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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!
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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).
The problem with that argument is that it doesn't actually prove anything.
And the problem with your argument is that it's not analogous to the situation at hand.
I rob a convenience store
RIght there - your analogy is broken right from the very beginning, because robbing a convenience store is *IN NO WAY* similar to downloading something from the internet (regardless of how the MPAA/RIAA apologists try to spin it.)
The problem with your analogy is that software can be copied without affecting the source. Your analogy would be more like this:
"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 go out and buy a case. I tell my friend that I like Diet Coke, and he buys a case."
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?
If you did that, you'd be stealing. What's so hard to understand about this? Taking something you don't have permission to take, whether it's a real thing or a copy, is stealing. The Bible says thou shalt not steal. If you want to do this, fine, do it. But why do you continue to try to say that it's not wrong? Why do you do that?
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.
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
...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
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.
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
And how is this different to 1. Show gets low ratings 2. Show available on p2p 3. The low ratings due are to piracy. ?
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...
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 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...
What's wrong with it is that the people aren't offering you a chance to try before you buy. In order to try before you buy, you have to steal a copy from the owners. It's kind of sad that you don't see anything wrong with that.
There is wrong in that: The owners are wrong.
If you wanted to turn this around into an argument that says, "Hey, content providers should offer this as a service," that would be fine. I'd be right there with you. But using it to say "It's okay to take things" just isn't right.
It's ok to borrow things, as long as you do it without causing the owner to be unable to use it if he wants to use it, and you don't dammage or wear it out in the process.
I can't believe we're still having the old and tired "copying/theft" argument: Unauthorised use, yes, but you don't take it away from them, therefore it isn't theft. I never bought as much music as I did during the napster haydays, I was sampling music, buying the ones I liked. They called me a thief for it! Now I want them bankrupt... corrupt bastards.
You can't take the sky from me...
...and all the male fans of the male Starbuck are, of course, gay.
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."
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
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
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.
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.
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
For people who think that's wrong: It's not.
To steal something you have to intend to deprive the owner of it.
While this obviously means you can't accidently steal something (Which is true for a lot of crimes. You can't accidently trespass, either.), it also means it's not theft if you honestly were borrowing something with the intent to return it before the owner wanted it.
Of course, the problem is proving, in court, that you intended to return it. That really only works if there was no logical way for you to have kept it. Maybe if you walked off down the street with someone's pet elephant or something, but normally that doesn't work.
And you have to demonstrate you intended to return it before they would have wanted it back, which basically means 'before they noticed it missing'. Note 'intended'...you don't have to really get it back, just intend to. If you get hit by a car while returning it, you're covered.
This is also why walking up and destroying something of someone else's is called 'theft'. You're intending to deprive them of their property, even though you, yourself, are not intending to keep it.
However, as copyright infringement is not theft, there is no exception with 'I intended to delete it' or whatever the analogy would be.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Because taking OSS and using it in a closed application is done to make money. The example of copying a can of Coke isn't being done to make money. The guy isn't going to replicate the can a billion times and start his own Coke dealership. That would destroy Coke. Also the Coke can isn't "free" to begin with
this analogy is wrong. PearPC does not see any negative effects when cherry OS uses their source code. They do not lose any money, because pearPC isn't selling their source code. The original source code is still there, so people can easily use it for any similar project.
Then again, when companies sell a 2 Liter at the same price as a 20oz I have to wonder at the actual cost going into making these soda
it's all about convenience.
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.
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.
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!!!
Seven was so much hotter.