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P2P and TV
Khuffie writes "According to Wired, Warner Bros. Entertainment recently passed on a pilot of a show called Global Frequency. However, due to a leak on bit-torrent the pilot episode has reached thousands of viewers who are clamouring for more, and has given the show a new lease on life. What's more interesting is what the show creator learned. From the article: "It changes the way I'll do my next project," said Rogers. If he owned the full rights, he said, "I would put my pilot out on the internet in a heartbeat. Want five more? Come buy the boxed set." Frankly, I'm all for this method of distribution, as I barely watch 'regular' TV anymore."
You're watching no ads. I'm not sure you realize how much money advertising brings to the table here.
Want five more? Come buy the boxed set.
You mean pay in advance for the boxed set that doesn't exist yet? Yeah, the kind of people hell-bent on pirating shows will do that. Even the ones who claim they'd "pay" for good content (How much? Ten or twenty dollars? Beyond which they'll just go back to BitTorrent again?). And no one's going to finance a project like this, since you've got no proven paying viewership.
Look, guys: we all realize that P2P has legitimate applications. But these desperate attempts to somehow "prove" that P2P is somehow the most desirable distribution mechanism are getting tiresome. And even in this case, Warner Brothers owns this content (though I'm not even going to touch on the legality of copyright infringement, since so many here already either believe copyright is inherently wrong, or that copyright is okay when its used by projects they approve of, but "wrong" when a corporation uses it).
Frankly, I'm all for this method of distribution, as I barely watch 'regular' TV anymore.
Well bully for you.
What do you watch, then? Shows whose production counts on the advertising revenue associated with the show? No, you don't have to watch the advertising, and yes, you can go to the bathroom during the commercials. But the advertisers are paying to be in front of X number of peoples' eyes. And if that goes away, how does your well-produced show get, well, produced?
I'm not saying there are NO alternatives; just that it's more than a little hypocritical to completely discount where the money came from to pay for these shows you're downloading.
Now, if someone who creates and owns the content wants to distribute on P2P and try to drum up interest that way, go for it. But I highly doubt the kind of entitlement crowd that downloads everything for free is going to be willing to pay to support ongoing production of such an operation. Some money? Aboslutely, sure. The kind of money that is ANYWHERE NEAR the kind needed to support the ongoing production of such an operation? Absolutely not.
How many really cool TV show pilots are sitting on a shelf collecting dust, never to be seen by the public?
Why? Corporate interests? Copyrights? It's sad how copyright law lets something be shoved under the carpet like that.
I'd like to see media companies do something cool: if the product is no longer generating revenue, turn it loose on the web. Maybe that's just a dream, because they're hoping TV Land will pay royalties to air old TV shows, so since there's a *potential* revenue stream, the shows sit on the shelf.
Hey, here's another idea. Put the pilots on the web, and have a contest to see which one folks like best. *gasp* Imagine that! Having the *viewing public* help you pick out what shows to work on next! Oh, the humanity!
This is the end of advertising-sponsored media -- not Tivo or illegal torrent downloading. Advertising-based media, which always must seek the largest audience possible for every program, simply cannot compete once broadcast distribution is no longer a scarce commodity. The larger the target audience, the lower the quality.
The full implications of the long tail are astounding, once you really work them out. Imagine the end of huge movie stars, of "hits", of fame in entirety -- it will simply not be profitable -- imagine what that would mean, in any medium! How will we decide what to watch, listen to, or read when there is nobody who can make money deciding for us?
Did you even read the post you replied to? The only legal basis for *copyright* is to promote the progress of science and the useful arts. So if people taking your Awesome-o-matic would in the long run promote science and the useful arts more than letting you keep and sell it, that's what should be done. If you don't like it you can move somewhere else, because that's the *constitution*.
I am trolling
How about we take a cue from the home theatre market? Direct to Video productions? Screw the movie theatres and the major networks, just release the episodes directly to DVD and make money that way.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Way to totally misunderstand the GP.
He's just saying that if the point of copyright is to encourage more content to be created and released (which it is), then we should consider the copyright system a bit broken if it causes large amounts of good stuff to get suppressed. It's possible that tweaking the copyright system would result in more content getting created and released, which would make it better. GP said nothing about giving stuff away for free.
The choice of what to do with it is in the hands of the creator, not what the masses want.
The construct of "intellectual property" is created by the masses for their own benefit. If it happens to benefit creators, that's great. If the creators get in the way of benefit for the masses, fuck 'em. Copyright is about benefitting society; that the best method of instituting it happens to help out the creators in most cases is incidental. The system can help creators a bunch, that's fine, but the second that interferes with the benefits for the masses it needs to change, because that's not why the masses invented copyright. The creator can choose not to release anything at all; however, if they do release and then seek copyright protection, society better damn well better be getting something out of it for granting them such protection.
We're talking about optimization here. Best possible good for the masses. Odds are the solution gives the creators of content a pretty damn good deal, too, but that's just a happy coincidence.
If the TV world would wise up and start distributing their shows with the ads via bittorrent the world would be a better place. Embrace new technology don't fear it. It's exactly what iTunes is doing. They made it easier to buy the music than to steal it. I was "podcasting" tvshows off of btefnet.org when it was up and I wouldn't of minded if the ads were in there. I'm accustommed to watching ads on TV why not downloaded TV shows?
I've watched the pilot. Clever, but the first half _sucks_. Uses pretty much every cliche in the book.
Clichés are clichés for a reason. They work because they meet the viewers' expectations.
I assume you're talking about the setup for the show, where we get the "what is the Global Frequency" talk, the introduction of the "new guy" into the world of the series, etc.
I'm curious how you would handle the following:
without ending up with either the pilot we got or having something like this at the beginning of the show?
By the way, this wasn't the final pilot; the GF ringtone was only a placeholder, and the music wasn't finished either. It was a version that was shopped around to networks, which would have been finished had they been picked up. John Rogers, the producer, said he would've reshot elements of the pilot they been picked up, particulaly the opening scene in the alley.
Jay (=