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."

Comments

I remember it somewhat different....

[espergreen]

"Hey! There is this really good show that just came out! You should download it off bittorrent too!"

Re:I remember it somewhat different....

[StarKruzr]

"a female Starbuck is heresy"

But she's hot, and therefore all is forgiven.

Re:I remember it somewhat different....

[Provocateur]

You're telling me...I remember the first time I saw Captain Picard's bald head, I thought, goddammit they haven't found a cure! I'm doomed!

Great Show

[nra1871]

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.

Re:Great Show

[bill_mcgonigle]

In the Slashdot world it works like...
1. Get high Nelson ratings.
2. Charge more for commercials.
3. Profit!

In the Slashdot world there are plenty of Nelson ratings. Mostly it's geeks sitting on couches, pointing at dumb shows on TV and taunting, "Ha-Ha!". I recently Nelsoned Enterprise, for one.

Unfortunately the rest of world isn't so clever and they have to go by Nielsen ratings.

Re:Great Show

[nra1871]

I really don't see how it is different. For years (coworkers for exampe) com in and say 'hey did you see the simpsons last night?' 'no I had to go out with the inlaws/friend/brother/dog' 'well i taped it, I'll bring it in tomorrow'. This is nothing new, just a different medium.

Re:Great Show

[SatanMat]

Control, control, you must learn control...

1) -- You did not watch the ads. in so doing you have taken revenue away from me, my family and our porche...

2) you did not watch the show in the manner which I THE LORD MPAA have deemed the only one worthy

3) You are thinking... STOP IT!! I will tell you how to think and what to watch...

now go... and download no more.

Re:Great Show

[j_w_d]

You need to read the article and think through the implications of facts it discusses. The most pertinent is that viewership evidently increased, possibly by orders of magnitude because of the "piracy." Now think about this, most people who subscribe to cable don't just subscribe to one channel. So, they exercise a choice about what they are going to watch. Therefore, from the SciFi channel's management's view point, "piracy" had an effect upon the decisions of paying viewers. In effect, "piracy" increased their revenue stream, possibly by orders of magnitude. Where is the loss that the use of "theft" implies?

This same effect has been shown in the case of music CDs as well. The real issue of the RIAA is not "piracy," since it is easily shown that there IS NO FINANCIAL LOSS to any of their members. The issue lies in the fact that the RIAA represents middle-men, not artists. The potential ability of the artists - who are in effect the RIAA's cash cows - to go independent and cut out the middlemen entirely by using the internet as the artist's primary distribution channel scares the "pigs" out of the RIAA's membership.

Also, the use of the terms "piracy" and "stealing" and "theft" are confusing and erroneous language. Nothing has been stolen. What has happened can best be described - if you insist trying to think in terms of a crime - as "dilution" of the nominal value of the "property." On a per-copy basis, the "legitimate owner" has to sell more copies, less expensively to clear the same amount they would if market forces permitted them to continue to peddle legal copies at the inflated prices they would prefer. The very fact that "piracy" occurs indicates that their product is both over-priced and demonstrably less available than it should be for the best sales. The RIAA could easily end their own priacy worries by reducing prices and increasing production.

If the article's author is correct, BBC may well have quietly encouraged the "piracy" of the new Doctor Who to take advantage of the same effects that SciFi observed. Nearly 17% of the population of Great Britain tuned in to the first official broadcast of the new show. If that number was weighted to reflect that actual probable segment of the British population from which viewers are likely drawn for a show such as Doctor Who, that fraction has to be nearly 100% of the probable potential viewers, maybe even more than that. They can't have anticipated anywhere near that kind initial response to a new show, not even a new Doctor Who. Once more, you have ask where is the loss that the use of words like "stealing" and "theft" implies?

Lastly, the article's author argues that the behaviour we observe is nothing more than what generations of broadcast radio and TV have lead the public to expect and how to behave. Payment is made indicrectly through the purcahse of products that have been advertised on the show, or over the radio between songs. This behaviour has been modified by the enabling technologies of computers and the internet. Never the less, it is what the industry has lead their consumers to expect.

Re:Great Show

[Scrameustache]

There is a major difference between going for a piss during an advert break, and actively removing every single advert.

You still have a full bladder in the later scenario.

Other than that... Fuck 'em, I don't want to see their ads for tampons: I'll never buy tampons in my LIFE, if I ever do, it will be a brand specified by the woman making me run errands, not a brand selected based on advertising.

I use the mute button or channel-surf when ads come on, I'm not watching ads on TV, I don't see ads on the net, I don't read the ads in the magazines, I don't listen to them on the radio, I don't owe anything to the advertisers.

They try to brainwash me into giving them money, I resist by ignoring them, changing channel, muting, adlocking, turning the page, or skipping to thwe end of the commercial break. It isn't wrong of me to do this, like it isn't wrong of them to spend money to get me to know their product exists.

What if...

[Richie1984]

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

Re:What if...

[Em Ellel]

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

What?! And encourage producers to make higher quality programming that people actually WANT to watch!?!? We just can't have that!

This is totally true

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Sounds like the Photoshop Effect

[Gribflex]

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.

Re:Exactly

[FooBarWidget]

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."

GPL violations killed the free software cause?

[God! Awful 2]

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.

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 /.ers... instead of persecuting GPL violators, you should be thanking them.

Now go ahead readers & nitpick my analogy. But you know it to be true in essence.

-a

Re:GPL violations killed the free software cause?

[foreverdisillusioned]

I don't want to come off sounding like your typical anti-corporate zealot, but there's a big big BIG difference between a 12 year old girl violating copyright law and a multimillion dollar company violating copyright law.

Consumers are NOT an organized whole. They are not out to destroy anything. As long as the TV/Music industry chooses to evolve, they will never be put out of business. OTOH, if a company like Microsoft could violate the GPL, they could virtually destroy Linux for all but the most dedicated enthusiast (use their war chest to build a ton of awesome improvements, convert all of the commercial users and a significant portion of the home users, then slowly break compatibility.)

Your analogy fails because commercial enterprise is not the same as personal use. Downloading a TV show might not be "right", but it's not in the same league as major GPL violation. One is for profit; the other is not. Corporations do not (or rather should not) have the same rights that individuals do, and you just can't compare the calculated tactics of a software giant with a bunch of preteen p2p users who just wanna catch last night's Inuyasha.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

How is it not like setting the VCR?

[...] 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.

You haven't actually made an argument yet.

Every time you say something like that, you push the date of our opening back by a month.

...What? Whose opening? What opening? (ObGoatse here.)

If you won't buy a moral argument, will you at least buy that one?

No. You haven't actually made an argument, you've just said "it's wrong".

Explain to me exactly how downloading something off BT is different from setting my VCR timer. Then I'll buy your argument, maybe. So far, you've just made a couple vague hand-wavings and said "fire baaaaaaaad".

Ads

[ucblockhead]

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.