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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."
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.
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?
> It is technically legal to download anime that's copyrighted in Japan but not yet licensed in the USA.
No , like TV programs, that's illegal too. Would you warezmonkeys please stop spreading lies to each other? You fools are the entire reason for this "educaton campaign" of suing people.
Porn is making its way into the mainstream by allowing itself to be so available. Yeah, they may make a fuss about copyright on occasion to keep up appearances, but overall, they'd rather grow their market so that they can cash in down the line. Today's 16 year olds downloading porn are future adults buying porn.
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.
Yesterday's 16 year old downloading free porn is today's 26 year old downloading free porn.
It's only a matter of time before the big budget porn DVD companies start suing people too, mark this AC's words.
your cutting into our way-f'n-overpriced dvd boxset profits
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!!!
"They DO want people to watch their shows, right?"
No, they want people to watch the adverts that come with the show, buy the associated lunchboxes, CD singles, T-shirts and beer holding hats.
TV shows are really becoming vehicles for product launches. Just take a look at MTV and the Xbox unveiling.
Hell, maybe it's always been that way and I'm only now old enough to appreciate it. When I think back to some of the cartoons I would watch as a small child, they were obviously just 30 minute advertisments for a toy line, same thing we're seeing these days with Pokemon and whatever card collecting cartoon series is big this week.
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...
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.
The poster gave up his opportunity to receive positive moderation when he descended into juvenile insult. If you genuinely believe that he had a point, then restate it in a nonabrasive manner and see if the mods "want to hear it"
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).
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.
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.
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
Yep, I agree. I've downloaded three TV shows from BitTorrent in the past year. Two of them were series that I record on my DVR regularly but had been timeshifted due to sporting events. The other was a show that I'd accidentally deleted before I could watch it. In all three cases, I deleted the shows after watching them.
What the MPAA doesn't get is that there is a fundamental difference between MP3's and DVD quality AVI's. With the exception of a few hardcore swappers, most of us simply don't have the disk space to store dozens or hundreds of movies. Since even broadband users often have to wait many hours for a show to download, the idea that downloaded movies are going to replace the DVD in the same way that MP3's are replacing CD's is simply unfounded. Couple that with the fact that few people really want to watch TV on their computer and even fewer have any kind of connection between their PC's and home entertainment systems, and any reasonable person would conclude that movie swapping will never become mainstream. They are spending FAR more money on these legal actions than they'll ever lose to swappers.
If the MPAA really wants to improve their revenue streams, they should start offering these themselves. I'd have gladly paid a buck to watch those shows.
There is nothing so pathetic as seeing a beautiful young theory roughed up by a tough gang of facts.
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.
The tv/movie industry is facing the same problem that the music industry has faced/is facing. They see that thier stranglehold on distribution is in trouble. If it got to the point where people could download any syndicated show from the people who make it for a small fee, then companies like Time/Warner/AOL/etc. couldn't sell their air time for profit. Companies that base their business on being middle men are never going to be for a way to do business without them.
>> Subtle difference between giving to your friend and giving to 10,000 of you closest friends.
>>
Actually, no there isn't.
The problem isn't that you are letting a few friends borrow it, it is that now 10,000 new copies exist.
My PC full of shows off the TiVo seems to prove you wrong. Granted it sucks that playback of .TiVo files only works on Windows at the moment, but I have a gaming box so it's not a big deal. Next step is decoding them to normal mpeg2 and throwing them on a RAID array in my basement. That will allow me to share the storage and play back the shows on any of the machines on my network, including a box hooked up to the tv.
I'm actually using Firefox to download shows, since TiVoToGo doesn't support the TiVo and PC being on different subnets. The TiVos have a built-in web server that lets you access the now playing list.
You can also fast forward through commercials at up to triple speed (yes the same as on a VCR), or edit them out once the files are on the PC. Pausing live tv shows is also a bonus.
Also, a VCR won't automatically track when a show is on and record episodes you haven't already recorded. I'm currently collecting a number of series by recording them then archiving them on my PC. Because it's a subscription and it tracks what it's recorded in that subscription, it only tapes an episode once, even if I delete that episode off the TiVo.
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.
You can burn archived shows from the PC to a DVD using Sonic MyDVD. So if your friend had a network and some software he could have given you a DVD to take home and watch.
.technomancer
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...
Just because you can't obtain something through legal means doesn't make it free!
With the exception of a few hardcore swappers, most of us simply don't have the disk space to store dozens or hundreds of movies.
Who needs to store it? Watch it, delete it, good to go.
That said, I have 4 200GB drives that I've bought over the course of a year, which is enough to hold several seasons of a variety of TV shows, along with every decent (in my opinion) movie released in the same amount of time in xvid, and still not be hurting for space. I don't have a desire to re-watch most things, so I would just start deleting things if it came to that, but if I wanted to keep it I'd just burn it to DVD.
Hypothetically, of course.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Please do not encourage people to use I2P right now. Come back in 3 or 4 months (when the network makes the transition to UDP) and I'll be glad to see posts like yours, but at the moment what you're doing is counter-productive. Please give the developers some room to wiggle, I know you're anxious but the network will just crash right now if too many people join.
Australian here. Looks like I've watched my last Daily Show for a while.
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?).
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!"
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.
All these things are covered in high school economics class, it's strange to see people think some industries are cooler for the sake of humanity and completely missing the reason why every single business on earth exists: to generate revenue.
It is too bad that this attitude is all too common with recently college educated people.
You think that you are leaving high school economics behind with that statement? Or are you trying to say that you learned this in HS economics? The problem with your post is that it is 100% completely and utterly WRONG.
Businesses exist for several reasons. Most of the time it is to fill a gap in the market place. They exist to create jobs. They exist to provide a service that people need or want. They exist to provide a product which people need or want. They exist to further the social institution we as humans are always trying to improve on. They exist for several hundred reasons, and only one of them is to generate revenue. The revenue generation isn't that important if you take a step back and look at the big picture. This isn't about economics. It is about humanity. And even if it were you would still be wrong.
It must be a scary place looking through your economic worldview. No wonder you make such silly statements; you don't know any better.
Your ignorance is infinitely greater than you realize.
Ah... see... the problem is the mis-use of the word 'share'. People who copy like using the word 'share' for their activities because it lessens the illegal impact of their activities. "It's just sharing... and sharing can't be wrong, can it?"
And people against copying like to misuse the word 'steal' because it overstates the illegal impact of said activities.
Both sides play the same game here.
RIAA music may be nearly everywhere, but not all labels are aligned with them. You can still buy music from non-RIAA labels with a clean conscience. It's what I do.
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?
Legally, you are correct. Ethically, I disagree. This isn't like bootlegging DVDs. TV Content is broadcast for free. I fail to see the harm in people downloading something that was broadcast for free anyway.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
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.
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.
- George Carlin
And it becomes legal again if you just film it. Something's seriously f'ed up right there.
-Ted
-=-=- Quantum physics - the dreams stuff are made of.
Yeah, just like I'm allowed to walk in to the movie theater at any time because I bought a ticket but didn't show up to watch the movie. Oh wait... I'm not. If you didn't watch it when it ran on TV, its your own damn fault. Buy a VCR, rent it from a video store, get on-demand TV.
I'm not shedding any tears for the MPAA, but stop making ridiculous excuses to justify your infringement. If you think $100/month is too much, don't pay for it. Nobody's holding a gun to your head forcing you to get cable TV.
The MPAA is well within its rights to sue people that distribute unauthorized copies of their content. It's when they try and do things like get P2P outlawed that they cross the line. That's not happening in this case though.
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.
Ah, the olde fansub argument. Actually, it's not legal. There's a treaty, Japan and the U.S. signed it... Berne I think is the name. Anyway, maybe you've noticed the Japanese companies are starting to take offense to fansubs? Because it's becoming increasingly obvious that fansubs are hurting sales a lot, and the U.S. anime companies aren't exactly rolling in dough. The U.S. anime companies would do more about fansubs, but they really don't like to piss off the fans, even though the companies are hurting because of it.
As far as I know, the only company that has taken offense to fansubs in the last few months is Media Works, who sent a cease and desist to pretty much anyone who ever translated or distributed any of their anime or manga. Otherwise, the Japanese companies still don't care.
IMHO Smallville has it right.. their seasons end in late spring/early summer, and that year comes out in time for xmas, for about $50 for the season.. I have 1-3 on dvd, have the fourth on disk, and will buy it happily when it comes out... I cringe when I see a season for much more than that.. when they're over $100 for a season, forget it..
Smallville is about the only series that I've seen try this, if they all did, my parents would have a much easier time in finding something to get me, apparently I'm difficult to shop for at xmas time.
I *buy* the series I download, or record when available... I don't feel guilty at all downloading in the meantime... my GF has paid $$$ for Inuyasha and other series, so f*ck the tv media... I can record on my MCE box and convert and cut the commercials myself if I want to... so stuff it *AA
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
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
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