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HBO Attacking BitTorrent
DIY News writes "HBO is actively poisoning the BitTorrent downloads of the new show Rome. In addition to an older tactic of offering bogus downloads that never complete, HBO is now obstructing the downloads offered by other people. HBO runs peers that tell the tracker they have all the chunks of the show, but then send garbage data when a downloader requests a chunk. While the bogus peers can be detected, it will take much longer to download shows."
These people would have been owned and disconnected within hours of this being discovered. With the changing of the guard, so too does the changing of morality.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Good for HBO. They have every right to protect their legitimate revenue stream. If we think we can send whatever sequence bytes we want over the p2p networks, I say we extend the same freedom to the fine people at HBO.
At the same time, this is also good for p2p software. I'm sure it will only result in better algorithms for dealing with tainted peers.
Okay, I understand why they'd want to do it, or at least some initial reasoning: People are infringing on our copyright (Arrrr!), so we should try to stop them. Thing is, how does this help them at all? Do they really think that people are going to try to download the first episode, realize that it's really difficult, so they'll pay for HBO and start mid-series? Is that their game plan here? I just can't imagine this working. What they've really done is only two things.
1: They've pissed people off, some who may simply download out of spite now, and
2: They're stopping potential customers from seeing their show. I don't have HBO (not sure I can get it here anyway, but let's say I can). So what if I download and episode, realize that I really like it, and want to sign up? Well, they've stopped me from doing that, or at least tried.
So yeah, I just can't imagine how this helps them at all. Of course, I may be way off here, so bring on the torches if you're into that sort of thing.
CC Licensed Serialized Story and Podcast: Ingenioustries
You say it like HBO is doing something Evil. I would agree, if they were messing up the protocol, across the board, but, from the article, they are doing this to downloads of their copyrighted material (specificaly, the show ROME).
Perhaps "HBO using technology to counter Copyright Infringment". I mean, really, downloading Rome cant be particularly leagal. It is theirs. Surely this is a good thing. I mean, entities have to be able to protect their property. Argue what you will about the terms of copyright (I would agree they are ridiculous). But this is somone trying to protect something which is currently making them money. And they arent suing anyone, either (yet). I for one, hope they can find a technological way to stop people from using BitTorrent to illeagly download theiri intellectual property, as I tend to prefer those solutions to the far nastier ones that are available (see the RIAA).
I hate to break it to you, they have the copyright to the show. They have full license to distribute the show in any way they see fit. They see fit in distributing the show as a garbled mess over Bittorrent. If you don't like their distributation method, that's YOUR problem. Find another way to watch their show.
Burn Hollywood Burn
Also, it much nicer than suing people, and possibly more effective.
To me this reaction seems like lifting your fist at someone, and shaking it while spewing "I'm gonna get you" through clenched teeth, without really knowing how you're gonna get them.
This is a sig. It is appended to the end of comments I post.
Maybe because they ARE obstructing the download. It has a negative connotation, to be sure, but obstruction means exactly what HBO is doing.
Game the game! Perhaps this will help the rest of the "entertainment industry" (HBO is one of the few actually entertaining networks these days) understand that there is no way to prevent "piracy" via technical means. There is always a way around any technical "problem" (in this case, BT). By practicing this sort of act, it seems that at least some people at HBO will come to understand this. The only way to win the game, is to provide an easier, BETTER alternative. iTunes is proving this, for example. No, it doesn't stop MP3 trading, but it makes money DESPITE illegal file trading.
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
Yeah, but how are they gonna sue? All you have to do is say that the chunks you downloaded were poisoned bits. Are those copyrighted as well?
Car thieves are miffed because auto makers are now installing locks on all cars.
...or...
If you're going to be a thief, don't complain when someone tries to stop you from stealing their stuff. Anyone who complains about this is an immature idiot. HBO spends 10 million dollars to develop, produce, and advertise a show on their premium networks. To recoup the costs, they charge subscribers money. For those that don't wish to subscribe, they sell DVDs in a couple of months, so that you can either buy the DVDs or get them off Netflix or from some other video rental source. HBO makes 20 million dollars from this process. HBO goes on to keep their people employed and continue to make television series and movies.
HBO spends 10 million dollars, and everybody steals their content without reimbursing HBO for any of their costs. 10,000 people lose their jobs because HBO declares bankruptcy.
I know this is an extreme case, but I'm tired of all the whining because a company (or even a person) who produces something that you think is valuable enough to at least steal would like to make some money off of it. Yes, I know they're rich, but if you don't like that, stop buying their product. Why exactly should networks, studios, software developers, or anyone else provide anything of value if there's no benefit to them, i.e. no way to make a living?
I'm a software developer, and if my company doesn't get paid for something, I get laid off.
Grow up people.
shh...
don't talk about usenet.
You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. - Winston Churchill
Except that copyright infringement is not theft. It's using copyrighted information in an unapproved way. That's not to say that it's alright (nor, to condemn it), just to say that calling it theft is inaccurate.
I can go to the supermarket and eat cheese for free. I don't have to steal it or nothin'. They even slice it up for me. They find that by simply giving cheese away they end up selling more cheese than if they don't. To a certain extent they even reduce shoplifting (most grocery shoplifting isn't hardcore theft, but casual snacking along the way and a package of bologna with one slice removed is, to the store, the same as a whole stolen package of bologna).
The free cheese whets my appetite and makes me more inclined to buy a half pound of the stuff for later.
That is, of course, if the free "cheese" they give me isn't really a pile of poison poo spray painted yellow.
I really hate when that happens.
Perhaps HBO should consider, instead of interdiction, simply giving the first few episodes away to induce subscription, that is, of course and ironically, if the show isn't too cheesy.
If they don't feel inclined to give me a free sample, at my convenience, I'm afraid I'd be inclined to believe there's something about it they don't want me to know.
Like the fact that I wouldn't want to buy it.
KFG
When you leave your name and IP address in the letter, doesn't it defeat the purpose of posting AC?
I wonder how they'd view Usenet then when your client merely downloads? Its certainly not distributing any part to the masses.
When will media companies get it.
I am more than willing to pay for shows - but make them available to me in the following ways/manner:
1) Don't artificially hold back on releases (Australia sometimes does not get shows for 6-12 months)
2) Make it available to watch on MY time scale
3) Not Streaming Only - DRM it if you think that will help, but P2P shows that it wont.
4) Don't over price it. AUD $1-$2 per show episode is acceptable - distribution could be achieved via P2P.
When will these fools get it?
Do the following really mean anything? SCSA MCP CCSA CCNA
--I'm not actually after an answer!
do you want a site that could be busted to have a history of what you downloaded and of your upload download amounts?
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
My first piece of entertainment journalism (in 1997) was interviewing a VP at Showtime about the upcoming premiere of Stargate SG-1.
From the article (the "Zakarin" quoted was Marc Zakarin, Exec VP of Original Programming):
That said, the "intensity of viewing" is aimed at generating new subscribers and keeping old ones happy. If people shuffle off the shackles of the HBO coil and resort to downloading, how long will HBO keep producing good content?Start a happiness pandemic
OK, so I get HBO (or any other channel, premium or not) on-demand. Most of the time, there are just a few *specific* episodes they offer. If and when I can find the one show I want (or all of them), I can then record it on my Tivo/PVR, right? I can use my PVR to put it on a DVD, right? If I'm running a home-brew PC-based PVR, I can copy it to disk. Or, I can just record it when I watch it at it's regularly scheduled time. The point is, I already pay the particular media company for the right to watch their channel, because I want to *WATCH* the programming on that channel. Anyway, there are several ways that I can get this show onto a device that will allow me to play it back whenever I want, on whatever device I want. Are you saying that because it's downloaded instead of recorded from TV that it's illegal? I hope whatever tards at HBO came up with this idea get knocked over the head with the clue stick!!!!! If they want to stop/reduce the downloads that they think is a bad idea, then USE THE TECH that will enable them to make a buck off of it. People are still gonna download it, but if the make it easy to _legally_ obtain this show ($$ for non-subscribers, 1/2$ or free for customers), they can have a huge array of options for how to present this, and the method of delivery. Of course, putting some stupid DRM in there is gonna hurt their cause... What the hell is it gonna take for these old media companies (MPAA, RIAA, TV, Cable, etc) to realize that the internet and online users could be helping their bottom line instead of making them look like idiots, and them treating their customers like theives. There is a market opportunity here, and they are completely ignoring it.
--- "To ignore race and sex is racist and sexist!" -- Jesse Jackson
. . .a friend got an unsolicited DVD from HBO in his mail. . .
Ah, I've never seen one of these. Ok, at least they're starting to learn what everyone else has known "forever."
Perhaps that "pirates" and legitimate customers are more closely intertwined than the simplistic among us would like to admit.
Sometimes the key to having a successful business is the careful regulation of theft.
KFG
It's still a derivative work.
I am puzzeled and troubled, both by your comments, and how it got moderated. A supermarket may choose to give you free samples. It is theirs to give. But you cannot make the argument, "well, because the supermaret gives free samples, I am entitled to take free cheese, even when they are not giving out free samples."
It is the supermakets property, and their choice, how they wish to advertise. Similarly, the series "Rome" belongs to HBO (or whoever the relavant copyright holder is). It is not correct to say "it would be good marketing for them to give this away, therefore it is legitamate for me to take some" any more that you could say "it wasnt shoplifting, when I unwrapped the cheese, they regularly give the stuff away". It is THEIR choice, not yours. If you dont want to buy it because they wont give you a free sample, that is your choice. But that doesnt legitamize people who want to download, against the will of HBO. Their marketing descisions are not the same as your entitlment.
But you cannot make the argument, "well, because the supermaret gives free samples, I am entitled to take free cheese, even when they are not giving out free samples."
I am puzzled by the fact that you seem to believe I have made that argument. I have done nothing of the kind. Perhaps you need to go read my post again and try to see what those who moderated me saw.
KFG
I can go to the supermarket and eat cheese for free. I don't have to steal it or nothin'. They even slice it up for me. They find that by simply giving cheese away they end up selling more cheese than if they don't.
True, but they don't let you take the whole 10 pound block of cheese home for free.
Perhaps HBO should consider, instead of interdiction, simply giving the first few episodes away to induce subscription, that is, of course and ironically, if the show isn't too cheesy.
HBO isn't selling you a block of cheese, or a single show, they're offering a service where you get a lot of movies (well, a few movies played a lot of times) and a few HBO-only shows. Perhaps your cable operator occasionally runs a free HBO weekend promo.
If they don't feel inclined to give me a free sample, at my convenience, I'm afraid I'd be inclined to believe there's something about it they don't want me to know.
You could probably go to this link and "watch a clip of the new episode". At your convenience, of course.
Here come da fudge!
Fine, people trying to kill Bittorrent altogether because some people use it for copyright infringement is bad. But for christs sake, HBO puts a ton of money into those episodes and it deserves to get paid for them. It's illegal and immoral to download them, and I think it's perfectly fine to attack transfers of obviously copyrighted material.
How do you justify it morally? On a very small scale, filling in an episode you haven't seen, sure, no big deal. Massive redistribution of an entire series is obviously going to harm HBO, whose only crime was creating something which people like to watch. Do you think that HBO is some soulless bunch of corporate assholes who deserve to get screwed? Where do you draw the line between small artists and these corporate assholes? HBO hires the best screenwriters, directors, actors, and technical people in the business, and the result is the show that you like to watch. Do you think you're benefiting anyone by downloading it for free en masse?
What do you think will happen if no one enforces their legitimate copyright, and everyone has push-button access to free copies of Rome. Fast-forward to a time when most houses in America would have the ability to watch freely downloaded episodes on their TV, as an alternative to subscribing to HBO. Do you think HBO will make money? Do you think they will continue to make high-budget shows when their subscriber base shrinks? Their most likely source of income is incoporating ads into the scripts in a way which is impossible to skip, like references to how well Tide gets their togas cleaned. Is that better than paying for HBO?
The technology isn't wrong. But don't go bullshitting yourself thinking that downloading copyrighted material anonymously and in large quantities is somehow justifiable.
to do anything worth their while. Maybe in the short run they'll discourage some of the downloads, which is good for them. But in the long run, let's consider the likely possibilities:
1. Bittorrent is a great distributed protocol to distribute content. It can be modified to instantly block ips that provide bad data. This may slow down the protocol overall a bit, but it should be quite possible and it WILL prevent these "geniuses" from f'ing up the authentic data from the original uploader.
2. As they are doing this, many people around the world are connecting to the www and finding out how to download content.
Perhaps instead of petty attempts such as this, they will figure out a way to distribute their content effectively and cheaply while still making enough profits. People shouldn't have to be charitable to these companies by not downloading. Yes, I know they need money to make content, many people, especially outside the US, do not feel morally bad to be downloading their content.
If you're going to be a thief, don't complain when someone tries to stop you from stealing their stuff. Anyone who complains about this is an immature idiot.
No, there's still a reason to be worried about this, even if you're a staunch supporter of copyright. This tactic can be applied to any torrent. Today it's HBO interfering with illegal downloads of the show they're trying to sell to subscribers, but tomorrow it could be Microsoft/SCO interfering with legitimate downloads of Linux ISOs, or the MPAA interfering with some independent director who's chose to distribute his film over the internet. Eventually, BitTorrent client authors will have to solve the problem.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
Signed what? I called my cable operator, gave them my credit card number, and my HBO service was turned on before I even hung up the phone. I have no contract with HBO.
No kidding... it's hard for some people to even consider the fact that HBO IS IN THE RIGHT!
The issue is not whether HBO is (formally) in the right--they probably are. The issue is that whether HBO is in the right, as well as the remedies, are a matter for a court of law to determine. We don't want a world in which companies decide for themselves whether they are in the right and then decide for themselves how to enforce the rights they themselves have determined they have.
I'm getting soooo sick of this sense of self-entitlement... "give me everything for free" attitude.
Many companies have that attitude, and they have the lobbying power to get their free handouts. Laws like the DMCA and the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act are such an egregious violation of the fundamental social contract behind copyright laws that, ethically, these companies don't have a leg to stand on as far as I'm concerned.
why is it acceptable for a company/person to take the law into their own hands when it's copyright, but not when i catch someone breaking into my car and i give them a beating? thats what the real outrage here is. these movie studio's think just because it's their precious copyrighted works, they are some how justified in anything and everything they do.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
I downloaded the first six Prison Break episodes, after watching the first, I was hooked, so I watched the rest. After that, I was excited to watch the next one so I did the unexpected... I WATCHED IT MONDAY NIGHT @ 9PM ON FOX! Wow, if it weren't for those torrents then Fox would be without a viewer! HBO should smarten up. The same thing happened with me and Sopranos, after a few episode downloads off the net, I was hooked and watching it on the tube.
"you sonofabitch i didn't know!"
If you don't have money to purchase something, do without. There are plenty of free entertainment services available.
.
I have the money. I spend some of it on entertainment services, however, it is not my mission to give it to them. It is their mission to get it from me. I am under no obligation to cooperate. In fact, I rather resist. If you do not I'd be perfectly happy to get a post office box you can send your money to.
Personally I insist on getting value for my money and I am the sole arbiter of what constitutes value for my money. Because it's mine.
There are plenty of free entertainment services available.
Exactly! In fact, I make money by providing these, so I'm intimately acquainted with the phenomenon. When you avail yourself of my free entertainment services you are not my customer. You are my product which I am reselling to someone else. I also provide paid entertainment services, which you would likely not avail yourself of if you had not first seen one of my free services. Yes, I'm playing both ends agains the middle for my own benefit. Welcome to the middle. But if you do not feel you recieve value when I charge you I will lose you as a direct customer. That would make me unhappy.
If you really want to see ROME. .
You seem to have missed the point that I don't. See my first paragraph.
Problem solved.
I don't have a problem. HBO does. See my previous paragraph. I think you might have some issues with the whole buyer/seller relationship. I can't afford to misunderstand this as my income is derived from it directly. Please send money to my post office box.
As for a download on demand service, I'm sure they'd be thrilled to do that if they could be reasonably certain that you could not then redistribute that video to 20,000 or so of your closest friends over P2P.
Well, thank God that their failure to do so prevents that from happening!
Here is the one thing, the only thing, they can be absolutely certain of; media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed. This is an innate property of the business they are in.
If they don't like that they have two choices, 1)Get out of the business. They are no more required to sell media than I am to buy it, 2)Deal with it.
The one who figures out how to deal with it while keeping the customer happy is the one that will still be around and thriving ten years from now.
The customer is control, because their money is theirs.
Deal with it.
I have to, because if I don't I go hungry, not in ten years, but tommorow. Spend a year or two as a street performer. It'll learn ya.
KFG
wouldnt that argument that you're using also apply though if he were taping the show or using a PVR?
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
I can go to the supermarket and eat cheese for free. I don't have to steal it or nothin'. They even slice it up for me. They find that by simply giving cheese away they end up selling more cheese than if they don't.
Would you still buy the cheese if you could take as much of it as you wanted, whenever you wanted, for free?
Now you are comparing apples.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
I'm sure the executives at HBO are thinking the same thing about people who have the ability to pay for HBO yet won't.
I, for one, applaud their pseudo-solution to piracy of their show. This action, though not very nice, is a direct result of people trying to jack them of their creativity. While I haven't seen the show, I can comment that the steps they are taking do not interfere with legitimate downloads, nor are they suing everyone in sight.
Those of you bitching about your slow downloads must realize that someone pays for this, and HBO is trying to make sure that if they have to foot the bill, you won't get your downloads easily.
Now if they produced shows that didn't SUCK I might give a shit.
Apparently all those people downloading episodes of Rome seem to think it's worth something. If the show was really crappy nobody would care that HBO is poisoning torrents that nobody cares about, and we wouldn't be discussing this.
i ate crayons when i was a kid and now i have two braincells and the blue ones taste nicer
This is already implemented in azureus CVS. Enjoy the show guys.
We got sick of it and cancelled our cable. We still get a few local stations for news. We rent or buy only the DVDs we want to see. The kids get videos of cartoons for as cheap as 99 cents, and they get to see the *good* cartoons, without commercials. It's cheaper in the long run, more convenient, and HBO has made a habit of releasing their original series complete on DVD, which is the only way to make sense of the entirety of "Carnivale", for instance.
As for HBO, shame on them; they host Bill Maher, and I wonder what he's had to say about this.
Their model of distribution? A scarce network of trusted hosts.
Can this be used for p2p? You bet - even if encryption is outlawed, there's still steganography or just a walk to a friend with your hard disk (usb pen drive, whatever). Will this be used for p2p? That depends on how hard the content owners and the state will go against p2p.
We live in interesting times, my friends. Btw "p2p users are like drug users" would be a misrepresentation of my view.
I won't commnt on this HBO issue specifically because I'm in the UK (you know, the filthy place that wants to steal the internet), but on a similar note...
Sky showed Battlestar Galactica a while back, and though I caught the first few episodes, i missed a couple from around ep5. As BSG is a series that really has to be watched in order I stopped watching it, and started downloading it instead.
Is that wrong? I watch Sky on NTL cable, and there's no video on demand for series (only films).
Now you could argue that I'm skipping the adverts, which I am, but there's nothing in my contract about watching the adverts, and with a video recorder I could pause the record when the ads come on (something I used to do when I had video).
So again, is what I'm doing somehow wrong? What am I gaining, other than a higher quality recording (which I could also get if I had a PVR).
This is the method that we all said we would prefer. I don't understand why people are all up in arms over this; would it be better if they were throwing lawsuits around instead of beating people at their own game? Really, I prefer this way anyway, and it has the fringe benefit of getting people get to try to design better protocols. This keeps sounds more and more preferable to lawsuits.
/Rome/ wasn't broadcast, so it doesn't count. HBO is a somewhat pricy subscription based cable TV network, so their content never hit the air in any form of open format. This is like throwing DVD rips up on a BT tracker and wondering why whoever bankrolled the movie is a little peeved.
Besides all of that, I really don't have a problem with people downloading broadcast TV shows. I honestly think the legal system shouldn't have a problem with it either, since it was broadcast and all. Now, the courts probably would take issue, seeing to how the industry bought so many wonderful laws. But that isn't the point.
The problem here is that
What HBO is doing is similar to defending yourself against a mugging. You legally need not wait for the police to take action. They are not going against someone who has downloaded, they are disrupting the illegal actions of someone who is downloading. They are also doing it without any collateral damage.
This is very similar to banks putting purple ink bombs in the sacks of money robbers demand. Only the money is destroyed, making it useless to the robber. If the robber is cheezed, tuff.
It's not hacking. They're advertising that you can download data from them. If you choose to do so then they'll provide data to you.
That the data isn't what you expect is unfortunate. There's a quality gap but that's not illegal.
They're not connecting to you and pushing data at you. They're not attempting to subvert your PC. They're not executing code anywhere other than their own servers. They're doing very little wrong.
They are declining to play nicely and follow the protocol you're attempting to use. That's a reputation issue, and one that needs to be resolved. But there's nothing that says they have to play nicely, and implement the protocol properly. So don't expect them to, and don't accuse them of illegal actions when they don't.
If they attempt a form of vigilante justice that does transgress the law, then I'll join calls for them to be prosecuted. Merely giving you data that isn't what you wanted isn't a transgression, and can thus not be prosecuted.
Heck, to take a thoroughly corporate view, they own copyright on 'Rome', so surely they're the people that can specify which data _should_ be provided through a torrent to give you the copy that they want to share. They're actually doing you a favour and giving you the official copy and not some encoded fascimile provided by an unreliable source.
People are just being picky in wanting the unreliable version because it's more likely to let them watch the program in question. Ironic really.
Your post is smack right on the point, which unfortunately nobody, repeat nobody, especially not the business executives at these large media organisations seem to understand.
Dude, spend a few mins and get a webpage or a blog up. We need some serious apologetics on behalf of customers.
If capitalism is to be described in two words, it should be 'customers = kings'.
In the Entertainment industry, the commodity that is to be sold is the 'acts, creativity, talents and the show', not the MEDIA on which that is recorded.
The Industry is keen on selling the CDs and DVDs to gain profit. They seem to have forgotten that it is not the CDs or DvDs or TV shows thats important, but the content. The media is just irrelavent except that the customer needs ease of use, acessibility and total freedom over the 'CONTENT' in the media.
If it is becoming hard for the Industry to control the Content from being shared without returns on investment and profit to the industry, they should then revamp the whole industry's way of functioning instead of trying to struggle with the Media. The Media being electronic will always be easy to transmit over the networks, come what may. Heck, the networks exist for only one reason: TO SHARE, SHARE SHARE and SHARE. in short, to communicate. Don't fight against this nature of the networks.
Instead, try some creativity with the functioning, pricing and ultimately the industry itself. Or else, die. Something else will take up your place.
HBO is not giving you a free download, as in your cheese analogy.
HBO is fighting illegal distribution of their material. They do give you a free taste of the show in their advertising. That is the level they feel comfortable giving out.
You downloading the show is like going to the dairy section and opening / eating whatever cheese you want.
They should do like XM and let you get an online account if you pay for the service and download / stream content when you can't watch otherwise. You pay for the stuff, why not get internet access as well? If enough people go that way, maybe you can even charge for access online instead of offering it free to your current subscribers...
Ed
I have to say, im perplexed by this post. First they call HBO "unscrupulos" for poisoning downloads of their content (wouldn't the people doing the downloads be the unscrupulous ones?), then they go on to lament the network bandwidth loss generated by said poisoning data that technically they shouldn't be downloading at all? Then they compare this to spam. I really think this person's sense of morality is a bit out of kilter.
Granted, I posted not long ago about how I have downloaded a lot of music and this stance COULD be seen as hypocritical. I don't think these are the same thing at all. In THIS situation, HBO is the original creator, and entitled to get paid for their hard work. In the other, the RIAA gets almost all the money instead of the artist who actually deserves to get most of it, not some pittance.
When you taped their show with your VCR you could do exactly what with it? give or loan your tape to someone else? Spend far more time than it was worth making a copy of your tape to give or loan to someone else? There was a limit to the "so called" damage you could do. I say "so called" because honestly, your shared tape of a show on HBO was little more than a small, free sample to anyone you gave it to. At best it was an extended commercial for HBO and their wares.
Now you go online and the entire season will be there to be downloaded. Given time and enough fans the whole run of the show would be available online if HBO didn't do something about it. Why bother paying for HBO if you can get the one or more shows you want to watch online for free?
You can't compare the taping of television shows twenty years ago to the ridiculous level of leeching that takes place today. As Samuel L. Jackson said so well in Pulp Fiction it "ain't the same fuckin' ballpark, it ain't the same league, it ain't even the same fuckin' sport."
And most of all every single person who tries to draw the comparison knows it perfectly well.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
Indeed. I look forward to them providing pay-for downloads in a format that won't restrict how I watch it... oh dear..
From your original post :
That is, of course, if the free "cheese" they give me isn't really a pile of poison poo spray painted yellow. I really hate when that happens.
By writing this sentence as a part of your whole cheese-HBO analogy, you chose to blur the difference between the free samples offered by HBO (not poisoned) and the regular shows downloaded without HBO's consent over bittorrent (poisoned). Equating the two propositions hints that the latter should be allowed since the former is.
I am puzzled by the fact that you seem to believe I have made that argument. I have done nothing of the kind. Perhaps you need to go read my post again and try to see what those who moderated me saw.
You made that argument through your analogy. And I think it's for this exact reason that you were modded up.
It would be nice to be sure of anything the way some people are of everything.
Where i live, we sadly cannot get any of these american channels, even if you want to pay for them. We also dont get much american shows these days, with the exception of crappy realitytv that i have no interest in.
The only option for me is to download these series from the internet, or wait years for dvds in wrong region that might show up or not. I would happily pay a subscription fee for such downloads, but sadly it seems that tv stations does not think that far..
I don't think it's the entire season that bothers them as much as the fact that you and any number of others can grab the entire season in about six hours or so. There was plenty of entire season sharing in the VCR days but it was usually limited to a circle of friends. Even in VCR days distributing a trunk full of tapes would generally attract legal attention.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
imho what's really missing is a pay-for-download version (iHBO anyone?).
This service could be free to HBO subscribers, and everyone else could buy single shows, a series or a time-span (1-month, etc).
The single thing that media groups didn't learn from s/w companies is that 100% piracy elimination is 100% impossible, and in my opinion software piracy even helped certain products become #1. I think this would be true for media as well: as more people pirate it, more people talk about it, and more people buy it.
The bottom line is that there is no product that everyone will buy, so any product that can be exchanged for 'free' will be. To a large degree this has positive, not negative economic impacts for the rights-holders. Since the piracy has no direct impact there is no monetary loss, but there is increased exposure.
It blows my mind that these supposed business experts are failing business-101: If there is a demand, fill it. The demand is to have media available on the internet, and since they are not filling it, it's being filled by others.
iTunes is proof that despite 'free' content, there are lots of people will pay for it...
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?