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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."
Hoffman added that the pilot's unauthorized distribution is "unacceptable and illegal ... no matter what the underlying motives" and said the company hasn't ruled out taking legal action "when it comes to stopping the illegal distribution of our copyright material."
Quick! Cover it up! People aren't supposed to know we're rejecting the GOOD shows in favor of more idiocy! God forbid that a television network pander to an intelligent clientele. After all, you're all supposed to slurp up the low cost, low profit, low intelligence, but HIGH MARGIN reality shows! Who wants to worry about actually pleasing customers? Just pander to the stupidity! That's the ticket!
Gah. And television networks wonder why no one is tuning in anymore. It must be because there isn't enough stupidity. Bring on Big Brother on Survivor Island where the worst singer is voted into fear factor stunts! In Dolby 5.1 no less! That'll bring in the ratings!
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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.
Viral marketing
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Legal posturing.
This is *precisely* why Copyright law needs an overhaul. The supposed goal of copyright law is "to promote science and the useful arts".
How is allowing a company to stop this from seeing the light of day a promotion?
If you make something, and don't release it, you shouldn't be allowed to stop someone else from distributing it for no charge.
Frankly, I'm all for this method of distribution, as I barely watch 'regular' TV anymore.
Only on slashdot is stealing* encouraged and applauded when it involves Television, music, and movie copyrights, but God forbid anybody violates the GPL.
*Yes i know it's not technically stealing.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
I hate it when things accidentally get uploaded onto a computer and then leaked out on bit torrent completely accidentally.
No sireee bob, no humans were involved in this "leak"...it was all accidental
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!
Torrent of mentioned show.
I think guy now "gets it" - he doesn't *need* the studios anymore. Get some funding, put together a pilot and a few episodes, and then do it himself. He could sell DVDs. He could do it via hostageware (until X amount of money or DVDs are sold, we won't make any more). He could make it, get it popular, then have a major network pick it up. Tell people that if he can raise X amount of money he can film a pilot episode (and if they're someone such as the producer/director of "Firefly" or "Battlestar Gallactica", maybe the fans would do it - look how much people raised to try and save "Star Trek").
Makes you wonder if Podcasting might not take this route. I once listened to the "Catholic Insider" (not because I'm Catholic, mind you, but I liked his reporting on the death on the last Pope), and he had a joke Podcast about podcasting in the future - where people all around the world online edit the video, set up production, then distribute it online with the ads built in (or people pay for certain individual content).
It's rather optimistic, and I'm not saying the major networks will "go away", but if gentlemen such as this guy can go "Woah - wait - now I have an option on how to promote my work", then there's a chance that it will bring a new level of pressure onto the networks. Which would mean more competition. And that is always good for the customer (I don't like using the word "consumer" for myself, sorry).
Of course, this is all just my opinion. I could be totally wrong. But I hope not.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
It's mind boggling to me that things like this don't put big, green, opaque dollar signs in the eyes of studio execs everywhere.
Even without effective DRM, studios could be raking in the cash RIGHT NOW via any number of online distribution methods. Yes, there would still be piracy, but it would convert at least SOME of it into dollars. RIGHT NOW!! If they want to keep pursuing DRM then fine, but they're losing money right now. What more incentive do they need??
The United States of America: We do what we must because we can.
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?
So long as there are broadcast television networks and channels that don't make a dime off cable subscription fees, the subject is accurate. Execs don't particularly care about cool, fun or quality. They care that the programs they run bring eyeballs to the screen that will allow them to maintain (and raise) advertising rates. It's how they make virtually all of their revenue.
Now, what's changed in recent years is the number of cable networks and channels getting in on the act. Ad revenue matters to them too, but they throw on much riskier programming that can be resold through retail channels. Their smaller quantities of free eyeballs ("expanded basic" cable or satellite subscribers, not over-the-air or nearly-free basic cable) demands that they provide niche value to the channel lineups, and demands they produce programming that can be sold. Comedy Central is a perfect example of this - South Park, Chappelle's Show and Reno 911 would not have gotten a chance elsewhere. On CC, they made money for the channel through ad revenue, and sold tons of DVDs.
The production houses are the wildcard in all this (Warner Bros, Paramount, NewsCorp). They're now directly affiliated with broadcast media conglomerates themselves, but for years, they sold to ABC, NBC and CBS. Now they can pitch to those 3, along with their "vanity" broadcast network, as well as to their vanity cable station (FX, TNT, USA and the like). With so many broadcast outlets, the big dollars don't come with being picked up. They come from syndication and retail resale. As such, those production house (like the one from this article) owe it to themselves to get quality shows in front of viewers, no matter what it takes to get it there.
RW
It was his reaction to the whole thing. Instead of pondering what this sudden influx of a fanbase for a non-existent show means, he jumps straight to the "cover it up through force" method.
;-)
In other words, I'm not really talking about copyrights. Then again, neither is Mr. Hoffman.
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Those in charge of distribution of programs need to finally realize that either they distribute their shows and profit, or face the simple fact that they will be shared on P2P nets and distributed outside of their profit channels. The simple fact is that electronic distribution is not going to go away, no matter how many laws are erected to stop it.
That does not mean that I am saying that stealing is right, or that *is* a right, clearly, from a legal, moral and ethical standpoint it is not. However, common people are becoming common electronic thieves simply because that is the only way to satisfy demand. Given the illusory "anonymity" of the internet, it is all too easy to do, and right now, the odds are favoring them as opposed to Hollywood when it comes to facing the consequences of violating the copyright holders' rights.
That all said, it's also my take that people, given the choice, would pay a *reasonable* fee to legally download television shows and do more or less with them what they did or do with videotapes. However, for some reason, Hollywood cannot seem to grasp this, or at the very least, cannot grasp how to do loosen their grasp on their content in such a way to make a subscription based P2P net possible.
My suggestion: allow people to subscribe to virtual channels, as they do with satellite or cable now. Allow them to download the shows, to share them on legal networks and pay a fee that is comparable to what they pay for cable now. That would be a real on-demand system, one where the infrastructure of the network is paid for by the subscribers themselves. Other than a substantial investment in seed servers and a first uplink, Hollywood would have to do little else than pay credit card processors and accountants.
To enable protection, they could sell smartcards similar to what Dish and DirectTV use now. Yes, I know that they have been hacked in the past, but nowadays, they are relatively secure, in as much as the average guy will not bother even trying.
Then, collect cash.
So, someone in the TV industry clues in to what Microsoft and a few others have know for a long time...Windows and other programs like Word, Autocad, etc are as popular as they are now not by quality, but by the fact that they are freely copied and thus everyone, even poor people learn them, and if they ever are in a situation where they can buy it, they do. Piracy thus creates a vast pre-made audience for a product, be it software, music, books or now TV shows. For all we really know, this release of the show could actually be a test of back-channel marketing. To sell a show, you need to know how popular it is, and only then can you sell commercials for it.
In today's 500+ channel universe, getting "eyeballs" can be hard for a new show on TV...but on the Internet, it's a good chance if you get even a small part of one percent, you will get more viewers than the average new show on network TV. As various groups track P2P transfers, you can get a more accurage accounting of viewership than you can with a random sampling of TV viewers such as Neilson does.
All in all, P2P distribution seems to be a more economical way to judge the possible success of a new show.
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
After "Doctor Who" debuted/returned triumphantly back to British television and the SciFi Network here in America continuted to pass on the show, I wrote a personal letter to TiVo CEO Michael Ramsey (a Scotsman) advocating that TiVo make an offer to BBC Worldwide to make the series available as a download to broadband enabled TiVo subscribers that might be interested. I figured that most broadband enabled subscribers would also be viewers with scifi leanings, and it would be a success and would generate buzz.
While it might have been costly short term wise, I asserted that TiVo would be at the forefront of a potentially profitable new television wave. Charging production companies/studios to make available pilot episodes to TiVo subscribers to create buzz for certain properties. It would be a way to circumvent the networks saying "no" to shows that might otherwise be successes.
To this day, I haven't heard one thing back from TiVo about this. I think my idea had merits, and obviously an idea whose time has come.
To this day, no American broadcaster or cable network have picked up the rights to the new "Doctor Who" series, leaving potential American fans to *acquiring* the show through less-than-legal methods until an official DVD release in the States happens...which won't until the series actually is televised in America first.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
There should be NO protection for works that are never published. This pilot is more like a trade secret than some creative work.
This should be true in general. Any work that an "owner" is not interested in exploiting for commercial gain should be strictly PD. None of this nonsense about locking up masterpieces in a vault to rot away.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
We'll make another 6 episodes as long as the actors and the audience can agree on a price for more. We'll stop when they can't agree.
Stephen King tried it. He started a new book and gave the first chapter away for free, putting subsequent chapters up for sale; when enough people bought a chapter he would write & publish the next one (all on-line). It was a dismal failure: the second chapter was bought by few and re-distributed by many; as a result, chapter three was never published. Author and audience couldn't agree on merely chapter 2.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Don't you understand? They are losing viewers because of the evil pirates who distribute their hard work for free on the Internet. This allows the terrorists to win. Please think of the children.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
It was his reaction to the whole thing. Instead of pondering what this sudden influx of a fanbase for a non-existent show means, he jumps straight to the "cover it up through force" method.
I wouldn't go so far as to call it "force". It might be heavy-handed, but it's a viable and not-entirely-unreasonable legal option at his disposal.
In other words, I'm not really talking about copyrights. Then again, neither is Mr. Hoffman.
Fair enough.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
This is true, but as with any product, you have to make it, and that costs money. Making TV shows to attract the products to watch the commercials is their capital expense.
Cyncially, it's not entirely unlike a hunter putting out a salt lick. Well, TV viewers don't get shot. They just get shown commercials. I've known people who would say that the deer are getting off easy.
The upshot (as it were) is that the networks are the middle man, and P2P may represent a way of cutting out the middle man, for TV as it is gradually becoming for music.
As with music, there are still questions to be answered. Middle men exist for a reason: they make transactions easier. TV networks broker the transaction between the artists (TV show actors/directors/writers) and the viewer, extracting their inch of green in the form of commercials. Even if the TV producers could make their shows, getting it advertised and paid for are still unanswered questions. Pay per download, perhaps, with P2P used as "viral marketing"?
There's also, as with music, the question of up-front expense. TV pilots are wildly expensive. Worse, they make significant capital expenses, like sets and effects, which cost a lot but can be re-used if the show is picked up. Think about the Firefly pilot, for example: they had to build a huge set for Serenity. All that is up front expenses, which are spent by networks. There are economic solutions to that problem, but we'll have to see which ones work and which don't.
So having us as the product rather than the customer can change, but it's going to be difficult. It means changing the nature of the seller from the network, who makes its profit by selling your eyeballs, to somebody else who makes a profit elsewhere.
Perhaps a well-funded person who makes 10 TV shows, has one succeed on a pay-per-download basis, and makes enough to do 10 more. Or perhaps there are 100 low-budget movie producers, like Blair Witch, of whom 99 will lose their $20k investment and the others will get enough buzz from somewhere to sell copies online.
Or wackier, perhaps a subscription basis, where they sell shares of a project in progress, the price rising as it gets closer to completion, and the profits shared among the shareholders. I seem to recall a movie being made like that, but I don't recall what happened to it. I'm afraid that speaks badly for the idea.
Or perhaps even an "open source" project, but although writers and actors may do it for love and to share, the guys who sell lumber and costumes usually don't think of their work as open-sourceable.
Either way, if you don't want to be the product, you're going to find a way to be the customer. Customers pay for things.
"Now I have an extra 10,000 hits a week on my website, and I've got to figure out what to do here."
hits != unique vistors
Each unique visitor can easily generate 100 hits or more depending on how the website is organized.
10,000 / 100 = 100 visitors, and alot of that may be non-unique vistors (such as return visitors,) or even extra Googlebot, Yahoo, or MSN activity.
Don't get me wrong, I think it's great that the P2P community can bring life to a show that the corporate world sent to the trash.. power to the people and all that stuff.. but lets not get overly excited. 10,000 hits extra a week is a marginal amount of activity considering the amount of people actually surfing the Internet at a given time.
Valkyrie is about to die! Wizard needs food -- badly!
The leader of Global Frequency is the enigmatic Miranda Zero, played by actress Michelle Forbes. (Forbes is fast building a tech-geek pedigree: She's also the voice of Dr. Judith Mossman in the video game Half Life 2).
Funniest line in the story. Forbes has been a tech-geek actress for a long time. Perhaps some may remember her recurring role playing the compelling Ensign Ro Laren in Star Trek: The Next Generation?
When Family Guy premiered on Fox, it immediately got close to no attention. After a short 4 seasons, the show was terminated. THEN the internet distribution of Family Guy began: Winamp Online TV (saltwaterchimp.com anyone?), torrents, and p2p networks began showing various episodes. The popularity grew and grew as people started buying the DVD sets and renting them from video stores. Fox, in one of their smartest moves, LISTENED to this great attention it was getting, labeled it a late-bloomer, and put it back on the air. Internet distribution actually helped a show get back on the air and help the network get more advertising, etc. who says it can't be done?
The voice of the next generation. "In this tower, in my mind..." Babble - Tower
I almost modded this insightful, but then I put a little more thought into it.
What about my journal (think written paper journal), I never intended to exploit it for commercial gain, but I hardly think it should be public domain.. would I even use it if at any moment someone could take it freely and publish it?
Also, what about my music? I may one day want to exploit it for commercial gain, but mostly I do it just because I enjoy making music. For the most part I've been too self conscious to ever publish it (though I may one day release some stuff under the creative commons or what have you). But would I even make music anymore if, because of my lack of desire for commercial gain, it immediately became public domain? What if I never publish my music, but 10 years from now I find the master CD and change my mind about the commcerial gain aspect and want to sell the music rather than let it rot away?
Where do you draw the line? Is my journal protected but my music not? What if my music is a journal of sorts, music made to private events in my life that I don't want anyone else to hear? Does the medium make a difference (i.e. a written journal is protected but a musical journal is not)? Often I start a song and then scrap it because I don't like where it is going, should all of my work be part of the public domain, no matter how bad it sounds? What if I think it sounds horrible, but other people think it's a masterpiece? I'm the creator, shouldn't I have ultimate say in the publication of that work?
I thought someone said there was going to be free beer!
So if I produce a movie, and I can't get it published, another movie company can make a copy of it and distribute it, then keep all the profits? Also, what about a studio employee that takes a copy and sells it to a competing studio before it's released?
Since when did operating systems become a religion?
Put ads in the file..provide it via bittorrent. And put a blub somewhere (either in the show) or on the website that by getting the torrent from the show's offical tracker the producers can prove x amount of downloads of the shows to advertizers.
If people want the show to continue, they'll get their copy from the producers. If not, then advertizers will not pay and the show will die.
This should be true in general. Any work that an "owner" is not interested in exploiting for commercial gain should be strictly PD. None of this nonsense about locking up masterpieces in a vault to rot away.
Scenario:
1) I create a really neat widget.
2) I am not interested in releasing the widget.
3) I am not interested in financial gain.
And somehow you come to the logical (??) conclusion that I should release the widget into the public domain, because obviously if I don't want to profit from it then you should should be able to mandate such release.
That is a ridiculous and indefensible position. As an added bonus, some nitwits have chosen to mod you up.
Here is some news: Some things are not free. Some things are not your property. If you did not create $ITEM, you have no rights whatsoever to $ITEM until the creator/owner agrees to assign such rights. You really should understand this.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
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?
And, P2P aside, if it were that easy, it would already have been done.
Web comics, like Sluggy Freelance for example, seem to make their authors a decent living based entirely off of merchandising and compilations of free on-line content. So, the question isn't whether money can be made on this kind of open model, just whether it's enough to support movie production as opposed to say comics.
Basically, this new model requires producers to accept a (possibly) lower gross income per viewer in order to achieve distribution costs of almost nothing.
Of course, as you imply, 10,000 dedicated viewers is nothing for TV and movies. But just because this particular show didn't drum up more interest in this one instance doesn't mean the model is a failure. It just means there aren't enough people willing to both bother finding BitTorrents and cross the infringement boundary to make it worth while. An officially sponsored torrent link and open distribution model would likely do a whole lot better.
Hmm... speaking of merchandise, I think I'm giong to go buy that iSophagus shirt I've been eye-balling right now.
I'm the creator, shouldn't I have ultimate say in the publication of that work?
No.
For example, Kafka wanted his works destroyed when he died. No one respected this, and we're all better off as a result.
Copyright is granted by the public for the public good, not any specific individual's good. Having works created is good. Having works be in the public domain is equally as good.
If copyright is the incentive that it takes to get you to create a work, then it might be worthwhile to grant you one. But if you created that work without regard to a copyright, then it'd be foolish to give you a reward; you did it for free. Since a copyright basically provides a potential economic reward, it's authors that are looking for money that deserve copyrights. Authors doing their work for fame, or for art's sake, or whatever, don't need them in order to produce.
Personally, I think it'd be better to grant a low level of protection to works in progress or not yet published, for a brief period of time, provided that there was a bona fide intent to publish and properly register the work. But most protection should be reserved for works where the author has applied for a copyright, and fulfilled the formalities that go along with that.
This way we could avoid having people pirate manuscripts, but not grant undue protection. The author would have to seek protection, and thus only the ones that actively wanted it, and were willing to take some minor steps (fill out some forms, pay a filing fee) would get it.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Jedidiah,
Consider these other aspects of a TV Pilot. In the real world where we all live, everyone working on a TV pilot is paid a minimum fee with contingency clauses in their contracts that mean these actors, set designers, costumers, directors, makeup artists, etc. will get a cut of the action if a network chooses to buy the show. So it's a big gamble for these people. For an actor, I think the day rate is like $800. And these acting gigs come few and far between. So a lot is riding on this for a lot of people.
If a show fails to get picked to run on a TV network, it's shelved. But there's an investment in there both from the production company and all the above-mentioned workers. The production company will continue to shop it around. They may even re-edit it.
If the pilot gets leaked, prospective buyers are going to look at it not always that there's a positive buzz, but that interest in this comodity has disappated.. it's been diluted. A prospective buyer is thinking that X number of people have already seen it (on the internet) and are unlikely to sit through commercials to watch it again when they've got a commercial-free version already available. Those eyeballs watching the pilot are critical to the prospective buyer because they've got to use those Nielsen stats from the airing of the pilot to then lasso advertisers.
So by leaking this shelved pilot, it decreases the chances that those crew members will get paid properly for their work.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
"Miranda Zero, played by actress Michelle Forbes. (Forbes is fast building a tech-geek pedigree: She's also the voice of Dr. Judith Mossman in the video game Half Life 2)."
I guess having appeared as Ensign Ro in multiple Star Trek the Next Generation episodes isn't worth mention as far her geek-pedigree goes?
Sometimes my arms bend back.
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 (=
Global Frequency torrent link
Just in case you were curious, as I was...
FYI: The torrent's hosted on Demonoid, so if you're getting "unconnectable" errors, you might want to try registering there.