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How Battlestar Galactica Killed TV
Don Melanson writes "Following up on the MPAA going after torrent sites, you may be interested in Mindjack's latest feature - Piracy is Good? How Battlestar Galactica Killed Broadcast TV by Mark Pesce. It includes a post-script written in reponse to the recent Torrent site shutdowns." From the article: "While you might assume the SciFi Channel saw a significant drop-off in viewership as a result of this piracy, it appears to have had the reverse effect: the series is so good that the few tens of thousands of people who watched downloaded versions told their friends to tune in on January 14th, and see for themselves. From its premiere, Battlestar Galactica has been the most popular program ever to air on the SciFi Channel, and its audiences have only grown throughout the first series. Piracy made it possible for 'word-of-mouth' to spread about Battlestar Galactica."
"Hey! There is this really good show that just came out! You should download it off bittorrent too!"
I watched every episode off of bittorrent. Friday nights at 10 is quite possibly the worst time ever for me to try and see a show. I downloaded the shows and watched them when convenient. I pay for cable and get sci-fi so I don't see how anyone could reasonably consider it stealing.
Battlestar killed the TV .. star!
This is the largest of the Pro-P2P claims. I download Album A. I like Band A so much I buy their album(s). I tell Person B that I like Band A and Album A. They download/buy Album A.
Sure this is all non-mainstream stuff. But Albums get bought nonetheless. The only thing that suffers in Mainstream music. But that market could only go down anyways. It was already fully inflated.
What would have happened if people had downloaded the show, watched it, hated it, and told their friends not to tune in? Viewing figures would be down, and piracy could be held accountable. This sort of result works both ways, folks
I'm not stressed. I'm just terribly, terribly alert.
Yeah, sure, "I download music from Napster and then buy the CD". This was, what, 5 years ago, and people are still repeating that shit?
Another example of this is effect is anime fansubs. It's the free fansubs that create a market for a show; if there's enough of a market, the anime will hopefully get licensed, and will be profitable. If an anime is licensed, but hasn't been fansubbed, chances are it will have a much smaller market & not be as profitable.
Join moola.com, play games to earn money.
Of course, now that they're rich, they call doing this 'being a criminal' and that it destoys the chance of new talent (or by extension, shows) being recognized and being able to survive, when the opposite is clearly true.
"Hey! There is this really good show I just downloaded! You should watch it on scifi next week!"
It may be a more practical thought excercise to understand what happeneed to BG and decide whether this popularity of this show is because it is in a genre which garners its survival from this sort of fan loyalty or not. Translation: Star Wars, Star Trek.... fans tend to be far more engrossed into the world these shows create then, say, a football game. There is plenty of content which doesn't require one to be so engrossed to enjoy it.
I could be wrong, but I feel the debate should be more case-by-case and content-centric than it is currently.
The Crimson Dragon
1). Too much money is involved in advertising and programs
2). There will always be a readily available audience for TV
3). People are "lazy" when it comes to viewing, it's easier to flip through channels and see right away what's on than start a download, wait, watch, decide it sucks and try to find something else.
R(k)
It is, to me, obvious that the free promotion by TV torrent sites gave television shows excellent free promotion and gave them a huge increase in viewers, popularity and even DVD sales.
But the latest crap from MPAA will highly likely change that. Some torrent sites now encurage a boycott of the MPAA members.
I am probably not the only person out there who got majorly upset for being caled a thief for downloading TV shows. As if that is stealing.. Just like people stopped going to cinemas when the MPAA first attacked the torrent sites, people are now likely to stop buying DVDs of shows and also stop viewing the TV shows...
These are the faceless members of MPAA who are participating in suing sites for showing Internet users where and how they can get the TV shows they missed when they were aired on TV:
* Buena Vista Pictures Distribution (The Walt Disney Company) * Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc. * Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. * Paramount Pictures Corporation * Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation * Universal City Studios LLLP * Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
eom
TV died and we watched.
This is how I was introduced to Doom and Windows, if I recall correctly.
Piracy is as beneficial as it is "damaging". If not moreso. Example: I download all my PC games to try them out before buying. I never want to get screwed, and a lot of games are lemons that you can't return.
Unfortunately that doesn't work for everyone since it's kind of a self-enforced honor system, but I call bullshit whenever I hear such major loss of profit due to filesharing followed by a record quarterly earnings from the same companies.
You see, they released a new version of the show Battle Star Galactica on TV. Viewers, fooled by the hype and the hope that Edward James Olmos might offer a good show, watched the new Battle Star Galactica.
But, when people saw Battle Star Galactica, the answer was clear. Television had reached an all time low. Unlike previous all time lows, this one was so low that they all agreed that there just wasn't any point watching TV anymore. With that, the viewers turned off their TV's and went outide. With no viewers, TV was dead.
In fairness TV lasted longer than many had predicted but, its demise was a certainty and Battle Star Galactica was the final straw on the camel's back.
That, my friend, is how Battle Star Galactica killed TV.
I remember a few weeks ago, the premiere episode of Family Guy leaked and everybody I work with was talking about it. I downloaded it at work (not using bittorrent, it was actually posted for download on a website), and the whole office stood around watching it. Needless to say, The Family Guy owes a lot of its popularity to how accessible it's been on the internet.
I completely missed the miniseries. But when the new season was getting ready to start, a friend said I should check it out. I was rather skeptical because of the 'backlash' that a lot of the sci-fi crowd had against a lot of the changes from the original.
The first thing I did was find a torrent of the miniseries, and I was hooked, absolutlely. I then made sure to watch every single episode of the new series because it really was that good. But I never really would have gotten intereted unless I had that torrent.
Sci-Fi just got so much *right* with BG. The free downloads on their site, the official commentary podcast, and the show itself is just outstanding. I'm waiting eagerly for next season.
--- witty signature
I work at the leading worldwide online retail store in the world (Amazon.com) and checking the stats for keyword Battlestar galactica in customer search shows a increase of about 750 % monthtly since the torrent incident was reported in the press.
Sometimes I would miss a particular episode for some reason. Being able to go online and view that episode, commercial or no commercial, kept me interested in the series since I was never behind on the show's plot.
Don't you think there's a huge gap between "one of the best hours of drama ever written for television" and "one of the best hours of drama ever written?" I'd say that "33" is one of the ten best one-hour drama television episodes I've ever seen - but it doesn't rate in the top THOUSAND of hours of drama I've seen.
The exact same thing happened with Doctor Who. I couldn't careless for it before the leak, infact I downright mocked it. Thanks to peoples reviews I started to watch it and now follow it every week.
I like muppets.
This is the same as what has been argued made the Grateful Dead so popular - bootleg live concert tapes passed from fan to fan.
Oh come on...that is the weakest justification I ever heard. If someone is watching a pirated copy, why wouldn't they tell their friend to download the same copy, or pass it on themselves. This is plain illegal. It's theft of service, unless you are actually paying for cable and the Sci-Fi channel. No amount of bullshit justification will change that. Now, if the torrent versions include commercials, and the station airing it derives income solely from advertisements, it wouldn't matter how you watched it, as long as you didn't skip the commercials (in theory anyway, I know anyone with DVRs or whatnot does this anyway, myself included). Of course, I don't believe illegal downloaded is necessarily killing TV, and probably never will. Most people don't know what the hell a "torrent" is.
Piracy made it possible for 'word-of-mouth' to spread about Battlestar Galactica.
I call BS. Didja ever think that the name itself was enough to get people to tune in? This was actually a show many years ago, you know. I'll bet there are a significant number of viewers who tuned in just to see how it was like the original, and have stayed tuned because of a good story. Does the pro-piracy movement really need to use such weak propaganda?
These people want to be in control over everybody. This is why they increasingly want to create laws limiting the rights of people to information. When their goal is reached, there will be no such thing as movies, music, books, software, etc. All people will be brainwashed from childhood into a state of near unconsciousness. Only the few elite will be learned and have access to information. They will control the masses to obtain their own goals. And we will all be slaves, in eternal bondage of the mind.
That, not profits, is the goal of the RIAA, MPAA, and Microsoft. Otherwise, they would wake up to the obviousness of piracy's advantages to their business. (For example, some businesses spend a ton of money for publicity. Piracy provides this for free.) That is why we must fight these evil organizations.
Sure, there's a huge difference, but it still is such an objective claim. Almost everyone I know wouldn't love "33" and many would get bored with it. I thought it was OK, but not amazing. That's not the point. A news source shouldn't be saying something like that... unless they are quoting someone else, or saying that "based on viewership," etc. This just makes them look like an unprofessional source.
I often read stories about this kind of thing; where a {piece of software, band, CD, Movie, TV Show, etc} gains popularity and a 'legitamate' user base as a result of piracy.
The most commonly used example of this is Photoshop (followed closely by windows). Through a very high piracy rate, and a very low litagation rate, photoshop gained so much market share that it is now the dominant application in its field (bitmap editing).
Adobe didn't condone the piracy of their software, but they also didn't actively pursue minor cases. That is, if some high school kid pirated photoshop, and used to create images for personal use, no biggie. If a company pirated photoshop, and used it for commercial purposes (and got caught), send in the lawyers.
So many people used the software illegally at home that when it came time to make a purchase in the work place, the choice was obvious. People already knew how to use photoshop, and kept hearing the name of the application over, and over again.
By allowing piracy (or in this case, downloading of tv shows) to happen amongst a demographic that 'doesn't matter' (home users that cannot afford the software anyways, or a small number of people that would have downloaded BSG regardless) but have influence over a demographic that does (companies that can afford photoshop, or friends and family that have never heard of BSG), companies can gaing huge market share. It's a grey area, but it has proven positive effects.
bsg is a softcore porn abomination desecrating the memory of the classic original. it is for the porn people watch it. other than that it is a complete pile of shite.
Many shows that air in america is not acessible here where I live, so I have to use internet to download the shows that i.e. SciFi airs.
And I reckon many have to do that here. You can't even get SciFi here in Sweden... so they don't "lose" any money on me at least.
A small number of people torrent. These people tell their friends--a large number of people, who don't torrent--to use what they can to watch the series: TV.
Every torrent-user brings in on average X number of TV viewers.
Microsoft had allowed pirate copies of Windows to flourish so they'd get more revenue later.
The MPAA and RIAA know full well that sharing improves sales. The reason they want to put sharing out of business is that it opens the distribution market to indies and self-published artists.
It is nevertheless worthwhile to continue to point out the (unremarkable) fact that sharing promotes rather than diminishes sales. MPAA/RIAA want to limit competition, not maximize revenues from their existing offerings.
The amount of viewers you can get with a legimate, legal torrent of a good TV show is still so small that the advertising revenue out of that wouldn't pay for the show.
And you can bet your farm that the broadcasters will fight this all the way to their grave - meaning once you have a broadcaster footing any bit of the bill for the program, you can be sure that the agreement denies any legal avenue of internet distribution. So even if they could put it both on the telly, and legally as torrent, the broadcaster will NEVER allow it, as if torrents take off and become more popular, the broadcaster becomes redundant.
I imagine it'll start off slowly... someone sponsoring a legal torrent of a 'geeky' subject material, paying for onscreen bug / 'sponsored by XXX' banners in the video, and then putting it out legally. Maybe something like, say, coverage of the E3 trade show or something else like that with small production costs (basically the cost of taping and editing). Then it'll go to cheap comedy stuff - animation, talk shows... and it's a long way until a drama show with $500K+ production costs per hour are funded by advertising for torrents.
Also there is the issue of regions - advertisers want to advertise to target audiences. Very few companies want to advertise worldwide. Torrents are, by definition, worldwide. So you'd need sponsors who see value in advertising to the whole planet at once.
Companies like Intel, AMD etc. might see some value in it, but considering that 90%+ of the advertisements I see in my telly are from very local companies, and would mean nothing to a large percentage of the torrent audience, it's problematic for the advertisers.
We'll get there.. 10 years.. 15 years.. but in the meantime people will try subscription models with DRMed streams, pay-to-download DRM-crippled files and all the other junk like that - all while torrents slowly own the world. Things will start to change only after major chunks of the viewers are consuming torrents. Today it's few percent, not enough. iTunes came only after MAJOR chunk of music was downloaded online, same applies here.
The most important factor is do people who download television programs stop watching broadcast TV ?.
I would say that at the moment the answer to this is no. Most people would prefer to watch programs on their TV because it probably more comfortable (larger screen, comfy couch, etc.) than watching a program on your PC. Remember geeks who have their PC hooked up to a large flatpanel and 5.1 sound are a minority (even of those who download telly shows).
If the current filesharing activity is helping increase ratings the issue for the MPAA should be will this always be so ?. Difficult to call, I am not sure the PC will move out of the sudy and into the lounge. There are precedents though, Tivo for example and the next generation consoles who might be offering email and web surfing.
people having regular cable >>>> people having hi-speed internet access !
TV as we know it is no where near extinction ! BSG's popularity has worked both ways. Thier initial promotion, and the subsequent p2p has only made the series more popular and possibly the most watched sci-fi series around these days.
Edward James Olmos is a pathetic actor. His best work was in the shadows of Crockett and Tubbs in Miami Vice. Even when Olmos was given the spotlight in Miami Vice he still sucked horse cock. That's why Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas (Crockett & Tubbs) went on to have profitable careers while Olmos was destined to wallow in the mire of the likes of Battlestar Galactica.
video killed the radio star
sure, you'll go out and buy your favorite series to see them in the best quality possible, but will you buy that so-so series that you kinda wanted to see, or will you just download it and live with the quality loss? I want to see Escaflowne in perfect quality, Divergence Eve on the other hand...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
This article merely suggests that the content provider could have taken another strategy. It proposes another way. Just remember though, that the content provider is allowed to be stupid. If they are stupid, that doesn't justify piracy. I just hope this type of article isn't being apologetic, and making content pirates sleep better at night because they apparently made something better.
"Hey! This is a really good show, but I am soo glad that I am not paying for cable/satellite/etc. I will have to keep downloading it."
I downloaded an episode of "Joey" off bit torrent on the off chance that it might actually be funny. I really should have known better but as I have more bandwith than common sense I decided to take a chance and get it anyway. I couldn't even believe the oddassity the writers had to even make the laughtrack laugh. Anyways, 35 seconds I will never get back.
Meanwhile "The Office" which is the best comedy that has been on NBC in many years was only picked up for 6 episodes. "Joey" gets a full season no questions asked while "The Office" gets six midseason episodes. Amazing. I told all my friends about "the office" and included a link to the torrent in my IMs. I know almost all of my friends watched it on tv when it aired after that. On the other hand I was so ashamed that I had even tried to watch "Joey" that I didn't even tell my friends I had downloaded it.
If bit torrent rusults in "Joey" being cancelled and "The Office" being picked up for another season then that in itself shows that it has legitimate applications.
...that most people find it easier to simply tune in the telly when it is airing. So the pirated material is a free teaser, but people still get "the product". Another thing is that you are looking for return viewers.
If people a) found it easier to just pirate episode after episode it wouldn't work. And b) if people pirated it, and then went "man, that was good, but now I have it/have seen it" it also wouldn't work.
The first assumption is constantly weakened by increase in bandwidth and improved distribution methods. The second assumption makes it pointless to use these results when it comes to "one-off" works like CDs or movies. It acts more like a free teaser track for a CD than the CD itself.
If anything, piracy is an "attention-grabber". A pirated show would get more attention than a non-pirated show at the expense of other shows, but I doubt the totals (comparing a market where nothing vs everything is pirated) are good for business...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The people who download are *series* viewers. These are very different from spontaneous viewers.
Series viewers are those who will pay to watch their favorite shows each week, and rarely (but sometimes) watch something at random. Usually anything they've watched at 'random' is actually something they've heard about beforehand, through advertising, friends, or downloading.
Here's the thing. While the TV model accomodates spontaneous viewing very well, it's very difficult for series viewers to catch each episode, especially since many of them don't show more than once a week. The Survivor community online (www.realiiity.com, etc) is a great example of this type of viewer. A friend and I exchanged video-cassettes to catch up on shows that we would miss but for which could schedule recordings.
The problem is, the series viewer is the one that suits the current format of show production. Unless you see each episode, the show isn't nearly as entertaining. Missing Week 5 of a 13 week program is simply *bad*.
There needs to be an alternative distribution system. Bit-Torrent farms provided this. In large majority, these are fans who will buy the DVDs for the commentary and bonus features *anyway*. Downloading isn't bad for series TV. It's good.
I found the author's idea for inserting advertisements into a program to be a terrible idea. It already exists in America to a certain extent, where a network will have icons come on screen in the middle of a show to advertise some other program. Spike TV is exceptionally guilty of this invasion on the program.
This advertising horribly distracts from the program, and I hate it even more than when some stupid network stamp obstructs something important in the program. It's a terrible idea, and I pray that it does not prove to be the next evolution of advertising.
Dear diary: Today I stuffed some dolls full of dead rats I put in the blender.
Before southpark went big it was thrown around the net in RM format. Everyone loved it, and a lot of its popularity was attributed to that burst of exposure, I know I sure wouldn't have cared because, who has time to check out all the esoteric shit on basic cable? It's sad that as soon as the show was popular enough they cracked down on the sites hosting the rm's.
Seriously, without that exposure theyd just be another gay comedy central abortion nobody heard about, fans went crazy getting them publicity.
$50 at 20:1 odds BSG does the same thing when dvd time comes around.
The first rule of USENET is you do not talk about USENET.
when they decide to finally air the programs I like here in the Netherlands.
...
Seriously the stuff they still air: M.A.S.H., the Nanny, Friends, Married with children,
You would think they had unused time slots to show something remotely new.
Well, they've got a point. I downloaded the show after hearing the word of mouth, and it made me a fan.
This bothers SciFi for some reason?
Some companies that make TV content are trying to stop internet distribution, and I can't for the life of me imagine why.
Some think fast forwarding commercials should be (or even is) illegal. So since you can watch it on your computer you can skip the ads. The problem is, our technology is too advanced - get it? These guys should be locked up and studied.
Some think its bad because they want to sell you a DVD. Guess what, this argument is about as braindead as wanting to sell a $20 CD in Tower. Sorry guys, new technology is here. Packaging and distribution are free now. Just put ads in your MPEG file, some people will watch the same way some people don't filter banner ads, and be happy you still have a business. Live musicians and stage actors weren't so lucky with new technology.
If technology comes along to make media distribution completely free and democratic, that's a very good thing. If that means it eventually becomes hard to make money selling DVDs in a store or operating a broadcast TV tower, boo fucking hoo. Give them the same line they gave the live musicians and the stage actors. "It's progress, man. Go get a real job." Believe me, there are plenty of ways to compensate artists, even in the scary scary 21st century. More than ever, as a matter of fact.
Everything is going to be more decentralized, and that's a good thing.
I downloaded it, all skyone hdtv copies. I dont even have HDTV at home, but was able to watch the widescreen versions.
America has become so backwards, skyone is kicking our asses in content.
Hell, Skyone even wanted to buy the rights for Enterprise, but they would of done a better job and made some people look like dribbling monkeys. Oh wait, they are monkeys.
That is an absolutely brilliant analysis and I have little doubt it would work. It would make all parties happy (except broadcasters of course, since they're no longer in the food chain). But that leaves happy producers, happy advertisers, and happy viewers.
So, what's left to see is whether the studios will adopt it. I doubt it will happen quickly because these old behemoth industries aren't used to change and it's a very big change in business models. On the other hand, it's something that they could certainly try without doing any harm to themselves and actually give it real-live testing. Simply pick a few select shows that targets the 18-25 market and test it out with a discount for the advertisers as part of the test. If it works, they make money and they eventually turn it into a regular distribution method.
It's too bad you can't do a similar thing with music. There's simply now way to put an advertisement in a song that can't be cut out. At least not without ruining the song. But for TV and movies, this model has excellent possibility of being viable.
The fact is, the entertainment industry is going to have to learn to adapt or die out and be replaced by people and companies who CAN adapt. Suing your customers isn't even a viable short-term economic model.
Torrent has given indie filmmakers, documentarians and producers an invaluable "word of mouth" advertising, especially those on the far fringes of the mainstream.
The only thing that is killing TV is the "500 channels and not a damn thing to watch, hell I guess I will DL a good tv show if I cant watch it" is killing TV. Content IS and WILL ALWAYS BE king period.
Ah yes, the voice of truth and reason rears its ugly head, yet agaion, on Slashdot. You sir, are absolutely correct.
However, this is Slashdot and your statement is heresy here. You will now be moderated into oblivion. However, do not let this disturb you. Instead, know that the Slashdotters are wrong and that they will come to know the error of their ways in the future. Know that they will come to regret the error of their ways despite their unwillingness to realize the truth.
If the producers of BG expect to maintain their momentum, they should occasionally embed references to issues confronting mankind today. The original "Star Trek" did so and became hugely popular even though the special effects were crappy.
One suggestion for a good story line is to explore the issue of Tibet, which Beijing is brutally occupying.
If the producers of BG expect to maintain their momentum, they should occasionally embed references to issues confronting mankind today. The original "Star Trek" did so and became hugely popular even though the special effects were crappy.
One suggestion for a good story line is to explore the issue of Tibet, which Beijing is brutally occupying.
In the end the show stands on its own merits and fails if it's bad and prospers if it's good. Whether the show does good or bad depends on the show. The potential that the show has to reach a bigger audience, however, seems to depend on P2P as well as word of mouth, and not regular forms of advertising.
Or you could go by the context of this being a television show and not make the author disambiguate everything for you.
We recently learned this is difficult for people with Asperger's syndrome, so maybe a higher than average percentage of the Slashdot audience is less likely to get that, but the story submitter may not have that kind of section 508 sensibility.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I usually don't reply to blatant flamebait like this, but it's not an excuse for piracy. BSG is on TV at an awkward time. Downloading the torrent has made this TV show accessible, and has increased the popularity of the show.
Without BT it might not be as popular. Why is that a bad thing?
Truth is, we pay for TV. If we miss a show that we like, and download it, isn't that akin to recording it on a PVR? Commercials or not?
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Trying to find out exactly how much money per viewer a TV show can expect to make, and whether charging a buck to download the episode would be an increase or decrease to that number (*anyone who says "BUT IT COSTS MONEY TO RUN SERVERS OMG!!!!" can go look for the point and then fuck themselves with it)
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Hey, cool show I downloaded. Since I'm one of the few people with a Nielson TV rating thingy, I'd better leave the TV on when this is broadcast to give it my 'vote' (and for all those without a Nielson TV ratings thingy, it didn't matter a jot whether they watched it when it aired or not).
To paraphrase the new Battlestar Galactica, "The war is over. We lost."
The goal of the RIAA/MPAA isn't to eliminate Internet distribution, it is to preserve their ability to make money off of the content and their monopoly over distribution rights. Unauthorized Internet distribution currently plays into their hands by making their products more popular without giving those distributing it the means to make much money. There is no evidence of a decrease in DVD sales or any other revenue source that feeds RIAA/MPAA profits.
What the RIAA/MPAA really fears is an equivalent of a new Microsoft for content and Internet distribution that would make enough money that it could dictate terms to the RIAA/MPAA. Thanks to unauthorized filesharing of the RIAA and MPAA's most popular products, such a new Microsoft cannot and will not happen. In addition, the ready availability of RIAA/MPAA products to those who desire them but do not wish to pay for them means that no effective political movement can develop to change the laws that would permits others to profit from distribution.
The RIAA and MPAA still have their monopoly over authorized distribution that can make money, and they still have their de facto eternal copyrights. Nothing in the conceivable future is going to change that. They won the war.
download every episode and STILL set my Tivo to record it every Friday night. I burned a few episodes for my friends that were less than enthuziastic about the show and they all became hooked and watched it on friday. Then they got their friends hooked, so yeah I can see how this happened.
Pictures came and broke your heart.
Oh-a-a-a oh
And now we meet in an abandoned studio.
We hear the playback and it seems so long ago.
And you remember the jingles used to go.
Oh-a oh
You were the first one.
Oh-a oh
You were the last one.
Video killed the radio star.
Video killed the radio star.
In my mind and in my car, we can't rewind we've gone to far
Oh-a-aho oh,
Oh-a-aho oh
Video killed the radio star.
Video killed the radio star.
In my mind and in my car, we can't rewind we've gone to far.
Pictures came and broke your heart, look I'll play my VCR.
You are a radio star.
You are a radio star.
Video killed the radio star.
Video killed the radio star.
Video killed the radio star.
Video killed the radio star.
WAIT! KEEP READING
The above is a joke/troll but THIS is the real deal!
Um. You fucking idiot. This whole article is about how piracy is actually a good thing, but you throw a hissy fit about how the author said he liked the show?
I tried out game XYZ and absolutely LOV... I mean heated it! I finished it 100% and only invested 4 weeks worth of time in deathmatch so far, it was GREA.. I mean horrible!
It was sooo GOO..I mean bad that I have also burned a copy and stored it on a DVD/CD. I will also pirate the sequel and company ABC's games as soon as they comes out, just to SUPPOR... I mean pay the company back for the WONDERFU.. shitty game XYZ!
If only these companies released some good games would I actually support them!
I am one that downloaded and watched Battlestar before SciFi aired it. I told EVERYONE that I knew about it. Best advertising one can get, Word Of Mouth.
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
Ahem... how would I be getting something for nothing? They are broadcasting this for free to my home? That's like saying since band X demands I only listen to their albums on a sony music player at 11:00PM, and I use a panasonic at 10:30 I'm commiting a crime.
The first rule of USENET is you do not talk about USENET.
Seems to have 3 problems, the first that it atributes the "word of mouth" almost singularly to the people who downloaded, as opposed to those who watched the show or the miniseries and gave it good buzz without downloading.
Second, and the way they lay it out, piracy only works for stuff that has a geek-heavy audiance, with the savy to record and download and watch the show off the net, which leaves -plenty- of room for broadcast TV to cater to the non-geek elements of society
Third, word of mouth nearly allways has an effect good or bad, there's nothing special about word of mouth cause by pirate downloads...
I'm really amazed by how many people have said here that they think downloading stuff off the Internet is okay, that it's just like setting the VCR, that it's not stealing. That really blows my mind.
I don't see much point in making a moral argument. I get the impression that talking about karma here would get me laughed out of the room.
How about a pragmatic argument, then? You want to be able to download high-quality TV shows and movies over the Internet, right? You want somebody to set up a store, like the iTunes Music Store, where you can legally get high-quality TV shows and movies. Well, guess what? Every time somebody says "Bit Torrent is just like a VCR" or "it's not stealing" or "I'm not doing anything wrong when I download," you make it just that much harder for Apple or anybody else to open such a store.
Every time you say something like that, you push the date of our opening back by a month.
If you won't buy a moral argument, will you at least buy that one?
Part of the reason South Park got a contract and had such good buzz was because the short "Spirit of Christmas" was widely spread around via tape and Internet. I and most of my hipster Internet friends new about South Park before it ever aired.
What is necessary to make sharing legal is a distribution agreement that takes p2p into account. When a TV show is made, rights for the music, actor, director, etc. dictate that they get a residual cut for if/when they show is on the air, replayed, sold on dvd, etc. Additionally, rights for broadcast can be region specific.
when a tv series from the past is pressed into a dvd box set, all those rights have to be renegotiated. I'm assuming that in the future, p2p, or per-download rights are being figured out right now for new series.
what isn't an option is for these companies to ignore the illegal distribution, even though there is no harm to them and to the stakeholders. The mere act of ignoring the p2p would open them up to lawsuits from actors, directors, broadcasters, etc.
Bootlegging has always been a successful marketing tool. Dave Mathews wisely followed in the Dead's footsteps by allowing people to make live recordings directly from the mixing console. College kids in particular passed the tapes around and launched the D.Mathews band to greater heights. It makes sense that BSCG would profit from this, too - the show is great.
Battlestar Galactica drove me to use bittorrent for the first time just a few weeks ago. I had been TIVOing BSG and watching it when my wife was out, but somehow the season finale had been accidentally erased!
Needing to know is the Cylons were going to destroy Kobol and BSG, I downloaded Bittorrent, found a great tracker, and within a few minutes, was getting 0.9 kbps of a 4 GB torrent of the entire 1st season.
I'll let you know how it turns out - only 28 more days to go!
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
P2P apologists continue to be the most overt example of /. hyprocracy. Like it or not, this is purely a question of the copyright owners wanting to control the means by which their product is distributed (the "license", shall we say). In fact, it doesn't make a whit of difference whether /. readers believe that torrents have a positive effect on the popularity of tv shows because it is the perogative of the copyright owners to decide how their product is marketed. This story is nothing but a single piece of anecdotal evidence. And there isn't even the spectre of poor, exploited artists to elicit sympathy.
/.ers... instead of persecuting GPL violators, you should be thanking them.
I would like to see the same arguments applied to GPL violators. After all, unauthorized use of GPL software can't decrease the legitimate use of that software. It's not "stealing" because no one is being deprived of property, and the companies that choose to violate the GPL weren't the ones that were going to contribute in the first place. But now consider all the programmers who are being exposed to GPL via their employers' unscrupulous practices. The same guy who today is writing proprietary Linux extensions may someday cash in his stock options and spend his "retirement" writing the next generation networking code. And think about the benefit to the up & coming programmers in the 3rd world, who are benefiting from working on outsourced Linux-based code instead of outsourced Windows-based code. 10 years from now, that pool of programmers will make Linux even stronger. So come on
Now go ahead readers & nitpick my analogy. But you know it to be true in essence.
-a
The gist of the article is that far from reducing viewership, your behaviour and that of the parent and many others like you, actually hugely increased the number of viewing eyeballs at the time of the later official broadcast. So, you can wear that eyepatch if you want and even that messy parrot, but the PTB at SciFi, if they have even two neurons to rub together - a dubious assumption, I know - realize that the world is different and "pirates" might well be some of their best friends,
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
...is that it is mindnumbingly irrational.
"I go to a convenience store and use my Star Trek Replication Device to copy a can of Diet Coke, without taking away the existing Diet Coke. I like it so much that the next day, I replicate a case. I tell my friend that I like Diet Coke, and he replicates his own case. Now none of us buy Diet Coke, and they go bankrupt. Noone will bother inventing new soft drinks anymore, since there's no profit to be made."
The whole "this is profitable" argument relies that a chain of events leading up to more sales (or other money-generating events like ad impressions). But if copying the first can is ok, why shouldn't the second, third or 100th be? Why should any of those you market it to bother to buy it instead of pirate it? You end up with a market with all marketeers and no customers.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Since when did he become an authority on TV watching habits?
Unlike with software, they don't make ad-free paid copies of the TV show available. At least not immediately. It comes out on DVD, commercial-free, months later.
That works for me; it's like I'm years behind on my TV watching but gradually catching up.
(At least I hope it remains commercial-free. Sooner or later somebody will get the idea to put a non-skippable ad in the middle of the show. I stop buying all DVDs in perpetuity from the company that tries that. I'm serious: I really don't care that much about Sidney Bristow's latest antics.)
But many people would rather be able to discuss the current episode of 24 around the water-cooler the next day. It would be interesting if they made it available on a pay-for-download, heavily DRMed version. That would cut the rate advertisers would be willing to pay, of course, but in theory the fees balance that out.
But the economics don't work. Eventually somebody would notice that they could be making more money from their airtime (which they sort of pay for, though not really; either way it's a scarce resource). Then they'd make some shows "over-the-air only", which would have higher ad fees. Those would be the more popular shows.
How I'd want it to work, of course, is that gradually we get ala carte downloadable TV only. My cable fees stop subsidizing the channels I don't watch. The airtime gets put to better use than CSI: Waukeegan; say, cheaper cell calls and wifi broadband.
Oh, well. I'm just gonna go read a book.
>> ...Piracy made it possible for 'word-of-mouth' to spread about Battlestar Galactica.
Typically specious and lame thinking from jerks who want to steal and call it sharing.
What evidence exists that this show's ratings are atttibutable to pirates?
Their argument goes like this:
1. People pirated the show.
2. The show is popular.
3. Therefore, piracy made the show popular.
Got that?
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
I've been collecting all the different answers to how to have an economy of creative works after the old business models fail. It's apropos to this discussion. I include both things that I think are good and those that I think are bad, and I welcome other people who have heard of or thought of different alternatives to mail me to add to the list.
It can be found at Solutions to the Copyright Crisis.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
No recorders (e.g., VCR, TiVo, Replay, MythTV, etc.)? Isn't that what those devices are for? :)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
When I first heard about the new BG I didn't fancy watching it. I'd heard all sorts of bullshit about it and tuned out. I live in the UK and don't have satelite or cable (because of the area I live in and the building rules about dishes).
I'd then heard lots of good stuff about the show later on and decided to check it out. After watching a few episodes and got into it. After downloading them all and being disappointed that there weren't more episodes I discovered that they're making a second season.
Yesterday I saw the DVD boxset in the supermarket for the first season I picked it up right away. I loved the show and wanted to show my support. I didn't watch it on Sky or SciFi but wanted the makers of the show to know that it had support. Now I have the DVD's I can lend them to my friends and spread the word.
I know it was technically wrong to download them, but I felt no guilt whatsoever, as I knew that if I liked the show I'd probably buy it when it came out on DVD. I did exactly the same for Enterprise - bought the first Season boxset at the same time as BG - as well as the Star Wars Clone Wars DVD.
I don't normally purchase so many DVD's, especially two boxsets in one month as money is slightly tight at the moment, but these shows are amongst my faves.
One thing I know is that when the next seaons come out I'll be buying those too.... although I'll be downloading the episodes again beforehand.
Tiered pricing.
Charge less for people who can not pay as much or people less inclined to pay at all. It's the same idea behind the senior citizens discount, or kids eat free, or midnight or matinee movie showings.
In this case, it's give away the programming (well, let people watch it stripped of the advertising) if the viewer is someone willing to pay to go through the trouble of downloading it instead of just turning on the TV.
The problem with this model for TV (or movies for that matter, the article attempts to differentiate between the two but on the internet there is no difference) is that what happens when the cost of getting the program on the internet goes away? What happens when most people find it just as easy to get a program on their computer as they do to get it on TV?
What happens when you can get bittorrent on AOL?
The problem with the "little bit of piracy for a lot of real viewers" is that it only works when piracy is inconvenient. If the costs of pirating the program become less than the costs of getting the program legitimately for most viewers, then the model doesn't work anymore.
As things like bittorrent become more and more user friendly, MPAA et. al. are going to have to issue more and more lawsuits to keep the costs of piracy high and preserve the model, otherwise more and more regular viewers will become pirate viewers and the model won't work anymore.
paintball
If you're going to interrupt a series every ten minutes, you shouldn't be surprised people look for ways to circumvent that.
I seriously don't understand why Americans even bother watching TV.
Watching Friends here in Europe takes half the time it takes you guys.
I think, therefore I am...I think.
Step 1: Make a crappy TV show on the cheap
Step 2: Make it available for free over the Internet
Step 3: Profit when billions of people show up to see how crappy it is
My point, actually, is that I find the "free advertising" argument somewhat self-serving. Billions of people don't show up due to your selfless advertising. Or at least, it hasn't been proven to my satisfaction they get more commercial-watching viewers through your free advertising than they lose to downloaders.
(And it's all about the commercials. They wouldn't do it at all if somebody weren't watching the commercials. The network execs know that their product isn't TV shows and the audience isn't their customer. The advertiser is the customer and the product is you.)
So I'm always reluctant to accept, "I'm doing this thing that you don't want me to do because maybe it's good for you" arguments. Even without examining the numbers, it's always healthy to be suspicious of somebody who claims they're doing something in my own best interests.
One of the main reasons why Microsoft became so huge is because of piracy. Many millions of people got hooekd on Windows and MS Office software because geeks like myself took the one licensed copy of the software and loaded it on all of the office computers. People got hooked on something that was more visual than DOS and it looked like Macs. When it came time to upgrade the software, or "comply" with piracy threats, all of these companies and organizations started paying Microsoft full price for each seat license. The Microsoft empire was built on piracy. Let's not forget that.
Like the other AC, you are going to get modded down for this.
Expect a lot of "well, it is ok for us to do it, not them" hypocrisy and the usual weaseling tactics(i.e. "no, that is sooo much different" and "no, any analogy is flawed when it disagrees with me, but the one that agrees with me isn't").
Computers are the devils tools didn't you know. They've fooled people into thinking that when they download a song or video it is "copied" and not stolen from the store shelves and wharehouses, which is what actually happens. The devils tricky like that, we have to spread the knowledge to defeat his scheme, tell everybody who wants their soul saved that when they download the devil uses his evil to steal the goods of good christian multinational corporations.
"Broadcast TV piracy", what a crock of shit.
Is it transmitted "over the air"? yes.
So, if I had the technical means (a biiig dish and hypersensitive-OMG-from-teh-FUTURE!!1!! reciever) I could watch every single episode of anything ever broadcast, just by pointing my biiiig dish and hypersensitive reciever at some nearby (~40 lightyear) object and merely record the TV signal that got bounced back off it. Technical issues aside, would I be a pirate? I believe not.
Tell my why this is any different (legally,folks) to bittorrent. They've broadcast it, not narrowcast it. If they don't want people recording their shows, perhaps they should move to a more-private, non-broadcast medium. Good luck with getting an audience though.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
It went arount the net in Quicktime format.
soxmas.mov
It was an story about Santa fighting Jesus over the spirit of Christmas.
It was due to this clip and Georgy Clooney's forwarding tapes around Hollywood that South Park got made into a show.
But this all doesn't mean you can steal anything you want. If the creator of the content wants to send out the content for free to create publicity, that is his/her prerogative. You don't get to take it upon yourself to "do them a favor".
"While you might assume the SciFi Channel saw a significant drop-off in viewership as a result of this piracy, it appears to have had the reverse effect: the series is so good that the few tens of thousands of people who watched downloaded versions told their friends to tune in on January 14th, and see for themselves.
This is why the article's argument isn't going to be at all compelling to the right's holders. Until Congress repeals Sturgeon's Law, most shows will simply loose under this model. SacredNaCl might be in the minority on this one, but that won't usually be the case.
...the ends now justify the means? Is this the kind of world we want to live in? Or do the ends only justify the means for things slashbots want it to and nothing else can follow this logic?
But instead, you decided to steal it.
In what spiked Kool-Aid drinking world does this equal theft? Nothing was taken.
regardless of how the MPAA/RIAA apologists try to spin it.
What about the piracy apologists who spin things to fit their agenda?
Say something against people downloading companies' stuff for free without permission, get labeled a MPAA/RIAA/BSA/etc apologists. Say something good about Microsoft or dismantle some FUD attributed to them(since it is not ok for Microsoft to throw FUD, but it is ok to throw FUD back at Microsoft), get labeled a "Micro$oft" apologists.
Get over yourselves, just because someone doesn't agree with your agenda doesn't mean they are "apologists" for group/company/etc XYZ.
The article states:
Industry pundits talk about audiovisual downloads through some system like Apple's iTunes Music Store, and perhaps we'll see something like this in the near future, but this works against the simple fact that people do not expect to pay for television programs
Is there any data to back this up? Maybe people would in fact be willing to pay $1 for a TV episode on demand without commericals or 50 cents with an episode with commericals, or maybe not, the article does not prove the case one way or the other.
YOGURT: "Forget the ring. The ring is pumpkin. I found it in a Cracker Jack box. The Schwartz is in you, Lone Starr. It's in you!" OK, everyone, in conjunction with the release of Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith, focus your force so as to un-stick the rover. Han Solo: "It'll work.... It'll work"
and the fork ran away with the spoon
I consider the sci-fi channel one of the smallest fish in the cable company. I also consider it's viewers more unique than any other.
...but this is the first step...
That said, would the same thing happen if Food Network came up with the same kind of show? Would Desperate Housewives be as big of a hit at it was if episodes were pirated? Would it really get as big a share? How about West wing or Alias?
See, while I tout this as a victory against overzealous controls on copywrite, this can be discounted. At best, it's those with technical knowhow and net savvy using it to learn about good entertainment. At worst (as big networks will most definitely spin it) it's a bunch of fanboys and fangirls of sci-fi spending time on a small niche.
I think some time should be spent on more research of these phenomenons, but there's too much money in advertisements these days and it will take a long time to change. I don't think this is a network killer.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Profit is the goal and motive, control of the masses is just something they do in order to reach that goal.
But they act in a way that sacrifices short-term profit in order to reach that goal. So it leads some people to think that profit isn't what they really care about.
I think what they really want is power, and profit is one way of obtaining power.
You can't take the sky from me...
I mean, looking at your posts, it sure looks like you're taking a rather pure stance on behalf of the MPAA on this subject, and your other posts do tend to have a bias toward oligarchy, oligopoly, and pigopoly generally. So, which branch of the MPAA do you work for? Your name provides a clue.
Seriously, if you wanna astroturf, don't.
political_news.c: warning: comparison is always true due to limited range of data type
1. Stealing is wrong but so too is lying. They are both 'not good' and they are certainly not at all the same thing. That said, I'd like to assert that making copies is not stealing. It is called something else but it's not stealing.
2. This only makes an [entertainment source/type] mroe popular so it's actually good. If the people who control the rights to the material in question thought so, they probably wouldn't be spending money on lawyers to combat the activity. It's more likely that they see this activity as a way to make more money and are doing what they can to contain it and make a profit. The proliferation of unsanctioned copies of entertainment material lowers the value of commercial sponsorship and therefore threatens to decrease the REAL product they are selling, which is advertising space/time. Whether the problem is real or merely perceived as such, sponsors will be less willing to spend their advertising dollars on a medium that is devalued due to people using alternative venues.
The **AA groups are a bunch of liars making false claims that making and distributing unsanctioned copies of entertainment material is somehow hurting the people we admire the most -- the entertainers. It's not true. Tons of math and logic has been applied to show that the opposite is true. It is, however, contrary to the **AA's interests in that the components that offer value to those groups are being affected. (Again, advertising) (Another point to note, unlike trademark, copyright does not get 'diluted' by ingoring infringement.) I think the **AA's should be held accountable for their deceit in the form of a civil suit... I wonder how successful that would be but it can't be legal to go about spreading lies in order to support their aims. The truth [of devalued adjacent revenues] might not win the sympathy of the public, but it would certainly fly in court.
The public wants what it wants. The enterprise wants what it wants. The differences will be set, settled and re-settled over and over again.
Unless the torrent you're downloading contains commercials, including those from your local market, you are paying for fuck-all. You actually believe the $0.20 per month SCIFI gets from you entitles you to their entire lineup, commercial-free?
On my computer, I get Sci-Fi's entire lineup, commercial free, by pressing a "skip" button whenever a commercial starts and jumping immediately to the resumed show. I know that function's either hidden or nonexistant on commercial PVRs, but it's really only an incremental improvement on "mute" and "fast forward" anyway. Even permanently cutting out commercials on programs I want to archive is something that's always been possible for anyone with two VCRs and too much time on their hands.
So is what I'm doing unethical? Morally wrong but allowed via legal loophole? Illegal?
I hope not. If TV channel owners are expecting me to watch those commercials, they probably ought to have me sign something to that effect. On the other hand, if the Sci-Fi channel gets 20% of my viewing time but 0.4% of my cable bill, perhaps I'm not the one with whom they should be renegotiating a contract.
I don't understand why the tv channels don't give them selve Torrents out against payment or with adds. I would be happy to pay 2 $ per show... or watch some adds. If that would mean legal download! Whats keeping them, are they so mind dead?
I have avoided it, I still have images of Lorne Greene. I keep waiting for Hoss to hop out of a space ship.
"I go to a convenience store and use my Star Trek Replication Device to copy a can of Diet Coke, without taking away the existing Diet Coke. I like it so much that the next day, I replicate a case. I tell my friend that I like Diet Coke, and he replicates his own case. Now none of us buy Diet Coke, and they go bankrupt. Noone will bother inventing new soft drinks anymore, since there's no profit to be made."
The whole "this is profitable" argument relies that a chain of events leading up to more sales (or other money-generating events like ad impressions).
If you have Star Trek Replication Technology. You also have the Star Trek Socialist Techno-Eutopia that goes with it, in which there is no money, and no RIAA.
Q. E. D.
You can't take the sky from me...
I wonder how many people worldwide would watch an ad infused MPEG-4 mutlicasted version at 2Mb/s vs just download it?
Heck, if ANY major broadcaster wanted to reach just about every college campus in the world all they would have to do is set up on Internet2 and multicast the stream. Internet2 is multicast enabled and peers with all the other major research/university/college ineternet networks that are ALSO multicast enabled.
I really get sick of saying this, but it's true, even when you it's a favorable outcome for your side. So the show was pirated and became popular, that in no way means it became popular because it was pirated. Even without the piracy, it may have become just as popular, because it's a good show (I'm assuming here, since I haven't seen it). If it had done poorly, would the cause be that it was pirated? There is no more to say the show did well because of piracy anymore than to say it did well because Coke with Lime came out at the same time. Two things happened, but they may not be realted at all, even if you want to think they are.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
...and all the male fans of the male Starbuck are, of course, gay.
everyone says it's a good enough series that I should overlook things like the female Starbuck and the non-robotic Cylons.
Think of all you had to overlook in order to enjoy the originals; this is much easier.
You can't take the sky from me...
That Neilson TV thingy sounds inconvenient. For radio, they just send you a little diary. They sent me one for each member of my family. Naturally, I filled them all out with my NPR shows and sent them back after the requested time period.
They never publish the numbers for NPR. I wish they would, I'll bet NPR has some of the most popular shows on radio.
If you must moderate, please moderate as irrelevent, not something bad, because I'm sure someone will find this interest
The poster isn't having any trouble making this distinction; and he understands my point fine - that "one of the finest hours of drama ever on television" isn't such an extreme claim to make.
Every time somebody says "Bit Torrent is just like a VCR" or "it's not stealing" or "I'm not doing anything wrong when I download," you make it just that much harder for Apple or anybody else to open such a store.
Every time you say something like that, you push the date of our opening back by a month.
If you won't buy a moral argument, will you at least buy that one?
Quick! Everybody clap your hands! It'll make the RIAA stop being callous assholes!
You can't take the sky from me...
even under the scenario outlined. A few people download the show and through word of mouth, the show gets additional publicity and becomes more profitable in the intended distribution model. This works well as long as the initial pirating audience is kept to a relatively trivial volume, so that there is a sufficiently great number of people who will see it in the primary venue.
By scaring as many people away from this secondary market as possible, they make this possible. The decision to spread fear of the secondary distribution model makes sense as a means to limit loss without destroying the benefits because they can be reasonably sure that a) many young computer users will assume that THEY can't ve caught and will continue to pirate, and b) there will always be some new network that will allow them to keep the fiction alive that they are making a concerted effort to catch all the pirates, but that they are just one step behind. Their ideal situation would be a secondary market that was sufficiently obscure that 98% of the potential audience would decide that it wasn't worth the effort, and then they could let the other 2% be. Unfortunately the tools keep getting easier to use, so that obscurity no longer works as a deterrent to particpation.
They neither need or want to stop everybody. They merely need to limit the size of the "seed" audience. That's why they only go after a few hundred people at a time, rather than the tens of thousands of names they have. Its about creating enough fear to limit without destroying the P2P marketing phenomenon.
I think they DID find a cure. Didn't Picard win the Sexiest Man Alive contest in People Magazine one year? The "cure" for male pattern baldness in the 23rd Century is apparently what it has always been: power, fame, or fortune.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
We do not need content providers and advertisers inserting ads into our programs!!!!! We want to see the content, period. As demonstrated by other comments, users are willing to pay for content, and ARE paying for content when subscribed to a cable/sat provider. We just need to be able to pay directly for programs, and then receive uncut, unmodified, unadded extras, pure content. Period.
Your fees alone do not cover the cost of the shows, the shows make money through advertisements. If they can't show you ads, either you'll have to pay more for cable or the show will be cancelled.
But I wanted to comment on something else. This is the perfect distribution method for sci-fi type shows. Most sci-fi shows focus so much on series-long plotlines, super character development, and re-emerging incidences, that if you haven't watched EVERY episode, you quite honestly don't have any clue what's going on. I have thoroughly enjoyed BSG, but that's only because I've seen all the episodes. It will lose the semi-casual viewers if it continues on this path.
I suggest it look to a very successful show, such as 24, on how to keep viewers. 24, although its events occur all in one day, does an excellent job of retaining viewers that tune in in the middle of the season because it only has 1 or 2 plotlines that run the entire course of the season. 1 or 2 plotlines that span 2-3 episodes, and a plotline or two that begins and ends within each episode.
The Scifi genre needs to either accept itself for what it is, a niche market, or make the small sacrifices necessary to make the genre appealling to more people.
P.S. I love the fact I haven't had to listen to one mention of photon torpedos, aft shields, wormholes, or the space-time continuum in BSG.
If they offered a non-drm format that can be played on my OS of choice, that's it.
Between the work, and the study, I have little time to watch TV... and most of my favorite shows are aired when I can't watch them. Today I'm a subscriber of a TV cable service, but when I miss an episode from Justice League Unlimited, for example, my only choices are wait for the reprises next season, or download it from emule... Guess what's my choice?
Also, I don't really watch all channels that cable TV has to offer. For example, I don't like sports... but I can't remove ESPN from my subscription to pay less.
If someone offered me something like an ITMS for series and shows, where I'm able to buy, or subscribe, to shows individualy I would sign in no time! And I guess it would cheaper than cable TV too, since it's pay per view.
(PS. There is no PVRs avaliable here at Brasil that I know of...)
---- You know how some doctors have the Messiah complex - they need to save the world? You've got the "Rubik's" complex
I'll bet NPR has some of the most popular shows on radio
But NPR will ways be playing second fiddle because it doesn't carry this:
http://www.coasttocoastam.com/
I can't help but wonder if TV over the internet did take off, if the entire medium would dramatically change. Think about this - right now we have shows that are 30 mins and 60 mins, with advertising spliced into that amount of time (so the actual amount of content is around ~22 mins and ~42 mins respectively). Regardless, almost all shows are 30 and 60 minutes, due to the nature of the beast - people have to know *exactly* when to tune in, as the show will not be shown again afterwards for some amount of time. Plus, shows cannot be too long otherwise they bump out the other shows - there is a limited amount of time in which shows can be broadcast throughout the day, limiting the length of TV shows. However, if we were to switch to a content-on-demand style delivery system (bittorrent), and got the episodes through some "centralized" network (essentially a big site w/ a buncha trackers I guess), things would be quite different. There would be no need for shows to be 30 or 60 minutes, as one person watching one show wouldn't bump another person out from being able to watch their show (aka, if your show was 4 hours long, that's fine, because you can be watching your show for those 4 hours while someone else watches something completely different for their 4 hours). Furthermore, shows could actually be five minutes long. I mean, why not? I'm not really interested in watching five minute TV shows, but I bet it'd happen. There'd be a LOT more content too, especially if it was based on subscriptions of some sort. Producers could make a whole wide variety of shows, and then they could be paid pro-rated depending on how many people are actually watching their shows. Individual producers could make their TV content, and put it up on such a "network," and if it was good enough to catch on they'd have a free and fair chance to actually build up a viewer base. It'd be similar to how the internet changed the publishing of books, etc. It helped reduce the barriers to entry into the market for the small guys. Anyways, there are my two cents.
...the incredibly stupid way they do then of course people will Bit Torrent just the stuff they need. If I like a TV series, say Deadwood, I also have to pay for The Sopranos, Sex and the City, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Ali G, Carnivale, Six Feet Under and a whole lot of other stuff. This is like going to the supermarket to buy some cheese and finding I have to buy everything else the supermarket sells too. It's even more stupid. These people are selling information which is easier to slice and dice than white bread. When the people making this stuff are using a technology so incredibly backwards to peddle their technology it's hardly surprising the market is going to find new channels to distribute stuff. In fact fans are actually willing to pay a fair price for the product in isolation judging from DVD sales.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
If TV producers had brains, what they'd do is supply free downloads of their own, with ads, requiring only that you fill out a survey. If they were to do that, they could do really spiffy ad-targetting that is impossible with network TV.
The thing about good ad targetting is that people are more likely to watch the ad and more likely to buy the advertised product. In other words, if the people making these shows stopped fighting the internet and started using the internet, they could actually make more money on ads.
But they're too wrapped up in old models that are hard to maintain in modern times. But someone will do it, make a mint, and put them out of business.
The cake is a pie
I'm kind of surprised that they don't do scrolling ticker type ads in the blacked out areas of letterboxed broadcasts. Pleasantly surprised, it's probably just a matter of time.
The topic seems completely off to me , am I missing something?
Talk about making up bullshit.
The GPL exists so as to subvert copyright. By creating the GPL, RMS intended to turn copyright against itself. The GPL itself is an act of disrespect to copyright.
The only hypocrisy is in your mind.
I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
... what is happening in the world of broadcast EVER. I mean this man is ENTIRELY too sober, get him a beer or two, stat. But really, great work.
Bottom line is... Limiting DVD releases geographically is almost as dumb as trying not to exploit the exposure of an internet release, and getting the big bucks out of the premiere. Keeping people all over the world on hold might not work as well as feeding them what they want at an acceptable cost. I definitely would pay for it.
Downloading a TV Show is the essence of TV OnDemand.
It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.
It's not about money, it's about power. The pirates, illegal distributors and downloaders are all part of the Rebel media Alliance. They must be destroyed so that we can bring ORDER to the Galaxy.
-------- In Soviet Russia, "Soviet Russia" sigs hate Slashdot.
You guys are so immature it's sickening. Sorry that someone dares to make a comment that you see has threatening your favorite TV show... It's not like I said it sucks, I just said that that was bad news reporting to say it's the best show ever. I'm getting so sick of this web site. Every 3 news items are really interesting, and have great posts/comments, but it's not worth it to have to deal with fanbois left and right... I wish there was a site like slashdot for IMPORTANT news for nerds.
So, if I rob a bank, but then tell everyone I know how great the interest rate on savings accounts they had, and that results in enough people opening an account that if offsets the ammount I got away with making a net profit for the bank, then everyone should be happy and I should have no consequences. Now if I can just find my skimask...
There was an interview with the article's author on the media report last week. You can listen to the audio or read the transcript here
This, however, doesn't give one the right to take the app and 'remix' it into an ad-free version...
It's my computer. Assuming I haven't agreed to a binding contract not to do so, I can edit any file on it in whatever manner I choose. If I edit out the bit of code that displays the ad, I am totally within my rights.
Before you tell me that I needed to agree to an EULA to use the app, consider that I can edit the file before executing it. I can remove the EULA and any advertisement code and still be 100% within my rights.
This is not to say that I do this. If I want software, I pay for it. However, I take offense at your declaration that I do not have the right to edit files on my own computer if I choose to do so.
An artist has the right to distribute works how they please. What if a rip put up on bittorent was too dark, too contrasty, or has the wrong gamma? The cinematographer ALWAYS works with the telecine artist, the guy who tranfers from film to video, so he knows when shown on television it can look as good as it can. Regardless if you paid for it, you are violating the artists intent. This would be no different than copying a photo negative, and making prints yourself to show your friends. If you're a bad printer, the photographs will look like crap.
... I assure you it won't happen again.
Listen, like it or not, shit's gonna change. As computers and technology become more integrated with humans in general, the line blurs between memory and experience.
When you have organizations like the RIAA suing the Girl Scouts (for Christ's sake!) over singing 'Happy Birthday' - you know the balance is out of whack and things need to be changed.
Is whistling 'Happy Birthday' in public a crime too? Isn't that considered a public performance of a copyrighted song?
So it goes for television. For instance, is relaying the details of an episode to a friend illegal? One step further then..
Would it be illegal if I emailed that description?
Would it be illegal if I were to draw pictures of the episode, frame by frame from memory? What if my memory was damn near perfect and I'm a good artist?
Would it be illegal if my memory was enhanced somehow, say merged with a computer-like memory and I sent the 'thought' of the episode through the Internet? Still illegal?
I could give you numerous examples of the lunacy the current system - past, present and future. As Billy Joel once sang, "We didn't start the fire." No, we didn't - the mega-corps did - or at least gave us the tools and now somehow try and tell us how to use them.
There are other models in advertising (as the above article suggests) and distribution that simply work if the industry wasn't so megalomaniac about it's control. I just wish our reps in Congress understood this better. After all, don't we have enough people in jail already?
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
The makers of Battlestar Galactica are aware that free content helps boost viewing figures. While I doubt that they'd condone P2P, they actually made the first episode available for free download from their official site/a.
They've taken it down now, unfortunately, I think because it was re-run recently. But there's still lots of other stuff, including deleted scenes and episode commentaries (as mp3 podcasts) --- basically, all the stuff that would normally (and undoubtedly will) be included on the DVD release.
I for one would gladly pay a montly subscription fee for a service where I could legally download TV shows. Video on demand is worth paying for.
post hoc ergo propter hoc
Naturally, I filled them all out with my NPR shows and sent them back after the requested time
Naturally, this is why Neilson's radio radio ratings are taken as a guide to what people want to listen to, not what they actually do.
The GPL only exists with the support of copyright. If not for copyright, everything would effectively be BSD (if much would truly be written at all, seeng as how there'd be zero incentive.)
It uses its rules to maintain the freedom of something that would not normally be free, and to protect the creators of GPL'd software.
It is not a disrespect of it. It is in fact a fine, effective use of copyright.
However, people distributing works that they have no permission to, now that -is- a disrespect of copyright.
Right, and the counter argument from the MPAA is The MPAA says it wants to encourage legitimate download sites instead. Several TV companies are experimenting with legal peer-to-peer based downloads, including the BBC. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4545519.stm Come on, theyre now making it out that they are the good guys who are trying to provide a service. Wake up! If these legal sites were available, the tv sites would not exist.
Quit copying and start paying the authors.
Yes, it may be a good deal for an unknown band or show to offer sneak previews or provide givaways in order to generate excitement about their product. That is THEIR decision to make, not yours.
In the case of established names, who account for the vast majority of piracy, the opposite holds true. Releasing large amouts of work for free gets you nothing.
Quit pirating and pay for your goodies. And please quit justifying your petty theft. In particular, any line that is tantamount to "I don't like the people I am stealing from, so it is OK" is utterly juvenile.
Bittorrent is still here. So are TV rip groups who make high-quality TV rips by using HDTV digital satellites. All that was lost was a few sites that index said torrents. You can still get all of your favorite TV shows via BitTorrent from global search and index sites like Torrent Spy.
I've always thought that it would be less of a problem in the eyes of tv execs and advertisers if the commercials were included in copies available on the internet, although people making profits from dvd sales of shows probably wouldn't tend to agree.
GPL violators are charging for something they got for free. Torrent pirates give for free something they paid for (probably). It's making money off someone else's trouble vs not paying someone for their trouble. Not quite the same.
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
I claim my office has a cool MS program.
You copy it from your office.
(No way, my office is legit - use an extra license from your office.)
You have your kids use it for school.
Your school is pressured to license it from MS.
Offices everywhere buy MS product because "That's what everyone knows."
Or not.
Score: -2, clueless troll proving he's an idiot
The SciFi channel isn't broadcast TV, its a Cable channel, only available to those who pay for a cable or satelite subscription.
(Although it might be on free to air TV in other couyntries, like stargate and Farscape.
Some people have been complaining that 10pm (9 central) Friday is an inconvenient time, but the majority of people don't have work or school on saturdays, so theres no reason not to stay up, and anyway the most popular programs on network TV are on on other nights at 10 (9 cwntral) eg CSI Miami and Law&Order...
THANK YOU!
Anyone who uses P2P software, including BitTorrent almost always has to have an argument with someone based on this subject.
Since before even Napster, I was downloading music. My CD collection has since grown into the low hundreds. Before this "revolution"? None. At all. I hate having to pay $12+ for a CD, and I CERTAINLY wasn't going to do it without hearing the music first. When I download TV torrents, I usually even <i>watch the commercials</i> if they're there. Why? Believe it or not, I don't find them that annoying. So what do they have to lose? They're getting viewers and still showing ads.
Every time I see an article like this, it brings a sparkle to my eye, because A. it means not everyone in the world is a cheap bastard, and B. it strengthens my argument.
If people as a whole were legally allowed to share copyrighted works without fear of legal action, people would be not only much much happier but the quality of our arts will improve - if the RIAA and the MPAA weren't shoving whatever they can down our throats, the good artists could come to light. But hey, That's Capitalism!(TM)
The reality is that the shows that get fansubed are ones that fansubbers like to watch and not the general "viewing public". Most "fans" just download stuff for the sake of downloading something due to free time and unused bandwidth so just having a fansub and just having X people download doesn't indicate very much about a show which tells Japanese producers almost nothing about their shows. What does end up happening all too often is that movers in the industry will not care how many will download a show but are far more interested in board dicussions and the like. This is a far better indicator of the fan reaction to the show than the silent no-names that generate bandwidth.
This effect is a gold mine for those who are savy in the Anime industry. They get a ton of marketing response with much lower overhead and without the whole without tainting the response by announcing the companies interest. Watching Internet chatter on the show (not the downloads) gives you far better information than a billion of those "viewer cards" they stick in the Region 2 DVDs and the magazines. You can tell what the hits and duds are for any given season just by the the amounts of discussion on most boards where there are already forces behind the scenes taking careful notes.
What about the reverse situation? W
hat if the new show is crap( more likely with the sci-fi channel ), someone downloads it, and tells a friend who is thinking of paying for the sci-fi channel not to bother?
I'm a fan of both TOS and the "remake" aka TNS of Battlestar Galactica, but it always bothers me to hear statements like "the series is so good...Battlestar Galactica has been the most popular program ever to air on the SciFi Channel"
= 10065&page=1&pp=25 and compare to top Nielsen rated shows at http://tv.yahoo.com/nielsen/.
. html).
In the grand scheme of things, the ratings that Battlestar Galactica aren't that great and being the most "popular" program to air on SciFi doesn't mean much either.
Take a look at the ratings for BSG at http://forums.colonialfleets.com/showthread.php?t
The FINALE for BSG (which was very good) got 2.8 million viewers. Yet, Enterprise averaged 2.7 million viewers and has been cancelled (see http://tv.yahoo.com/news/eo/20050513/111604476002
If a network show got ratings in the 2.x range like BSG is getting, it'd be VERY quickly cancelled.
1). Too much money is involved in advertising and programs...dumping broadcast and going internet will increase ad revenue, not decrease it. The sooner media companies take advantage of the internet, the more money they will have in the future.
2). There will always be a readily available audience for TV...except when a show comes on they don't like
3). People are "lazy" when it comes to viewing, it's easier to flip through channels and see right away what's on than start a download, wait, watch, decide it sucks and try to find something else...Let's say you start watching a TV show. You kind of like it. Then, halfway through, Paris Hilton shows up, and you gouge your eyeballs out. (For the sake of argument, lets say this is an alternate universe where another set of eyes grows back immediately.) You are now faced with a problem: everything else that is on television is HALFWAY OVER. What can you do? You can either A.) Continue to watch Paris Hilton while gouging out your eyeballs continuously, B.) change the channel to a different show and be confused for 15 minutes, ruining the ending of the show if you happen to catch a rerun, or C.) turn off the television and read for 15 minutes.
Most people choose A or B, which is fine with advertisers. They don't care if people are enjoying themselves, just as long as they watch the commercials. If they replace broadband with OnDemand-like services, however, they will end up with all three groups of people watching. Not to mention more specialized advertising.
1). How is downloading a torrent of a broadcast show different to asking your friend or relative to record a TV show for you while you are at work?
2). And how is that different to setting up your own VCR to time-record the show while you are out - and skipping the ads? Is the difference that the VCR is not mine or my family's/friend's?
3). Lets take it one step further. What if the downloader sites all had an informal/formal/eula/whatever agreement that if anyone asks, we are all co-owners of each others VCRs/TIVOs, etc? How is that different to taping it myself?
anime fans. They can be divided into two groups: those that legimately purchase, rent, or borrow their anime, and those who pirate. There is almost no middle ground from my point-of-view. Strangely enough, many of the pirates have plenty of money. Quit trying to justifying your petty theft.
You could argue that but you would be wrong. What helped put the content providers off for several years was their closed-minded arrogance and their insistence on believing that lawsuits would save their obsolete business model. They only agreed to start licensing their material after they saw that lawsuit after lawsuit after lawsuit would not stop people from downloading music.
Being hot isn't everything after all.
"sweet dreams are made of this..."
Download does increase popularity of many things that would or would not be popular without it. I downloaded sin city, I also saw it in theaters twice and will probably again... (omg mpaa stay back)
Battlestar galactica especially I dont think would of gotten the younger generation without the word of mouth generated by pirace..
I heard people talk about bsg, but never cared much to follow up on it. But once someone forced me to watch the 1st episode, I was hooked!
;)
Just the other day, I was talking about dark scifi, how star trek is too perfect. BSG is what I'm talking about. It's got me sold and has me wanting to watch the rest of the series on scifi. huh, never watched anything on scifi before
Actually, I ran into this problem. My business model was going to be the only way for humans to reproduce, and I was going to have a massive profit margin! But instead it turns out that here in reality, now, hardly anyone needs external help to reproduce! Since my business model clashes with reality, clearly, reality must be modified so that I can make a profit.
What's that? That's ludicrous? Oh, I see now. Really what you are afraid of is *change*.
Excellent!
And to think, about 20+ years ago, Metallica credited their rise to success mainly in part to the bootleggers who copied their shows and albums, and distributed them. Then, come the Napster era, Metallica turned right around on the very same thing that brought them to fame to begin with. I wonder how long it's going to take before the exact same thing happens in this case?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
The radio is free to listen to, because it uses's advertisting to generate income The internet, connected through an isp for most, requires a subscription to generat income, there are no adds delivered by the isp to the subscriber. The Tv, requires a subscription to watch channels, and delivers adds to the user, to generate income. So in order to watch TV, you have to view adds, and pay a subscription. ??? But I would also like to add, I really don't think piracy helped battlestar galactica as the article mentions. As if I were to watch all the pirated versions, I wouldn't re-watch them on the tv... And even if I did go tell people how awesome the show is, it's not like they are going to go watch it because I told them too. Only a select few will go do as I recommend.
Black Sky
2D Elite Inspired Game
I think broadcasting is fairly efficient. BT is a waste of duplicated bandwidth. It's the fact that we dont control the broadcasting that makes BT even an option.
*sigh* bring back my @home/attbi news servers!
my associative arrays can kick your hash - TCL
I still don't get why people like Battlestar Galactica. I found it to be incredibly boring. I tried giving it a chance and watched 3 or 4 episodes. 3 or 4 hours of my life wasted. It was so boring I could hardly stand it. I thought maybe if I watched a few and got to know the characters and story it would be good. But I couldn't find a story and the characters are about as un-memorable as possible. I don't get it...
Now Star Trek Enterprise and Andromeda were good shows...
The thing you are overlooking is to make this analogy correct, the Star Trek Replication Device needs to 1) use energy/cost something to replicate, and 2) just make the diet coke without the packaging.
As much as people don't like to admit it, People like to promote what they are consuming. Especially and sometimes only when it's good. People like to know what the contents are. People like to know they aren't breaking the law. People don't like waiting for a download/replication.
It's all about economics of scale. The movie companies can afford to give you a better product for your money because they are mass producing it. You can have an inferior product for cheaper, but if it's a good product, it will encourage more purchases.
Copying of movies is encouraging innovation.
As for your analogy, EVEN if it were correct and replication did not cost anything, and was instant (for time is money) and you got the packaging, what's wrong with the market dying? People will still invent new soft drinks but for the fun of it rather than for profit. You're practically telling me that open source doesn't work, and if it did, people would stop selling software.
From TFA: What if, instead of carrying the broadcaster's station ID, the bug contained an advertiser's payload?
Oh, oh, I've got an idea! What if, instead of carrying the advertiser's logo in the corner, the program contained words like, "Enjoy Coke!" These would be displayed in a single frame randomly throughout the program. The viewers won't be consciously aware of it, but it will garner their attention nonetheless. I'll call this form of advertisment "Subliminal Messaging."
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
I couldn't always be at home on Wednesday nights to watch every episode of LOST. So with bit torrent out there I downloaded the episodes that I missed and continued making the effort to catch the broadcast version when it came out on TV.
After the MPAA started going after the bittorrent TV show downloaders I stopped downloading the shows that I missed. Since I missed some shows, I didn't want to watch the next episode since I missed the prior show. It's like ripping a chapter or two out of a novel. It's just not going to be as good, you have no idea of what you missed or if it is important.
Since it's been so long since I've seen LOST I have stopped caring & haven't missed it a bit. I do more things with my time. So thanks MPAA, by stopping me from watching TV you have improved my social life! I would say that I have a girlfriend now but nobody here would believe me.
We are going to see advertising embedded into the programmig. This will go beyond product placement and will include scrolling ads on various parts of the screen. Eventually, so much screen space will be taken up by advertising that it will be hard to see the program. They will keep adding more advertsing and make it more and more blatant as long as people are still willing to watch it. You only have to watch survivor or a soap to see how blatant product placement can be. A question for you all - my wife is watching a reality tv show here in Oz called 'my restaurant rules'. Now, I claim that the votes are rigged and un-audited? She, of course, claims them to be above reproach. I believe that they are rigged to get more advertising viewers and more sms voting (ie profit). Comments?
Kinda like when I call "first post" when I clearly didn't.
Is it sarcasm? Is it irony? Is it reverse psychology?
Yeah, i would have gone more for (0, offtopic) than (0, flamebait). After all, the purpose of this article was to whine about the MPAA's stance on piracy. Whining about lack of objectivity in the media is for threads related to government announcements only ;)
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
yeah, bloody channel 10, just before BSG (which is usually 10:30 Wed) said 'you can see this week's at 11 pm Saturday now'
We will now show a REPEAT of a talk/variety show earlier in the week. (just because some nancy boy host got drunk at some 3rd rate awards show I think, or something)
So much for the viewing habits. Saturday, couldn't get to it - so what to do now? Download it? Chance that it will be rerun is probably 0 or close enough to it.
Not Free SF Reader
I have an extensive DVD libary that proves that he's a cretin. Next.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Battlestar Galactica? Never heard about the fracking thing.
How is this news? Music/CDs sold much better in the days of a real Napster. Back when people would download music and then go out and buy the content they actually found worth there money. I used to buy 75-100 CDs per year when there was a napster, now I buy zero cds, and maybe purchase 5-7 songs off itunes a year. I know I have downloaded TV shows I did not have time for in my schedule and now the shows I like make it into my DVR. I have downloaded some movies I thought I might like, and the ones I do like I have purchased since they deserve a home in my 400 DVD changer, and I have recommended to friends who have also purchased them after watching them over at my house. http://fsbomortgages.info/ Fsbo Mortgages
This reply is probably too late, but attempting to justify bit torrents by saying that they helped viewership is very short-sighted.
Use of bit torrents is an early-adopter practice right now. It is primarily in use by opinion leaders, and so these people have a lot of influence. This mechanism won't exist when more and more people adopt Bit Torrent as a means to get their software.
Moo
Leeching torrents or getting stuff from donkey is a hassle and yes if Buffy, Angel or Firefly would have been available to me on the QuickTime Movie Store the same week they aired in the US I would have bought them there and wouldn't have wasted precious hours on IRC.
BTW, now I am sure you work in Apples marketing division.
Seventeen minutes after I supplied the link to it over here.
Hmmmmmmmmmm. Synchronicity?
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
The problem is desire.
Fans desire to see the show as soon as humanly possible. Where the production company screwed up, they released it in the UK first. Myself personally, I saw the entire first season thanks to torrents before it ever aired in the US.
No offense to the people overseas, but Battlestar Galactica is an AMERICAN creation. (not to be politcal here...but it's blasphemy to release "our" shows over there for you guys first, imho).
Anyway, back to the point. The problem isn't piracy. People are going to share television shows and movies regardless. If not thru IRC, thru Gnutella, if not thru Gnutella, thru Kazaa, if not thru Kazaa, thru BitTorrents, if not thru BitTorrents, they'll find another way. The MPAA is a victim of its own success. By pissing off and alienating every single person out there, it does nothing but fuel people's resolve.
Sure there are going to be people who are going to try to get something for nothing. That's true in any society. There are those of us who not only download things to be the "first" to see them, but we still pay our $8.50 at the box office to see it in the theatre. SW Ep2, I saw 2 weeks before release, did that stop me from going to see it in the theatre? No. In fact I saw it twice. (not because it was good, just because I was taking others to see it.)
What the MPAA doesn't understand, is that some "art" is art...some art is utter crap. If people like what they see, they WILL spend the cash to get the "real thing". Unless they're a broke college kid, and what does it matter if they see it for free on the internet, or see it for free on television 3 years later. The "but we have commercials for network showings"...does cut it, because nobody pays attention to those anyway. Darth Vader choking a red M&M doesn't make me want to buy more M&M's, (in fact it makes me want to choke a muppet.)
Truth be told, it makes not one iota's difference whether people watch things for free, or pay their money, the corporations still dump their profits into promotions, people still buy their products, most without the influence of advertisement. If things are of quality, that's where people spend their money. If a show is good, and someone downloads it, watches it sans commercials, it's not going to affect their spending habits.
This is turning into a rant, so I'll just leave it at that. (on a final note, F' the MPAA)
Who cares about the ozone layer?...thanks to CFC's I can write my name......IN CHEESE!!!
>>The only ones that really matter are the people in the sample set for ACNielsen watch it.
Not exactly. Have you forgotton about all those TiVOs out there collecting viewership information?
TiVO provides much more detailed information than ACNielsen could ever hope to collect and is therefore more valuable to researchers/program directors/studios/etc.
But still, even with all these options, a lot of guys who have male pattern baldness chose to go the natural route. Some do it because they can't afford any of the treatment options, some do it because they don't care about appearances, and some do it because they have enough self-confidence that they don't need to hide their baldness.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Seven was so much hotter.
Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted! Reason: You can type more than that for your comment.
When the mini-series came out, I didn't want to see anything about it. I'd heard, mostly from aint-it-cool-news that it sucked, that some of the actors hated it, etc. My wife watched it and liked it enough to TIVO the series. I joined her as I started to hear good things about the series and I've gotten to really enjoy it. By just automatically rejecting it because it is different, you're missing out on some good TV.
1. Don't think of it as corrupting the original. It is its own series, sharing a common idea. In fact, at times, it pays strong omage to the original, with nods to aspects of it from time to time.
2. Changing gender. Why not? Was Dick Benedict that special an actor? Watch A-Team if you need more of him. The character was what is important. Apollo is supposed to be the stick in the ass type and Starbuck the fun one. Making Starbuck female is minor as long as they kept the personality the same. In fact, as a woman, she is even more fun, because that is not how our society feels a woman should behave. Plus, it adds a new element to toss in some sexual tension between the two with them having such opposing personalities.
3. All the sex. Yes, they have a lot of sex in the show. One, such things do happen in the real world. Why pretent it won't. They are all in a small, contained environment, with limited numbers. Of course relationships will develop. Just look are our military now. Also, a lot of it is with just one character, Baltar, who is established as a womanizer. So, if they want to spend any time with him as a character, some of that should be a part of it. That is a part of what he is.
4. Cylons. We've gotten a lot of the man creates AI, AI turns on man stories. Dune, Matrix, etc etc etc. This is not an uncommon idea. However, that doesn't means it is a bad one. So far, they've tossed in a big new bit to the idea, religion. The cylons have a religion, and it doesn't follow the same beliefs as the humans. So now, you've got AI vs creators, plus two religions on conflict. Religions in conflict is also not original. However, it is one of our societies biggest issues, especially now. We have a long long history of wars and conflict based on religion. I think if the writers have a good payoff there, using both the AI and religion aspects, that we've got a really interesting motive here. Don't forget, we still do not really know why the Cylons attacked. I doubt religion was promgrammed into the originals so.....
I also went back and watched the mini-series. Yes, it is not as good as the TV series, but it is ok. I was wrong to avoid it because and what I'd heard. Now that I've judged the show on my own, I'm eager to watch more. I think there are some truly interesting ideas being presented, mostly religious, which, set in a SciFi world, makes it different. Heck, while it takes a lot of ideas from the original series, it also grabs a lot from things like Dune as well and I think it well on the way to becoming its own entity. It is rerunning now, I recommend checking it out if you haven't.
The advertisers see you as an untapped market.
lol! "Also good for nosebleeds!"
You can't take the sky from me...
What happens if the cable goes out? Of the local news station interrupts the program? This has happened to me several times and the networks don't rebroadcast. The only choice you have is to seek the recording from another source.
But there is no other source.
If you wanted to turn this around to say "Gee, the content producers should really offer Internet downloads," NOBODY would argue with you. But instead you're saying, "I forgot to set the VCR, so I'm just gonna fucking steal."
Have you no sense of right and wrong?
TIVO
Again, good questions.
In a meeting I attended a few months ago, Guido said that one of his regrets was including too much "functional language" stuff in Python initially. Things like map, fold, etc. This was in the context of future directions of Python. He was also unenthusiastic about the idea of introducing macros into Python. The overall impression I got was that, despite the claims of Lispers that everything is getting more Lisplike, his intention was to make Python less Lisplike over time. I was quite frustrated by that as were a few others in the audience, but most attendees thought that was a splendid idea. I got the sense that he places a higher priority on ease of use for the masses than on what Lispers consider power for the elite.
Still, despite frustrating warts, I DO find Python easier to remember after a month of working in some OTHER language than something like Perl, so Python has replaced Perl in my toolbox as my Swiss Army Knife for on-the-spot, one-off applications. For those, lots of clever abstractions aren't necessary.
As for Ruby...I prefer the syntax to Python's, but it has three strikes against it from my perspective. One, Matz's attitude toward internationalization is the Japanese equivalent of the ASCII-only mentality of many English speaking developers. He has stated that internationalization (the ability to work smoothly in any combination of languages) is a lower priority to him than enabling him to work with the LEGACY Japanese text data that he personally works with frequently. This is HIS language, optimized for HIS needs, and to the extent that it turns out to be useful to others, they are welcome to use it, too. For someone like me, who needs to make applications work smoothly in all major languages, his provincial approach makes Ruby completely unsuitable for serious, professional applications, so I don't want to put too much time into it.
Two, Ruby's performance is far worse than even Python, and Python is pretty bad.
Three, Ruby's user community is not appreciably bigger than Scheme's, though it's growing faster. That means fewer and less mature libraries, tools, reusable source, etc.
And as far as macros, Matz has already stated that Lisp macros are "too powerful" in his opinion and are intentionally absent in order to make Ruby better for "ordinary users". If you love Lisp, the lets-keep-it-simple-for-the-masses comments from both Guido and Matz are not encouraging.
As for placing Ruby on the "power continuum", I wouldn't try to quantify it, but my sense is that it is above Python, but below more interesting languages like CL, Scheme, Haskell, OCaml, etc. I can't be more specific, because Matz's provincial attitudes about internationalization make it useless for me. It's not much more popular than Scheme, though -- not yet popular enough to have the mature tools, libs, and programmers needed for most commercial work.
So, if you are willing to suffer the costs of using a non-mainstream language, why not go with a more interesting language?
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
How does setting a VCR show up on the Nielsen ratings? Does that mean all of our VCRs are collecting our viewing data and sending it back to Nielsen Media Research?
There are 10 kinds of people: ones who understand ternary, ones who don't, and ones who think this joke is about binary
How do they draw the conclusion that the show got good ratings because of piracy?
I started watching the show because I was over at someones house that Tivo'd it.
Maybe the high viewer-ship was because the show was good...
I doubt piracy helped Gigli at all...
... is availablility.
At least, IMHO. I frequently use gnutella, and I discount the claims of the RIAA, not just because they are taking the actions of a bullying conglomerate, but because they don't have what I want.
All the music I download is music not carried by major labels. Artists and remixes that I can't get in the stores, or imports that I'd have to pay four times the normal price for. I could see there being a legal qualm to be had with the last part there, but as I see it, the service that the record companies provide, how they earn their money, is in convenience and distribution. If they don't distribute what I want, I don't see what service I should be paying them for.
I do pay the artists, if I like them, by buying tickets to their shows if they're ever in town, which is how most recording artists make a living anyway. To the artists, the albums themselves are almost more like advertising for their live shows.
In any case, I think the significant thing to be noted from this article is that P2P technology was used here not to circumvent IP, but to get something not otherwise available (at least, not at the time). The article notes that most torrent users are in Australia, which I take as an indicator that Australian viewers enjoy a wide range of programs that their TV distributors are failing to provide to them.
This brings me to my vaguely innovative idea: judging the show's ratings by its torrents. The ACNielson (sp?) system has been laughable for quite some time, but nobody has instituted a better one, AFAIK. I propose that broadcast networks should pay more attention to P2P networks, not as a threat, but as a means to gauge the actual popularity of a show. Rather than rely on "Nielson households" to decide the programming agenda, watch how many people are interested enough to encode and seed a given show, then see how many people want to download it.
Certainly, such a system would be biased towards the tech-savvy, but any sampling system is necessarily biased somehow, and the representative samples would be much larger than the number of Nielson households. It has been shown that, where the shows are available on broadcast TV, at least some people still watch the shows they've downloaded when the shows hit the airwaves, so those torrent numbers do correlate to "real" viewers. This system has the added advantage of being much easier and cheaper to implement than sending Nielson boxes across the continent, as it primarily builds on the existing infrastructure of P2P networks.
A similar (though less interesting) idea is that, far from being upset about TiVo and related technologies, TV networks should try some opt-in system to find out what shows people think are worth recording. There definitely would be people who wouldn't want their viewing habits tracked, but some wouldn't mind.
To recap: I, and I believe many others like me, primarily use P2P to get content that I'm interested in that isn't available through the usual channels. TV networks should harness this new technology as a means of measuring the public's real level of interest in their programming.
P.S.:
[ mini-rant ]
For the love of all that is good and decent, don't seed "Fear Factor" or "Survivor", or "The Apprentice", or "The Biggest Loser" or any of that 'reality show' crap!
[
The author stresses how the whole assumption of television is that the viewers don't pay for the content, and how it's impossible to change.
He's missing all of the last 5 years of cable or so - with all the shows that HBO has released which have done very well on video/dvd.
Well, I do appreciate your answers. You've included information here that I haven't read about elsewhere, so it is much appreciated.
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That said, I find all of this depressing (yet not surprising) as well.
Re: Python - I give Guido a LOT of credit. There is finally a ubiquitous usable programming language out there that obviates the need for Perl. I have nothing against Perl or Larry Wall, I just find Perl totally unusable; which explains my original obsession with Python. But, as you note, Python isn't tending towards being more elegant over time; it's tending towards more readability/usability/mass appeal. FWIW, I don't think that's all bad. I understand his reluctance about a macro facility. It's not only difficult to use properly; it will probably be difficult to implement in an infixed syntax, no? Given that it's not on his personal wish-list, I understand his reluctance.
Re: i18n - I'm not surprised about Matz's attitude on this given the ethnocentrism for which the Japanese are infamous (heh heh - I'm in the US: "Pot meet kettle. Kettle meet pot."). However, I don't see how it would impact my own use of Ruby. Wouldn't the fact that a language like Ruby can handle Japanese automatically (via Unicode UTF-8 I assume though I have to admit to ignorance in this respect) mean that it could handle pretty much any other language easily?
Re: Ruby performance - FYI, my own benchmarks have shown Ruby to be around 20 - 50% slower than Python. I was willing to overlook performance issues for the time being as this won't be an issue for *most* of the things I do and I ass|u|me that it's being considered for improvement. Whether I'm right or wrong about that, I don't know.
Re: Suffering the costs - Well, if you were in my shoes and starting this little quest from scratch as it were and given what you know today, what would you do? The goal isn't just to find an interesting language and play with it. I would also like to be able, should any of my ideas pan out sufficiently, to be able to:
-Open source and/or commercialize parts of what I'm doing in a way that's completely useful to some set of future users without substantial concerns about
-presentability (no cheese allowed; I think you know what I mean)
-large runtime royalties (hello Franz and co!)
-extreme performance issues
-licensing issues with run-times or royalties
-portability (fairly important these days)
-etc.
-Program to a variety of target profiles (desktop, PDA, web) for starters; embedded is optional for me.
-Have available a sizeable set of APIs for common tasks. Writing yet another XML parser or web framework might be a fun learning exercise; but it's no way to get real work done.
So, anyway, I guess I'm just thinking this all through "out loud". I'm probably just hoping for too much, but if there's one thing I've learned the hard way it's "hope for little; receive little".
Cheers!
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
is not a legitimate excuse to steal. I cannot comment on dubbing, as I always use subtitles. They are much, much better, as Japanese really doesn't translate into English worth a dime, which is the core reason for silly translations. Reading something that is not-quite-right is much less disconcerting than hearing it, for some reason. Anyhow, you might learn some nihongo.
Well, I do appreciate your answers.
;-)
Well, then my gain in real karma offsets my loss in Slashdot karma.
Re: Ruby & Unicode -- a couple of years ago, Matz was routinely making anti-Unicode statements that made it clear how provincial and amateurish his internationalization ideas were. A lot of people were complaining, but he was shrugging it off with "it's my language, designed by me for my own work". I don't really want to get into the details because they would require writing more than I want to, but if you treat your Unicode encoding(s) as "just another encoding", your internationalization will almost always be retarded because your built-in text features can't assume enough about the nature of the text to do the right thing in any but the simplest cases. Beyond that, it's up to the app programmer to either employ more expertise than most non-specialists have or to decide (as is usually the case) that "we'll worry about 'international' later", resulting in an amateurish architecture.
Ruby may have gotten better in this respect due to pressure from others, but I walked away from it after hearing Matz's position(s) on these issues. If I have to deal with an amateurish platform, it will at least be a popular one that people will PAY me to deal with (like PHP).
Re: Ruby performance - My experience is similar to yours. They are *absolutely* and *always* working on performance, but performance is a very hard problem with dynamic languages and takes more resources than most small languages have available to them. Guido keeps wishing that someone would step forward and create a HotSpot-type JIT compiler for Python. He may have to wait for Microsoft and Python.Net (aka IronPython). I wouldn't hold my breath for Ruby, but Scheme has Big Loo, if you don't mind a language named Large Toilet.
Well, if you were in my shoes and starting this little quest from scratch as it were and given what you know today, what would you do?
Based on all you say, I AM in your shoes, or a reasonable facsimile thereof, and I've told you my conclusions.
Your list of requirements are all non-language issues, and I think they are very wise. I would add maturity of tools; availability of diverse, free, and well debugged libraries (similar to what you said); and popularity among programmers (for lots of reasons).
Unfortunately, this narrows things down to a VERY small set of languages, none of which will be unfamiliar to you. Among these, even Python is iffy. Python is great for smallish personal projects and for some not-too-busy Web apps, though, so I use it often.
Beyond that, the two languages I really want are mature versions of two currently embryonic languages: Paul Graham's Arc and Walter Bright's D (see digitalmars.com). The latter is much closer to a reality than the former, but both will take years (if ever) to mature. Arc is more interesting, but it's just party conversation, AFAICT.
D has a real chance, though. I find it almost as easy as Python (but it wouldn't be if I didn't know C), has dozens of great features, it can use existing C libraries as well as C can, a GCC front end is available making it very portable, its performance is faster than anything except C & asm (usually faster than C++), and it's free in every sense I care about (no cost for anything and open source where I want it to be). If you haven't already done so, check it out.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
Actually more appropriate would've been: "clueless teen proving he's a retard"