declaring victory.
WOW... and in other news, it's ok to make a fire... as long as you don't make it out of your neighbor's house. However seriously what on TV is worth recording??? My g/f has us set up w/ the mondo cable package at 99.8% of the stuff on TV is just crap. The only thing I went out of my way to watch in the last 6mos was the Battlestar Galactica a series.
actually I am happy to see you, however that is in fact a banana in my pocket.
1: Offer fast TV downloads for free, or offer legal torrents.
2: Include the advertisements in the shows, and track how many people download them.
3: Profit!!!
The problem with this theory is that it assumes that the *AA are pro business. They are not, they do not want business opportunity, what they want is business monopoly granted to them by the government in the form of copyrights, with infinite force behind them.
The truth and the problem is that copyrights are not free market. If the government gave Ford a monopoly on making cars, because they don't have an "incentive" to make them unless they could lock out everyone else - most people would see this as interference in free markets and overbearing government regulation.
Well that is exactly the problem with copyright distribution monopolies. They are more like a massive overbearing government regulation on how people can share information than a "intellectual" property right. Here, the word "property" is just a label to hide unjust coercion of people, and has nothing to do with real property at all.
good thing they didn't go after my favorite, which is...
Lasers Controlled Games!
So their problem is advertising is getting cut out, right? Why not take advantage of other advertising mediums such as product placement? It has taken off in movies such as Minority Report and The Matrix series, why not more in TV?
As well, this way they can cram more crap into their stations, as each TV show will take up 16 minutes less per hour (That's 6.4 more hours per day to insert infomercials and other garbage tv shows).
In Canada, there is no way to get HBO legally. The only option is BitTorrent or an illegal American satilite (sp?) dish. I'd pay for it if I could get it, but as it is, I have to download the excellent programming with BitTorrent. What they don't understand is that they need to make it available for people to pay them, before they starting bitching about piracy.
here is (originally PDF but converted to txt) what ShunTV has recieved by the MPAA explaining why they've been shut down.
- Teja
For what it's worth, I always mark "redundant" unfair in m2.
Just want'd to let you know
Ok, this is the fourth response along the lines of "They want you to watch the ads, not the shows", and while I understand the importance of ads for these shows, I'm not buying it -- and yes, I already am pretty cynical about tv.
Television is increasingly reaching a point where it's competing against other forms of entertainment for consumer attention -- pay tv, movies & dvd rentals and purchases, the internet, video games, etc. These forms don't all subscribe to traditional media and advertising practices, and the television companies know this. We're actually at a point of really high quality television right now, arguably better than film, and that's a result of the networks realizing that it's worth it to give us good shows and diverse programming so that television can remain a viable source of income for them, and ensure continued audience penetration.
So yeah, the ads are their way of getting revenue, but the ads wouldn't be placed if the television shows sucked. That's why shows get cancelled -- they want people watching their shows.
Recording is fair use. Distributing is not fair use (even if you are not profiting from it). MPAA is well within their right to go after these sites that take part in distributing their stuff. Still, I would be more than willing to pay for a decent quality download straight from the horse's mouth instead of some shitty divx rip that some numbnuts fucked up. Sometimes the lag from broadcast to DVD is just too fucking long. It also sucks if you're in another country and have to wait a couple of months (or even years) until it is broadcast.
If you find this post offensive, don't read it! THINK ABOUT YOUR BREATHING! I am what I am because of how apes behave.
...and still wanting to remain married to her. Somehow, I don't think she'll be in the mood for conjugal relations.
Note to the MPAA: Provide TV shows online for a reasonable price, and you'll make a hell of a lot more money than you will from these lawsuits. Start suing customers, and you'll see just how frigid a bitch they can be.
Sadly, btefnet is on the list. Where will I get The Daily Show and Dr. Who if they go down?
EXACTLY!! I live in the US, I mean how the hell am I supposed to watch Dr. Who? Wait 5 or 6 years for the DVD box set to come out here? I'll lose interest by then!
This was the last straw. As soon as all the shows I'm watching are over for this season, I'm done. No movies, no DVD purchases, no more TV. Not even downloads. I'm no longer a part of this society.
... I wouldnt be watching Lost now. It's a densely packed storyline and I missed a couple episodes a while back. When I finally got back to it, someone who I thought was dead was alive and I didnt know what the f**k was going on.
I was able to catch up on BT, and now I can follow it when it broadcasts. Otherwise I would have said to hell with it, and they would have lost a viewer (no pun intended).
If past episodes were made available for download at a reasonable price, I would have paid for a handful of previous shows. I wouldnt even care if it was full commercials and DRM'd up the wazoo. For $2-$3 per episode, I would consider it just like a rental or buying a movie ticket. ie. a disposable purchase.
Though I wonder how many people would download torrents instead of buying the inevitable DVD release. The quality of the episodes I saw was so poor that if I was really such a big fan of the show, a 300 MB divx would be no substitute for the proper DVD boxset. For many people though, if the downloaded episodes are 'good enough', then I could see how it could potentially impact DVD sales.
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Anyways, I wonder how the hell these fuckers are able to stick their dicks in the air agianst powerful studios and lobby groups.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
What's funny is the MPAA and other companies scream up a storm of how it's illegal and wrong, have they ever stopped to consider how much of a fucking monopoloy tv is?
Case in point, I'm a huge sci fi fan. Take Trek as a main example. Sure if I'm at home during the day around 1pm I can catch TNG/DS9 reruns on "Spike" TV but most people with day jobs aren't home at that hour. Sure I could Tivo/DVR/VHS tape it but then again you have to deal with the inconsistances of stuff being prempted, etc Not to mention you're paying to record the stuff, those VHS tapes and blank DVD's aren't free, if you record it yer at least spending X amount of money on blank media.
So as most people are unlucky to not be able to tape shows, such as my example, what options do we have?;
- Wait till reruns begin/occur. Some shows are already in rerun syndication on other networks. Take Stargate. It has new episodes of SG-1 on the Sci Fi channel. but if you turn on say, the WB at 3 am some nights you catch old reruns of it. This falls into the above example of being able to record such things, as such times, in an affordable manner. And that doesn't take into account the current season of a show. Smallville just ended it's season (I think), so if you missed the last few episodes of the season you gotta wait till the end of Summer when the reruns of that season "catch up".
- Buy the seasonal DVD's. Ok this is my main deterent. I'm a huge Trek fan, have been for 15 years. I own not one season or movie of Trek on DVD. Why? Walk into the cheapest department store there is. Seriously, go to Walmart or K-Mart or Target. See those prices? $80-100 for ONE season of basically any Trek. $80 fucking dollars. I don't need 20 extra DVD's, sure their nice but I just want the series, in DVD format in DVD quality all in one nice little package. I honestly cannont justify paying more than $30-40 per season of a TV show. If you want all 7 seasons of a Trek series, it's almost $800......I can buy a god damn CAR for that (or at least put a downpayment on a nice one). Now some DVD's have become more, economical. This past Christmas when Buffy season 7 came out, they released a holiday package deal, all 7 seasons for around $200-250. That is reasonable. I can justify that purchase for the cost. And you still can find a deal here there, Amazon.com knocks off a couple hundred bucks on big series like Trek, but still not much... Now remember when I said go to a department store? Try a large chain store like Best Buy, EB, Suncoast, Media Play, etc..Double those prices.
- Avaiblility. Remeber how I mentioned the cheap stores and big expensive chain stores? What do you see most of in the dvd sections at Walmart or Kmart? New Releases. Sure they have a handful of tv seasonal dvd's but most likely the last that was released (i.e. you'll find Stargate Season 7 but not Season 1...). So what are you left with? Going to a store that specializes in electronics and shit like Best Buy or Samgoodie, whom have a nice HUGE selection of DVDs and such but charge INSANE prices. ($1200 for all of DS9 last time I checked...)
The quality of tv just doesn't justify things in the end. I mean, for every Trek dvd or Scape DVD that's fairly expensive you'll find CRAP like American Idol or the latest incarnation of Survivor selling like hot-fucking-cakes for half the price. Hell I haven't watched anything on the Fox network in years (except 24) cause every night it's their prime time lineup of "Reality TV" shit. ABC, CBS etc follow either in the same suit or throwing out the 14th different spinoff of CSI or Law & Order o_O
When prices are reasonable or tv schedules become more flexible in correlation with recording media prices then maybe I won't use BT for my source of entertainment.
Aw Frell this
The BFAA (Burger Flipper Association of America) served me with a lawsuit for $2500 last week, due to my "refrigeration of as many as three pounds of copyrighted food". Apparently their business model is based on consumers consuming consumables immediately. "If you don't eat it while it's hot, it's like stealing from us," they said. What can I do? I don't like sitting in their restaurant because it smells like hot grease. They insist I have to because the advertisements in the joint are being delivered bundled with the food.
I'm tired of this shit. Really fucking tired of it. Just leave things as is. People watch it first-run when it airs, you sell your fucking commercials.
Holy shit I can't even formulate fucking words to express how goddamn angry I am right now.
You fucking short-sighted asshole. By that logic selling series sets of shows on DVD must 'hurt syndication sales'. Bullshit. A set of 20+ HDTV Divx rips of a show taking up precious space on my hard drive isn't going to beat having a neat box DVD set of my favorite show with commentary and extras.
And international sales? Bitch, if it wasn't for TV rips I wouldn't be watching getting into the seventh episode of the new Doctor Who. There's already a 2005 series DVD box set sale in me when it comes out, thanks to people making copies of the show for us to enjoy. I'm sure I'm not alone.
You don't have to control every fucking little inch of your property with an iron fist. Sometimes the fans (remember what fans are?) can help bring in the cash better than whatever half-baked bullshit excuses you try to serve up to the media.
ADAPT OR DIE.
BytesTemplar.com
The six sites sued Thursday include ShunTV, Zonatracker, Btefnet, Scifi-Classics, CDDVDHeaven and Bragginrights.
ShunTV posted this copy of the MPAA press release (pdf) and says they are down for good.
Btefnet is still up at the moment, but there is no official response on the main page so maybe they just haven't gotten around to shutting down yet.
Good point
I like the cut of his jib.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
The MPAA is going about this all wrong. They are going to alienate everyone that they haven't already. I can understand going after people who pirate movies, but it's just as easy to pay money to see the movie/buy the dvd. Most TV shows aren't available for purchase immediately, the DVD releases are seasons behind. They're not going to stop people from archiving the shows, because with TiVo Home Media option, I can dump them to my PC and burn to DVD.
They could make a KILLING by following the business model of soapcity.com, where it breaks down to 50 cents an episode. (Granted, it's a subscription model for $10/mo, or like $3/episode, but that's a damn good deal if you don't have access to a television.)
They use the Microsoft WMP DRM (last I checked) and the download license expires after 30 days. The downloads are available immediately after the episode finishes airing on the west coast, so no one can see it early. And there's no advertisements in the episode.
A VCR lets you keep the tapes, you can't take any content off a TiVo. Once you run out of room, you have to delete the show. And you can't record and skip commercials. With a VCR you can pause during commercials.
It is too bad the SVHS did not catch on. Near DVD like quality, surround sound, better than what VHS is. Plus, if you want to loan a tape to a friend, you can.
I'll give one more example of why TiVo sucks. I was going to work late one friday night, and called a friend of mine to record a show. He said he only had a TiVo, but would record it. He was leaving saturday morning to go home for the weekend. If he had a tape, I could have stopped to pick it up. But TiVo requires I be in his house to see it.
TiVo is taking away your choices, your rights. As content goes from analog to digital, there will be more content encrypted. TiVo will side with the producers, to get the ability to save this content. Before, with VHS, everything was standard, the producers could not get away with it.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
The O.C. is where its at
Welcome to The O.C. Bitch.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
When I am not home, I want to see the episodes that I missed while I was gone, so I download the missed shows via a .torrent as it beats leaving my comp on to record it. If those filesharers would leave the commercials in the video, we wouldn't have a problem, legally, in downloading the program.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
When theiving little warez puppies like you stop stealing our work
signed,
The MPAA team
Well its dead. http://www.btefnet.net/ Sorry, BTEFNET is down for maintenance. Please try again later.
I think these lawsuits will simply speed up the migration away from P2P to anonymous P2P. Many individuals believe strongly in the freedom of uncensorable speech and many also think that copyright (a monopoly on the free flow of information and a an barrier to promote artificial scarcity of knowledge erected by government enforced through threats of violence) needs to be reformed at best and removed totally at worse.
The more promising anonymous p2p applications is I2P, its Wikipedia article here. It is a network layer and has a variety of tools including anonymous bittorrent [ducktorrent], [i2pbt], [azeureus plugin] (Azureus 2.3.0.0 has I2P code in its core as seen from their release notes), anonymous p2p search [i2phex], anonymous IRC [core], anonymous http [core], anonymous distributed content store like Freenet [Quartermaster or 'Q']. All it really needs is people to share their content (just put it in your files in automatic webpage directory) and anonymous newsgroups.
There is also Freenet which is a useful backup to I2P until I2P develops a well working distributed content store (currently Quartermaster or the defunct Stasher fufill these rolls and are in the I2P core CVS). If you get Frost for Freenet there are a few distribution organisations there as well.
The FCC said it was okay for Tivo users to record and share tv shows with 9 friends.
Apparently it is OK to record TV as long as your aren't sharing it.
Duh.
It is a basic fair use right to record T.V. programs. Distributing them is copyright infringement.
Note: as an expat, I regularly use a torrent site to watch American television. But I don't kid myself. What I'm doing is an infringement of copyright and, while there's a lot going wrong in copyright law, this ought to be an infringement.
Phiwum's law: anyone that names an obvious law after himself and then puts it in his own sig is just pathetic.
Attack of the shows hosts Kevin Rose and David Prager (He wrote the article. The two kevins just presented it) had a segment on " RSS feeds to download you favorite Tv shows using BT" the episode orignally aired on : 5/5/2005 was broadcasted to something like 13 million homes. Now MPAA announces they are going after the Bitorrent TV distro sites a week later when Kevin Blurted how "It's cool to download" to all the 13 year olds that watch G4 However both Kevin agreed on this would be the carm before the storm. But some thing you shoulding openly say on TV station that goes out to a large audience
What's the problem with the MPAA? They have the mean to distribute TV shows which you can watch whenever you want. I have digital cable with Rogers and I do have some TV shows available freely on demand. I would not mind paying something like $1.99 to watch the show I forgot to record.
Also I don't see their point. I don't think I'm "stealing" their precious shows since I'm actually paying to get the channels on which theses shows are aired in the first place. I could understand their objections about people getting the shows without being subscribed to the network that originally aired them, but it's not the case since they are going after the site themself. This just proves that the TV medium is outdated and is in great need of improvement. What if TV would move to a more On-Demand format where you could subscribe to a TV series instead of a channel. And I bet under that model, producers would make more effort to produce shows of a better quality.
I don't get it. Movies != TV. WTF?
UTF-8: There and Back Again
And how many had to record it on a dvr only to find out that the movie went 5 minutes past what all schedules published for the movie. My tivo missed the end and I had to download it off the net and view the end on my PC.
Personally I consider it fair use if I already have a copy of the content I obtained legaly but I'm using the internet to get it in a different format instead of paying for utilities to do it I just basically leech off someone elses work.
Course back in the real napster days I had a lot of cd's of mine stolen so I used napster to restore my muisc collection. Subsequently the drive carrying all that music died a year later. Which lacking napster I just quit buying cd's.
And a warning to the MPAA and RIAA in the last few years I have severly cut back my cd/dvd purchases. You have put out nothing but crap lately. Hell last night I made the mistake of renting that damn steve zizou life aquatic movie. If there was any part of that that was interesting it must of been after the first 45 minutes I suffered and gave up on it being anything..
I guess if I want to be entertained I'll just pirate your movie trailers. All the good parts are usually in there anyways.
That doesn't get all the shitty US show's I hate watching but d/load anyway. I mean what are the chances of New Zealand ever getting American Dad or the next season of Family Guy, or that shitty show numb3rs with all the stupid phony maths, I mean I should be able to watch all the same shitty crap that americans get to watch.
What could be better than a jet powered motorcycle? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8l6GTHLSWE
..when I was growing up, mommy always told me to share.
Parent is humerous and true. too many tight asses around here.
. . . for being such a karma whorin' BIOTCH
Perhaps you should learn the difference between uploading and downloading before you get on the internets.
Yo, MPAA, I downloaded the entire series of The Shield and do you know what? I bought the DVDs, all three seasons that are out. I downloaded Dead Like Me and guess what? I bought the DVDs. I've downloaded dozens of shows and movies, liked what I saw and bought the DVDs as my permanent copy.
I don't think I'm alone in this either.
About five episodes into the season I watched half of a West Wing episode and really enjoyed it. Knowing where to get Bit Torrent files of the show I went out and downloaded the previous four episodes and was up to speed for the season.
This said, if I had not downloaded the previous four episodes I would NOT have watched every minute of the rest of the season.
Also, I am a die hard 24 fan. I watch every episode start to finish commericial and all but with no VCR or TIVO I missed two episodes this season. However, my friend BTEFNet was able to provide me a pointer to shares of the file which I downloaded and watched. Personally, I do not care where I get the damn episode from but if it goes by somebody at that point has wasted an opportunity.
Whether it was sampling new shows, catching up in a season, or just watching an episode I missed I do NOT CARE where I get it from as long as I get it. You a**holes at the MPAA get it through your head TV is about eyeballs and attentiveness. I pay attention, I know President Palmer pitches for All-State and the "swoop and swap" and All-State's stand so damnit don't cut me OFF!!!!!
I don't have cable. I'm a college student so I can't afford it (or DVDs of seasons.) There are a couple of shows I like to keep up with ("The Shield" is one) so I download weekly torrents to watch it. I don't keep the episodes. After I watch them, I delete the files (yes, I REALLY do. I rarely watch an episode of anything more than once.) So the only way I'm really "stealing" is because the video files are commercial-free, right? If the commercials were left in the files and I keep deleting them after I watch them once, is that still technically illegal?
I wish more TV networks made their shows available for download or stream. They could air the commercials like normal and still get their ad-revenue. Or do they all have some kind of agreement to prevent viewers from bypassing the cable companies and having direct access to the shows?
If you offer torrents online for a fee, I would be willing to pay for them.
How about you bypass the fees you're paying Comcast and other cable companies for the on-demand programming, and just charge us a small fee to download shows whenever we want? You could even just offer last week's shows. If we really like a show, we watch it when it comes on TV. Otherwise, we can download it later for a small fee ($2-$5, depending on the show?).
This way, you can also get viewers in other countries, or those who don't have cable or satellite for some reason.
If you live close enough to a large Canadian city across the border, you might be able to pick up the local CBC TV broadcast (i.e. antenna reception). It airs Tuesdays at 8.
That said, the situation royally sucks, no question.
I have a question: why is it illegal to download recorded broadcasts? The recording of a backup copy is legal, so I guess it must be the act of giving it to someone else. Distribution is the key here right? But surely the broadcast was public in the first place, so what's the difference in changing the manner and time at which you watch a show?
Thinking further, you could concievably claim monetary loss because the advertisements will have been removed. But the only time those specific adverts would be shown was around and in between the first broadcast, and the advertisers would have to pay extra for subsequent showings, so the TV company aren't required to distribute adverts any time except the first showing.
Another obvious question, why do we have to pay for broadcasts that are already easily picked up from the air? Surely if we're getting them regardless of whether we want them or not we should be able to do whatever we want with them. What is it about a piece of wire and a braun tube that makes it illegal?
Lots of (perhaps stupid) legal questions, but it's something i've been wondering ever since I started picking up recorded anime.
I have to wonder, you can go into any backwater fleamarket and find lots of copyrighted material for sale. In Chinatown in NYC you walk on the streets and buy DVDs of movies that havent been released yet. But all of a sudden the internet hits and all of this illegal sharing becomes trackable. Now the *AA's have an idea on how bad this stuff is. Even if they win and illegal internet activity is put to a stop, I think there will still be thousands if not millions of people who participate in illegal copyright enfringement, it will just move to another place that cant be tracked so easily.
So... alternatives?
Power to the Peaceful
There is an easy answer to this problem for the MPAA. Provide a legal alternative. If they want to stop people 'pirating' their televison shows, provide the public a way to download the shows and pay or provide advertising in exchange for the service. Until they do this, they show they are just trying to keep their monopoly secure. And until then, new websites providing the torrents will continue to pop up. Lets see how long they will play this proverbial version of 'whack-a-mole'.
Just as important are the trackers. Who owns/sets up the prq.to tracker that bt files are tracked by?
This is a no brainer for the MPAA types, because of the popularity of DVD sets of TV shows, which make huge money because they require almost no investment.
The HDTV shows I download and burn to disc are just as high quality as DVD (on a normal TV, anyway). I can burn 12 hours of video on one DVD and play them on my DivX compliant Philips DVP642.
Good heavens Miss Sakamoto - you're beautiful!
It seems like we need to petition the BBC or something. They seem to "get it" more than most when it comes to embracing new technology rather than fighting it. I'd be more than happy to watch some flash ads while downloading episodes of Dr. Who. Hell, I'd even be willing to pay a couple bucks an episode.
especially the part about the trailers. Insightful!
Somthing fishy is going on:
....
... ...
Site says:
This domain has just been registered for one of our customers!
Domain registration and webhosting at best prices.
Registry says:
Registrant:
oblivionx btefnet
Domain servers in listed order:
NS0.DEMANDRED.NET
NS1.DEMANDRED.NET
NS2.DEMANDRED.NET
Registry for Demandred.net
Registrant:
Huntington Beach, California 92648
United States
Domain servers in listed order:
NS0.DEMANDRED.NET
NS1.DEMANDRED.NET
NS2.DEMANDRED.NET
But most telling...
Subject of #bt on efnet
* Now talking in #bt
* Topic is 'BE PATIENT WHILE WE WORK THINGS OUT'
Looks like server hop perhaps to avoid there ISP shutting them down.
Amen, I'm also totally pissed.
... some of these shows are broadcast for FREE. All I need to watch the O.C. or Lost or Law and Order or whatever is plug an antenna into the back of my TV. What the fuck are they talking about losing money?
Many of these shows are broadcast freely over the airwave, let me repeat that
Or take Battlestar Galactica, I watched most of the episodes first run, but also downloaded the ones that I missed. Does that effect my decision to buy the DVDs? Nope, I was going to get them as soon as (within a few weeks) they were released. But now with this bullshit I'm not so sure.
So here's my proposal to you all. We keep complaining about alienation and the like from the big Hollywood execs. And yet all we can do is retreat to this wonderful message board. Here's the solution to it all. Let US alienate the execs. Let US show them that they aren't to screw with us. Let us set a week where we boycott television watching. Spread the word to everyone to not watch television. We can call it international no TV week. That'll screw them over real good. Screw the Nielson ratings, screw the MPAA and screw Wal-Mart for their killing of US jobs. Who's with me? Who's ready to join the revolution? We'll take on the broadcast flag as it heads to congress. We'll take on the Rich Ignorant Association of Anglos and the Menstrual Pansies Association of Ani. No TV. No TV. No TV. Chant with me. No TV. No TV. No TV.
C'mon, cut us some slack! I'm FINALLY gonna get broadband! I wanna download!
Please don't humanize the morons around me. It makes me very uncomfortable.
Grandparent was litterally asking for it.
So they want me to re-up with a usenet provider? No prob - back to newscene I go... I didn't renew since torrents were working so great, but I'll go right back to using usenet...
[At home I have directtivo - but I travel a lot. I like to get shows, and watch them in my hotel room, or on flights, etc..]
When RIAA started being asshats, I just about stopped buying CDs. (I still sometimes buy them now as gifts - but almost never for myself anymore). Maybe for MPAA I'll watch fewer movies - but with how few good ones come out, I don't think anyone will notice a few lost ticket sales a year...
You spelled 'the' wrong.
http://www.mpaa.org/MPAAPress/2005/2005_05_12_BitT orrent.pdf
Let's say for example in the future it made no sense whatsoever to sell music, TV shows, movies, games, books, or any other form of content because it would be pirated the very instant it got out by everyone.
Entertainment would then be reduced to free blogs and content on websites (plus any free content someone happens to make), and the only free books would be limited to universities and government funded institutions.
Heck, we may not only revive folk music, but also wean ourselves off the idiot box yet!
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
This domain has just been registered for one of our customers! Domain registration and webhosting at best prices.
why not just impose a $3 tax per internet user and be done with it. I would pay $3 a month to download as much as I want and not be worried about the MPAA and gang. They get the extra $$ from taxes (that will cover there supposed loss) and we are free. Sure people will bitch about the tax, but face it, most of us would find this a fair trade.
So, if I walk in the Louvre and help myself to whatever takes my fancy, I'm not stealing the work of great masters, right? I mean, it's not like I can buy any of the works in the museum shop
The proper analogy of "stealing" copies in a museum is photography of the exhibits. Would discreet photography without flash even be noticed? Or do they ban mobile phones in major museums?
If you live close enough to a large Canadian city across the border, you might be able to pick up the local CBC TV broadcast (i.e. antenna reception). It airs Tuesdays at 8.
Nope, unfortunately, I live about 8 hours away from the border.
It's such an awesome show though...
"Apparently it is OK to record TV as long as your aren't sharing it."
Uhh, no. If you were to ask the MPAA, they might say something like
"I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.".
Why?
"However, if you are an advertiser who has paid $280,000 a minute to advertise, he feels a very large pain in his stomach as well as in his checkbook because it destroys the reason for free television, the erasure, the blotting out, the fast forwarding..."
Of course, the MPAA famously lost that battle. But they never gave up; expect Betamax to be overturned within the year.
So this is what happened to BTEFNET earlier tonight when I was refreshing it.. it seems anything remotely connected with bittorrent downloads seems to get targeted for shutdown within a few months.. I'm sure they will start going after private tracker sites as well soon.
That made me laugh out loud.
This sig is false.
I rarely use the Internet distribution channel as a backup to my P/DVR. Occasionally I'll forget to check settings and recordings won't have proper padding, so front/back may be clipped. Also, the VCR tape may break and cause the loss of the entire night. The Internet is also useful for the rare instance that an affiliate refuses to carry content and/or has technical issues.
For example, the show Family Guy recently went back on the air. The local Fox affiliate had technical issues that blocked analog transmission. DirecTV was also out since they were forced into only keeping the local feed (they should carry local and national feeds to the networks). Through Internet distribution, I was able to watch the show (the local affiliate eventually re-broadcast with network approval).
The networks need to allow free or cheap downloads of aired shows. At least until a DVD set is released. Start offering free or cheap downloads and it will shut down some of these channels. The offerings will also bring greater validity to legal cases (because what is so wrong with distributing aired shows to others that may enjoy it?).
this is the problem slashbots have understanding copyright. It's not locking up an idea for ever, it's granting the sole right of copying, distribution, performance, public display, and/or making derivatives or an original expression of an idea.
Then what happens if a given idea can be expressed only one way, as is allegedly the case in music (ObTopic: such as TV show theme songs)? It could get painful.
Ford is not granted the sole right to make cars.
At one point, one company did have a government-granted exclusive right to make and sell internal combustion engines. But unlike patents, copyrights do not expire.
It looks like btefnet is down - hopefully not for good...
I'm all messed up on cough syrup now so just, like, nevermind.
What about porn sites?
This really blows because people, like me, use a method of downloading TV shows via BitTorrent called broadcatching. I'm sure there are tons of people like me whose intention is not to do any harm to that particular show/network. I prefer downloading of TV shows because I cannot watch them when they air (usually). Though better solutions (Tivo) might exist, it is still super convenient for me to download TV shows (acutally my computer does it for me) and to watch them on the computer. Or I can quickly transfer them to my laptop and bring it to work/school with me. I can understand why the RIAA/MPAA might have a problem with people downloading music/movies, but it's television and it's broadcast all over the world -- for FREE. This is indeed another "scare" tactic. What's next, suing people for using BitTorrent all together? What about HTTP downloading? What about FTP? I can download my "warez" from those protocols too.
I'm generally inclined to agree with the people who say that the MPAA is less evil than the RIAA. They've been less draconian, their product is undeniably of generally higher quality, and they actually release things for a reasonable cost relative to production values. Certain studios (I'm looking at you, Paramount!), however, are reaching the tipping point with forced adverts on DVD. Believe it or not, I am not interested in seeing previews I can't skip for a movie coming out in six months. Odds are I won't watch the movie anyway, but lo and behold I still get the forced ad content every bloody time I boot up the movie. One of the biggest reliefs about digital media was that at first studios didn't put all those bs previews on DVD like they did with VHS, they appeared to have learned their lesson. To those studios that are actually preserving the DVD as a useful medium--congratulations, I believe in your business model and am willing to purchase your product. To those that are ensuring I see previews for "The Matrxi: Revolutions" well into 2009, I can only say that you should straighten up and fly right or expect me to consider your product flawed and unworth purchasing.
Surely there's a way for "channels" to sell themselves on their website as well as part of a cable package?
I'm Rick James with mod points biatch!
Sadly, btefnet is on the list. Where will I get The Daily Show and Dr. Who if they go down?
Just as long as they don't take MySpleen. Please god, don't let them take MySpleen. I need MySpleen to live!
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
And for that matter, let's stop using the word "piracy". At least as it applies to copyright infringment. I cannot believe that out of dictionaries full of English words we can't find a couple of other words to use.
It's surprising how many dictionaries now have, as the first two definitions of "piracy", some wording of the following:
Besides, if we let the MPAA/RIAA define our lexicon
"Piracy" for infringement has been in common use nearly since the copyprivilege was invented in 1710.
we're halfway to losing the battle for copyright already.
I've tried to introduce the term "copyprivilege", which IMHO better reflects the constitutional status of Title 17 exclusive rights compared to that of the free press. The Congress has power to choose whether to grant exclusive rights in works of authorship, but it must uphold freedom of the press.
Looks like I'll be...walking...talking to people...
fuck that
Seriously, I don't think these guys get it. Anyone remember the latest Harry Potter book? Remember that part where Fred and George set off a multitude of fireworks in the school and Umbridge was forced to run around extingiushing them all? I believe what she tried to do at one time was stun one out of existence and it just ended up multiplying.
So, imagine. MPAA and RIAA executives, whose collective IQ is about half that of a kid with Down Syndrome. They're Umbridge.
Their goal: make torrent download sites obsolete.
Take the RIAA . They succeeded in shutting down Napster and they rejoiced that it was the end of music swapping... or not. Napster died, Morpheus, Kazaa, WinMX, Gnutella, and Bittorrent rose to prominence and actually made the problem worse.
So, the MPAA seems intent on killing Bittorrent. They managed to get to suprnova, Lokitorrents, and few other sites. The result? A plethora of suprnova clones that are alive and thriving.
Do these organizations remind you of a dog that chases his own tail?
It almost makes me want to stop teaching and go into business because if these executives have IQs of -4 and still manage to make millions, imagine what me with my IQ could accomplish.
Probably because they are rapidly shifting the physical location/ownership of the server to a country with sensible laws. I don't see why all these sites aren't using the same host as PRQ, then this would all be a moot point.
If it's not on cable (i.e. broadcast via normal radio waves OR sattelite) and it's being broadcast in an area near ME, then you have nothing to worry about... I own the rights already, and I feely allow you to redistribute the content.
You see my body has an EULA. In order to pass radio waves through it, you must agree to the EULA. This EULA states that you transfer the intellectual property rights to all your content (radio & teleivion are specified) to me for a perior of 347 years from the date of using my body as a transport medium.
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
I was disappointed that the new Xbox doesnt let you buy songs from MTV .. ie while a video is playing on MTV or some other channel u can press a button and purchase the song or video.
Guess they decided not to have that feature when they realized MTV doesnt show music videos.
I downloaded all the new BSG episodes, all from btefnet. I also bought the DVD of the miniseries. This is a gigantic bummer.
Lasers Controlled Games!
:D
I hope the MPAA shuts down these evil bittorrent sites where I go to find episodes of the new Dr. Who and Call For Help 2.0. My downloading those two shows is depriving the MPAA of so much money.
Except neither show is available in the USA, where I live.
So the MPAA wants to prevent me from stealing shows that I can't watch any other way? What a bunch of jerks.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
alt.binaries.drwho and/or alt.binaries.multimedia.scifi for the good doctor. alt.binaries.multimedia.comedy for your fake news. (Attn **AA, please continue to ignore the existence of the Usenet.)
Share and Enjoy! (tm)
The TV industry is used to being paid by their customers, which are the advertisers. This is a new thing - viewers wanting to buy programming directly. This must seem very painful for them, as if they stuff up then they have to deal with low sales and thus will have to produce quality product at a fair price in order to keep their revenue streaming in.
You can cup my balls. Any good with the shaft?
TeeVee is too easy. It's there, you turn it on, you watch. You get hoked on some product placement stuffed series, miss an episode, and the MAN wants to throw you in jail for glomming a copy.
Is it really worth it. It's not like the material is all that creative. Hell, the book is ALWAYs better than some dimwitted, cloistered in hollwoody, leftist, who doen't know his hole from that ass over ther, could possibly portray by way of kicking kappy little electrons around.
Read the book. Go rent a film. If you're poor, go to the $1 movie. If you're real poor, hang out at the couthouse. It's much more interesting than anything on TeeVee.
Hell, you might even teach yourself LISP.
ShunTV dealt almost(with a few notable exceptions) exclusively with documentaries and news programs. Suing them is, to me, just wrong.
I'm not sure what the MPAA thinks it's going to accomplish, but as a paying customer(I pay over a thousand dollars for Cable TV, thank you very much, and the amount of money I spend on movies is non-trivial), this is the last straw. Shutting down suprnova was one thing(That was wholescale theft of movies, music, and more), but this isn't right. I will not be seeing the next star wars movie, nor Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, nor any one of the new movies coming out, nor will I buy any new copies of old favourites. If they're so worried about losing money because people downloading TV shows, then so be it: Now they're going to lose real money and real mindshare.
My personal boycott of RIAA music(I refuse to even listen to it, lest I give the bastards mindshare) is now extended to the MPAA, and to all Cable TV, even the shows I really enjoy. Lord knows it's an ant vs. a behemoth, but at least I'll be able to sleep at night knowing that I'm not paying for lawsuits.
So, are there any web-based independents out there who want their stuff seen? My viewing schedule just opened right up, and I'd love to see stuff done by someone who actually wants me to watch their stuff.
It's been a long time.
... and with things like Azureus supporting distributed databases of torrent clients, it gets nice. Either that, or we start using FreeNet to distribute the torrents.
Yet more insanity. I tell you now, I pay $142 and change every month to Adelphia for cable and internet, and if I miss an episode of House, I'm gonna go find it and download it - I paid for the 'license' to watch the stuff they send to my house, period.
First, the last time I checked, the airwaves belonged to the people. Second, whats my $142 for if it isn't a license to watch House? Third, fair use allows for time shifting, and thats really what these sites allow me to do.
Another bullshit money grab, greedy corporate bastards.
In Canada, there is no way to get HBO legally.
Your beef is with the CRTC (the Canadian FCC), not Time Warner. In Canada, all networks have to carry a minimum percentage of programming made in Canada. In order to offer HBO in Canada, Time Warner would have to split it into two channels and show Canadian-produced filler half the time on each channel.
EXACTLY!! I live in the US, I mean how the hell am I supposed to watch Dr. Who? Wait 5 or 6 years for the DVD box set to come out here?
I agree with the bit about the Daily Show (I love it and I live in Europe, so downloading is the only option) but the complete first season of Dr. Who will be out on DVD this year. I don't know about North American release dates but I suppose you could always order from the UK if you don't mind R1 disks.
I kinda got used to the new Dr Who! It's pretty good! How am I supposed to get it in America now? I guess eventually DVDs MIGHT go on sale, and they MIGHT be playable in American DVDs...
You'd think the BBC could just open up all its content as bit torrents (I understand they have opened up quite a bit!) and just charge people to be able to decode the videos. Why not?
If I have the right to digitally record TV shows, why doesn't someone ELSE have the right to record them FOR me?
I mean, are we afraid that (omgbbq!) people who don't have this 'right' are getting ahold of the files? And who ARE these people that don't have these rights? Is this like making encryption software available to terrorists or something? Is there a 'no-export' list for TV shows now? Have we all been unknowingly making episodes of Friends available to Al Quaida?
This keeps getting more and more ridiculous. It really does. Why even bother having television media in this country if we're apparently not allowed to watch it?
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
Got a source for that claim?
Can I have all your money? I promise to use it wisely to better mankind/world/dog? Promise!
From the site:
my blog
If we used hexadecimal would it be 15 friends?
oops... that's supposed to say R2
I love Sci-Fi, unfortunately I also live in a country where "sci-fi doesn't sell", and therefore suffers from lack of distributers. So in the world according to the MPAA:
-I can't catch on TV, since no distributers are willing to sign it.
-I can't catch it on DVD, since there are no localized releases.
-I can't import it on DVD, since to do so would require me getting a multi-region DVD player, which is illegal according to the MPAA. (I could also buy a Region 1 DVD player, but it would also be illegal, since I'm viewing content not meant for my region).
-I can't download it, due to some wacky reasoning that a non-existent local distributer is going to lose out on profits.
So what's a man to do?
what seperates man from the animals, except the weasel
The story above this one says: "Second Round of Serenity Screenings Sold Out."
People just don't care what the MPAA does, as long as Hollywood keeps delivering the latest in digital explosion rendering technology.
I don't see what the big deal is. People watch shows on TV, people watch commercials on TV. People download shows from the internet, people watch commercials on the internet.
Plus it must really confuse the people at TiVo when they track my usage stats and see that I fast forward through all the shows and only watch the commercials (to find the good ones for my site). Surely I cancel out several of you commercial-skipping fools.
Most of the Daily Show is available for free online from comedy central's website.
This has more information than the news articles:5 _12_BitTorrent.pdf
(pdf warning)http://www.mpaa.org/MPAAPress/2005/2005_0
from their page 2:
"Since we began shutting these sites down, the time that it takes to download a file on BitTorrent has increased exponentially which means the experience of downloading copyrighted films and TV shows is not what it used to be," said Glickman. "We intend to make it even worse. Protecting the television industry is essential."
Below is a list of the six BitTorrent sites being sued by the MPAA. Together, these sites facilitate the illegal swapping of copyrighted material to over 100,000 people daily.
ShunTV [www.shuntv.net] ShunTV specializes in distributing recent television shows. It has around 10,000 registered users. A regular team of users (dubbed "TeamTV") appears to upload content on a daily basis as shows are broadcast. The site even includes a "Calendar" of television programs showing the date of broadcast and whether a copy is available on the server.
Zonatracker [www.zonatracker.com] Zonatracker is mostly in Spanish and has over 2500 users. It offers hundreds of popular movies, including many movies still in theaters. The Zonatracker tracker is also used by another Spanish-language torrent site, Zonadivx.com.
Btefnet [www.btefnet.net] This torrent site and the eight associated servers specialize in distributing television shows. The torrent site shows that there are over 48,000 registered users seeding files on the servers.
Scifi-Classics [scifi-classics.net] This site is designed to distribute science fiction content. Torrents are posted in the forum section and tracked by the associated server. There are over 1600 registered users in the forum section. CDDVDHeaven [cddvdheaven.co.uk] This site has over 8000 registered users, and averaged over 1500 visits a day in March 2005 according to statistics posted on the site. It currently lists over 100 torrents for a variety of movies and televisions shows. The site profits by giving privileges to users who make monetary contributions to the site, allowing them faster downloading speeds without requiring them to upload torrents.
Bragginrights [www.bragginrights.biz]Bragginrights has over 12,000 registered users and a wide variety of torrents, including those for films currently in theaters. It solicits donations to make money.
PRQ? You mean the tracker that's down 50% of the time? I can see why these other sites aren't using the same host... ;)
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
I really really really hope that the guys start ripping using the H.264 codec next season
Yeah, that would be keen. Then only the people who can afford a dual Mac G5 or an umpteen gigahertz Pentium 4+HT will be able to watch downloaded TV. That's a much more effective way to kill TV episode downloading than lawsuits...
Is a BBC production. MPAA is an american organization. Presumably the MPAA won't be policing this show? :)
The MPAA is a nice front so you don't know who to be upset with. Here are the MPAA members:
Buena Vista Pictures Distribution (The Walt Disney Company)
Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc.
Paramount Pictures Corporation
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
Universal City Studios LLLP
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
Publically broadcasted signals, which according to the FCC, being not encrypted or protected, (much like someone living near you with a wide-open wireless connection, which is legal to use, since they're broadcasting for the public to see and use by definition if they don't secure the access point) is illegal to share?
BS! If you receive a signal over the airwaves, and your device can receive it, it's fair game. At least, that's what my roommate did to fight the charge against him for "war-driving" (which can't be true, the unsecured wireless access points were unsecured, non-password protected, and unencrypted) and the exact same argument was used. If you don't encrypt or protect a signal, then anyone's free to use the signal as they see fit, whether recording it, or rebroadcasting it, especially from Publically Funded Stations Like This One. If you don't protect what you broadcast, technically you can't complain when someone exploits it. My roommate's case may be an isolated one, but it still happened.
Also, what right does a company like the MPAA, which doesn't even PRODUCE movies, have to sue people like this? First off, that's the job of the Movie company that produced the movie, and secondly, Motion Picture... That's a movie, not a television film. So, now, if you copied and rebroadcast, say, Star Trek: Enterprise, it would be Paramount's job to sue, not the MPAA on behalf of the company. In almost any REALISTIC court of law (I guess Memphis is still one of the few left in the USA) you cannot file a lawsuit on behalf of anyone, except in the case of a wrongful death.
Someoe correct me if I'm wrong on any of those points, I welcome the extra info.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
download the torrents via irc (EFNet/#bt) or even newsgroups, as both mediums are largely untouched by the **aa
I pay for a cd and the music on it, and I can download it in mp3 from wherever I want for my personal use. That's perfectly legal.
But I pay for cable, I watch the shows, and its illegal for me to download them? Huh?
I understand the TV is a business driven by ad revenue, and because of that, the only crime here would seem to be removing the commercials.
Why don't the tv networks get together on a "secure" drm movie format, a secure free properietary player, and lets us download our tv shows with the commercials in them? With the format and the media player they could take extremely aggressive actions to stop you from fast forwarding through commericals... and then just let us DOWNLOAD THEM FOR FREE.
The main reason I download shows is for convience. I no longer have to a slave to my TV. If they'd just give us "handcuffed" shows to download with a media player, I think we'd all love that.
And if we didn't love that, perhaps we could pay a fee to watch a commerical free version of our favorite shows.
In addition, television stations could stand to make even more money because more people could have access to their shows. People would no longer have to choose between watching 24 on FOX and Everybody Loves Raymond on CBS. You could watch both shows and both the television audience and the tv networks would benefit.
Couldn't we all be happy with this?
Better to be legally bulletproof than traffic bulletproof
Ahhhmmmmm.... sorry about that.
Now what were you saying about Cartoons in the 1980's being vehicles for toy advertising?
I mean, its not like they are losing money. A person can't go out and buy the tv show. Perhaps it should be legal to do, with the requirement that you don't cut out commercials. If the commercials are left in, then they really aren't losing.
Trying to stop MOVIES on p2p networks I can understand. If i could go out to the corner store, or some online store, and buy last night's episode of "King of the Hill", I would. But its not an option and they aren't losing money.
http://illhostit.com/ - Webhosting
-- $SIGNATURE
Nope, unfortunately, I live about 8 hours away from the border.
1. Get it from the newsgroup [alt.binaries.drwho]. This may require a subscription to giganews or supernews if your ISP doesn't carry it. Your choice of Divx, Xvid, HQ Xvid, or straight 1.3gig(or so) mpeg-2.
2. Ask your local cable company to carry CBC. If you watch the olympics it's reccomended.
3. Get a region free player that will play pal and buy the discs from the UK.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Apparently it is OK to record TV as long as your aren't sharing it.?
I mean come on. We know the issue isn't recording it, its the redistributing it with *commercials stripped*.
We've been back and forth about this kind of issue how many times? We ALL know that networks produce their programming content (some even good) with revenue generated how? Right! Commercials!
So here we have a problem, with 1000's of sites serving as content repositries for commercial-free TV programs, which I can TOTALLY understand. I'll do everything I can to NEVER site through a commercial again. But its not in the networks, the producers or their stars interest in US bypassing THEIR revenue models and doing it in PLAIN SIGHT.
Now I do fault them for not being pioneers in the content distribution department. Why can't a pay a few dollars for a commercial free download? Or at least subscribe to a network service for DRM wrapped commercial containing versions?
We know where this is all heading, Tom Hanks gave us a ugly example of in Castaway (does anyone NOT remember the glaring American Express placement?) but thats down the pipe and they'd probably ALL prefer milk the existing system for as long as they can (and they are certainly feeling the pressure).
Quack, quack.
Its very simple:
1. TV networks pay for television shows.
2. The network gets its money back from advertising.
3. If people circumvent the advertising then the networks won't be able to sell it for as much.
4. The networks will pay less for shows.
5. The shows will have a smaller budget.
6. Smaller shows will cease to exist, and today's large shows will grow smaller and smaller until they too cease to exist.
7. We will be left with a 24 hour news network and lame independant shows that are made in someone's garage and distributed over the internet, and by independant I mean at least until they're costs become prohibitavely expensive and first they advertise on their website, then they advertise on the show, then they do product placements, then they become a sponsored show, then they become like the paid advertisments of old.
8. Boooom, the earth cracks in two and we all fall into the mantle and burn like Anakin OMG SPOILER...
Before you bitch about the great evil overlord MPAA, understand that you are indirectly funding a show by buying the products or services that are advertised during that program or by paying for your subscription (but that isn't enough to fund these big budget shows so they advertise on subscription television as well). No Money = No Show. Its business baby.
The rant has ended, go in peace.
"The stupider people think you are, the more surprised they will be when you kill them..."
Businesses exist for several reasons.
True, Businesses exist for several reasons.
But they survive for only 1 of 2 reasons. They are state operated or subsidized (either openly or quietly) or they consistantly rake in profit margins or growth of ohh... 20%.
Private businesses which dont generate huge profits/growth, dont survive. Unless you know of some examples.
No one has a right to their *own* opinion. They have a right to the TRUTH.
I'm downloading from btefnet right now. It took awhile to get a slot on Bt-Serv in the IRC channel, but...
First, the process you're trying to elucidate is called disintermediation.
Second, there will always be a place for "middle men" if they provide sufficient value.
Do I want to deal with every publisher on the planet... or buy from Amazon? Do I want to comb every newspaper for stories and deals... or check Yahoo and eBay? Do I want an acount with every movie studio or NetFlix?
Do I want to try browsing every site on the web for the information I need... or do I do a Google search.
They are all "middle men" and they all provide a useful service.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
I skipped out on the first half of the season of Lost, until my friends pursuaded me to download them and watch it. Since then I have been glued to the TV screen on Wednesday nights, (when i wasn't in class) watching all the twists and turns. Otherwise, I would have been indifferent to the show still. I plan on buying the DVD's in september when they are released. I own several series on DVD because I thoroughly enjoyed them (also have then on CD so I had something to watch between seasons). Now they want to alienate me and others like me by doing this kind of stuff... Dissovle the **AA's
1.5 hours next Wednesday night is the last one for this season.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
elitetorrents, unrealtorrents there are hundreds still out there MPAA will never win.
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I have downloaded some TV shows in less time than it takes to play them. If you have 30 seeders and 30 "leechers" you will typically get over 200kbps. I peak just over 500kbps using Azureus which is a java BT client. For now I've been getting four currently showing programs- alias, lost, desperate housewives and kojak. Haven't seen an episode yet- I'll watch them all in one glorious sitting at the end of the season. I could almost as easily be recording them off my cable. If I buy a DVR for $179, I can definately record them easier than torrenting them. And those copies I easily edit commercials out of with ULEAD and reburn and give to any of my friends. It's a strange world.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
It's the other way around... Prostitution is legal, porn is not... :)
did they sue individuals too?
The MPAA recently started going after movie traders, now the Box Office numbers in the theaters are slipping.
Anyone want to bet that tv ratings start slipping even more now that they're going after tv show traders?
And on top of it all, the DVDs and CDs I bought recently has that stupid FBI anti-piracy logos on them. Makes me not want to spend any more money on new CDs or new DVDs.
How long until they start going after Used CD and DVD sellers?
I just bought the Firefly DVD set AFTER seeing rave reviews (her and other places) ahead of the upcoming movie and AFTER downloading the premiere and the first few episodes.
I just started buying Buffy the Vampire Slayer on DVD AFTER borrowing the seasons from a friend and watching them all.
One activity is perfectly legal and one is apparently the biggest crime of the 21st Century.
The media companies are going to pay. They're too big and corrupt and clueless to survive for long.
-------- In Soviet Russia, "Soviet Russia" sigs hate Slashdot.
Instead of spending $500 on hookers,
Bender: What to do, what to do? One three hundred dollar hookerbot, or three hundred one dollar hookerbots?
>I posted the list first but *I'M* the one who
>get's modded "redundant".
Of course it is redundant, regardless of if you are first or not, it is allready in the article. Just copying something from the article is always redundant since the article is always "first".
Guess what? I want my TV to be just that: a TV. That's why the knob goes "thunk" when you turn it to a different chan. If I want to see something again, then I'll *buy a copy of the movie*.
Go figure.
Same goes for the phone (Bell model 500), radio, software, etc.
And FWIW just IMHO most of the crap that is available nowdays is just that: crap. I get along just fine without any of it. I don't *need* electronic shit to have a life, thinksyouverymuch.
C|N>K
If I hadn't downloaded a torrent of the Firefly series (many many months after its cancellation), I wouldn't be so incredibly psyched to see Serentiy this Fall.
Is that your argument for everything? You really believe that is the type of comeback that can drive home the above point? You really think that making a joke about government corruption isn't ironic when you are going to sit there and praise corporate corruption? Give me a fucking break.
Your ignorance is infinitely greater than you realize.
How much does fox earn in advertisament per episode of simpsons? A dated statistic ( here) said 30 seconds of ads cost around $300K in 2000. I think there are 8 minutes of commercials out of the total 30 minutes. A rought estimate with those values is around $5 million per show. What I want to find out is how much do I make them in ad revenues. I bet it's far less than 1 dollar/person. I bet since Fox is the middleman here, it would be possible to buy an eposode directly from the maker for much less, or perhaps for 1 dollar per episode for unlimited viewing.
Now Season 5 sells on Amazon for around 1.5/episode on DVD. For bittorrent distribution ~$1/episode seems reasonable.
Think about the last couple of laws that have been passed that may affect this.
#1: you can now sell movies that have been 'christianized' and 'sanitized' legally.
#2: You are NOT DECRYPTING anything from an over-air transmission. It was broadcast in the clear. That means that ABC/NBC/CBS/UPN are pretty much without recourse, since their shows are over air broadcast, and they are not encrypted. HBO, etc may have recourse, since those channels are CABLE ONLY.
#3: So, if I capture an OVER-AIR broadcast, remove the commercials, and post it as a 'sanitized' version, am I breaking any laws? Absolutely not. I don't want my kids to see that crap on desperate housewives where you can see her nipples, so I choose to DOWNLOAD a sanitized copy. And that's LEGAL. Now, if it were HBO, I wouldn't have that recourse, since I can't prove I paid for HBO. But over-air are free game. We game them the damn spectrums for FREE, so now we get to benefit from the spectrums for FREE.
Everyone keeps saying 'it's copyright infringement'. I would say that as long as it's over air broadcast, WITH THE NEW LAW ALLOWING SANITATION OF SHOWS, you've effectively given me the LEGAL RIGHT to sanitize the show and resell it to my special clientelle.
Latest news: The formation of SoAA. 50/50 share-holders are MPAA and RIAA. This new subdivision is Soap Opera Association of America.
You know this tactic of the MPAA reminds me of many government agencies when threatened with down-sizing. They just throw crap out there to legitimize their pitiful existence.
This SIG pulled due to lack of funding. (This damn war is costing too much!)
Exactly, it's odd there isn't more interest in Usenet.
ISPs won't monitor what you download because they don't want to be known for spying on customers (plus there's effort required to set up the monitoring).
The Usenet supplier won't monitor your downloads because shopping your customers to the **AA/Police isn't good for business.
And finally since there's no compulsory sharing/uploading with Usenet there's nothing for the **AAs of the world to spy on.
Let's hope it continues to be ignored for a long time to come!
Thank you so much. Really. Now you healed my from my addicition to download the latest show from Simpsons, American Dad, Family Guy, Enterprise, etc. Really thank you. Now I can finally go home and read a book.
On the other hand. A friend is totaly devestated (remark we don't live in the USA so we need to get the shows in some other way if we want to watch them). Where should he get his shows from. Well he proably has to start nag some friends. Like it happend when I was in school and I had cable and a friend not and I had to record all the shows to VHS (and I cut out the ads by hand == stop on commercial).
And last: supernova is gone and there are tons of others who replaced it, tvtorrent is gone too and if bfe net is gone also, then there will be other re-appearing. Its just like weed, you can rip it out from the ground but it will re-appear somewhere else.
"Freiheit ist immer auch die Freiheit des Andersdenkenden" - Rosa Luxemburg, 1871 - 1919
My one gripe with 'stolen' bittorent TV is that they rip the advertisments out. Don't get me wrong, I'd much rather watch TV without adverts, but I also understand that making TV is not cheap and that somebody has got to pay for it and until Apple gets it together and start selling TV that means adverts.
I understand that its not a perfect solution. At the moment, advertisers pay networks, networks commission production houses and production houses pay the staff. But whilst they still exist distribution networks should be embracing this as, so long as the adverts are intact, they are getting paid for nothing. Geeks rip the TV using legal software and distibute it at their own expense. Advertisers hit a bigger market, and if the networks are savvy they can charge advertisers more. Where is the problem?
Here is my prediction for a happier TV future
The technology is there already. TV networks need to wake up and start doing this now.
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
What would the MPAA say about .torrent files going around with nothing but 30 minutes of back-to-back commercials??
"Dude, I've got the latest laundry commercials. What about you?"
"Man, I spent all weekend hunting down the McDonalds 'I'm Lovin' It' campaign-International Set, SEASON 1."
"Dude, is it good?"
"Man, I'm lovin' it!!!"
*MPAA springs wood*
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
I'm so glad this happened.
See, I've been without cable for probably going on 3-4 years now. And we get crappy reception, so broadcast TV doesn't work well either.
I was pretty happy with my lack of TV until someone told me where I could get full episodes of The Daily Show via bittorrent. So I downloaded Azureus since it has a couple of nifty RSS plugins and started gathering them.
Then I noticed other shows on the list. Wait a minute, is that really the new Battlestar Galactica? I watched the mini-series at a friend's house, this is great! I downloaded them all, and I told my friends who watched it when it finally aired on Sci-Fi in the U.S. I also started to get Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis, since those were a couple of weeks ahead of the U.S. (and I was basically getting mega-doses at a TiVo-owning friend's house).
I was renting Smallville through Netflix, but when I hit the end of season 3, I started getting those through bittorrent as well. Then the new Doctor Who showed up, and I was thrilled; the show is good, and I was telling my friends in the hopes that it would eventually hit the U.S. in DVD form.
I was basically starting to reconsider getting cable again -- the downloads are nice, but I have a small hard drive, and I work a swing shift, so they're not always done when I get home -- and perhaps even springing for a TiVo since I can't be home to watch stuff when it normally airs. Then I got home to read this article.
So I have to say, thanks MPAA! With this incredibly fucktarded move on your part, you have lost a potential paying customer, probably for good.
You almost made me forget what short-sighted, greedy fools you were. I'll not make that mistake again.
Jay (=
All of the television shows that I watch are broadcasted in the clear over the air. With the right equipment anyone can listen. I chose to use a device called "an antenna" and attached it to my television set. Look, I'm watching your content without paying. During a commercial I mute the audio and turn away - let's be honest, I wouldn't buy the crap advertised anyways.
With the invention of recording devices I can do anything I want with the recording - hey, they obviously don't care enough to prohibit who watches it, fer chrissakes they send it, unencrypted, no DRM over the air for anyone to watch as it is. Why bitch and moan when someone does the same thing?
Gee, I hate to think what you'd do if they just decided to stop making those shows...
I am devastated that btefnet is no more. For the last few months it's been saving me from watching German TV, which tends to have the same shows, but dubbed for the locals (occasionally shows have an English option). I think there is a large expat community which greatly appreciated the service provided by these sites.
In Germany, you can get UK satellite TV - but that itself is illegal, I believe, and they require that you have a UK address.
I agree with one suggestion in another comment that they should provide the shows for download themselves, complete with advertising.
Kudos, shuntv! My early morning site - after living in the US for four years, this was my one way to get the shows that I love that are not broadcast in my country, most importantly TDS...
Here is what happened: The MPAA member companies and the MPAA have been banging the drum loudly about movie piracy. What then happened was that about half a year ago, newspapers started reporting about TV piracy - the fact that you could watch episodes of 24 and E.R. for example in the UK before they reached overseas syndication.
Now the licensees of these shows in the UK, such as Channel 4, especially did something very clever. They didn't complain against users of the services, instead they went to MPAA member companies and argued that the licensees fees that they pay for syndication rights should be reduced, as the MPAA itself had argued that bittorrent sites eat into the market.
So the MPAA campaigns had actually backfired - by talking up the threat and loss, they found themselves being argued to lower income through syndication. So now, they are doing this, so that overseas broadcasters resume full fees.
So it's not us, the simple user downloading an episode of the Daily Show. They argue about 10,000 users, but the market that we could offer, e.g. 5000 Dollars (let's say 5000 users pay $1 daily to get the Daily Show overseas) are not even enough to cover the legal base for such a contract.
This was all about million US$ per episode license fee for 24 and Lost for UK and scandinavian broadcasters. Those series syndication negotiations screwed us getting our Daily Show and Real Time fix. The MPAA member companies now go back to the broadcasters and say 'see? we fixed it - please give us the full amount again'....
In the end this is all a bit shortsighted. Most people realize that the age of commercial broadcasting is close to being over. The people that the advertisers target (19-34 with cash) are sick of wasting their time with watching TV ads. But until universal VOD is a reality, it will take 5-7 years.
I have really enjoyed this website and huge kudos to syoung, TeamTV and all the others...
What I miss most is that the site introduced me to programming that I would not be exposed to otherwise.
And it's free. As long as you're not profiting off their work, why should they get to do shit about this?
Most often, people will get the shows off IRC, create a torrent, upload it to the masses. So ever wondered if MPAA has looked at IRC?
- Teja
MPAA you silly people, you don't need to sue us, we're paying "piracy" tax on CDR media. It's perfectly acceptable for us to pirate your films now.
As long as your TV licence is paid up, you and any members of your household are licenced to receive programmes broadcast by cable, satellite or terrestrial analogue or digital signals, or any means yet to be invented. The courts have ruled that it is fair dealing under copyright law to record a broadcast programme for viewing later.
So as long as you have a valid TV licence and the people downloading from you have valid TV licences, you should be fine with offering TV programmes for upload. After all, you paid for the privilege of receiving those broadcasts; and the receipt is on your mantelpiece {or wherever you keep your important documents}.
You might need a rebroadcast licence; but since you aren't using an RF transmitter, this should not be expensive. If the bandwidth of your outgoing connection is small enough, you could well be exempt from this requirement anyway {after all, councils and housing associations don't need a rebroadcast licence to plumb a communal antenna to several flats; the tenants' TV licences are enough}.
Now, if someone is downloading TV programmes from you without a valid TV licence, then they almost certainly are committing an offence. A simple warning on your download site ought to be enough to keep you out of trouble.
Side questions: (1) If a friend comes into your house and watches your TV, do they need to have a valid TV licence? (2) If you have a display-less TV receiver {e.g. a video recorder or NICAM receiver} in one building, connected to a receiver-less display {e.g. an old Amiga monitor with a composite video input} in another building, which building actually needs the TV licence?
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
I used to go to btefnet.net to download the Daily Show but they were taken down when I checked last night. Fourtunately it appears The Pirate Bay appears to be hosting some of the shows. Last night's Daily Show was available this morning. It is not organized by show like btefnet was but the old saying still is true: The internet treats censorship like damage and just routes around it.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
That way it can be claimed that you aren't re-broadcasting it. You're merely sending a copy to one or two other people.
Stargate Atlantis was one of the T.V. shows. Back in December 2004, Adelphia terminated my cable service account (for forever -- blacklisted) for DMCA because I was sharing two Stargate Atlantis episodes over Bittorrent according to BayTSP and MGM's hardcopy letter.
e ...
I wasn't alone. See http://www.google.com/search?q=baytsp+mgm+stargat
I mean
first it was music, we had to rip and share, because there were no legal sellers on this perfect distribution medium. STILL noone except Apple has made a real efford going there, but its coming, perhaps too little too late.
then it was movies, we had to rip and share, because Broadband made it easy, and STILL noone in the movie business has taken up the Big Fat Gaping hole in their distribution market. Thats easy, if as the content provider you ALSO control distribution. But we the customers still get fsckecked.
now its TV shows, we have to rip and share, because, again, the internet is largely not used as a distribution or supporting medium for TV shows.
When Will They Learn? Thick (or extremely greedy) bastards.
"Every television series depends on other markets (such as) syndication and international sales to earn back the enormous investment required to produce the comedies and dramas we all enjoy," MPAA Chief Executive Officer Dan Glickman said in a statement. "Those markets are substantially hurt when that content is stolen."
Oh, so your DVD recorder secretly assist in international sales when you record a TV show (and possibly give it to friends), and that's why they haven't tried banning DVD recorders yet?
Seriously, that quote is so messed up it isn't even funny. Yeah, right, before DVD came and entire seasons weren't regularly sold in stores, the concept of TV series didn't work. And VHS/DVD recorders are tools of the devil because they let people not assist in "international sales" that "every television series depends on".
It's like they're seriously just trying to piss off people.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Both posts are redundant, since the list was IN THE ARTICLE. But then I'm off topic and a flamebait, so what do I know.
They are going to lose on possible revenue here. I've got at least 22 seasons of several tv shows that i never would have picked up had i not downloaded the first couple episodes of each show off P2P networks..that comes out to at least 500.00CAD a year. I sure hope they smarten up and at least share the first couple episodes of a show so I can continue to test out new shows otherwise they will simply lose out on my business anyways.
I'm no longer a part of this society.
Dude. You're on slashdot. You most likely haven't been part of society for many years now.
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
I know this is starting to sound cliche but their business model is outdated. It is not stealing anymore than if I recorded the show and gave it to a friend to view. It is just a matter of scale. I completly reject their claims and will continue downloading TV shows (and whatever else I deam ok) as long as it is available to me.
Some things I will not download out of respect for the company, product, work involved etc, but I have no problem downloading a TV show that is already available for free to anyone who has a TV.
IOW, I'll stop when they pry the mouse out of my cold dead hands.
"war on Internet file-swapping sites"
War on Drugs, War on Terror, War on Internet File-Swapping Sites...
You know, if I was wasting as much time and money as these guys are, my wife would shoot me square in the balls, and I would deserve it.
BDR Gear
Outdoor gear, MREs, and more!
Hmm, german hosting to avoid US laws?...
That still might not be enough.
If I were in their shoes, this is what I would do:
1) Generate multiple fake IDs
2) Buy prepaid debit cards online with fake IDs (repeat as necessary.)
3) Buy webhosting in China with disposable debit cards, using fake ID
4) Run a BT-Site/Tracker in China
5) Profit? (from Ads, etc.)
I mean, if people fighting spam can't stop chinese servers from spamming, it's going to be equally impossible to prevent them from hosting torrents...
And even if the MPAA manages to convince a chinese company to shut down the site, you're still protected by hopefully several layers of obscurity.
The latency isn't going to be great, but, if that's what it takes to share my m0vies/tv/pr0n...
While indeed DVDs often have additional features (like deleted scenes and director commentary like you said), they most often had to replace the original soundtrack by something cheaper.
0 .html 0 890,00.html
It's crazy. The license they need to pay for the soundtrack when broadcasting is apparently much cheaper than the one when selling DVDs.
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,66696,0
http://wired-vig.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,6
And that kind of sucks too.
Tristan.
Since Azureus supports distributed trackerless torrents and magnet link URI's, as long as the magnet link is avaiable somewhere (usenet, google web cache, ect...) torrent swarms will continue to exist....even if these sites are down..
All we need now is for the web sites that are left to post the magnet links....then all you need to do is search for them on google..
That's a great point. But the torrent found on the site, is that not also a very small percentage of the program itself, or are tracker programs JUST instructions for the material?
[%] Cingular Ringtones
I posted on this at http//improvised.blogspot.com Don quixote and bittorrent: MPAA continues to resist new technologies The fact that we even call it an entertainment "industry" is a problem in and of itself. Sounds more like turning out mass quantity, maximizing profits than the quality thought process that most of us would hope we would be putting in our brains. Today the MPAA sued 6 bittorrent tracker sites, sites that post small files that basically tell a computer where to go, to many various servers, to pick up the small pieces that eventually make up a commplete file. For many people who can't schedule their life around the TV, the realization that the technology exists to actually have content available WHEN WE WANT IT is a step in the right direction. So you would have thought major media/entertainment companies would have been jumping on the bandwagon, trying to define this new distribution potential, thereby protecting there content? Instead, groups like the MPAA are engaging in ridiculous battles like the recent site shutdowns due to lawsuit. Shutting down 6 sites on the internet is, as the rightfully digusted doomd.com points out, is like using gasoline to put out a fire. The internet is designed to brand fools, like Dan Glickman of the MPAA, who think they can stop an entire technology, as the don quixotes of the world. I have seen a few good posts out there in the wake of this new futile attempt to deal with new technology. Ka D'Argo, posting at slashdot, talks about the ridiculous divide between the technology available and the entertainment industry's attempt to leverage it's crumbling monopoly. Single seasons of series of television shows going for $80, entire series for hundreds of dollars? Syndicated television shows? The availability of these is also pitiful. Where is the adoption of a new business model? Don't think that these actions couldn't have consequences, however. It looks like they just might not be the one's the large media companies want. As is happening with the decentralization of power in the news media market, the effort by a group like the MPAA to limit access to television that most of us already have coming into our homes, could only PUSH PEOPLE TOWARDS NEW MEDIA. For example, the Open Media Network. This is a fascinating concept, and I agree, the future of public television. Video blogs, independently created content will just grab more attention from the networks, major entertainment companies, as viewers/consumers will find, as I have begun to find, that while independently created content can sometimes not be as polished, the content itself can vastly outstrip much of the mass entertainment we see today. For example, to spin off into news media for a second, Netvideo, is a freely distributed internet program hosted by Jason Romney, an Australian. Romney hosts video interviews through the internet with tremendously interesting and insightful people from all around the world, the "movers and shakers" of the internet, discussing the issues that face the future of ideas and creative works, things that are changing the way we live and interact. In contrast, When I turn on CNN, they spend 24hrs./day for a week nibbling at the Vatican's heels for a new pope or chasing some woman who got cold feet prior to her wedding day. WAKE UP PEOPLE! It's not just news and information, either, this independent content is entertainment too. I know I'd rather watch some video of a local person in Iraq describing their life than the latest episode of a contrived "reality" tv show. The networks could easily distribe in a method through the internet that would only bolster their profits. One of the key issues holding this back, however, is international and local affiliates are freaked at losing something, but at some point we have to understand that the broadcast model is outdated. For instance, if NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX, offered their shows over the internet, they could deliver them however they wanted to, including commercials and maybe slightly reduced quality. Hey, go for broke, have us enter
...can I turn off my computer from school...?
Posts not to be taken literally. Almost everything is sarcasm.
It's somehow illegal for me to take the shows that you make available on TV for Free and send them to anyone else for Free?
Huh? How is it hurting you that I'm spreading the popularity of your show at my expense for bandwidth, etc. I mean, if you broadcast a show to 2 million viewers, and then I p2p it to another million, isn't more viewers WHAT YOU WANTED?
Or are you still believing that we're actually sitting and WATCHING the adverts that you slip into the show about every 10 minutes now, rather than using that time to take a leak, talk on the phone, eat, whatever else we need to do?
At *some* point, someone's going to figure out that most advertising is complete bunkum, and we're going to have the biggest economic crash in history, as well-dressed but penniless marketing people beg for spare change to wash your windshield or do a market study.
-Styopa
Aren't they just middlemen between you and the undertaker?
They lost the Broadcast flag bill and like clockwork the black lash arrives. Poor babies. Now if only congress would come up with a bill to prevent arbitrary suing of web sites and IP addresses. How exactly do you cross examine an IP address anyway? I guess it would be no more bizarre that Michael Jackson taking the stand.
Television shows are not 'free' - they are to you and me in terms of real cost, but the producers of those shows sells advertising time which pays, in part, for the show. The better the show, the more viewers it attracts, and although the aggregate water pressure drops at every commercial break, the number of potential eyeballs that might stick around to view the ad is what drives the show into repeat seasons, ups available cash for better production values, etc.
In recent years, however, there's been a significant spike in the after-market for such shows. Used to be, they were doomed to be repeated on local UHF television stations or late-night affiliates. Now, there's video where you can buy the show on DVD for your very own! Now, if those shows are made available via the internet (agreeably at a lesser quality), then the incentive to purchase those after market products is reduced.
Well, yes, but what they want is more counted viewers. It would be cool if they could claim that they had a 6% share on the 'live' broadcast, and a 30% of internet interest? If the extra eyeballs could be quantified, they could turn those into advertising dollars which would leave them not only with nothing to complain about, but given them reason to seed the content themselves!
It sucks, but the producers do have a right to protect their markets. The challenge, for everyone involved, is to find a happy middle-ground. The p2p interest is an un-tapped market which the MPAA would rather ignore. Would you pay $1 for a show downloaded off the internet? Is there some way to guarantee that the advertising remain inserted? How can you give the producers their candy, and the downloaders their fix, and have a win-win?
Therein lies the challenge.
"Stop whining!" - Arnold, as Mr. Kimble
here..
SEO Test: TIGI und SEBASTIAN - Online Shop - V
I actually have been successful at reencoding 260 MB 22 minute cartoon episodes down to 56.8 MB. The quality is *beautiful*, and not noticably worse than the 260 MB DivX one, unless you're sitting right up close (I am not--I watch it on TV afterwards).
Though I should mention about 10-15 MB of savings is moving the audio from MP3 to AAC.
Being able to get better quality with 56.8 MB than 120 MB DivX shows out there is pretty sweet in my books.
Akarsz Magyar Gentoo fórumot? Akkor
Most shows on BT are in xvid, not divx. The rip community, TV or DVD, has been mostly xvid for a while now. Why does everybody still talk about divx?
Like many others, I have been enjoying European TV (Dr Who Especially). There are also some TV shows that are no longer showing, that I have gotten (Spaced is one of them, I highly recommend it www.spaced-out.org.uk). What are the chances of being sued or investigated by European Movie and TV people?
Dr. Who - Only aired in the U.K.
Stargate: Atlantis and SG-1 - I'd be willing to pay a modest fee to view these, but $80 a month for content with commercials? NO WAY! Yes, the cable package that includes Sci-Fi is $80/month here and nearly every channel still has commercials.
Enterprise - I'll watch this the way UPN wants me to when they upgrade their POS transmitters in the NYC area to be on par with the other networks in the area. Their digital signal (piggybacked off of FOX's transmitter in NYC) is utter shite that is even uglier than their analog signal here, which is pretty amazing considering how horrible their analog signal looks due to low signal strength.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
...can't be shared?
I've been trying to get a copy of "Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman" for a while. The quality is not good, the badwidth (and hard drive space) are very high.
And I'm looking very forward to the DVD collectors edition of the first season and will probably pre-order that as soon as I can save up $40.
Not because I *couldn't* get it off the Internet, but because I am getting a good, collectors value.
No! It's a *SIG*. Keep the Special Interest Groups away! (Con joke!)
Shut. The. Fuck. Up!
Those litigious asswipes read their press. Don't give them names!
-Those who dance are considered insane by those who can't hear the music.
I'm most likely older than your fucking ass, you coward.
Not that I have to explain shit to the likes of you, but typically I tend to try to be a bit more mature and articulate in my postings, but this one was a bit of a raw emotional dump which normally I would have aborted before hitting save.
I don't need you to explain to me it's defects, cuntrag.
BytesTemplar.com
It's good to be both. If all of the site is on one domain, all eggs are in one basket. The site is either all up, or all down.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
http://www.btefnet.net/ is down.
We're living under a 21st century nazi regime. I'm affraid the only way to save our liberties, is to move them abroad. Move the torrent files to a country where the MPAA cant shut it down!!
Now this is an explanation I can accept. :-) Sorry, I was in a pissy mood last night...I usually wouldn't care one way or the other.
Who owns/sets up the prq.to tracker that bt files are tracked by?
Not entirely sure, but they're hosted by the same ISP as thepiratebay.org
Second you argument is to broad. Copyright wouldn't stop others from making the same kind of thing, only from making the exact same thing.
Assuming Copyright covered McDonlads burgers it doesn't stop Burger King or you from buying and making your own, but you can't make and give away McDonalds burgers if you know the recipe. The analogy breaks down because it doesn't work with real-world goods.
The constitution allows for a temporary monopoly on creative works. Fair use is allowed, and it's defined in United States Code, section 107.
So look over those factors and think about what people copying TV shows implies. The rules only say that evaluating Copyright infringment should INCLUDE these factors. Don't think judges will be limited to them. I could easily see adding
Finally the justification for copying in your argument is just silly...Keywords there is "I don't like". I don't like having to pay for Photoshop. I don't like having to buy CD's for $15 each. Your options are buy or not buy. Letting your friend have a copy of your DVD = bad, letting your friend borrow your copy of your DVD = good. See the difference?
What you can do is NOT distribute your copies. In the U.S. you have a copyright to make your own personal copies or limited distribution for the purpose of learning. You don't have world wide redistribution rights for exact replicas of the entire works.
The key thing you need to understand here is the difference between making a backup and SHARING or DISTRIBUTING that backup. A pirated copy of my software may or may not equal a lost sale because who can say if the person would have bought my software? What people WOULD have done is irrelevant.
Think of a bank teller who gives away a thousand dollars to everyone who comes to their window as soon as they walked up because "they would have robbed me to get it anyway". It's a bad analogy because once again we're using real world items to compare to copyright of the intangible, but the point is that the person who GAVE them the money/software/movie/song is breaking the law.
People can give away their software and destroy their copies, right of first sale. If they don't get rid of their copies then they are becoming distributers and copyright infringers and should be liable for that.
I also hope Usenet continues to be ignored, but are you sure about this?? -- "The Usenet supplier won't monitor your downloads because shopping your customers to the **AA/Police isn't good for business."
How many 'big' Usenet providers are there?? How much competition is there? As the number of suppliers decreases, the likelihood of caving to the lawyers goes up, I bet.
Hooray for consolidation....
"He'd be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once." - Steve Jobs on Bill Gates
Not exactly true, The Daily Show airs on Canal+ pay-tv in the nordic countries, so I guess it is somewhat available in central Europe as well.
The fact that we even call it an entertainment "industry" is a problem in and of itself. Sounds more like turning out mass quantity, maximizing profits than the quality thought process that most of us would hope we would be putting in our brains.
Today the MPAA sued 6 bittorrent tracker sites, sites that post small files that basically tell a computer where to go, to many various servers, to pick up the small pieces that eventually make up a commplete file. For many people who can't schedule their life around the TV, the realization that the technology exists to actually have content available WHEN WE WANT IT is a step in the right direction. So you would have thought major media/entertainment companies would have been jumping on the bandwagon, trying to define this new distribution potential, thereby protecting there content? Instead, groups like the MPAA are engaging in ridiculous battles like the recent site shutdowns due to lawsuit. Shutting down 6 sites on the internet is, as the rightfully digusted doomd.com points out, is like using gasoline to put out a fire.
The internet is designed to brand fools, like Dan Glickman of the MPAA, who think they can stop an entire technology, as the don quixotes of the world. I have seen a few good posts out there in the wake of this new futile attempt to deal with new technology.
Ka D'Argo, posting at slashdot, talks about the ridiculous divide between the technology available and the entertainment industry's attempt to leverage it's crumbling monopoly. Single seasons of series of television shows going for $80, entire series for hundreds of dollars? Syndicated television shows? The availability of these is also pitiful. Where is the adoption of a new business model?
Don't think that these actions couldn't have consequences, however. It looks like they just might not be the one's the large media companies want. As is happening with the decentralization of power in the news media market, the effort by a group like the MPAA to limit access to television that most of us already have coming into our homes, could only PUSH PEOPLE TOWARDS NEW MEDIA. For example, the Open Media Network. This is a fascinating concept, and I agree, the future of public television. Video blogs, independently created content will just grab more attention from the networks, major entertainment companies, as viewers/consumers will find, as I have begun to find, that while independently created content can sometimes not be as polished, the content itself can vastly outstrip much of the mass entertainment we see today.
For example, to spin off into news media for a second, Netvideo, is a freely distributed internet program hosted by Jason Romney, an Australian. Romney hosts video interviews through the internet with tremendously interesting and insightful people from all around the world, the "movers and shakers" of the internet, discussing the issues that face the future of ideas and creative works, things that are changing the way we live and interact. In contrast, When I turn on CNN, they spend 24hrs./day for a week nibbling at the Vatican's heels for a new pope or chasing some woman who got cold feet prior to her wedding day. WAKE UP PEOPLE!
It's not just news and information, either, this independent content is entertainment too. I know I'd rather watch some video of a local person in Iraq describing their life than the latest episode of a contrived "reality" tv show.
The networks could easily distribe in a method through the internet that would only bolster their profits. One of the key issues holding this back, however, is international and local affiliates are freaked at losing something, but at some point we have to understand that the broadcast model is outdated. For instance, if NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX, offered their shows over the internet, they could deliver them however they wanted to, including commercials and maybe slightly reduced quality. Hey, go for broke, have us enter our zip code, and give us LOCAL advertisements. The funny thing is, the m
Hey, I was introduced a couple of years ago to Torrents and have watched alot of shows, because of it. I also was introduced to the New Battlestar, and Dr. Who series, and am a little unnerved about this site going down.
I have found EMULE a good alternative, it takes a little longer, but I have found all the shows I am looking for. you all should check it out go to www.the-realworld.de
You can get lots of shows this way.
The 'War on the Homeless'
Notice that we're talking about these companies filing lawsuits guys. That's because they tried to have this stuff procecuted but the courts sais "nuh-uh". Some of these companies went after Grokster and the like a few years ago. The court ruled that as long as this was peer to peer sharing, not material downloaded from a central server, it was perfectly legal. And that's right. Peer to peer is just like loaning a CD to a friend who loans it to a friend, etc. So the best that these shmucks can do is make a nuisance of themselves. Which is what recently happened to a bunch of my buddies at UCSD. 400 individuals got slapped with personal lawsuits from record companies. It won't stand up in court, but it's the best they can do to curtail the sharing. Screw that. I paid enough money for all this hardware. Who cares it the record companies can't squeeze another 99 cents out of me for the latest Nelly download.
There are people out there that freak out when you tell them they can just go online and grab stuff you want to see or hear for free. They panic because they just heard on the news about how the record or movie company just went after a bunch of people. So for the 'tards, it's effective.
Ok, so I got this news story in my email today. They have to be kidding me - the damn sites they shut down aren't even the ones that the majority of users go to. Have you guys even heard of these sites? Probably not. I have been getting immediately aired tv programs (or even a week in advance) for over a year now, and it hasn't been by going to these sites that combined have less than 100k users. If I didn't use bittorrent, I would never get to watch The Simpsons, Shield, New Family Guy, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Everybody Loves Raymond... etc. Why? Cuz I work 3-11's thats why!I miss ALL of prime time. Bittorrent tracker sites keep me interested and watching until the day my ass becomes unemployed and watching the boob tube 24 hours a day. I could probably make a million points about fair usage here that a thousand other people have made before me, but there is no need. The point is, the MPAA isn't going after the sites that have 500k or even 300k users, they aren't sending lawsuits to their servers and they aren't doing anything more than trying to scare the big sites into closing their doors... why? Because I think they realize this is one of the grey areas where they actually have a chance of losing in a drawn out court case; most people see television programming as free anyway... you can pick it up on your tv without paying and using some tinfoil right? Its not any different to most people to watch 'CSI' on their rabbbit ears than it is to watch it on their Windows / Linux box.
My main thinking was this:
;)
Most Usenet suppliers are charging for a service, if they get a reputation for monitoring their customers and sometimes reporting them to the police, their customers will stop using their service. Even if there's only one supplier left people just won't use the service if they don't trust the provider. Who wants a log of their downloads from alt.binaries.erotica.scat turning up in court?
I'm sure most Usenet suppliers do log all downloads but they won't actively check their logs for illegal activity, they will only check if the Police come to them with a request (and if the Police are already investigating you, the data on your hard drive will probably be the most damning evidence). The key thing here is not using services that are monitored by the Police/**AA et al (like BT or Emule).
My other reasoning was Usenet providers offer huge transfer amounts each month, usually starting at 2Gb, some even offer unlimited transfer for a higher fee. While there are a few people who might use Usenet to grab a Linux distro, I can't think of anything else that would need a transfer limit in the Gigabytes unless it's games/movies/TV shows (well probably porn too, but that's mostly legal). If the majority of your customers are downloading this sort of thing, doing anything to risk losing that customer will not be in the best interests of the company.
How can you steal something that you are able to pick up free? Doesn't the fact that TV is released as non-encrypted signals over public airwaves mean that it's effectively in the public domain?
There are plenty of books in libraries..
What I'm suggesting more is a financial boycott, that is, if you can try not to dole out any money for movies, TV, DVD's, etc.. Just so that the MPAA will realize who their real clients are.
Just say no to license servers!!
This link is being reported to be a backup of all of btefnet's torrents as of the day it went down. It appears to have several tens of thousands of torrents and is 24 MB.
B 7F 9B97482AF94535EA8930A|/
ed2k://|file|torrents.tar.bz2|24171559|75405CBD
Bittorrent is shut down, ED2K Forever.
Promote freedom; fight fascism.
A-fucking-men to that.
They will never stop until somebody makes the
If I were to record my favorite TV shows from my sat box onto VHS, would that be wrong?
No.
If I don't have a capture card, and I want my shows on my computer, is it wrong to download them from sources like BTefnet.net?
I say no.
If they charged a few bucks per episode legally online, I would buy them every week. But noooo... these companies are too greedy to let Family Guy go for $1.99. They want me to wait 'til 2007 and buy a DVD with the season for $60!
The problem is that the Daily Show on the Comedy Central site is streaming video. With my Paraguayan DSL internet (which only gives me 64k) I cannot watch streaming video. So downloading the torrent for some of us is the only option.
You should look into using mplayer. It has an option to dump the stream to a file, for offline viewing.
http://www.piracyisnotacrime.com/tvtorrent.php