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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 thought the MPAA only dealt with movies? Are they just going after TV sharers for the hell of it?
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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
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.)
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.
Wow, that argument follows as much as the conversation between Bart and his one time employer, Fat Tony.
"Is it wrong to steal bread if your family is starving?"
"No, I don't guess so."
"And if you have a large family, is it wrong to steal a truckload of bread?"
"No"
"And say your family don't like bread. Say they like cigarettes. Is it wrong to steal a truckload of cigarettes?"
"Hell no!"
Fair use is the worst thing that ever happened with copyright law. If people didn't have a way to weasle out from under the jackboots of copyright we'd have had the revolution a long time ago.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Explain to me the problem with allowing other people to distribute your program for you? if you ask me, torrenting shows should be encouraged.
What should be illegal is removing the commercials, then they need to find a way to track the # of people that download a show (ie: if THEY hosted the torrent).
The internet is clearly a viable way of distributing media to the masses. if they welcomed it and embraced it, they would see a lot more happy viewers, and a lot more money.
But I guess that interferes with all those contracts giving certain networks exclusive rights to broadcasting, doesn't it?
no comment
simple answer, the law itself
They are in sweden, MPAA/RIAA cannot touch them, since they don't violate any swedish laws.
And they have their own lawyers to consult any possible borderline areas.
But this isn't going to last very long.
Sweden is changing their copyright law, though it's only proposed law now, and if it passes as it is, it might kick in as early as june or july.
The law focuses on taking down people making profit with illegal filesharing.
You can guess twice if they're paying for all this from their own pockets.
This page is pretty much the thing that makes piratebay illegal under the new law. If they could pay the stuff from their own pocket without accepting any donations, the law couldn't touch them.
They're in trouble if they keep the tracker running and continue with the current way.
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
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.
I really really really hope that the guys start ripping using the H.264 codec next season, then the HD content would look even sweeter.
Ok, Apple's somehow really brainwashed people with this H.264 thing.
It's a good codec, but it's just the latest version of MPEG-4. And Apple's not the only company to use it either (Nero Digital AVC is H.264, for example).
Apple gets good results because they use fairly high bit rates and spend time on the encoding. But honestly, WMV-HD, which is based on an older MPEG-4 codec, looks just as good to my eyes. It just doesn't compress quite as well (and we're talking a couple of hundred kbps difference; they're not worlds apart).
Anyway, DivX, which is what most of these HDTV shows on BT sites are compressed with, is actually using pretty much the same codec as WMV-HD. It can look just as good as Apple's H.264 stuff. Obviously, though, you're talking a 350MB file for a 44 minute show (60 minutes sans commercials) vs. a 350MB file for a 1 minute trailer, in Apple's case. The bit rate is heavily compressed on the files you can get on BT sites, and the resolution is also lowered in the interests of file size for downloading.
Now, as for what's going on with these lawsuits, it really strikes me as stupid. The TV networks give this stuff away over the airwaves! I understand that they own the exclusive distribution rights, but you know what the obvious solution then is? Offer the damn shows up for download (not streaming) complete with commercials, from the TV station's official site. Simple! Make them low quality divx files just like we get from BT for all I care. I will happily skip over the commercials, but you know what? I do this anyway with my MCE machine, and there's not a damn thing they can do to stop me. So I don't see how they really lose anything from this proposition, and they'd regain their internet distribution for themselves.
Here's an example of why this pisses me off. Tonight MS had the good sense (sarcasm) to schedule their Xbox 360 show at the same time as the Apprentice, which I normally watch. I only have a single tuner. So what do I do? I watch the MS thing and miss the Apprentice. Why do the networks not want me to now see the Apprentice that I missed, complete with the same commercials I would have skipped over anyway if that's how they want it? Why not just give me the stupid show as a free SD-quality download an hour or two after it originally aired?
(btw, I say that knowing that I personally would not be helping them any with my commercial skipping, but the point is the same number of people who watch commercials normally are still gonna watch them on a downloaded file, especially if they're still watching on a TV. The people who don't watch commercials aren't gonna watch them no matter what, and even if they're forced to they're not gonna pay any attention.)
If they're worried about overseas or affiliate distribution, a) put up a country block similar to the one the BBC used for their online Olympic coverage (this was pretty effective - I managed to get around it using an anonymous proxy but it was hellishly unreliable, and 99% of the world would not know how to do this), and b) put the downloads on a time delay such that no show goes up until the last affiliate has screened it.
Why is this such a complicated idea? Which makes more sense, to try to sue every bittorrent site out of existence or to proactively retake their own online distribution back? Online distribution is not going away, the question is whether or not the networks want to control it themselves or cede it to others. (And by using lawsuits as their only strategy, they are ceding it to others... they will never stamp out file sharing completely and they should know it. They need to provide a compelling alternative themselves.)
...expect Betamax to be overturned within the year.
I watch less TV than ever now, and yet it really bothers me the idea of losing the ability to time-shift my viewing. My response will probably be to simply no longer watch anything.
That has been my response to the RIAA. What used to be a 4-6 CD a month habit is now reduced to zero. Going on 3 years now. And no, I don't p2p anything. I simply stopped acquiring new music. I listen to the radio and see live stuff, thats it.
It really was a bit of an adjustment, but after a short time, I realized I simply can't support such behavior and now I'd much rather keep my money.
The same with TV and mainstream movies for the most part. I don't pretend I'm some sort of elitist. It is just that everything is so overtly commercial, and it becomes even more obvious when you step back and stop participating.
"Kittens give Morbo gas!"
The recording industries tried to make player piano rolls, cassette tapes, library loans, DAT, video tape, second hand music stores and recordable CD's illegal. They all failed, and now recording content is considered fair use. The various industries over the last hundred years insisted that libraries, VCR's, player pianos, and second-hand book and CD stores would ruin them and put their poor starving children on the street to sell apples. Didn't happen. They are ALL richer than God now. They've no argument.
They now insist that file sharing is illegal; such opinions should be adjudged by their previous legal opinions on the above media. They were wrong then, and they will be wrong again someday when the political axis shifts in a decade or so and new judges and lawmakers dump their player piano roll-hating screeds into the dumper of history.
Aside from the hubris of their ideas of controlling everyone's actions, the world can't afford another War on a Common Noun. IF we somehow manage to prevent the corporations from hiring their own police forces and forming their own courts/collection agencies, the civil and criminal courts and normal law enforcement do not have the capacity or the funds to arrest and prosecute the entire planet. Half the adult population of the U.S. and Europe would be in prison or a debtor's farm if these laws were to be enforced to their fullest extent.
Unlike the Bill of Rights, which don't change with the whim of the public, civil law about copyright and distribution will change if enough citizens become "criminals". They will change the laws, even if they have to vote every idiot who covers the old corporate bastards out of office. People don't like being sued and sent to jail when they don't think what they are doing is wrong. And make no mistake, they will turn. Their is no moral issue here; copying is not stealing. Lighting a candle with another candle doesn't diminish either, as Tom Jefferson said. We didn't create copyright to make people rich and loaded with "rights" to distribute media and knowledge. We created CR to permit authors to make a living, for a limited time, on new art, and then to let it be free to inspire new art. If CR no longer serves that purpose, it has to go.
As for me, I lost all sympathy for the copyright holders when the Sonny Bono Act made copyrights eternal. There was a 200 year-old deal: we give you a limited time to make money, and a living, then it gets kicked into the public domain. That deal is broken, and it isn't getting fixed. I do not want to see "intellectual property" eternally locked up in the vaults of immortal corporations. Human advancement requires that works of art and science be distribute freely, at some point, but that no longer can happen. The deal is broken. We did not break it. They did. So, war. And we will win, and the copyright gods will lose.
Bad analogy. You bought a ticket to a specific film at a specific time. If you subscribe to cable, it's like buying a season ticket to the cinema, and in that case, of course you could walk in at any time.
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!
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 (=