Slashdot Mirror
BBC Views Content Piracy As Wake-Up Call
Peregr1n writes "The BBC is reporting that they view the piracy of a Doctor Who episode before its broadcast date earlier this year as a 'wake-up call about the demand for new technology', in a refreshing change of opinion from most media/broadcasting corporations, who would damn this piracy without hesitation. They are forming plans to simulcast the television channels BBC1 and BBC2 on the web, as well as allowing users (only in the UK to start with, unfortunately) access to shows for a week after the broadcast date. It is worth noting that they are already trying out a system where they make shows available on the web before television broadcast, with The Mighty Boosh. Other BBC3 comedies are due to follow suit and become available on the internet first." Relatedly, shadowlight1 writes "K9, Doctor Who's lovable robotic dog, is returning to the new series with a cameo in season 2."
If the BBC does this internationally I'd be willing to pay for their content. Currently they have news clips available on-line and I would welcome a move towards internet broadcasting. I am tired of paying for 50 channels of cable when I only watch 5 of them and one of my other favorite channels I can only get by paying another $25 a month for an extended plan.
ACTUALLY LISTENED!
Look! Pay attention all who hate on piracy and despise users for doing what they want:
Google listens, gives everything away for free, yet is one of the richest and most loved companies.
BBC is just now listening to what people say,
and now we must give them respect for doing that.
MPAA recently said that they could be wrong too, and that their movies sucked. They do.
What a novel concept! Give people what they want and they won't hate you so much.
Go with the flow instead of against it. Gah, haven't you people read the Tao?
Or "Satan's Hound Of Comedy-Sidekick Hell", to give him his full title.
I will never forgive the BBC, or indeed the world in general, for allowing the theme tune to K9 And Company to be inflicted on this poor unsuspecting child...
Cheers,
Ian
As much as people from abroad take the piss for our "TV license", it's nice to have a media corporation act in the public's interest rather than being legally obliged to do everything in its power to make money for its shareholders, unlike typical broadcast corporations.
Here's the crucial difference: the BBC think "they've already paid for it, how can we give them better access to what they have paid for?", and other corporations think "they've already paid for it, how can we make them pay for it again?".
Compare and contrast with, say, the RIAA, who flatly deny that you buy music, rather "a license to listen", and run the upgrade treadmill - buy on vinyl, buy on cassette, buy on CD, buy on DVD-A, buy online - but tie it up in DRM so you'll still have to pay for a copy for the office and your car too.
At some point, corporations should recognise that they've been more than compensated for the cost of producing it, and let it go. But they are unable to do so as long as shareholders are able to turn around and sue them for not milking the public for every penny they can.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
If I have signed a licencing agreement with X over a (presumably popular, though I've never listened to it myself) show, wouldn't X be rightfully annoyed if I then start giving it away ?
Say X's business depends on it, and they've committed funds on that basis - the beeb would be in obvious breach of the licence, and would be open to being sued. This is therefore not an excuse, it's a cold hard problem. Deal.
It annoys me when (anyone) makes a bold new move, and joe-random-nobody pops up with "yes, but it still doesn't do *this*". So what ? Progress is being made in a good direction. The idea is to applaud and encourage, not to bitch and moan. Some people are so unbelievably self-centred.
Simon
(who's noted that being critical of someone on
Physicists get Hadrons!
Although most of time getting stuff for free is the goal. In this case, its fans wanting to see the new show in the first case. In this case the pirates or a good percentage of them would probably pay to buy the video/dvd etc.. I could be wrong but some of that BBC stuff isn't even available in the states, forcing die-hard fans into pirating.
Piracy for movies and songs that have been around in the market for a while, is all about getting it for free. These folks probably wouldn't pay no matter what.
There is talk about releasing dvds at the same time as movies in theaters. Seeing as a DVD costs about as much as 2 tickets, I think it might help with group 1, but not with the "i'm never going to pay" group.
It's not a technological issue preventing this; it's actually the BBC's Royal Charter, which states that any overseas venture has to be paid for with money that is not derived from the license fee (also, there could be potential international copyright issues; however, the fact that the World Service broadcasts music, amongst other things, to the four corners of the world suggests that the BBC is in a position where it can come to reasonable agreements with copyright holders).
So on that basis, a serious question: how many people outside of the UK would be willing to pay for access to BBC programming over the web?
We won, fair and square, almost 250 years ago, and yet they just keep trying to undermine our way of life here in the US. This type of economic warfare will not go unnoticed by our leaders. When the poor and infirm media executives can barely afford to feed their families, and have to go begging on the street for face-lift and breast augmentation money, there will be action. As Americans, we shouldn't have to put up with this kind of communistic pandering to the "people". We have the miltary might to thrash you again...don't test us!
(remember to post AC, remember to poast AC, remember to post AC...)
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Take a look, their online part is he 11th most popular English language site:
n g&lang=en
http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?ts_mode=la
They're ahead of CNN, ahead of NBC, Fox all the USA networks, all print media. They're even ahead of Fastclick (the web advertising network!).
You gotta be impressed at how they've grasped the Internet.
I'm not convinced it was a stunt, I'm sure the "buzz" it generated was more welcome than shunned, but there a few things that indicate the "CBC employee leaked it" story are at least partially true.
The main one being that the leaked episode one was an NTSC rip (29.97 fps) and not a PAL (25 fps) that indicates that it did indeed come from an NTSC territory and not a PAL one.
Please send all UCE to scally@devolution.com so I can f
If only other media companies would pick this up!
Next thing we need is a global service - I understand BBC limiting itself to UK to begin with, it is financed with UK tax money after all, however I really would like to see the day when broadcasters realize the power of global audience.. most companies are already global, and I would think the likes of Coca Cola, Nokia, Sony and Microsoft would see the possibilies of global marketing and the money they'd save/make by running their advers with something like that.
The superduper DRM schemes and limiting products to special markets only (through DVD regions for example) seems like a very odd and counter-productive thing to do from a global point of view.
Maybe what I'm asking for is utopia and maybe the current money flow is enough to keep us inprisoned to strange regional marketing schemes for years to come.. but maybe some day we consumers get the point through.. here's to hoping!
Ever notice how nowadays, almost all major movies are simultaneously released worldwide -- or at the most, within a few days?
/DVD media or burner manufacturers, PC makers in general have also benefitted enormously over the past few years due to illicit copying, These technologies -- all with legitimate non-piracy applications -- are now inexpensive ubiquitous. Had it not been for piracy, I'd submit it wouldn't be the case today.
Before Internet piracy took off, movies would be delayed for months before overseas release.
And I would guess that broadband ISPs, hard drive makers, CD
I'm not claiming it's justifiable morally, but it's not all 100% evil.
-- Samir Gupta, Ph. D. Head, New Technology Research Group, Nintendo Co. Ltd., Kyoto, Japan.
I think you hit on a very important point.
I don't think TV content producers care how their programs are distributed. They care about whether or not people are watching the advertisements.
Let's face it; when it comes to any media outlet's business model, WE'RE the product being sold. Advertisers/sponsors pay very good money to media outlets to spread ads to as many people as possible.
It's natural that advertisers, and in turn broadcasters, are concerned by any technology that prevents the ad from getting to the consumer: hence Ted Turner's comments about channel-flippers being "thieves".
I'd be willing to bed that for-profit broadcasters would embrace any technology that gives their programs (and more importantly, ADS) wider distribution. Things like Tivo and P2P distribution of ad-stripped programs is a direct threat to their business.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
If not for bittorrent, i would never know the joys of little britain (basically kids in the hall but british). this show has perminantly enhanced my life i believe. Hopefully the BBC will be smart and allow users outside UK to download from BT (i loath streaming). Note to any bbc'ers reading this. I will pay for it per month. I find the quality of BBC programming, to be astounding.
Recent finds
The Power of nightmares
Global Dimming
The Private life of plants
If drugs were legal
also things like little britian and dr who. I would say that i download more BBC content than content from any other company/org. If this were provided for say 20 dollars a month, for fast not dead at 98.2% torrents, i would happily stop using the free ones.
BBC advances humanity once again.
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
This is why the Beeb quite simply 'rock' and why the license fee is worth every penny.
Imagine if the RIAA or MPAA were in their shoes. "RAWWWWRRR!! SUE!!!! DIE!!!111!1one" - but the Beeb are different. They actually listen and take a pro-active approach. Instead of shouting at people for... ahem... "pirating" their show they ask themselves why and what they can do to *persuade* people not to or to do something even better that prevents people from needing to in the first place.
Heck, they even have a show (Points of View) where they allow people to blantantly and openly slag them off and read out the letters on air. Okay if someone's being a numpty then they'll just turn around and say "don't be silly." But often someone comes up with a valid point, and the appointed representative holds his hands up and says "yes you're right. Here's our apology and here's what we're going to do to prevent it happening in future"
You don't get that from many companies. One that actually listens to its customers is so worth it...
Of course they also get bonus points for inventing the BBC Micro... and BBC News Online which everyone around the world like to read... and embracing open source... and...
The BBC has a lot of content that I like; the few odd series that have made it to US public television that I specifically remember were Doctor Who, Are You Being Served, May to December (was that the name of it?), Mulberry, etc.
There were quite a few others that generated buzz but I never managed to see (Kumars of x Street, Yes Minister, some of the old crufty stuff like Upstairs Downstairs).
Heck, even MTV picked up The Young Ones.
The BBC has a large catalog of shows. Imagine charging an internet license for Bittorrent access to this archive and suddenly doubling their audience.
It was recently very difficult to get the entire Doctor Who 2005 down by bittorrent. If the BBC guarantees a few seeds for everything, then heck I'd pay.
It will be somewhat ironic if the BBC becomes a global media powerhouse while ABC, CBS and NBC go the way of the dinosaur.
The BBC has long held with the idea that the content they produced should be as available as possible, at least to the British people. This is interesting in that it marks a step away from the idea of being UK-only focused (at least potentially).
Now, as an ex pat myself I still find myself drawn to BBC programming; partly becuase I still find the English accents more "comfortable" than American for certain types of TV, but mostly because I find the general quality of writing and acting tends to be better. US TV is awfully focused on "How can we sell something to the public using the ruse of a drama", while the BBC has always subscribed to the notion "Let's entertain our people with good drama." This leads to a lot of good quality American TV shows that eventually pander too much to advertisers and/or "consumer advocate groups" and as such tend to eventually target at the lowest common denominator of the audience. This is why subsequent seasons of many TV shows seem to become progressively worse than the last.
This isn't really just an American phenomenon; I see this in some British TV shows as well, but in general it seems more prevalent in the US. Perhaps that because there are more hours of TV produced, more channels or something... I haven't really performed any sort of analysis; just my observations.
Getting back on topic though I have to say that I enjoy BBC content and would gladly pay an annual fee (like the license fee) for unlimited and unfettered access to this content. To me it would be better value than most of the crap I get on my satellite TV and never watch... and BBC America doesn't really count because many of the shows pre-date my moving to this country (10 years ago), and those that are more recent are often repeated incessantly and thus lose some of their "luster". A subscription to content would allow me to grab content on my broadband connection as I want to see it, then dump it to the hard drive of my MythTV box for viewing on the family television. Better than crowding around a monitor and just as comfortable as sitting watching regular TV.
I can't be the only person out there to be able to count the number of programs they actually watch on American TV on the fingers of one hand... not to mention being able to put my finger on what I consider quality TV because it is so different from all the other chaff on TV.
They could, especially if they weren't networks. The networks have a particular reason (economically speaking) to keep the shows private: access to the limited resource of public airwaves and/or cable TV space/satellite space.
These are extremely convenient ways to watch TV, so people prefer them to Internet broadcasts. Also, because of the high barrier-to-entry, there's a perception (true or not) that it's "better" content: it's "what's on TV". There's a considerable amount of simple inertia, too.
So advertisers will pay more for a 30-second commericial on TV than for an overtitle on your web broadcast. (You may well find overlays even more aggravating than commercials.) Or you could put in real commercials and watch the slashdotters scream about the DRM you put on to keep people from skipping them.
You'll find that the expense of producing a TV show, plus the expense of serving up 640x480 video images, rapidly exceeds the budget you get from advertising.
That said, feel free to prove me wrong. Overcome the inertia, make something good enough that people WANT to download it. Or build a set-top box for serving up Internet-based content, and hook it up to a simple remote.
(The remote alone is a big barrier. A TV remote has the simplicity of ten digits because of the limited number of channels. Full URLs are going to be a pain in the ass. Tie it in to full-scale web surfing, perhaps, with a wireless keyboard, preferably for a high-def TV so that you can read the screen...)
I'd love to see the Internet break the barriers that scarce spectrum/cable/satellite bandwiths bring up. It's starting to happen with music, which has lower start-up costs both in production and bandwidth. Video content may be next.
On the contrary. I live in the UK and fully support the license fee. The BBC is one of the best things about this country, even if the quality of their news output has dropped of late.
Rich
> **this is not an endorsement for state sponsored
> programs or wholesale socialism, because most
> of the time it sucks...
Yeah, "socialist tv really sucks:"
NOVA, Wall Street Week, Seasame Street, This Old House, Victory Garden, McNeal Leher Report, Cosmos, Scientific Frontiers...
Not to mention, the cooperation that brought us:
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Dr. Who, Blake 7, Benny Hill, Faulty Towers, Monty Python,
As opposed to Quality TV on Korporate Funded Networks:
Friends, pick your favorite reality show, Different Strokes, Heehaw, the 700 Club, GMA, Katie Couric, Friends,
Sure, Korporate TV does get some things right, but show for show, "socialist tv" is doing a hell of a lot better.
We (the dutch) are allready doing this. The website (http://www.uitzendinggemist.nl/ translate as "Missed Broadcast/Episode" hosts most of the stuff broadcast by public access (three channles here), it's all avaialable for free, and without commercials (which our public access does have, but only in between shos, not during).
I myself am enjoying this service so much, that I'm thinking of not getting a TV at all (I'm moving out soon, finally), since I'll be able to get my news, and background (60 minutes like shows) from the forementioned website. I'll just get the big american shows from the web, I usually end up doing that now anyway, since our (fully) commercial channels are atleast six months behind on the americans.
I do love "!" but not as much as I love "..."...
And they should look at this as an ideal way to export the British way of life through entertainment channels. For years the Hollywood movie has defined foreign entertainment in many parts of the world, but now the Internet might bring another country's productions to the forefront of the world stage, and America will begin to lose its grip on the "on-screen" entertainment monoploy.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.