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Classic TV for Free Download
way2trivial writes to tell us the New York Times is reporting that Warner Brothers will have over 100 classic TV shows available for free download with a 1-2 minutes of commercials per episode. From the article: "There is a catch. To use the technology, viewers will have to agree to participate in a special file-sharing network. This approach helps AOL reduce the cost of distributing-high quality video files by passing portions of the video files from one user's computer to another. AOL says that since it will control the network, it can protect users from the sorts of viruses and spyware that infect other peer-to-peer systems."
Usually the fact that a P2P network has been under some kind of central control was the exact reason it included spyware...
(Stating the obvious here, but damn..)
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
I think the major deterrent will be this (FT fine A):
"The company will offer a changing selection of several hundred episodes each month, rather than providing continuous access to all the episodes in a series, Mr. Frankel said, so as not to cannibalize potential DVD sales of old TV shows."
So just when you are in the middle of a season, the show will go out of rotation and you have to go and get the DVD anyway (or wait -- 4800 episodes, a few hundred per rotation -> at least 6 months).
Here's another link to the story.
Also, if you want to read the NYT version but don't want to create a login, check out BugMeNot.com.
I remember that Gamespot used to use an app from Kontiki for free downloads for non-subscribers. The app wasn't the most reliable and didn't always work right... they eventually ditched it.
Maybe it'll actually work better now...
This is a sig. It is appended to the end of comments I post.
It also brings legality into question for other distribution mechanisms, I would think. If Kontiki is legal, how would caching a bittorrent for an episode of "Lost" be any different?
Because it is ostensibly controlled by the owner of the copyright, which means they are controlling the means and methods of distribution, which is the central power of copyright. Nothing here changes or makes the illicit distribution of "Lost" legal.
using kontiki to violate copyight law would be illegal, using bittorrent to violate copyright law would also be illegal. there is no difference really if they give permission to download via torrent it would be legal, if they give permission to download via kontiki it would also be legal.
there isn't anything special about using a peer to peer network for distribution, the advancement is a social advancement in WB seeing the market for free downloads with ads as comparable to free broadcasts with ads.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
You must not be familiar with Bittorrent, or you'd know that with some clients implementing decentralized tracking, the torrent can live on long after the tracker is gone. At least, I think you meant to say tracker instead of seed, right? Because a seed is merely someone who has downloaded the whole file and is uploading only.
Its worth mentioning that Warner is also the one studio that has really resisted the MPAA strong-arm tactics of treating customers as criminals. They wisely felt pricing their movie library competitively ($10 range) meant greater sales for them, and less piracy.
They are definitely the good guys.
If content costs money, then why do media companys publish so much bullsh!t content?
If they cut some 60% of the crap that is out there, they could save billions.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Its gonna be BitTorrent with extra logging capabilities.
-d
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
FTFA-
"AOL is using file-sharing technology from Kontiki, a Silicon Valley company providing a similar system to the ambitious Internet video program of the BBC."
and a google search brought me here at Kontiki's page.
95% of all sigs are made up.
A broadband ISP would be crazy to enforce this, since one of the largest selling points of broadband access is quick downloads of large media content such as this. I'm not saying it would make people go back to dialup, but I do think the cable/DSL/FiOS speed war is fueled by the downloading of media. ISPs use their download rates to attract new customers at a price premium, and it works. Remove that incentive and you'll be back to the lowest common denominator (768k DSL.. how can they even call it broadband?!).
isomerica.net | Foonetic IRC
Adventures of Brisco County Jr.
Alice
Babylon 5
Beetlejuice
Chico and the Man
Dark Justice
Eight is Enough
F Troop
The F.B.I.
Falcon Crest
Freakazoid
Freddy's Nightmares
The Fugitive
Growing Pains
Hangin' with Mr. Cooper
Head of the Class
Histeria!
Kung Fu
La Femme Nikita
Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman
Maverick
The New Adventures of Batman
Perfect Strangers
Pinky and the Brain
Scarecrow and Mrs. King
Sisters
Spenser: For Hire
V
Welcome Back, Kotter
Wonder Woman
This is what I was able to find for a full list with more content to be added over the course of a year. There are a few shows I am glad to see, can you guess one from my sig?
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
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Just a small comment on the iTunes thing ... at least on the Mac, you can open up protected files (audio or video) with Quicktime (as long as the computer is authorized), which allows you to play the stuff fullscreen or on a TV.
These are old shows that have long since been paid for.
And you KNOW this how? Further, if you bought stock in a company, would you support a regulation that you could only sell it for 150% of what you bought it for, or that after the dividents had brought in 150% of your purchase price you had to give it away? Corporations exist to make money. This money goes into making new things and providing money to the owners.
In fact, most of them should have entered the public domain long ago if our copyright system were not corrupted by dirty politicians being bribed by rich lobbyists.
The shows I saw listed were all created within the past few decades, within copyright protectiong long before there were masses of rich lobbyists extending copyright laws.
People can make good shows for much less than you think
OK, prove it. I speak with over a decade of professional experience in the music industry. I have also dabbled in video, doing costuming, lighting, camera work, audio recording, and editing/post production. My work's appeared on ESPN, PBS, and Australian music video programs. Not a ton of work, but enough to know what even just lighting a scene to look good takes. Your qualifications are?
Take a look some time at the numbers for the production cost of TV shows.
Slashdot favourite, Farscape, cost somewhere around $2 Million per episode, just to make it.
The last time I saw the numbers some people worked it out that to pay for the production, manufacturing, and distribution to give every cable and satellite subscriber every show on cable on DVD, without ads, would cost about eight dollars a month.
OK, let's pretend that there's 2 billion people in the world in this equation, all of whom pay in $8/month. Let's further pretend that there's 150 channels (In fact, there'd be many more than that, because once you go global there's going to have to be channels that provide local/local language programming), with 6 hours/day of unique programming. That works out to:
2,000,000,000*$8=
$16,000,000,000 pot. Divided by 150 channels:
$106,666,666 per channel. Divided by 30 days in a month:
$3,555,555 per day. Divided by 6 hours of unique programming leaves:
$592,592 per hour of programming.
And that's supposed to include the cost of distributing the content to the users on DVD too? I think their math is a little suspect. Perhaps they set out with an assumption and looked for "evidence" to prove it?
This is not about rewarding artists so they will make more content.
Actually it is - the artists involved get residuals from old shows.
How many more episodes of "The Prisoner" are going to be made that would not be made is copyrights were cut down to 7 years?
None. But your question is broken because no matter what (within the realm of likely possibility), no more episodes of "The Prisoner" will ever be made. It's about as valid as me asking how many more episodes would be made if I don't shoot two dozen adorable little puppies in the head.
What is more important is whether actors can continue acting in small but interesting shows such as the Prisoner rather than some schlocky sitcom, knowing that the Prisoner audience will be far more likely to subvert payment systems. What is more important is whether anyone would fund making more shows LIKE the Prisoner, based on the behaviour of the fans of existing shows. I can assure you that reducing copyright to 7 years would cause media production of all kinds to fall drastically. Sure, there'd be some amateur stuff that would try to fill in the gaps, but you know, amateur work is called that for a reason. The vast majority of it simply isn't very good and finding the stuff that is can be a major pain. I'd far rather watch The Prisoner than public access cable. How about you?
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&ie=UTF-8& ncl=http://www.clickz.com/news/article.php/3563926
You didn't get it.
The joke I mean.
How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
So if they get scratched too badly, etc
For one thing: SkipDr. For another: DVDs of old live-action TV series aren't as likely to get scratched as animated DVDs are because your kids aren't likely to want to watch them and thus won't be as likely to look for them, provided that you keep them separate from discs containing programming targeted at children.
Eveventually DVD will be replaced by the HD standards and then it will become difficult to find anything play my "forver" DVD.
Difference is that DVD has such an installed base and an identical shape to the new high-definition video disc formats that it'd be market suicide to make and sell a player that doesn't play customers' existing DVD Video disc collections in at least EDTV (480p/576p) resolution. Even today, many DVD Video players are capable of playing legacy MPEG-1 discs such as VCDs.
if I can get things as a digital file without a bunch of hinderances
Not likely. The business models of the entities controlling exclusive rights in huge back catalogs rely on digital hindrance management.
The main issue is the intent of the network doing the distribution. Grokster et al were found to be illegal because they promoted lawbreaking as their primary raison d'etre -- with ads like "download the top 40 here" and other things that clearly were designed to incude infringement. Since Bittorent is content-neutral as a technology, it can't be declared illegal under MGM v. Grokster, since those who created/maintain it don't intend for its primary purposes to be infringing, and aren't encouraging infringement directly.
:-P)
Go read the opinion -- it's publicly available for free, and it's really not hard to understand at all. (BTW, I copied that link straight from www.supremecourtus.gov, so it's as legit as it gets, despite what Slashdot may say about the domain.
How To Get Humans To Mars
I've heard that AOL's software basically associates itself with various file types, puts itself into various context-sensitive menus, etc....
Hmm, that would make them just exactly like... Apple! Thier QuickTime player is perhaps the worst offender w.r.t. taking over things you don't want it to. Heck, QT takes over as your *TIFF* viewer, even when you tell it not to. Apple/QT is now far worse about hijacking PCs than Real, who for all their faults at least listened to complaints and made new versions much less intrusive.
But somehow, Apple is immune from serious criticism, even if it's justified, and that's especially true here on Slashdot...
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last