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."

Comments

what?

[austad]

I thought the MPAA only dealt with movies? Are they just going after TV sharers for the hell of it?

Re:what?

[chrispyman]

Not quite. Their member companies produce most of the TV shows as well.

Re:what?

[Demoknight]

Next thing we'll hear the MPAA going after porn torrents... I mean assuming they're out there.

Re:what?

[Luigi30]

Of course, but only after downloading it and analyzing it frame-by-frame to see if it truely is copyrighted material.

Re:what?

[Awptimus Prime]

I think you miss the point when it comes to porn. The porn industry has profit margins that exceed all other forms of entertainment.

Think about it. You pay a guy and a girl $500 for a 18 minute video, which may take all of 2 hours to shoot and an evening to mix/produce, then you have a lot of revenue for a long time if marketed correctly.

If these margins weren't so wide and the people doing the shooting weren't privately funded ventures, you would see a major difference. To simplify this: There aren't thousands of screaming shareholders, nor are there hundreds of lobbyists working on making ends meet for these businesses. MPAA associated businesses are different.

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.

Re:what?

[DustMagnet]

They covered the porn industry in your high school economics class?
Wow.

Re:what?

[ThisIsFred]

Hey, you need any help, just let me know.

Re:what?

[Saeger]

Next thing we'll hear the MPAA going after porn torrents... I mean assuming they're out there.

That they are. The "suprnova" of the porn torrent sites is Empornium. Pro: leeching is limited by ratio and you cant just create new leech accounts, so the download rates usually saturate your connection. Con: the admins are arrogant assholes.

Re:what?

[strider44]

well shit I was wondering why so many people chose economics! I should have checked up on it a bit more.

Re:what?

[AvantLegion]

Why didn't I think of that?

Instead of spending $500 on hookers, I can set up some cameras and pay a porn star $500 and cast myself as the leading man! Then I even have it on VIDEO afterwards!

Porn profit margins, you ain't kidding. You've solved the puzzle:
1) (some crap)
2) ??? // insert porn here!
3) profit!

Never thought I'd actually find genius on Slashdot...

Re:what?

[NutWrench]

There's PORN on the INTERNET?

Re:what?

[Civil_Disobedient]

Con: the admins are arrogant assholes.

Reason: because they have to deal with the worst of the worst kinds of adolescent assholery. They're strict with their rules, and there are generally no second chances. If you want your porn for free, you follow the rules; the fact that the site is so popular is a testament to how many people agree with the mods' enforcement policies.

Or, so I've heard.

Re:what?

[fritz1968]

I can set up some cameras and pay a porn star $500 and cast myself as the leading man!


Yea... but who would spend money for a 30 second movie?

Re:btefnet

[jlev]

TFA has a list.

"The six sites sued Thursday include ShunTV, Zonatracker, Btefnet, Scifi-Classics, CDDVDHeaven and Bragginrights."

Yeah, that's kinda the point

[smileyy]

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...

Re:Yeah, that's kinda the point

[zapp]

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?

Re:Yeah, that's kinda the point

[4b696e67]

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.

Re:Yeah, that's kinda the point

[InfiniteWisdom]

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.

Re:Yeah, that's kinda the point

[Ulven]

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.

Re:Yeah, that's kinda the point

[LordSnooty]

get on-demand TV.

Durrrr! That's what I've been doing the last 2 years. I believe they call it 'BitTorrent' - not sure it's a service run by the networks though. If it isn't, they should be.

This Blows

[bhive01]

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.

Re:This Blows

[bhive01]

Which is why they should embrace this distribution medium. I'd pay for a "good" TV show without commercials if I could download it for a reasonable amount. I admit I d/l all kinds of shit, but I buy the good stuff. The rest ends up in the big ole' recycle bin in the sky. Instead of suing new distribution methods, why not try it out and see if it works? my 0.02 c

Re:This Blows

[jdreed1024]

When are they gonna learn to adopt a new distribution system rather than beat it with fancy lawyers.

They have one. I, for one, am happy to pay $29.95 to get a whole season's worth of, say The Simpsons, (yes, they start out at $45, but they go down after a while), or Futurama, without commercials, with deleted scenes, and often interesting directors commentary. In fact, you get a better deal than the torrents, because with shows like The Simpsons, Family Guy, and Futurama, when they're shown in syndication, they often cut 3-5 minutes of the episodes, and sometimes cut funny scenes. Most of the torrents still have the commercials in them, and are the syndication versions. Or, they have "ads" for all the warez kiddies who distribute them. I don't want to see that any more than I want to see ads for Pepsi when I pay $10 for a movie ticket.

The MPAA is definitely the lesser of two evils at the moment. They know how to sell a product at a reasonable price and provide added value. Example: Most DVDs cost anywhere from $4.99 (the B-movie rack at Target) to $19.99 for the latest releases, with the average being around $12-$15. I get the movie, the trailer, and often deleted scenes or other extra footage. Compare to, say, CDs, which go from $7.99 (the cheapest I've ever seen) to $24.99, and you only get 60 minutes of music (maybe 80), liner notes if you're lucky, and that's it. And you can't tell me producing the latest big-screen Hollywood blockbuster movie is *cheaper* than a recording studio session, even with digital special effects and all that.

This is not to say the MPAA is the way and the light, we all know about their crusade to kill the VCR, and Jack Valenti comparing it to the Boston Strangler, but at this particular point in time, I think they have just a little bit more clue than the RIAA.

Re:This Blows

[Seumas]

That's missing the point that you CAN'T watch previous seasons even if you pay for them, to catch up to the current seasons. Most TV shows lag in DVD release by a couple or more years from the current season. There are some exceptions, but - for example - you didn't see X-Files Season One for sale as soon as Season Two started airing on television.

It's in their best interest to offer some sort of on-demand system for _all_ previous episodes of their own programming, if they want people to be interested and tune into their _current_ programming.

Re:This Blows

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of the torrents still have the commercials in them, and are the syndication versions. Or, they have "ads" for all the warez kiddies who distribute them.

What? I've been downloading TV torrents for over a year now, and I have yet to see one with any of the commercials left in or any warez group ads added. I've never seen TV warez groups release a recorded-off-the-air version when a DVD version is available either (as would be the case with your syndicated-and-edited episodes).

Either you have an unnatural talent for finding the absolute crappiest warez sources, or you're just making shit up. I'm guessing the latter.

Re:This Blows

[badasscat]

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.)

Re:This Blows

[mbaciarello]

As a foreigner who happens to like some American TV shows, I'd like to add a point...

Aside from pricing, which you may or may not agree with, resorting to season DVDs has one huge disadvantage for me: inability to try before you buy.

Take Firefly. I read very good comments on Slashdot. I thought I'd like to give it a shot. What better way than the pilot episode? Whoops, no one (I'm aware of) sells only that.

The show does not, and most likely will not ever air in my country. Even if it did, that would be on pay satellite TV, and it would be dubbed: that, I couldn't stand.

I could buy the complete series on DVD but... What if I don't like it? At $35 plus around $15-20 for shipping and (in worst cases) 30% customs duty, it's quite an investment on a show I've never even seen an ad for... (Except for Slashvertisement, that is... :-)

DVDs are not an option in these cases, although I admit they represent only a small fraction of online piracy. However, there are many countries which might collectively represent a decent market for a show like Firefly, and where dubbing is not the routine (as opposed to subtitling.) These markets, IMO, are not fully exploitable until content is delivered in a more granular way than DVDs -- the "iTunes Video Store" way?

Re:This Blows

[d474]

I pay about $50/month for my COX cable internet connection. I don't think that downloading the occasional "Daily Show" is going to hurt anyone financially. Think about it:

All this "stealing" talk is bullshit. The logical end to it is that if you "pay" for TV cable channels, but don't "watch" the shows, are you "stealing" from the advertisers because you chose never to watch the show? NO. So how is it stealing if you down load a show YOU NEVER WATCHED IN THE FIRST PLACE??? Virtual Insanity.

Re:This Blows

[Silverlancer]

It would cost me 30 bucks per DVD (with 7 DVDs!) to get a badly translated first season of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. Or I could spend a few hours downloading a better translation, with subs that are easier to read, completely for free.

At least in my experience, downloaded TV shows are far, far superior to what you will find on a DVD, if not simply from the ease of use perspective. For example, if one of my friends wants to watch a show, I can grab two DVD-RWs, copy everything onto them, and give them to him. Can't do that as easily for 7 DVDs.

Re:This Blows

[dnixon112]

Why do the networks not want me to now see the Apprentice that I missed

Because they want to sell you that episode on DVD later.

Re:This Blows

[LordSnooty]

...They need to provide a compelling alternative themselves. Mod Parent up! He truly has it in that statement.

Absolutely. Maybe the MPAA should be offering a second option when they sue a trading site

1. Close down now & pay us money....or...
2. Hand the site over to us, along with all technology, get everyone involved to agree to work for the network/content distributor for 6 months, here's masters of our programmes, get encoding, leave the adverts in, and keep the damn thing going, since it isn't depriving anyone of revenue. Quick $5 fee for users, and you suddenly have a revenue stream, without lifting a finger.

Can't wait.....

[mangus_angus]

To see Piratebay.org's response to their letter!!

MPAA

[deafpluckin]

What about non-US sites that are "pirating" US television. Do they have to respect US copyrights?

It is technically legal to download anime that's copyrighted in Japan but not yet licensed in the USA.

Re:MPAA

[QuantumG]

Copyrights are internationally honoured. Unless you're in one of the few countries that hasn't signed the international treaties on copyright then you are bound by US copyright just as much as you are bound by Japanese copyright.

Re:MPAA

[deafpluckin]

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.

It's not a lie.

Read here:

Fansubs violate copyrights We have to admit it: the distribution of fansubs is technically a violation of copyright under the WTO TRIPS agreement. However the TRIPS agreement does not demand that distribution of copyrighted material is a criminal offence unless it is done on a commercial scale. This means it is up to the copyright holder to bring the offender to court. The copyright of unlicensed material is held by the original creator. In the case of anime this usually means the Japanese distribution company. If something is licenced, the licensee holds the copyright and thus the right to sue any copyright infringers within the area covered by the license. (source: ato's forum post)

Up until now fansub groups have had little to worry about legal pressure from Japan. However US companies are more likely to sue, therefore it is an additional reason for fansub groups to stop distributing a series once it gets licensed in the US.

I assume the same is true for TV.

Re:MPAA

[iamghetto]

Copyrights are internationally honoured. Unless you're in one of the few countries that hasn't signed the international treaties on copyright then you are bound by US copyright just as much as you are bound by Japanese copyright.

It's not quite so cut and dry. What is illegal in one country may not be illegal in another. Take America for example, half the laws in America these days seem to be written for the lobby groups and not the citizens. What is considered a copyright violation may not be considered a violation in another country.

Last year (or maybe two years ago) it was ruled in Canada that sharing music was perfectly legal. The judge ruled that having a "shared music folder" on your computer where other users could download copies of the music was tantamount to the public library letting a citizens use photocopier to copy pages of a given book. That is the exact analogy he used.

So while in America sharing music might be illegal and said to violate copyright law, in Canada it is perfectly legal. Even if the MPAA thought we were violating American copyright, they have no course of action to take against us.

While Canada & America and countless other countries are bound by international copyrights, what violates a copyright in each respective country can be very different.

Actually that's the ruling about time shifting.

[infonography]

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.

Re:Actually that's the ruling about time shifting.

[Aerion]

ShunTV and BTEfnet both held their own .torrent files.

I hope for the sake of their users they "lost" all their logs.

Yikes!

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope they don't find out I'm a fan of the Gilmore Girls

True story

[Anonymous Coward]

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.)

Re:True story

[BrianH]

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.

Re:True story

[moe613]

ill be 18 in 4 months.

then ill be able to make your mom happy legally ;)

Yeah right.

[Poietes]

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?

idiots

[aendeuryu]

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.

Re:idiots

[EvilCabbage]

"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.

Re:Hello, Friends

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm an American citizen and what you say is true. Our founding fathers like John Wayne and Gary Cooper who tought civilization to the savage red indians and who made this country great would turn in their graves if they knew people were sharing TV content.

Fair Use

[MyNymWasTaken]

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.

Rampant Piracy == Business Opportunity

[Mazem]

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!!!

Re:Here we go again

[QuantumG]

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.

Share!

[jamienk]

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!!! :)

Re:Share!

[snuf23]

Yeah I am waiting for the MPAA/RIAA to push through legislation to change our educational system to teach kindergarten kids not to share, because sharing is evil.

Bobby: "I want to play with the blocks, can I have some blocks?"

Suzie: "No! Fuck off Bobby, sharing is Evil! Teacher! Bobby's trying to make me share!"

Teacher: "Now Bobby you go and take a time out - you KNOW sharing is bad!"

Re:Share!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Duh?

[Josuah]

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.

mod parent up

[Luke727]

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.

Re:btefnet

[Aeiri]

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.

Re:Damn!

[EvilCabbage]

Look, I'll stop complaining about the delay in TV programming if you guys just promise to keep Dame Edna. We don't want "her" back.

Down goes piratebay, Down goes piratebay...

[John Seminal]

Appears slashdot did what the MPAA could not.

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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.

Re:Down goes piratebay, Down goes piratebay...

[Keruo]

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.

Cause the TV Networks need to learn

[Ka D'Argo]

I've gotten my fair share of tv shows from online, some through BT some not.

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.

Let me try this game...

[HillaryWBush]

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.

DROP FUCKING DEAD GLICKMAN.

[Fortyseven]

Christ, leave us the fuck alone, you greedy fucking little corporate twats. TV swapping does NOTHING to bother you, except exist.

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.

"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."

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.

Let the Migration to Anonymous P2P Begin.

[Famatra]

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.

Actually,

[Propaganda13]

The FCC said it was okay for Tivo users to record and share tv shows with 9 friends.

Re:Actually,

[Anonymous Coward]

actually you need 9 friends first...

Who remembers Stargate Atlantis Season Finale?

[Bruha]

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.

Re:TiVo Sucks...

[TheHonestTruth]

Clearly, you don't have a tivo or you're just trolling. I'll assume the former.

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.

A) you absolutely can skip commercials with tivo, and I'll bet you head-to-head I can skip my commercials faster and more acurrately. B) you can transfer files off your tivo to your computer/portable media device C) you can burn them to a DVD if you so choose D) your friend could give you said DVD as easily as a tape if he didn't think you were such a know-it-all dick.

-truth

Re:TiVo Sucks...

[technomancerX]

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.

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.

Re:btefnet

[fernd1]

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.

Remember that Harry Potter scene?

[icedphoenix]

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.

FEAR NOT!

[gnovos]

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.

Re:Where you been, Ken?

[gooman]

...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.

lets rephrase

[DM9290]

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.

Re:lets rephrase

[mp3phish]

Private businesses which dont generate huge profits/growth, dont survive.

Your argument sounds awefully like the classic humans eat food argument. If you like it or you don't, it doesn't matter. Businesses don't have to generate huge profits or grow to survive. Most small businesses that are 5 years or older will never become a large profit generator. They will also probably never grow more than a few times their size. That is because they are small businesses.

It is surprising I have to remind you that small businesses exist. Typically someone with your claims would be trolling around bragging about how good small business is for our economy. How we need to give them tax breaks, and how we need to subsidize them with grants to get them on their feet.. etc etc...

But you already though of this and didn't bring it up because it is against your above argument.

But they survive for only 1 of 2 reasons. They are state operated or subsidized (either openly or quietly)

Well lets see, Microsoft is subsidized by government contracts. Boeing is subsidized by government contracts. IBM is subsidized by government contracts. Dell is subsidized by government contracts. But then what is a subsidary? The MPAA is subsidized by movie ticket buyers. The RIAA is subsidized by people who purchase albums and singles.

The money all comes from one place (the consumers) and all ends up in one place (the business or "providers"). The providers then divvy up the money back to the consumers how they see fit through payroll. The cycle continues.

The same exact cycle happens with government subsidary. The consumers get together, appoint leaders, and decide as a group which businesses a percentage of their money should go to. The difference is that (hopefully) it is for a cause that is for the greater good, rather than for the greed of the business executives.

Of course there is a lot unsaid here. But I hope you get the general idea. There isn't much difference either way except that government subsidary has a tendancy to be looked at negatively by the "conservative" economist and the coporate greed has a tendancy to be looked at negatively by the "liberal" economist. If you can call them that.

Ah, wrong.

[shmlco]

Companies that base their business on being middle men are never going to be for a way to do business without them.

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.

Re:mod parent up

[Catbeller]

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.

Really?

[el_womble]

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

1. Regular TV. Bored? Watched your faourite shows already? Why not sit back, open a can of beer and channel surf for a bit. Sure there are more adverts, no pausing and you can't choose whats next, but who cares?
2. Free Internet TV. Download your favourite shows from network websites for free with the adverts on. Sure they're released after the show was aired, but if you could have watched it then you would have.
3. Apple TV. ITMS expands to show your favourite shows 2 weeks early, with no ads for $0.50 a show. Sure its expensive, but the quality is l33t, and you feel like your a TV god. Its got DRM which limits Joe Public from distributing it legally. Apple modify the Bittorent protocol to reduce bandwidth costs.
4. DVDs and merchanise. Fans love em. Geeks love em. The highest quality money can buy, with additional bonus material and a cool box. They released just before the season finally on TV and generate an additional income for shows that are genuinely good.

The technology is there already. TV networks need to wake up and start doing this now.

Whew... what a relief!

[TrentC]

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 (=