TV Delays Driving AU Viewers To Piracy

Astat1ne writes in with a story in The Register about the delays Australian TV viewers are experiencing getting overseas-produced series and how this is driving many of them to download the shows via BitTorrent and other peer-to-peer networks. The problem is compounded by the fact that Australian viewers are unable to download legal copies of the episodes from the US iTunes website. Quoting: "According to a survey based on a sample of 119 current or recent free-to-air TV series, Australian viewers are waiting an average of almost 17 months for the first-run series first seen overseas. Over the past two years, average Australian broadcast delays for free-to-air television viewers have more than doubled from 7.9 to 16.7 months."

Comments

It's Still Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because some people can't get something, doesn't make it right. I can't afford a Ferrari, but nobody would justify me stealing it. Similarly, if a movie or show isn't available in my market, it doesn't justify piracy because the distributor for one reason or another didn't make it available. Either wait or it, or petition for it to be made or sale.

I love how slashdot has become Piracy Excuses & Justifications 101.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[unformed]

Who said it's about justifying piracy? It's not. It's still wrong, but it shows that there IS a market that is willing to pay for it ... if it was provided.

Piracy isn't justified, but if the consumers want to see a TV show, they will. The question now is, are you going to sell it to them, or are they going to have no choice but to steal it?

Re:It's Still Wrong

[Harmonious Botch]

While slashdot has indeed tended toward becoming a forum for piracy excuses, this is not neccesarily an example of it. This seems more to document a stupid move by a corporation that give the unethical a stronger motive for piracy.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[9mm Censor]

Yes, it is wrong. The media is wrong by not catering to the world market. If the media gave the market what the consumers want, there would be less of a problem with piracy.

We have the media corps not giving the consumers what they want.
and
We have the consumers taking what they want, but not from the media corps because they are not giving the consumers the choice to choose what they want, legally.

No one is really right in the situation, and thus it continues to perpetuate digital theft, and aggressive litigious bullying.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[LighterShadeOfBlack]

Just because some people can't get something, doesn't make it right. I can't afford a Ferrari, but nobody would justify me stealing it. - Whether piracy is wrong under this circumstance or any other, the "piracy is theft" mantra is pure unadulterated bullshit. For God's sake stop using it.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[pnattress]

You can't afford a Ferrari. That doesn't mean it's not available to you, just that you don't have the means to get it. The issue here is that Australians don't have the means of legally acquiring this material. They can't even log on to the US iTunes and pay for it. That's the problem.

I love how Slashdot has become the only place to come for incorrect car analogies.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[YouTalkinToMe]

Yes, it is still probably illegal, but when or how it is released does have an effect on the legal/moral implications of downloading.

For example, if the show was NEVER aired in Australia, and is never made available for sale on DVD, then is it still illegal to copy? It would have no impact on earning potential, or?

Re:It's Still Wrong

[Original Replica]

Either wait or it, or petition for it to be made or sale.

In a passive/aggressive kind of way piracy is a petition for change. No stealing it is not right, but mass piracy does convey the will of the masses. People want their entertainment, fresh and cheap. Maybe in order to supply that, quality will suffer, but that is what the demand is. If a legal unlimited media-crap P2P network that cost the same as cable TV, was made availible, there would be much less piracy.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

No the question is not are you willing to sell it, it's are people willing to pay you what it would cost. Chances are these people aren't stupid, but have looked at the numbers and concluded that people aren't willing to pay enough for them to make a profit.

Being willing to download for free doesn't mean being willing to pay the real market cost.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[anagama]

I disagree with you here. Note, I've been modded flamebait and troll a lot for saying stuff against the partyline on copyright. The problem with piracy is that has the potential to harm producers because some people who would have paid won't (it's impossible that all copyright infringers absolutely never would have paid for the content). Thus, the producer is harmed by illegal downloading and it should not be condoned.

This situation different. If the material is not released in any pay format, the content producer cannot possibly suffer any negative consequences by banned groups' piracy.

The question is different when there is delay as in this case and there are more questions to be answered. For example, do all shows make it to Australia or just a few? Why exactly are the content producers delaying so long? Is it actually the AU media that is standing in the way of distribution?

Answers to these kinds of questions could sway my thinking (remember, it is based on the potential for lost sales, not any "moral" argument posed by either side). If it is simply a choice by the content producers not to sell to AU, then I don't really have a problem because they would never have made a dime of Australia. I would think the answer though is more complicated. Politics? Protectionism?

Re:It's Still Wrong

[bendodge]

or are they going to have no choice but to steal it? You forgot to include the RIGHT choice: don't steal it. Instant gratification isn't vital to your existence, although that's what we are teaching our kids by buying them everything as soon as it "comes out". It used to be that kids saved their money to buy something, and in the process learned to WAIT.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

I would happily pay, but no one offers it for sale. What happened to market forces?

Re:It's Still Wrong

[anagama]

Chances are these people aren't stupid, but have looked at the numbers and concluded that people aren't willing to pay enough for them to make a profit.

How does that make sense? If they intend to never sell in AU, they've made the show with the presumption it will make a profit in other markets. If it turns out they can also sell in AU, then that's all pure bonus money. And how much exactly would it cost for them to get the show on iTunes? Doesn't apple actually provide the bandwidth for their pay stuff? There's just no downside.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[MostAwesomeDude]

Woot, a troll.

Okay, so listen up. If you can't afford a Ferrari, that is understandable. Ferraris are spendy little cars. But DVDs? They're perfectly affordable. So is basic cable. The problem here is not cost, not at any level -- Australia is an English-speaking country with similar obscenity laws and a excellent grasp of American culture. There should not be any costs associated with "preparing" episodes for export to Australia, neither for broadcast nor for DVD.

People are pirating it because there is no other way to get it. For some inexplicable reason, the industry seems to think that there is little to no demand for importing these shows, and so they've neglected to do so. It's sort of sad, really; the industry hasn't always been this way. For example, Cartoon Network started airing late-night anime precisely because polls showed that the biggest demographic of anime fansubbers and traders was also the demographic most likely to sit up late at night and watch cartoons. While this may not seem like a big deal to you, it was an amazingly awesome thing for anime lovers, and I think that Cartoon Network got it right.

Your "wait for it" method assumes that the show in question will in fact be aired and released in Australia regardless of consumer input. This is not true. There are many shows in markets which simply never arrive in places due to a lack of demand. For every anime imported, dubbed, edited, NTSCed, and aired or released in America and Canada, there are dozens that they predict just won't sell no matter how snazzy the packaging is. The only way to show that there is a serious demand is to pirate the shows.

The TV business is usually not as receptive to input as the Adult Swim guys. They don't understand much besides money and ratings. The only way to force them to speed up their importing schedules is to create economic impetus -- to pirate the shows that are being demanded. Anything else is futile.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Incorrect. It's illegal, not necessarily "wrong".

Re:It's Still Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no stealing involved here, sir.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it makes it right. Globalization is for everybody or for nobody. The businesses move freely, but consumers can be forbidden from purchasing in another country (see AllOfMP3, DVD region codes, etc.) If you sell something to someone in the US and there is no technical reason why you can't sell it to me, then it is wrong for you to exclude me. Levelling the playing field is not wrong: My conscience is clear.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[SaDan]

No kidding. It's TV, for crying out loud! This isn't a life or death situation. Go read a freakin' book!

Or, if you wish to be part of the solution, and not part of the landscape, write to your local TV stations and start complaining! Write to their advertisers! DO SOMETHING CONSTRUCTIVE!

Re:It's Still Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not that simple. Production companies charge more for new shows and less for old shows. Basically the AU tv company has said we are willing to pay $X for your show and no more. The Production company then replies, well if that's all your willing to pay you'll have to wait at least 12 month since we have other markets whom are willing to pay a lot more. If they where willing to sell for $X to AU at once then for example the UK market who where willing to pay more than $X will refuse to do so and the production company loses money. That's all basic economics.

As for putting it on iTunes. By doing so the program loses value for the AU tv company since it will mean that less people will watch it on TV and so they'd be willing to pay even less for the rights or even decide not buy it at all. So the US production company will eithert lose a sale or get less money from the sale than they could have had they not released the show to iTunes. That is a real and significant cost for them, one which any profits gotten of iTunes may very well not cover.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Piracy IS theft.

Copyright violations ARE NOT theft.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[anagama]

Except they can make money by directly selling it to the people and cut out the networks altogether. I suspect that since the media companies are really married to the advertising model however, they don't consider the potential for direct sales. Now, I don't condone piracy when the piracy might interfere with the content producer's ability to earn money, but by the same token, I've become quite accustomed to having commercial free entertainment on DVD or through iTunes. I'm in the US so it is easy for me to get things by legal means and so I do. If I was AU, I wouldn't feel guilty about downloading because nobody wants to sell it to me anyway. Right or wrong, this is the future market media companies have to deal with and what they ought to do, is figure out how to deal with it profitably.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[Yvanhoe]

Well it is wrong in the legal sense but I would call it right in the moral sense. Americans have the show for free on broadcasting networks. They can tape it, share the tape with friends, but can't do this digitally or can't give it to australians friends ? Yeah, that's the law, you should comply but you should also change it quickly.

Luckily I am free of the series addiction that seem to get all my colleagues, but I must say that it is very hard for those watching the series on the national network to not be spoiled by the bittorrenters who knows who gets to be killed at the end of season 1 12 months before "honest guys".

Re:It's Still Wrong

[orlanz]

Similarly, if a movie or show isn't available in my market, it doesn't justify piracy because the distributor for one reason or another didn't make it available.

I will argue against that. First lets call a spade a spade and not mix things up. We are talking about copyright infringement, not moral/ethical issues and definitly NOT stealing (people love to equate the two on the grounds of morality, but it pisses me off that they deal out vastly different degrees of punishment upon the guilty of each).

Copyrights are a social contract between producers and society, the later will assist (NOT gaurantee) the former in obtaining profits so as to encourage a healthy and growing existance of the former in the HOPE the former will continue to create works FOR the later. The emphisis is on the benefit of the later, NOT the former.

If for one reason or another, the producer is unable/unwilling to provide a work protected by society at its true value; society or elements of it have every right to seek other means of obtaining the work at its true value. Of course producers are a part of society and they can sue copyright infringers, but that just reduces down to a cost of obtaining the work by certain means. Legality is an issue of cost, not morality.

Consumers will look at their options and always choose the least costly method, therefore producers need to make sure that the profitable path is that method by either adjusting their price or adjusting the price of alternatives through lawsuits, legislation, regulations, etc. The two paths effect each other and both have points of diminishing returns; so one needs to balance them properly.

I am not providing excuses here, but just showing the basic ground rules that exist.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[miskatonic alumnus]

They are not stealing it. I don't know about the law down under, but in the states, if you receive a copy from someone who made the copy, not only have you not stolen it, you also have not received stolen goods nor violated copyright law. Please explain this whole stealing business.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[MillionthMonkey]

Well, we wanted all this "globalization", didn't we? And we have worldwide communication now, don't we? So why do they act surprised when people start pirating titles when they delay release dates across different continents by months?

I mean, geez, who's running the television industry, the Dutch East India Pictures Association? Why is their incompetence the fault of the market? Why do we have laws to protect incompetence?

Re:It's Still Wrong

[aplusjimages]

Is that you Ben Affleck? Don't worry the Aussies aren't downloading Daredevil or Gigli.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[dangitman]

OK, so what's wrong about it?

Just because something is illegal does not make it morally wrong. I download shows on bittorrent, and if I like a show, then I go and buy the DVD when it is later released. So, they are making more money from me than if I were watching them on TV. Everybody wins! I get the shows when I want them, the producers get to make money. Where's the crime or immoraility?

Re:It's Still Wrong

[dangitman]

So, sell it on DVD direct to the Australian market. As you said, new shows are worth more - so they can sell at a premium. If they wait until after it shows on Aussie TV, the DVDs are worth less, and people might pick them up from a bargian bin, if at all. After all that time, the show is less desirable, so people might forgo buying the DVDs altogether.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[KDR_11k]

And we need to argue semantics over something like this... why? Especially when you keep calling it "piracy" which last I checked meant attacking a civil vessel over international waters?

Re:It's Still Wrong

[KDR_11k]

For every anime [..] NTSCed

Um, Japan uses NTSC so that wouldn't be a conversion.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[Shaltenn]

The 'crime' as they would have you believe, is that you didn't pay for the 'privledge' of the format shift from DVD to . And that's a 'crime' of the highest order because they can't increase their profits with minimal work.
  I own a legitimate hard-cover copy bounded set of all the seasons of DS9 and get a letter because I downloaded the avi rips? Where's the fairness in that?

Re:It's Still Wrong

[HowIsMyDriving?]

If you would have told me that Jake and the Fat Man would be on DVD two years ago, I would have laughed. Now it is. What you would be doing is impacting future earnings. It is a companies right to not distribute something that they paid for and created. While you might not like that, it is true. If a company makes a movie that they do not like and don't distribute it, which has happened before, that does not mean that it is ok to pirate it. It is a buisness calculation to not release it and whatever happens for the company, be it good or bad is the companies problem. Since music and TV and movies are not a necessity, I don't see why there is this arguement that it is ok to pirate or copy it. These things are not like recepies for bread, ways to get clean water or other things that are needed to sustain life. Tough shit if you can't get the music you want. I wanted to go to a concert earlier this year but the tickets were 80 dollars. That does not give me the right to sneak in for free. The same goes with DVDs and TV. Companies pay for these things throught investors on future earnings for movies or advertisements on tv. I am guessing the TV shows you download do not have the advertisements in them. While it has been declared legal to fast forward through them, it is still illegal to copy and distribute them without the ads. Life isn't fair, you don't deserve everything that you always want. I want a Porsche 911 Targa, but I don't have the money for it. I don't rail against the machine and complain that it is unfair that it is priced at 80-100k. Buck up and accept the facts. If you want to change them, go ahead, but that doesn't make it legal to go around what you do when you pirate or copy things. You are not saving or preserving human life, liberty or the persut of happyness when you download Family guy.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[typidemon]

Just because some people can't get something, doesn't make it right. I can't afford a Ferrari, but nobody would justify me stealing it

That's a really shitty argument. I can afford to purchase the content, it's just impossible for me to attain it. If show's were available to legitimately download for a realistic price at the time of broadcast, I'd be there with bells on.

Similarly, if a movie or show isn't available in my market, it doesn't justify piracy because the distributor for one reason or another didn't make it available. Either wait or it, or petition for it to be made or sale.

It's not my fault that broadcasters, publishers and producers are caught in the 1970's while the world is getting ready to move into 2010's

If content providers were willing to adapt to a changing market, I'd be more than willing to pay.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[grimJester]

Piracy IS theft.

Copyright violations ARE NOT theft.

a) wrong.

b) correct.

To elaborate, piracy is robbery, not theft, committed at sea. Stealing something from a ship without getting noticed in the act would not be piracy. Threatening the crew of a ship with a cutlass while helping yourself to their booty is piracy. Possibly rape, depending on your definition of "booty".

Re:It's Still Wrong

[LighterShadeOfBlack]

It's not about semantics. It's about clarifying what the of the act of piracy is and is not. There's no point even trying to have an intelligent discussion about software piracy if one party doesn't understand what it is to the point that they can't differentiate between piracy and theft.

As far as the term "piracy" goes, I guess the last time you checked that meaning was some time before the 1990's since it has been used colloquially within this context for well over a decade. If anybody misunderstood my post to be of a nautical nature please raise your hand now.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[KDR_11k]

People know exactly what copyright infringement is but that's a long word so they pick shorter ones to type. Everyone knows what is being talked about and whether we call it theft, piracy or copyright infringement is merely semantics. Also you say piracy is correct because it's being used colloquially but isn't the fact that so many people call it theft strong evidence that theft is also a colloquial term for it? In fact I'd expect "stealing ideas" to have been in use much longer than "piracy". Noone thinks you ruin in and steal actual copies when you call it stealing. People only argue about semantics there to prevent analogies from being used. By stealing an idea you take away the benefits of authorship from the author, THAT's what you steal.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Because if consumers can buy shows on DVD there is less incentive for Aussie TV to show them, so they'll pay less for them and the production company will lose more money than they made on DVD sales.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[LighterShadeOfBlack]

But people don't know what we're talking about, that's my point. At least they haven't bothered to consider the full implications of what piracy is compared with theft (ie. to take a copy of something versus to take the original). This isn't a case of colloquialisms because the GGP's post made the analogy of pirating media with stealing a Ferrari. Which is, as I originally stated, absolutely incorrect.

People don't use "theft" in place of the term "piracy" or "copyright infringement" unless they don't understand the difference or intentionally wish to misrepresent piracy as theft to the uninformed reader. Either way, they can and should be called on it so that the real facts on the subject can be presented and an objective and relevant debate can be had on copyright infringement. As I said previously, that's not possible as long as one side believes copyright infringement to be just another kind of theft, in which case they will almost certainly presume that it is (or should be) subject to the same moral and legal standpoint.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[Matt_R]

Not only do we wait up to 18 months for the shows, the local networks air them at stupid times, keep changing timeslots, air the episodes out of order, start the episode late because some other live show earlier that night ran late.

Due to the crappy timeslots, I'd have to tape almost all the shows I want. If I'm watching a tape, I'm going to fastforward the ads. So why not download it off the internet a year earlier and save all the hassle?

This isn't the same as a movie. I go to the cinemas every few weeks and pay to watch a movie. This is free-to-air TV that I wouldn't have paid anything to watch in the first place.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[mabhatter654]

you hit it exactly...

the studios film much stuff in Australia and New Zeland in order to get around union obligations in the USA. Yet they want to use the same laws to prevent their finished material being sold on the "open market". Just because somebody sells iPods only in the USA is not going to prevent somebody from buying boxes of them here and selling them in a market Apple chooses to ignore. That's the falacy of globalization. It's the new mercantillism, where a small number of players move their pices at will without boundaries, but the local govts are demanded to prevent the customers (serfs) from getting the better deal thru the same channels.

look at copyright laws... they are reletively syncronized between the USA and Austrailia, something copyrighted here is automatically copyrighted there.. so what seriously prevents the media being sold there? Natural laws would say that a "thing" should be sold anywhere to anyone once it leaves your doors. Why are movies and media different? What natural right do they have to prevent global trade of their product that a maker of rubber bouncy balls wouldn't have?

Re:It's Still Wrong

[Sj0]

"The unethical"?

I'd say that's pretty subjective. Personally, I believe that since I pay a lot of money for cable TV, I've 'paid my dues' with respect to gaining access to the media. I don't believe that advertisers have any moral right for me to watch their ads, and I can easily show that nobody in the entire chain loses money as a result of my downloading a TV show I've paid for access for, to watch at another time and place.

Within my ethic, then, I am acting in a perfectly ethical manner. I'm simply attaining content I've paid for from another source, using an internet connection I've paid for. Since, in my ethic, I am not obliged to watch advertising just becuase some company paid for it, downloading TV shows is completely ethical for me.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[zakezuke]

Piracy isn't justified, but if the consumers want to see a TV show, they will. The question now is, are you going to sell it to them, or are they going to have no choice but to steal it?

There are many ways to justify piracy. Free advertising to markets who otherwise would not be exposed to it without shelling out money.

Anime is the best example of this. Fansub groups have been pirating Anime for a couple of decades, more so in the past 5 years as VCD/DVD and digital subtitles became practical. Most fansub groups pirate material until such time it becomes licensed in their country, which they feel they contributed to creating a market for material that otherwise did not exist. 100% justified. Whether it's right or wrong is up to the respective copyright holders, who in the past have shown tolerance to anime fan-sub groups. You can't say it's wrong, holding the copyright alone gives you the moral and legal authority to what you want. I can say, without a doubt, my spending on import material has increased as a result of these anime pirates.

How would a TV station know what the viewer wants unless they ask for it? What does an end user do when a series is cancled mid-season? What about DVD-region codes which were designed to prevent one market from viewing until such time as it was felt to be "ok" for them to view?

On the one hand, I agree that they should not be pirating this material when there is a viable option. But on the other hand, media companies are not respective the fact that we are a global society, and the concept of borders between peoples is obsolete. I would propose rather than thinking of these people as thieves, then of them as another demographic group, and market tward them. Establish either a planet wide television network, or permit downloadable viewing within a resonable period of time. Problem solved!

Forget about right or wrong... establish a system to meet the demand, and profit by it.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[KDR_11k]

This isn't a case of colloquialisms because the GGP's post made the analogy of pirating media with stealing a Ferrari. Which is, as I originally stated, absolutely incorrect.

Why is it absolutely incorrect? Whether that Ferrari costs thousands of dollars or mere cents, if you send it to China for disassembly and replication you'll still do severe damage to the company by forming competition that has no cost for inventing things because they just steal other people's ideas. Capitalism is designed to select for those who create the most benefit for society but someone who's just stealing ideas and thereby destroying the business of the inventor sets society back instead of helping it and since capitalism by itself has no safeguards against such parasites intellectual property law has been designed.

While I'd agree the original poster probably didn't have this in mind I still think it's splitting hairs to complain about the lost original. His idea was that not being able to get something legally isn't justification for getting it illegally, whether that Ferrari is stolen or counterfeit doesn't make a difference for that anyway.

People don't use "theft" in place of the term "piracy" or "copyright infringement" unless they don't understand the difference or intentionally wish to misrepresent piracy as theft to the uninformed reader.

I disagree. You're not using the term piracy to demand capital punishment for copyright infringers, he's not using the term theft to misrepresent copyright infringement as theft of the copy (although theft of ideas is another issue). He's using it to illustrate that you shouldn't take something just because you can't get it the legal way or at least shouldn't feel like you're justified in doing so. Because most copyright infringers infringe to save money and time without losing out on whatever they're infringing upon.

Of course the concept of copyright infringement is strange for most people since they rarely have ideas that are of any value, never mind having them stolen. They know that theft has financial implications and probably experienced it but few lost money to idea theft and as such they think it's a nasty thing to do but nothing that has severe financial implications for the victim. For a corporation however copyright infringement is much, MUCH worse than physical theft since a stolen item can be replaced but warez can't be unreleased and will keep hurting their market so equating copyright infringement with theft actually makes it less severe for the corporation.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[WilliamSChips]

Artificial waits are bullshit. If artifical wait periods are required to teach kids right moral values, perhaps you should rethink the moral values.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the same arguement over and over again and IMHO it's stll WRONG.

Where does it say that any major television producer/studio HAS to sell its product to YOU? If Paramount decided for whatever reason that Aussies suck and therefore won't sell Star Trek to them that's their right to do so. It's like any retail store with a "we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone" sign in the window. This whole "I want it so therefore I'm entitled to it" attitude is complete and utter horse shit.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[anagama]

This ignores the fact, whether illegal or not, that people will get the material when they want it. Laws and lawsuits notwithstanding, the media companies have a choice -- make some money and provide the content in a form people desire, or make little to no money and watch the people receive the content in a form they desire through unauthorized means.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[TeraCo]

It's true, it is nothing more than a justification. But strangely enough, we don't care.

I mean.. I'm pro-copyright in principle. I buy loads of stuff on itunes and I think there is a case for DRM (in that content producers should control what happens with their content) but ultimately, I'd rather download the TV shows now and buy the DVD's later than wait for Australian TV networks to get their shit together.

Ultimately downloading + DVD buying = Watching good TV shows earlier for me + Extra cash for the content producer + Australian TV stations getting fucked in the ass until they learn to quit screwing us around. It's win-win-win.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[kakofb]

Selling in Australia might sound like an easy way to make bonus money, but you have to realise that this is a different country here with different rules. Globalisation 101: Even though other countries may be English speaking and capitalistic, doesn't mean applying a business model designed for America to a different country won't result in failure.
In Australia, the five television networks fight and bid about who gets what programme. Sometimes it's a matter of them being smart enough to buy a programme that the other networks haven't discovered yet, but usually it's a matter of competing with them for the rights to show it. Coupled with the fact that Australian TV networks have to buy the HD versions, and buying a tv show from an American production company is really expensive.
I'm not entirely sure of how the licensing system works, but once someone's bought the rights to broadcast a certain show in Australia they remain pretty influential in how it's distributed by any other means within Australia.
Again, I don't know how this would apply to something like iTunes, but for example when the Channel Ten (FTA) bought The O.C., and Arena (pay tv channel) wanted to show it, there was no way Arena could show an episode before Channel Ten had broadcast it. I don't know if it's because Arena had to buy the rights from Channel Ten to rebroadcast it in Australia or what, but such an environment means iTunes releasing episodes of certain shows before the massive FTA networks had gotten around to showing them would probably result in a lot of issues. It's the same kind of problem which has resulted in pay tv networks being pretty terrible failures in Australia - the FTA networks have a lot of money, and individual pay tv channels have very little money in comparison, so they have no bidding power against the FTA networks, and if they get to show a certain programme at all they're not going to be allowed to gain any competitive advantage over the FTA network showing the same programme.

Then there's the whole question of shows not even coming to Australia. I doubt that's really the fault of the American production companies... We only have five FTA channels, four commercial and three mainstream and rich enough to buy the sought-after programmes, which means prime-time 'space' is very limited - if the show isn't going to be sickeningly popular enough to have at least a third of the Australian population gizzing all over it every week then it's entirely not worth spending millions of dollars buying the rights for.
Or perhaps it is worth buying the rights for, then just leaving in a cupboard so no other network can show it and maybe showing it every now and then at 11pm to very cautiously see how it fairs (cough ROME cough).

Re:It's Still Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Where does it say that any major television producer/studio HAS to sell its product to YOU?

The moment that maximising shareholder return was codified in US law. Why?

Re:It's Still Wrong

[Arker]

"Piracy" doesn't need to be justified. Talking about justifying it is just a means to divert attention from the real question. "Piracy" is simply people using making use of their own property, peacefully, without interfering with anyone else. What needs to be justified is laws that prohibit such behaviour in the first place.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[Sam Ritchie]

Chances are these people aren't stupid

No, these people are stupid. I'm fairly sure you need an IQ under 70 to be an Austalian TV exec.

Some might try and argue that they're just evil, and taking advantage of a docile TV-watching public by treating us like crap, but the increasing piracy figures show that at least some of us aren't taking it. And the argument violates Hanlon's law.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[bonhomme_de_neige]

Anime is the best example of this. Fansub groups have been pirating Anime for a couple of decades, more so in the past 5 years as VCD/DVD and digital subtitles became practical. Most fansub groups pirate material until such time it becomes licensed in their country, which they feel they contributed to creating a market for material that otherwise did not exist. 100% justified. Whether it's right or wrong is up to the respective copyright holders, who in the past have shown tolerance to anime fan-sub groups. You can't say it's wrong, holding the copyright alone gives you the moral and legal authority to what you want. I can say, without a doubt, my spending on import material has increased as a result of these anime pirates.

To add to this, Madman Entertainment, the (pretty much) sole distributer and licensee of Anime works in Australia, decides what to license and distribute next by collecting feedback from fans & customers and examining the rate of fansub downloads. When 100,000 people a week are downloading the next episode of series Y, it's hard to argue a case that they shouldn't put it out there on DVD ASAP.

Furthermore, they are usually very nice to small groups wanting to use their content - if you're a small club and you want to show something licensed by Madman at a members' screening, all you normally need to do is write them a polite email asking for permission, and it will be granted (on the 'condition' that you give out some promotional posters, which they will provide, at the screening, or something equally benign - in fact when I was organising such things we had people offer to pay for the posters when they missed out).

Madman has been expanding at an enormous rate since its foundation and it would be absolutely blind for anyone to say they are not profitable. Of course, they are a monopoly distributor to a niche market - but at the same time having their intellectual property "pirated" in this way hasn't hurt them one bit, because they've embraced it and found a way to use it to its full potential. And what better way to do your market research than to let your customers do it for you ... for free?/pP

Re:It's Still Wrong

[Harmonious Botch]

Hmmm...you're right. Sorry. No offense was intended.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[WilliamSChips]

Go read a freakin' book! I hate people always saying this whenever TV comes up. If all I wanted to do was read books I wouldn't even own a TV. But I do own a TV.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[xblackstatic]

Agreed.

The only point about delaying gratification is if you get something better by waiting. It's the classic marshmallow experiment. The experiment wasn't, "I'll give you this marshmallow, and if you don't eat it for ten minutes you are a good person", it was, "I'll give you this marshmallow, and if you don't eat it for ten minutes I'll give you another one." It's a measure of short- versus long-term thinking. To put it another way, if I really want a brand new Ferrari the second it comes out, and I have the means to purchase this item with no negative effects (i.e. I have high disposable income), and there would be no substantial benefit to me if I waited six month, then I should buy my Ferrari. On the other hand, if I wanted a brand new Ferrari but purchasing it would mean I couldn't buy food for the next twelve years, then if I still bought it I'd be succumbing to instant gratification.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[bane2571]

You've clearly never lived in Australia. Our 3 free to air commercial stations are notorious for incosistant programming.

At the moment the only Sci-fi on AU TV is battlestar galactica, relegated to a hideously late timeslot and pushed back by hours to make room for whatever piece of crap ran late earlier.

I wanted to watch farscape when it was playing and it was on late night as filler for the cricket. Cricket ran late? No Farscape. Basicly the whole season was played in random order on random days of the week. With AU TV you can pretty much gauruntee if you like a show it will be dropped halfway through or moved to a random timeslot with no warning, causing you to miss 3 or 4 episodes before you figure out what happened. To top it off if you are an internet user you tend to wind up finding out alot of the plots from Americans chatting about the latest episode that you won't see for 6 months.

I don't trust AU Commercial TV to provide 100% of a series at a consistant, accessable time slot. I DO trust bit torrent. Is it a bad state of affairs that the legal route acts shadier than the illegal one? Yes. Do I feel justified in pirating? Not really, but I'll do it anyway.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[vlad30]

Not only do they show 1.5 years later when they do they times they are shown are not stable (e.g. star trek shown after some sporting event when it finished) or worse entire seasons in 2-3 weeks unadvertised at odd times as a filler (e.g. Farscape) and beleive it or not the DVD box sets are usually available before or during the season being aired now and a clever purchaser can purchase from overseas.

Personally i want to skip all the middle men and just buy my DVD from the content producers with maybe a download to keep me happy while I wait for a box set and i would be happy to pay upfront for something I like

Re:It's Still Wrong

[Gription]

The piracy as theft argument doesn't fly in this situation. To steal something there has to be a loss in revenue. This is as much a case of piracy as aliens descrambling HBO and watching it on Alpha Centari. The media companies have decided to thumb their noses at these potential consumers. Apparently they aren't worthy of their notice.

There obviously was market for the shows in Australia and even though they had been servicing them (in a rather lame fashion) they are no longer allowing them to be customers. If they aren't going to sell them the shows then they apparently have deemed that the shows have no value in Australia. No value = no theft.

I am all for paying for media products. I have a huge collection of store bought movies. I have all of the equipment needed to do anything to a movie including ripping, copying, and editing. I don't download. I am also very much against the media companies being given any concessions of any kind. All of their actions stink of personal greed with no regard for the customer and they are successfully lobbying for more power to spoon feed their pap to us in a fashion that can only be looked at as monopolistic behavior. Until they cleanup their act and put the paying customer first they shouldn't get a single bit of government support.

Selling me a movie that forces me to watch ads before I can get to the main menu? Forcing unwanted, unreasonable, and unnecessary restrictions on the technology that I can purchase? The free market abhors these abominations so they pay lobbyists to get OUR government to ram it down our throats. Abusing the civil court system to wage a war of what amounts to a general campaign of government sanctioned derailing of due process against our citizens is the last straw.

Welcome to the future where "technology will make your life better". Yeah, everything is better and faster isn't it. Except I used to be able to startup the old VCR and start watching a movie in seconds. Now I can much more efficiently waste 5 minutes wading through previews that can't be skipped before getting to a menu so I can then start to watch the movie. Thanks, the check is in the mail... Even the packaging says to hell with the consumer. Does anyone really believe that so many DVDs and CDs are shoplifted that it requires so much packaging that they now sell special openers for them. The cost of the security devices is obviously more then the cost of the DVDs. (No! One stolen DVD isn't a $20 loss because they wouldn't have purchased it if the couldn't have stolen it. It is a 20 loss!!!)

I really want to see a MPAA executive left to suffocate under a layer of stickers that proclaims "Security Device Enclosed". I really feel that it would help secure my rights as a consumer that supports their insane idea of how a free market works.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[wolverine1999]

Just wait for the dvd's to be available and buy them on amazon.
Easy enough. Ignore your local market and get them from amazon.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[MichaelSmith]

until they learn to quit screwing us around. It's win-win-win.

I don't mind the adverts between and during programs. Its the adverts for their latest up-and-coming shit program which they put up over the top of the the program I want to watch which turns me right off.

Life is just too short to put up with crap like that. I have optus cable broadband and I hardly watch TV these days.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Go slap your parents in the head, they deserve it. They raised a scumbag.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[servognome]

"Piracy" is simply people using making use of their own property, peacefully, without interfering with anyone else.

"Piracy" is basically counterfeiting. Just because you don't prevent anybody else from using their copy, doesn't mean it doesn't have a material impact on the value.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[Arker]

I don't agree that it's anything like counterfeiting, but even if it were, so what?

How many Picassos were actually painted by El Myr? No one knows, probably no one ever will know, and it doesn't really matter.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[servognome]

How many Picassos were actually painted by El Myr? No one knows, probably no one ever will know, and it doesn't really matter.

However, if there were millions of identical Picassos indistiguishable from the original, it would make a huge difference.
Most of the things in the world have little intrinsic value, rarity is what makes things hold value. When rarity disappears, investment goes away and what you end up with is something like what's posted on Youtube. A bunch of creativity that suffers from extremely low quality.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[TeraCo]

I don't mind ads.. TV stations need to make money too. The screwing around I refer to is 'stopping a series mid-season to show older episodes, just beacuse it's not ratings period anymore' and things of that ilk.

If the stations offered the TV shows as downloads, complete with ads in them, I'd probably download them.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[Sj0]

Please go on. I'd love to hear your reasoning.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[Arker]

You have to distinguish between natural scarcity and artificial scarcity.

The latter is not true value - it's just a sneaky form of theft.

Picasso's work is valued by people in part because of its scarcity, sure. But there's no scarcity of Picasso *prints* mind you. There was, at one time, but the market is pretty well supplied now. Since the prints are no longer so valuable, does it follow that the printers are doing something wrong, that they should be enjoined from making so many prints, to keep the supply artificially scarce and the price artificially high? Would that create value? Perhaps the economy would do better if we made half as many cars, half as many shoes, half as much food?

No, it would not. Any more than breaking windows increases wealth.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[servognome]

But there's no scarcity of Picasso *prints* mind you. There was, at one time, but the market is pretty well supplied now. Since the prints are no longer so valuable, does it follow that the printers are doing something wrong, that they should be enjoined from making so many prints, to keep the supply artificially scarce and the price artificially high?

No artificial scarcity does not need to be kept indefinately. But for things that require large investments, there needs to be a period where things are kept scarce for a period long enough to recover the investment. Hence the limited time for copyrights (though the period should be much less than it is now).

Perhaps the economy would do better if we made half as many cars, half as many shoes, half as much food?

Those are material goods where the cost to produce can be recovered as part of the distribution.
Intangible goods cost to produce, but are free to distribute. Just because I can make 1000 copies of a song, doesn't make it any less expensive to make in the first place.
What is a good alternative to copyright? Do we just say anybody can use and distribute anything they find, and even claim ownership?

Re:It's Still Wrong

[Arker]

But for things that require large investments, there needs to be a period where things are kept scarce for a period long enough to recover the investment.

Even that is open to question, but note that songwriting does not require any great investment and never has. Recording and distribution, some decades back, were capital-intensive ventures, but even those aspects require no great investment today, so even if one accepts your contention here the argument above in the thread would not follow.

Do we just say anybody can use and distribute anything they find, and even claim ownership?

Note that they are two entirely different issues. Copyright is not needed to prohibit misattribution. Making a copy of a CD I bought, either to another CD, or to mp3s for my computer or ipod or whatever to play, comes under the heading of peacefull, honest enjoyment of my own property. Claiming falsely to have written a particular song does not.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[servognome]

Recording and distribution, some decades back, were capital-intensive ventures, but even those aspects require no great investment today, so even if one accepts your contention here the argument above in the thread would not follow.

True, but much of the reason costs for recording have gone down is because of software, that itself is copyrighted.

Making a copy of a CD I bought, either to another CD, or to mp3s for my computer or ipod or whatever to play, comes under the heading of peacefull, honest enjoyment of my own property.

And it is protected under copyright law as fair use.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[Arker]

True, but much of the reason costs for recording have gone down is because of software, that itself is copyrighted.

Only relatively recently. A great deal of software was developed before it became established that copyright would be considered applicable to it. If you're implying that software would be lacking were it not for copyright, I disagree.

And it is protected under copyright law as fair use.

Is it? In fact, it may be, in certain jurisdictions, and it definitely is not, in other jurisdictions. And sharing that mp3 file once made is certainly illegal in most jurisdictions, yet the same argument for it's legitimacy applies.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[servognome]

Only relatively recently. A great deal of software was developed before it became established that copyright would be considered applicable to it. If you're implying that software would be lacking were it not for copyright, I disagree.

Since 1980 software has boomed. There were many developers before that time fearful that copyright did not apply, and they worked under the assumption that it did.

Is it? In fact, it may be, in certain jurisdictions, and it definitely is not, in other jurisdictions. And sharing that mp3 file once made is certainly illegal in most jurisdictions, yet the same argument for it's legitimacy applies.

There have been supreme court rulings specifically stating the user has the right to time/media shifting. In fact acquiring copyrighted material is also legal (kinda a grey area). It is distribution that is illegal. That is why the RIAA goes after people for sharing files.

Why the delay?

[Weaselmancer]

Seriously, 17 months?

Why the delay? What exactly is it that could possibly take so long? You could almost put the DVDs in a hot air balloon and get them there quicker.

Especially considering that this is sales. Who waits that long to make money? Especially in that industry?

Re:Why the delay?

[Anonymous Coward]

Basically the older a show is the cheaper it is to buy. The Australian tv companies would have to pay a lot more to the American production companies if they wanted the rights to a show soon after it came out.

Re:Why the delay?

[Anonymous Coward]

Give 'em a break. They need time to translate the show into Australian.

Re:Why the delay?

[Anonymous Coward]

Give 'em a break. They need time to translate the show into Australian. There's also a minor issue with standards conversion; although Australia uses PAL, like the UK, their programmes have to undergo further conversion to flip the image upside down (which, of course, looks the right way up in Australia). The reverse also applies; this is why Britain is a bit behind Australia when showing Neighbours.

You can take a British TV set to Australia (and vice versa), and even receive pictures, but the programmes will be the wrong way up.

It's true, I swear.

Re:Why the delay?

[urlgrey]

You can take a British TV set to Australia (and vice versa), and even receive pictures, but the programmes will be the wrong way up.

It's true, I swear.

Sounds to me like turning the tube/tele upside down is the way to go. ;-)

It's fast. It's cheap. It's easy. And, best of all TVs are easily re-flipped for shows that don't need conversion. Channel surfing becomes challenging though....

Re:Why the delay?

[krosov]

This is also the case in region 2, where I happen to live. There's a similar delay in episodes of all american shows, from Southpark to Oprah. I'm downloading Southpark and The Daily Show (of which only quotations make it to the region 2 television) solely because I'm not going to wait 18 months until the show is less fresh, therefor less funny, is and broadcasted with commercial interuptions for phone sex, at 23.30h at night when I really do need to sleep. I can get a sure weekly southpark fix from the local bittorrent dealer in a dark alley of an internet and watch it hours after it was broadcasted at prime time. With movies, the same issues occur. Whe have to wait at least 6 months, which made sense in the old days when the marketing machines would also arrive 6 months late. At least the release was in sync with the marketing peak. Now, we do see movie trailers, reviews, blogs, parodies, pleasant scandals and bloopers at the same time the Americans do, thus months before the movies enter our movietheatres. I'm not a film lover, but I can see why people download the movies. Since the advertising reaches us all the way here, the marketing boosts the filesharing! Most DVD players in .eu are region-free now (I 'hacked' mine), otherwise we can't watch the movies we legally order over the internet! There's no way you can be 100% legal!

Re:Why the delay?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell a couple month delay is driving people in the USA to do it. the last 13 episodes of Stargate SG1 have not aired yet, but you can get them where they are airing off Bittorrent. SciFI is dragging their feet and will try to take 6 motnhs of showing an episode and then 3 reruns to spread it out.

screw it, I'm already 1/2 way through the new season watching off a bittorrent in better picture quality than off my Cable signal on my 32 inch tv... (gotta love mpeg playback devices!)

I am also ahead of other shows as well.

It's bullshit and the network exec's know it. I'm just happy that people are forcing them by downloading it. Guess what rich assholes... the masses control the world, not you fuckers! get us upset and you will find a uprising is something you cant handle.

Re:Why the delay?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, that's not true, but this is : southern hemisphere CRTs (i.e. older TVs and computer monitors) ARE manufactured to compensate for a different magnetic field direction than northern hemisphere ones. The only way to get them to display pictures without a funny colour tinge (typically green, though it depends on the position of the phosphor dots) in the northern hemisphere is to turn them upside down...

Re:Why the delay?

[ovanklot]

Here in Israel it's the same thing - some of the shows airing now first aired at the term of the century in the States and the UK, but are still being marketed as 'new'.
The problem is that this is a market controlled by an oligopoly (or worse - here it's a duopoly) - what they don't air doesn't exist. There are no other alternatives, just these companies. Here it's even worse with the cable company and the satellite company having mutually exclusive content, so I could never watch both Prison Break and House.

Most of the people I know who love watching TV supplement their viewing habits by downloading the content they love but can't get their hands on. Some completely replaced watching TV with watching downloaded (pirated) content.

Re:Why the delay?

[kinko]

1) the seasons play an important part... tv is pretty crap over the summer months (around Nov-Feb), and all the new series get shown on tv once people have stopped being on holiday, going out to the beach, etc. So that give you 6 months.

2) obviously they want to get popular shows to attract audiences. How long does it take until they decide that a US show is popular and looks like it will be around for a while?
Once they find a series that they think would also be popular in Australia (or New Zealand), how long do you think it takes to buy the rights and then find a place for it in the schedule?

Re:Why the delay?

[thekm]

I think the real reason for the delay is that they need to know what they're paying for. Everyone wants a hit, so after the period they know that they're buying a hit and will get a pile of ratings for having it. But the reason is also for the opposite... if it's a flop, it means that they can drive the price down on content telling the american company that they're actually doing them a favor by showing it.

Re:Why the delay?

[the_arrow]

Well, it can happen the other way round too. I bought a Mad Max dvd some years ago, and default spoken language was... American! Yes, the movies was dubbed to american english! After changing it to australian, I really can't see why because the actors barley spoke with an australian accent.

Re:Why the delay?

[zerocool^]

Fair Dinkum?

Re:Why the delay?

[renegadesx]

The networks in this country are fuckwits They think that it doesnt matter what time they are shown and people have no choice but to wait, there were gaps in many shows during what was ment to be the "hottest season" there were outrages with gaps with House, The OC, half a season of Friends got pulled and the networks basically said "tough luck, jam it up your ass, what are you going to do about it?" Obviously the people did something about it, and the networks have their head in the sand about the issue.

Re:Why the delay?

[Hucko]

Probably because barley isn't native to Australia. Try listening to quongdongs. Much easier to listen to.

Re:Why the delay?

[definate]

In Australia that industry, is an oligopoly and is heavily regulated. This allows the primary networks to negotiate the cost down more, since competing networks are in cahoots and how "relatively profitable" our market is. This means that the only time you actually see something, is 6+ months later or on Pay-TV, and Pay-TV isn't much better.

So i'd say the time taken, is a product of the Australian Television oligopoly, the American Copyright owners both penny pinching.

For instance, if your customers were used to receiving things 6 months later, and 6 months later that meant the cost would be half of what it is at that moment in time, wouldn't you want to just wait? And wouldn't the original copyright holder want you to wait, as it makes his product more valueable the longer he holds out on you?

Re:Why the delay?

[WilliamSChips]

the last 13 episodes of Stargate SG1 have not aired yet

Your counting is off. I only watch the episodes when they're shown in the US(for several reasons including laziness, paranoia, and wanting to watch with Dad on the HDTV upstairs) and the last 10 episodes are the only ones that haven't been shown yet.

Re:Why the delay?

[complete loony]

Mainly, I'm guessing bandwidth. We don't have many free to air channels. Taking on a new show in a prime time slot is a big gamble for the networks, so they tend to take the new shows that have proven themselves popular in other markets at the expense of existing series.

Re:Why the delay?

[cyril3]

Because your summer is six months before ours for a start. And thats about the delay for popular first run stuff. Iron Chef isn't really all that popular and it doesn't really matter if we see it 10 years later. To be perfectly honest I can't tell its 10 years old when i see it. Can anyone?

But they can do it if they want. I think it was Jericho? It was shown in Australia within a few days of the US to beat the torrents.

And don't for get the Sports Factor. Last year Channel 9 here had a catchup week where they showed seceially put together digest showreels of some of the most popular Soaps to catch up the almost 2 years that some were behind the US. This delay arose because [among other things] Channel 9 shows live Cricket over the summer and 5 x 4 day games and maybe another 12 one day games basically mean every year some of those shows will get 2 months behind just from the Cricket. The other major network, 7, has a similar problem with the Tennis including the Australian Open. They show full coverage for the entire tournament in January plus a few of the leadup Tournaments.

In the US the sport would be on Cable. In Australia anti siphoning laws prevent them from disappearing from free to air so while you watch first run CSI:Blue :Yellow or :Green we watch cricket. Everyone's a loser.

Re:Why the delay?

[Brain Damaged Bogan]

We only have 6 free to air stations: ABC - which plays nothing but news, boring british shows and a few dull aussie shows that nobody but senior citizens watch 7, 9, 10: standard run of the mill stations that play aussie dramas / american tv shows and reality tv... sbs: international channel that plays news in a few languages and also plays southpark... because 7,9,10 wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole when it first aired... bet the station execs are pissed at that decision public access: who the hell is going to watch public access... as you can see we don't have many stations... and with the bulk of tv now being reality tv because that is what the idiot masses wants it's no wonder that we have to wait 17 months for tv shows because there are a lot more shows out there to try and cram into less and less slots... it's only going to get worse unless we get a few more stations... I don't even watch tv any more, i just download whatever shows I want to watch and watch them when i want to watch them...

Re:Why the delay?

[renegadesx]

OH FUCK YOU YOU FUCKING YANK! America: The rest of the world is a minority

Re:Why the delay?

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus christ, mate. Take a chill pill or go walk-about for a while. This is the internet, remember? Doing your nut only gets you laughed at.

Re:Why the delay?

[Anonymous Coward]

"You could almost put the DVDs in a hot air balloon and get them there quicker."

It's quite common for the DVD box set to be available before the show airs.

Re:Why the delay?

[deerpig]

Is this an excuse for HBO? HBO in Thailand which is offered through UBC shows series like Deadwood and Rome at least a year after they have aired in the States.

Battlestar, is also shown a full year after it airs in the States....

Re:Why the delay?

[Anonymous Coward]

The delay for the Daily show is quite OK.
www.comedycentral.de runs the complete show *legally* in their
web site videoplayer the next day.

For most other shows Spoilers are the biggest problem.
I can stay off the internet news sites for one day - like today -
so I can watch the Oscars without knowing who won. Well, almost,
as the radio news told me one result before I could switch the radio off.

For shows like (high profile show name) which runs with a 6 month delay on Danish TV it's impossible to avoid Spoilers for half a year if you are an active internet user.

Now (high profile show name) sells on Amazon.com - for US markets. I'd be happy if I could buy the episodes at the 1.99 price if they could be burned to DVD (or converted to any other format allowing them to be transported to a friends house for group viewing).

I hope that the current season of (high profile show name) is the last one that I have to watch this way and that the media companies get their act together so I can buy the show immediately after the US transmission from Europe.

Re:Why the delay?

[Technician]

Since the advertising reaches us all the way here, the marketing boosts the filesharing! Most DVD players in .eu are region-free now (I 'hacked' mine), otherwise we can't watch the movies we legally order over the internet! There's no way you can be 100% legal!


DVD players are cheap. Simply buy one from each reagon you need. If you can't get one, use a PC. Most DVD drives permit a limited number of region changes. Simply set one to US, one to Europe and you are set.

Re:Why the delay?

[mpe]

I can get a sure weekly southpark fix from the local bittorrent dealer in a dark alley of an internet and watch it hours after it was broadcasted at prime time.

It isn't all one way though. People in the US have to watch Torchwood via the same means...

Whe have to wait at least 6 months, which made sense in the old days when the marketing machines would also arrive 6 months late. At least the release was in sync with the marketing peak. Now, we do see movie trailers, reviews, blogs, parodies, pleasant scandals and bloopers at the same time the Americans do, thus months before the movies enter our movietheatres.

Why is it that books, even video games can get their act together. But the motion picture industry can't...

Most DVD players in .eu are region-free now (I 'hacked' mine), otherwise we can't watch the movies we legally order over the internet!

Since the EU is in two DVD regions they'd have a tough time attempting to enforce this region coding.

Re:Why the delay?

[delinear]

Why is it that books, even video games can get their act together. But the motion picture industry can't...

I assume it's because video games aren't usually promoted by the stars, while movies are. The star is quite often the major driving factor in a lot of people's choices to go see the movie (or not). If Generic Actor X is shmoozing the US market, he can't be doing the same in the UK at the same time. It's still pretty dumb, though. Usually by the time we get the movie we're sick of the hype.

Re:Why the delay?

[Gription]

Since the advertising reaches us all the way here, the marketing boosts the filesharing! Most DVD players in .eu are region-free now (I 'hacked' mine), otherwise we can't watch the movies we legally order over the internet! There's no way you can be 100% legal!
DVD players are cheap. Simply buy one from each reagon you need. If you can't get one, use a PC. Most DVD drives permit a limited number of region changes. Simply set one to US, one to Europe and you are set.
One player from each region? Why would anyone want to dispose of that much extra cash for additions to their 'idiot box'? Besides only a real over the top geek type wouldn't see having a stack of DVD players as being real lame.

Now for a couple suggestion to make your wallet happy and to solve the region problem. Get an Oppo OPDV981H player and go into setup and press 9210. You can then set it to region 0 and you are good to go. It is cheap and is the highest ranked player on HomeTheaterHiFi.com! Its upconversion to 1080p or 1080i is great! (Link: http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/cgi-bin/shootout.cg i?function=search&articles=all

Another option is the NeuNeo Helios H4000. It is nowhere near as polished as the Oppo but it is region free out of the box and will let you fast forward and skip anything on a disk. Its "Smart Play" feature analyzes a disk and just starts playing what it thinks is the movie, completely skipping the menu and any FBI warnings! The fast forward and reverse aren't real smooth and sometimes it takes 10+ seconds to eject a disk but it is a cheap answer to the flexibility problem.

Both of these players will operate on US or Euro electricity and will also play either NTSC or PAL movies completely freely on either NTSC or PAL TVs. Finally I can waych those european ralley DVDs that I really like.

Re:Why the delay?

[Cervantes]

You can take a British TV set to Australia (and vice versa), and even receive pictures, but the programmes will be the wrong way up.

        It's true, I swear.

Sounds to me like turning the tube/tele upside down is the way to go. ;-)

It's fast. It's cheap. It's easy. And, best of all TVs are easily re-flipped for shows that don't need conversion. Channel surfing becomes challenging though....

Thanks for telling all of Australia how to violate the DMCA. You're going to turn them into a continent of criminals!!

Re:Why the delay?

[Technician]

Both of these players will operate on US or Euro electricity and will also play either NTSC or PAL movies completely freely on either NTSC or PAL TVs. Finally I can waych those european ralley DVDs that I really like.

It's probably more spendy than the 39.95 player I picked up for another reigon. The extra player is the price of just a couple movies. Call me cheap because I am.

Re:Why the delay?

[elrous0]

Don't you have access to cable and satellite channels? Here in the states, we only have 3-5 channels that are free and over the air (depending on where you live). But cable and satellite providers offer hundreds of channels.

-Eric

Re:Why the delay?

[CrankyOldBastard]

Actually, we have far superior Free-to-air TV than in America. I lived in the USA for a while, so have seen both sides of the Pacific.

Here on the Gold Coast we have:

9NBN (Newcastle)
9 Gold Coast
ABC(Brisbane)
ABC (Northern Rivers)
10 Gold Coast
10 Brisbane
10 Prime (Northern Rivers)
7 Sydney
7 Brisbane
SBS

Which leads to competition. Of these, 10 is owned by Fox, 7 by Murdoch (I think) and 9 by Packer (I could have ownership of 9 and 7 backwards).

The ABC is Government owned, but independent, and has no commercial advertising.

SBS is the "multicultural" channel, is Government owned and is in turn one of the major owners of World Movies.

7 is the "White Trash" channel, with the "Extreme Makeover" type shows, and lots of small words. 7 has the big car races (like Bathurst)
9 is where the most Game Shows are. 9 also has the Cricket.
10 concentrates on the medical and crime dramas (like House, Law and Order, NCIS)

ABC has docos, historical dramas, Shakespeare, and "Order in the House", which is broadcasts of Parliament in session. It does have a slight leftist bias.

SBS has subtitled foreign language shows (like Inspector Rex and The Octopus), Deustch Watch, the Laher News Hour, thought provoking documentaries (such as "The President versus David Hicks") and truely awesome cooking shows.

The problem seem to me that the major Networks don't actually care much about our little market. A case in point is the show House (10 Network), which as well as being many months behind the US, was actually shown out-of-order for the first two series, which totally destroyed the plot. The other day I was waiting for Rockwiz on SBS, and Iron Chef was on. The line used was "today in 1996 we don't have to follow the old traditional methods for great cuisine".

In comparison, in San Diego we had 2 free to air channels, which were pretty poor. of the 200+ cable channels, far too many were "shopping channels" or just endless re-runs of the same old series and docos.

Re:Why the delay?

[spindizzy]

Except then that the sound is inverted and you can make out all the Satanic messages too easily.
This is also why Australia is in a different DVD region to Britain, in the UK Data is written on the bottom and the label sits on the top, while here the obverse is the case.

Re:Why the delay?

[mpe]

The star is quite often the major driving factor in a lot of people's choices to go see the movie (or not). If Generic Actor X is shmoozing the US market, he can't be doing the same in the UK at the same time.

There's this technology which has been around for a while, called "live television", which allows for someone's voice and image to be shown several thousand miles away. They can even do a live interview with the interviewer being in a studio nowhere near them. This has been possible for at least the last 25 years.
Failing that there's a machine which has been around for closer to 50 which can transport people to anywhere on the planet in a matter of hours.

It's the same for new movie releases

[Average_Joe_Sixpack]

Much of the piracy of new releases is by those of us who can't stand the theater and don't want to wait half a year for the DVD.

Re:It's the same for new movie releases

[prelelat]

I wouldn't put it that its the same as a movie being pirated, usually you could get the content for a movie by going and watching it in the theater within a few days of it being released. The dvd is usually out within 17 months. This is saying you can't even access the media until over a year later in some cases, unless you pirate that media. That I think would drive more people to pirate a TV show than to pirate a movie, as some people will go to a theater to see something but would hate to wait an extra year before they can even legaly see it.

Re:It's the same for new movie releases

[rucs_hack]

I hear this 'can't stand the theatre' argument trotted out by people who download movies a lot.

It's a crock, no really. If you don't like it, then why are you downloading the film you would have gone to see? And how is a lower quality rip/cam job better then widescreen full on surround sound goodness?

Is it the shitty theatre food? Take your own, its not hard.

So you don't want to wait for the dvd? Well lets face it, you aren't going to buy it anyway, you have the rip...

Dvd's don't take too long to come out most of the time, and if you wanted to watch it beforehand, well there was the cinema, but you 'can't stand' those, can you.

I don't bother downloading movies myself, I decided long ago that since I don't much enjoy going to the cinema on my own, and people I know are mostly in the 'can't stand it so I'll D/L for free' group, that I'd just wait till films came out on dvd and buy those instead. I care not that its legal, I care more about enjoying decent quality visuals in my film experience.

Re:It's the same for new movie releases

[stupid_is]

In the UK you get told to leave if you bring your own food - it's a high markup item in the foyer and they dislike losing that revenue stream. Yes, it's quite simple to sneak stuff in, but that limits what you can eat & drink too. I also like to be able to pause the film so I can go for a pee/snack break.

In terms of the full on surround goodness - yes on stuff like Gladiator that uses it to full effect, it's great. I'd question its value on releases such as "The Queen". While I wouldn't watch a cam-copy, the DVD rips that come out at similar times to the cinema release are perfectly adequate.

Re:It's the same for new movie releases

[Dal Platinum]

You mention everything except for the other people in the theatre.

Re:It's the same for new movie releases

[delinear]

I do go to the cinema once in a while, but it's not the best experience. As the other poster said, sneaking in food is possible but hardly practical (you can't really make your own hot dog and sneak it in, the ice cream melts, etc), and you risk being expelled if caught. Personally I don't like to be made to feel like a criminal just because I don't want to buy their exorbitantly priced food.

Then there are queues, uncomfortable seats (with a premium for slightly less uncomfortable seats), the inconvenience of not being able to pause and the annoyance of people talking through the movie or the distraction of people playing with their phones during the movie (it would be nice if the cinema could employ someone to sit in on the movie and remove these people, but they're all too busy looking for food smugglers).

Finally there's the cost. I can almost buy the DVD for the price I pay for me and my better half to go watch a movie. Even though the experience is not nearly so comfortable as watching from home and even though I then have to sit through maybe 40 minutes of paid advertising - hell, they should be showing me the movie for free and making their money from the food and advertising.

So, even though I do sometimes go to the cinema it's far from an ideal experience and I can understand why people would resent paying for this when they could have the movie without any waiting time in their own home.

Re:It's the same for new movie releases

[rucs_hack]

But you say you buy the dvd. Therefore no issue really, same as me. I objected to people using crappy cinemas as a justification for downloading movies.

Don't get me wrong though, I don't think they're doing anything evil by downloading, its not like a few bits downloaded risks world peace or anything. What I object to is the hypocrisy of the argument.

Incidentally, I just moved from a town where the cinema had a nice bar you could wait in, pleasant seating, and a really good atmosphere (aka hot chicks behind the bar) to a big town with a cattleshed cinima monstrosity, so the next film I want to see - Hot Fuzz, is waiting till dvd release for me.

If you can make a copy of my Ferrari

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can create a cloned copy of my Ferrari without damaging mine, then I'd have no problem with you doing so. Make two.

Re:If you can make a copy of my Ferrari

[bendodge]

I would, because you agreed not to let that happen in your EULA, and the engineers who spent years designing it wouldn't get their earned pay.

In regards to the article:
Shocking! People want something they can't get, so they bootleg it!?! How surprising!
Come on, this is obvious. But it is still wrong.

Re:If you can make a copy of my Ferrari

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can create a cloned copy of my Ferrari without damaging mine, then I'd have no problem with you doing so. Make two.

I think Ferrari would have a problem with that, as that would be counterfeit merchandise

I just completely destroyed you.

Re:If you can make a copy of my Ferrari

[Anonymous Coward]

and the engineers who spent years designing it wouldn't get their earned pay.

Newsflash! The engineers already got paid while they were designing it.

Re:If you can make a copy of my Ferrari

[BronsCon]

It's only merchandise if it is sold. Hell, it's not even merchandise if it's being given away.

PWNT!

Re:If you can make a copy of my Ferrari

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi,

> as that would be counterfeit merchandise

For an identical copy, how would you tell which one was the original and which one was the counterfeit?

In fact - ask your friendly local customs agent - A lot counterfeit shoes, handbags, sigarettes, DVDs, ... - are indistinguishable from the originals either because they came from the same factory or because they're copied to a high standard. The only thing that makes one item counterfeit from another identical item is the brand owner saying it's fake. Does that sound right to you?

If you ever invent a star-trek replicator, burry it in your back yard and speak no more of it 'cause anything else is going to dump you in all know forms of pain and misery and probably a bullet in the brain.

Getting money for copies of an original (and any series-produced object is a copy) is a hopeless cause, always has been. It's like a pyramid scheme.

That said, I actually own a Ferrari (bought with money I got by selling series-produced copies of stuff to people like you) and I would never allow anyone to take a copy of it. Part of the charm of a Ferrari is that it's hand made and unique. Make a copy and it devalues both!

Re:If you can make a copy of my Ferrari

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be wrong if they had a way to legally aquire these videos, but they don't.

Re:If you can make a copy of my Ferrari

[ShieldW0lf]

Attempting to keep people from having access is wrong. Copyright is wrong. People who try to enforce it are wrong. People who help pirates are heros, people who try to stop them are villians. Copyright enforcement is an aggressive act.

Re:If you can make a copy of my Ferrari

[Anonymous Coward]

The engineers are already paid. It's not wrong. Copyright is wrong. The basic difference in degree if not in kind between humans and other animals is the ability to learn from others and teach others. That is to say - copying information. Copyrightists and patentists seek to deny us our humanity, and are basically evil people. You mightn't like me calling you evil, but you are, as far as I'm concerned.

Re:If you can make a copy of my Ferrari

[nekid]

But Ferrari would. You didn't pay the engineers to design the car and the machines to manufacture it, or the marketers to sell it. You paid for a piece of the total cost, yes, but not so much that it gives you the right to freely clone it and give it away. If they can't live on it, then they'll have to stop doing it and the world will be without Ferrari cars. Either that, or someone with some spare time will attempt to make some facsimile, but it won't be as good, and it will take far longer to be made available.

Yes, yes, we all understand how you don't like the system. But eventually, somebody has to make some money by selling something so that employees can be paid, so that they in turn can buy products. This is basic economics. If you believe everything should be freely available, then you should realize that you'll need to put in your 40 hours a week for nothing. Even if you hope that only electronic information or intellectual property should be freely available, realize that, without money as an incentive, you will have trouble get people to program, design, act, draw, build, write, and in general, create your beloved movies, television shows, music, applications, and images. Again, at best, you can only hope for inferior works that take much longer to complete than those driven by money.

Re:If you can make a copy of my Ferrari

[Sj0]

Actually, the dealerships buy the ferraris. They're the ones that actually pay for it, so the engineers would get their money. Also, in this example, the dealerships don't need to sell their cars to individuals. They make their money by selling advertising at stoplights. Since the standardized metrics used to estimate the number of people watching aren't affected by piracy, the only people who are hurt are the advertisers.

Don't hold your breath on me crying a river for advertisers who get slightly less exposure than they thought.

Re:If you can make a copy of my Ferrari

[Dun Malg]

But Ferrari would. You didn't pay the engineers to design the car and the machines to manufacture it, or the marketers to sell it. No, Ferrari wouldn't care, so long as you didn't attempt to make copies to sell to others, misrepresenting the copies as Ferrari originals. You could even make copies and give them away and Ferrari wouldn't care much, as the cost of materials would drive you to bankruptcy very, very quickly. This is why the "car analogy" shit fails. "Content owners" only care about digital duplication because it exposes the fraud of their business, that they've made a living out of distributing information based upon an artificial monopoly on information reproduction and and the traditionally high cost of encoding that information in physical, transportable form. The cost of the latter has suddenly vanished, leaving them tap-dancing in mid air.

Re:If you can make a copy of my Ferrari

[Ullteppe]

One: Ferraries don't come with an EULA. Two: Don't try to tell me that if an easy way of cloning physical objects existed, the world wouldn't look totally different.

Re:If you can make a copy of my Ferrari

[IamTheRealMike]

The designers were paid using money that hadn't been earned yet, but was intended to come from sales of the cars.

Re:If you can make a copy of my Ferrari

[Pulse_Instance]

The designers were probably paid from money that came from sales of the previous cars they made.

Re:If you can make a copy of my Ferrari

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. When infinitely-copyable digital material starts getting compared to physical items, the analogies break down.

All such analogies should start with "Assume that millions of regular consumers have magic cameras which can create fully functional, visually perfect 3D replicas of whatever they photograph. Further assume that the material item in question costs twenty, thirty bucks tops."

So, the question becomes "Given the choice between buying a genuine Ferrari for thirty bucks including delivery, or going out and finding the exact model you want and taking a magic photo of it, which would you choose? Now how about if Ferrari had decided they were never going to sell cars in your country or allow any to be imported - EVER - and yet everywhere else in the world, people are driving their cheap Ferraris around and yakking about them on the net? And hey, funnily enough, half your neighbourhood is driving Ferraris too..."

Re:If you can make a copy of my Ferrari

[McFadden]

Newsflash! The engineers already got paid while they were designing it.

Added to which, I don't see the engineers insisting they have to be paid again and again every time a car is sold. They took their fee and were happy with it.

Anyway, Australians should try living in Japan. We're still on Season 9 of 'Friends'. I believe the last episode I saw was called "The One Where It Doesn't Arrive For Five Years".

Re:If you can make a copy of my Ferrari

[aevan]

Except where then did the money for the original car come from?

Re:If you can make a copy of my Ferrari

[Anonymous Coward]

Venture capitalists of course. Screw em.

Re:If you can make a copy of my Ferrari

[suckmysav]

"The only thing that makes one item counterfeit from another identical item is the brand owner saying it's fake."

Sounds like DeBeers and their ongoing efforts to discredit "man made" diamonds as being somehow fake, despite them being indistinguishable from the "real thing."

Re:If you can make a copy of my Ferrari

[paedobear]

If you had BS or CS you'd not have that problem - pay TV in Japan is pretty close to the US schedules (and BS-2 are now up-to-date with the new Who, after a really late start...)

Re:If you can make a copy of my Ferrari

[Benaiah]

if I cloned your Ferrari, ferrari didnt lose a sale. There is no way i would have baught one.
However if you started giving away ferraris for 5k a pop, Hyundai and Kia might start see Ferrari cloning eating into their sales.

So who is losing out now?

Re:If you can make a copy of my Ferrari

[McFadden]

I have cable. Fox Channel shows friends. Fox Channel is on season 9. They don't show it on any other channels.

Re:If you can make a copy of my Ferrari

[Fulcrum of Evil]

you agreed not to let that happen in your EULA

Ferraris don't have EULAs. Besides, I'd rather xerox a 911.

Re:If you can make a copy of my Ferrari

[paedobear]

They show it on TVK - no idea what series though.

Re:If you can make a copy of my Ferrari

[graigchq]

we are not talking about ferraris here though are we, we are talking about TV shows which go out over the air - TO WATCH FOR FREE - all around the world. Come on, what we're saying here is that if it wasn't so late, then they'd watch it on TV. I won't lie - i download 24 and lost and heroes etc etc just like everyone else i know with an internet connection - and it ends up being better quality than watching it on my TV. These aren't films, they aren't music albums being sold in the shop for £13, its TELEVISION! Most of the TV companies are considering making all shows that are free to air available on the web in some shape or form - with some advertising, its situations like these that highlight how late this idea has come. And the ferrari engineers get paid handsomely i assure you.

Re:If you can make a copy of my Ferrari

[shutdown -p now]

But Ferrari would. You didn't pay the engineers to design the car and the machines to manufacture it, or the marketers to sell it. You paid for a piece of the total cost, yes, but not so much that it gives you the right to freely clone it and give it away. If they can't live on it, then they'll have to stop doing it and the world will be without Ferrari cars. Either that, or someone with some spare time will attempt to make some facsimile, but it won't be as good, and it will take far longer to be made available.

So Jesus was a bad guy after all? Just think of all the starving fishermen and bakers!

Re:If you can make a copy of my Ferrari

[Technician]

If you can create a cloned copy of my Ferrari without damaging mine, then I'd have no problem with you doing so. Make two.

It might become a problem when you decide to upgrade and sell the old one. You put it in the paper. Everyone who came to look at it said, wow, thats very nice, then made a copy instead of buying yours because they thought delivery would take too long and the price was too high.

Re:If you can make a copy of my Ferrari

[Dal Platinum]

Don't sell it, just take a photo of some engine upgrades, and a photo of somebody willing to fit them.

Re:If you can make a copy of my Ferrari

[Anonymous Coward]

Broken Window Fallacy. Look it up.

standard register article

[gEvil (beta)]

I find it humorous that the article talks about how the Australian TV networks are "unable or unwilling to change their programming policies", yet makes no mention about the actual core problem here--the licensing of the content. Yes, if a TV show is produced and owned by an American TV network, then the Australian TV network needs to license it from the American company. They can't just decide to air it whenever they feel like it (which is what this article seems to suggest). Whether the problem is the American company not offering up the content for licensing, or whether the Australian companies don't want to pay the fee until it's lowered needs to be mentioned in order for this article to be more than an uninformed gripe. Then again, it is the Register, so it comes as no surprise to me that it's actually missing the point...

Re:standard register article

[eddy]

It's a question of cost. I live in Sweden, and "Lost", to take a popular show, airs half a season or so behind the US. This means that we take a hiatus when the US does even though this is atypical for how shows are run here. "Prison Break" starts airing when a season ends in the US IIRC. Some shows are a year behind, but longer than that and we're down to things that are already cancelled and all the other stuff that the channels get "for free" (aka must buy) when they want a popular show.

If our tiny country, with less than 10M viewers (split over 5 popular channels) can air "Lost" just weeks behind the US...

Re:standard register article

[Mateito]

Many of the US shows last year (CSI and SVU spring to mind) had double episode end-of season finales. In the US, these were aired a week apart, so that the cliff-hanger was resolved in 7 days. Here in Australia, the local networks played half the finale around mid-November, then advertised that the second part would be shown in early February. This is an absolutely dispicable way to treat your loyal fans. So, yeah, I pulled down the second half via P2P. Stuff them.

And you know what? I discovered that could get an HD version with no commercials and with better sound. So, I kept doing it... just for one or two of my favourite shows. I can honestly say that if the local networks hadn't treated me (the viewer) with such contempt, I never would have bothered to look around the Net, never worked out which P2P client was the most efficient, and frankly would be watching them on local TV week to week.

Note that most of the current shows are aired only a few of months after the US. Heroes, NCIS, House and Grays Anatomy all fall into this catagory. We are about 3 or 4 episodes into the current season of each of these. I think in the US the episodes are up to the mid teens. The delay in airing doesn't bother me, but being forced to wait four months for the resolution of a double episode pushed me over the edge.

Re:standard register article

[grimJester]

I don't even know how far behind the shows I watch are in Finland anymore. There simply is no legal way to get them within a reasonable time. I've quit watching TV almost completely - all I watch nowadays is BBC News or found on the net.

I follow several "currently airing" series. Battlestar Galactica, Stargate, SG Atlantis, Rome, The Simpsons, South Park to name a few. I'd be happy to pay, for example, $2/episode for subscriptions for these if I could get them to start downloading from a trusted source as soon as they're available. Heck, I'd be willing to develop the service for a pittance. Still, the content providers are more concerned with preventing the audience from viewing their product than making it possible for the audience to view said product.

The current state of copyright no longer serves the purpose of making as much art as possible available to as many as possible. It needs an overhaul. Badly.

Re:standard register article

[Anonymous Coward]

Bollocks.

A few years ago, Ch9 I think, was broadcasting ST:DS9. They stopped, mid-series
for several years. The entire series, all 7 seasons, were released on tape at
video stores before the TV network started re-broadcasting. With no indication
the network would ever start showing the series again, fans were forced to
hire the tapes at $5 per 2 episodes at the time.

Then there is M*A*S*H, when Ch7 were broadcasting it on its n-th re-run a couple
of years ago, they butchered the show to fit more ads in, removing entire
sub-plots from episodes.

This is how Aus. treats its viewers. And I don't believe this has anything to
do with the licensing fees demanded from US distributors. If they have no
respect for their viewership then why should we respect their copyright?

Re:standard register article

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I'm in New Zealand, and Battlestar Galactica season 2 hasn't started airing yet. I gave up and bought it on DVD last August.

The first thing the TV stations claim will be that piracy is killing them - fine, it will have a bit of an effect, but the fact that a show is out on DVD before it's aired has got to count for something.

The same happened with Star Trek Nemesis. It was showing here for no more than two weeks, about 6 months after it was released for the second time in the US. I got sick of waiting and bought a copy on Amazon. The local theatres started complaining that both the availability of region 1 discs and piracy had killed their profit margin, so they paid the government to change the law. Now, companies are not allowed to import region 1 DVDs until 6 months after their release date. (This wouldn't be much cause for concern in the case of Star Trek Nemesis...)

Re:standard register article

[mibus]

I'm quite disgusted at how some other shows get treated. Stargate and Farscape are two great examples.

Both shows moved timeslots. Frequently. Several times a season.

Both shows "paused" mid-season, to suddenly re-appear 6 months later (with no or minimal advertising - don't watch the TV guide like a hawk? Too bad).

Star Trek has been similarly treated. Every new series started out at 8:30PM. Then 9:30. 11:30PM. Then "11:30PM, as long as the show before doesn't run too late, and there's no tennis on".

Re:standard register article

[rtb61]

This actually reflects the new trend, where they do not necessarily buy every season, or even every episode in a season (the price now varies based upon quality of each episode). Which is why they jumble them up, show them out of sequence and shift time slots.

With the internet who needs free to air TV, for me the idiot box is just background playing nothing but scifi dvds with the occasional rare bit of public broadcasting, never the commercial stations.

Re:standard register article

[Dutch Gun]

Timeslots? Channels? TV Guide?

These mean nothing to me now. I love my TiVo...

Re:standard register article

[mibus]

It still means something when your TiVo suddenly stops getting new episodes for no reason, and you can't tell when the next one was coming. Hope that wasn't a cliff-hanger! :)

These days I don't watch any normal TV.

Re:standard register article

[nathanh]

I follow several "currently airing" series. Battlestar Galactica, Stargate, SG Atlantis, Rome, The Simpsons, South Park to name a few. I'd be happy to pay, for example, $2/episode for subscriptions for these if I could get them to start downloading from a trusted source as soon as they're available.

$2 an episode is too much. Let's imagine I watch 12 series with an average of 24 episodes per series per year. That's $576 per year on top of the Internet bandwidth costs which are still quite significant in Australia (about $600 per year). I could get cable TV (or more commonly in Australia, satellite TV) for half that and get all those shows and several dozen more.

Realistically I'd be wanting to pay 10-20c per episode. And I'd want them DRM free so I could make backup copies for watching later. Anything more expensive than that is not even remotely tempting. I would like to know where the "$2/episode" meme came from because I don't think any thought was put into it.

Re:standard register article

[Barny]

Hehe, I haven't owned a television for about 6 years (or indeed sat and watched more than 10-20min worth at a friends place).

If everyone would start just tuning out to the crap posing as entertainment they would either adapt and fix what is broken with it or fall apart under the cost of running a broadcast station without anyone wanting to advertise on them :)

Re:standard register article

[lazybeam]

AU$600/year is "average" Internet. The plan I'm on here is only 512kbps (128 up) with 12GB download quota for $45/month. We're in contact here otherwise I'd churn to a different provider! My other house has full speed ADSL and syncs at 8032kbps and is heller fast. That plan is worth around $80/month (I pay less because my ISP loves me).

10-20c/ep is more than what it would cost them in bandwidth, let alone other costs. An ep would be 350MB which would cost $52.50 going by Telstra's excess rate. Yes there are more realistic bandwidth providers (eg the IXs such as PIPE and WAIX) but still most of the big ISPs don't peer there.

Re:standard register article

[stupid_is]

$2 an episode is too much

There seems to be 22 episodes per series of the Simpsons, and the current series is #18. Series #9 is retailing at $33 so that would suggest that $1.50 is a reasonable cost to own an episode. Hell, even the first series is still $30 at amazon. Series #9 (the latest available to buy) was aired 9 years ago, and series #1 was aired in 1989!!! (On a side note, UK consumers are still getting screwed by the infamous $1:£1 currency converter - #9 costs £30 (aka ~$60))

If a network put the series that weren't available up for pay-per-view on a server, they'd take a fortune and people would pay it. Whether they can make a larger fortune by buying^H^H^H^H^H^H lobbying legislation like DMCA, witholding the DVD releases and dribbling episodes to networks (foreign or domestic), is another question

Re:standard register article

[nathanh]

Series #9 is retailing at $33 [amazon.com] so that would suggest that $1.50 is a reasonable cost to own an episode.

That might be a reasonable price for a high-resolution high-bitrate version of the episode on DVD media, with attractive packaging, and no additional costs for downloading.

It is a completely unreasonable price for a low-resolution low-bitrate version of the episode on NO media, with NO packaging, and additional costs for downloading.

Re:standard register article

[stupid_is]

That might be a reasonable price for a high-resolution high-bitrate version of the episode on DVD media, with attractive packaging, and no additional costs for downloading.

It is a completely unreasonable price for a low-resolution low-bitrate version of the episode on NO media, with NO packaging, and additional costs for downloading.

The media and packaging are a complete waste of space, IMHO. I admit that preferences vary, but note that the $1.50 you are paying is for a very old series #9 episode on DVD. Personally, I don't really rate the extras on any DVD (except maybe for blooper reels) - so from a content point of view there's not much difference.

In terms of high vs low bitrate - most stuff appearing on torrents are in HD. That's enough quality for me (as I don't have a HD TV). Cost of downloading is nil, for me, as I have a all-you-can-eat provider that lets me grab as much as I like. People still on a 56K modem might have a different cost, but then this product offering would not be aimed at that sort of folk

As I said, if a studio *did* offer high quality downloads of TV shows as they air to countries where the show is not airing, they would get revenue. Whether it's more than selling the broadcast rights to some company, or if it would dent the potential revenue from that source - I don't know. I do know that I, and others like me, would willingly pay for fresh, up to date episodes of TV shows. Preferably DRM and ad free, although I think that is a rather large pill to swallow.

Re:standard register article

[AeroIllini]

I would like to know where the "$2/episode" meme came from because I don't think any thought was put into it.

It happens to be how much the studios themselves are charging for the shows on DVD.

A 24-episode season of a show (typically 45 minutes an episode, fleshed out with commercials to fill an hour when aired) is packed up into a DVD box set and sold for $49.99. The shorter, half-hour slot shows (22 minutes an episode) are cheaper, as are seasons with fewer than 24 episodes in them.

You may think it's too much, but it is indeed the "going rate."

Obvious...

[bigbigbison]

I know that as a Doctor Who fan in the states I'm not going to wait to see new episodes of Who. When I can download them and watch them less than 12 hours after they have been on in BBC, there really isn't any reason to wait until SciFi channel or whoever decides to air it. More and more it seems as if my favorite shows aren't aired on channels in the USA or if they are, they are shown months later.

Sure it may be copyright infringement to download them, but since there's no legal way for me to see a lot of these shows in the first place, I don't have a problem with it. I can't pay for them if I wanted to, I do pay for cable, and I'm not a Nielson Rating's house, so the arguments against downloading these shows seem pretty weak.

Re:Obvious...

[Anonymous Coward]

I am going to ask a serious question here. How are the TV station going to suffer if I download and watch Star Gate Atlantis Season 3 in Canada? Not like I am downloading a movie.

Season 3 is finished, but my cable is playing season 2.5. I still tune to the station and watch it if it is on, so the cable company/TV rating is not suffering. Regardless of whether it air now or later, it is not like I am going to buy the DVD 'cause show is always going to go rerun on 5 TV channels any time of the day/night.

Am I allow to "Time Shift" say 9 months into the future?

Re:Obvious...

[sokoban]

Also, Doctor Who on BBC-America looks like crap. I guess it is due to the PAL-NTSC conversion, but everything on that channel looks awful.

I do the same thing with Bleach, a Japanese anime show. I can either wait a few years for the dubbed english version, or get the subbed Japanese show the same day in really high quality DivX. I don't know what it will take to convince the networks that people really would like to download content and have it at home. I also don't understand why networks don't just release shows for free with targeted advertisements. It seems that if you had people sign up with some sort of basic survey about where they live, how old they are, their interests, etc. advertisers gladly pay to have commercials interjected into the programming people download. Free, but with advertising, television downloads would be a big hit, I imagine.

Re:Obvious...

[gEvil (beta)]

It seems that if you had people sign up with some sort of basic survey about where they live, how old they are, their interests, etc. advertisers gladly pay to have commercials interjected into the programming people download.

The reason is really quite simple: If they start offering up content with commercials to other countries, then they are (as far as the law is concerned) doing business in that country. Which suddenly means that they have to get a business license, follow all applicable regulations, pay taxes, etc. More easily said than done.

Re:Obvious...

[Anonymous Coward]

I can either wait a few years for the dubbed english version, or get the subbed Japanese show the same day in really high quality DivX. How good can the quality of the translated subtitles be if some fanboy has it done on the same day?!

Re:Obvious...

[cptgrudge]

Free, but with advertising, television downloads would be a big hit, I imagine.

I agree. Why don't the networks just set up their own bittorrent trackers and supply TV shows with ads in them? I'd be happy to fill out a (quite intrusive, but non-identifying) survey about my habits/details in exchange for a single use torrent URL. As it is now, if I miss an episode of a TV show that I watch, the crippled version on the network web site is the last place I go because I don't want to watch it on my computer. Instead, I get it through a torrent, and I might end up downloading the entire season because they are all there. Initially, all I'd probably do is watch the single episode, delete it, and move on. If it had commercials that's probably what I'd do. And I would watch the commercials, because I know that I'm getting something in exchange. Not everyone would watch them, but people get up to go to the bathroom or the kitchen during commercials as well.

Thanks to their tremendous lack of foresight, they lose ad revenue, lose a potential future DVD sale of the TV show, and downloading TV episodes without commercials becomes a bit more accepted by society. Maybe they are just stupid, but I think it's more likely they're just too slow to adapt and lack creative people in positions of power. These companies are still grappling with the concept of DVRs, when they should be looking ahead to the evolution of them into home media servers.

Re:Obvious...

[sokoban]

I can either wait a few years for the dubbed english version, or get the subbed Japanese show the same day in really high quality DivX. How good can the quality of the translated subtitles be if some fanboy has it done on the same day?! Really fucking good. The worst problems I've seen are occasional spelling errors. Dattebayo Fansubs does pretty damn fine work.

Re:Obvious...

[AyCarumba]

You are obviously an idiot. "I don't want to wait, so stealing is okay" is not an excuse for it. Hell, I don't want to wait for my million dollars I am going to make, so I will steal it from the bank. I'll make that much over my lifetime anyway, right? Idiot.

Re:Obvious...

[ArsSineArtificio]

Also, Doctor Who on BBC-America looks like crap.

Yeah, I don't get it. All the Doctor Who broadcast after 1989 has looked awful.

Re:Obvious...

[Anonymous Coward]

Generally better than the much-delayed, commercial subtitles, unfortunately.

Re:Obvious...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're an idiot. Copyright infringement is not theft.

Re:Obvious...

[zerocool^]

Also, BBC for a while licensed Top Gear out to the discovery channel (I think) but it just isn't the same as the UK version. They re-recorded all the parts in the studio to replace "bonnet" with "hood", "boot" with "trunk", and to remove all of Clarkson's "Everything from America is rubbish". They also switched the videos such that they were reviewing cars available in the US (Ford GT, Cadillac STS-R, and like a bently or something)

Now, I don't think that Clarkson really is fair about the quality of American cars, but without his ascorbic wit, the show just isn't worth watching.

Plus, I can get a High-Def copy hours after it airs on BBC here in America on the following Monday.

Re:Obvious...

[bigbigbison]

So the bank is who gives me my money and not my employer? It would be nice to get your comparisons right is you are going to make them.

If you take money from someone, you are taking something. they don't have the money. Who is being hurt by my not wanting to wait to watch Doctor Who? Or by my wanting to watch some other show that is not and probably never will be available in my country? Explain to me how I am hurting anyone and then maybe I'll think about stopping.

Re:Obvious...

[MojoStan]

Why don't the networks just set up their own bittorrent trackers and supply TV shows with ads in them? ...the crippled version on the network web site is the last place I go because I don't want to watch it on my computer... And I would watch the commercials, because I know that I'm getting something in exchange. Not everyone would watch them, but people get up to go to the bathroom or the kitchen during commercials as well. Do you really expect the networks to offer their shows (in their current form) with skippable ads? They're already throwing a hissy-fit over the ad-skipping feature on DVRs. I'm sure that's why they only offer the "crippled version" on their web site: the web site's embedded video player does not allow ad-skipping. I don't expect the networks to offer free downloadable shows (with ads) until they can find an acceptable video-playing system that can restrict ad-skipping.

Also, the few shows that I've watched on ABC's web site had a "full screen" mode. Is this unacceptable when watching it on your television (assuming you connect your computer to your television)?

Re:Obvious...

[Haeleth]

How good can the quality of the translated subtitles be if some fanboy has it done on the same day?!

In the days when I used to watch them, it used to be excruciatingly poor, with cringeworthy translation errors, unreadably wooden dialogue, and typos galore; most of the effort usually seemed to be put into dancing animated karaoke lyrics for the opening song, rather than actually translating the script well. I glimpse the odd screen capture on blogs and so forth from time to time, and it doesn't look like things have improved much.

Fortunately for the subbers, their audience is not very discriminating.

Re:Obvious...

[cptgrudge]

No, I don't expect them to offer their shows with skippable ads. They will not change fast enough; they are too entrenched and set in their ways. Eventually, they will be replaced with other companies, just as the horse-and-buggy companies were replaced by the automobile companies. Internet-based broadcasting with bittorrent? Uploaded video on the YouTubes of the future? New media companies with new ideas in any case. Those that stubbornly cling to the old ways of doing business in the face of a changing market will fail. Circumstances being what they are, it may take a while (maybe even beyond our lifetimes), but it will come.

And I don't connect any sort of traditional computer setup to my TVs. It's all XBMC, so if it has any sort of DRM, it won't fly. I suppose if I had a setup that had a web browser it would work, but then I have to control the video from within the browser. I can't use the fast forward, rewind, pause, etc controls defined in XBMC with that. So now I have a different site to navigate for every TV network? And I have to do it on a TV? With a keyboard or mouse? Please. Why would I do that when I can just connect to some tracker, download the file to a central place with all the others, and then watch it at my leisure?

I know they probably won't change. I'm just saying that if they offered a TV episode with commercials for download, real download, I would forego the version on piratebay in favor of it, and probably wouldn't end up downloading entire seasons of the show.

Re:Obvious...

[WilliamSChips]

I would really look for some other site, to tell the truth. I don't know much about fansubs but I do know that the particular site Dattebayo is controlled by the GNAA.

Re:Obvious...

[WilliamSChips]

What I find interesting is the disparity between your comment and the other comments on that thread. I've never watched fansubs but judging from other similar phenomena(webcomics vs newspaper comics, blogs vs traditional journalism, etc etc etc) I'm going to guess that you're talking about the average fansub and they're talking about the few good fansubs. I've found that when a barrier to entry(often artificial) is raised(often by the Internet) that the amount of crap goes from Sturgeon's Constant of 0.90 to somewhere from about 0.95 to about 0.99 but the remaining 1-5% is often better than all but the very very best of the barrier'd options. I call it the Paul Graham effect.

Re:Obvious...

[zakezuke]

Also, Doctor Who on BBC-America looks like crap. I guess it is due to the PAL-NTSC conversion, but everything on that channel looks awful.

I get CBC... so I was unaware BBC-America carried the new doctor who. I'll have to check it out. My CBC feed is soso in terms of quality.

But one can, if they so desire, order the box set of the pal edition from amazon.co.uk, unless they don't ship to america.

Re:Obvious...

[Fred Ferrigno]

Doctor Who airs in 16:9 HDTV, not PAL. I'm guessing BBCA does pan-and-scan. I think the SciFi channel letterboxes it, but then they edit it down to make room for more commercials.

Re:Obvious...

[Fred Ferrigno]

Well, only a few minutes after posting that, I just caught the tail end of a Doctor Who episode on BBCA and it's actually letterboxed.

Re:Obvious...

[paedobear]

No, the problem is just that fansub viewers really AREN'T discriminating - and speak an absolutely neligable amount of Japanese. Hell, #anime-junkies remained a massively popular group even after their "naked child events" masterpiece.

Re:Obvious...

[AussieVamp2]

That does sound like it would be way beyond your average multibillion dollar media company, certainly.

Re:Obvious...

[Maxo-Texas]

Stand Alone Complex very good.
In some cases worse than the Cartoon translation- but in some cases better (censorship? or cultural gap?)

Re:Obvious...

[stupid_is]

The "buy-drive" vs "fly-drive" episode is hilarious

Re:Obvious...

[JabrTheHut]

I'd be happy to fill out a (quite intrusive, but non-identifying) survey about my habits/details...

I'm a (bored) Japanese housewife with 17 children and 4 cats. I earn 600 million Yen a year. I have six cars, I do 8 hours of housework a day, and my hobbies are neco-equine flagellation and computer games.

I want to see what ads target "me"...

Piracy is bad

[bhalter80]

While piracy is bad, I think most people would agree, this study shows an interesting phenomenon of our shrinking world. With the increased availability of digital content the barriers to acquiring a product available in a region of the world that is not your own are almost non-existent. In the past you would have to fly to the region that had the product you sought out, buy it and fly back or have it imported via some other means. Now there is no technological reason you shouldn't be able to do the same, just some legal hurdles imposed by countries out to make a buck anywhere they can and media companies out to do the same. I don't know what the solution to the former is but in regards to the latter I would think this would be enough to show that there is a demand for the content and for them to find a way to distribute it.

Re:Piracy is bad

[frdmfghtr]

Now there is no technological reason you shouldn't be able to do the same, just some legal hurdles imposed by countries out to make a buck anywhere they can and media companies out to do the same. I don't know what the solution to the former is but in regards to the latter I would think this would be enough to show that there is a demand for the content and for them to find a way to distribute it.

I don't follow how you can say that the "countries" are out to make a buck...unless you are referring to government officials who will allow their influence to be, well, "influenced" by the industry that wants to make a buck then make another one without extra effort.

I would like an explanation from somebody in the industry as to why content is not made available to more viewers/listeners/etc. Demand is there; we see that in the amount of sales that come from online digital resources and transfers via other means such as BitTorrent. If there is demand for your product, you can do business and profit. If you don't do business, somebody else will.

People download from p2p nets because YOU (the content provider/copyright holder/whatever term you want to use) won't provide quality content and a reasonable price. Do that, and you will profit. Those who continue to use p2p weren't going to buy your product anyway, so you have lost nothing.

It all seems so simple, I must be missing something somewhere.

Re:Piracy is bad

[Anonymous Coward]

People download from p2p nets because YOU (the content provider/copyright holder/whatever term you want to use) won't provide quality content and a reasonable price. Do that, and you will profit.

You will only profit if what people consider a reasonable price is high enough. By offereing direct download they will lose renvenue from TV stations. If they lose more than they earn from direct download then it doesn't make sense to do so. Things aren't as black and white as you are trying to make it out to be.

Re:Piracy is bad

[frdmfghtr]

You will only profit if what people consider a reasonable price is high enough. By offereing direct download they will lose renvenue from TV stations. If they lose more than they earn from direct download then it doesn't make sense to do so. Things aren't as black and white as you are trying to make it out to be.

I agree that I made it a very simple argument--corporations hire people magnitudes smarter than I am in these areas to figure out these answers.

To counter your argument about lost station revenue; I don't see how a direct download can replace the broadcast. People who buy the downloads (or even the DVD collections) are they types who:

(a) Watched the broadcast and want their own copy for future viewing; or
(b) Didn't watch it the first time around and want a copy for future viewing

I can't think of any other case so if you can, feel free to add to the list.

Now, the first group is contributing to the broadcast revenue (ratings, ad revenue, etc.) and the second group are contributing by buying the content directly. Direct downloads augment the broadcast, not replace it.

There will be those who will go for the free download only and not look for the direct download nor watch the actual broadcast. Those individuals weren't going to contribute to your revenue stream anyway, so they are a non-loss (you can't lose that which you never had).

If TV revenue is in fact adversely affected, then it shows that the demand is for the direct download; the product demanded has changed, so you change with them. If the demand for widgets changes from red and round to blue and triangular, you make them blue and triangular if you want to stay in business.

I can't formulate a better argument, but it's just a gut feeling that the profit gained from digital distribution (it's GOT to be high; it's not like you need more physical material to distribute more copies, except maybe server capacity and bandwidth) would be much higher than the lost revenue from the broadcast.

Re:Piracy is bad

[rmerry72]

(a) Watched the broadcast and want their own copy for future viewing; or
(b) Didn't watch it the first time around and want a copy for future viewing
I can't think of any other case so if you can, feel free to add to the list.

Yeah, you missed one, the one that's the point of the original article:

(c) Are sick of not knowing when and if the broadcast will be on and just want to watch the damned thing now.

Now this group don't care about broadcasting revenue and put up with ads so they can have the convienience of a regularly scheduled piece of entertainment in their weekly life. These last few years even the big prime time hits of been jumping around slots and days through the key ratings periods, so throw out the schedule. When that happens people make they're own schedule.

I was watching House M.D. all last year at 8:30pm on a Wednesday night followed by NCIS. Channel Ten started me on that, and when they started showing repeats and fussing with the schedule I found and alternative provider and kept it up. Except now NCIS at my house starts at 9:15 pm, cause we don't have to watch all the ads that we used to on Channel 10.

Re:Piracy is bad

[VENONA]

"I can't formulate a better argument, but it's just a gut feeling that the profit gained from digital distribution (it's GOT to be high; it's not like you need more physical material to distribute more copies, except maybe server capacity and bandwidth) would be much higher than the lost revenue from the broadcast."

Gut feelings can lead you astray. There's a huge myth that bandwidth is cheap. Nothing could be further from the truth. Nor is server capacity cheap--not at a level where you can provide high-quality video downloads to massive numbers of people. The hardware requirements are enormous. Probably larger than you'd believe, unless you have some experience in this area.

DVD blanks are comparatively cheap. That's the basis of the NetFlix business model, and it seems to be working for them. That's probably not a solution if you enjoy some network weekly to the point where you need to talk about it around the watercooler, hang out on their Web discussion fora, or whatever. To some people, such as myself, I don't care if most network weeklies are delayed 'till they get to the SciFi, or other low-budget (Seen many of their movies? One-star mutant bug flicks are so 50s.) POS channel. I've no water-cooler imperative for most weeklies. The quality is usually so poor I'll wait until roughly forever, and even then, I'll only watch via something like Tivo. I won't sit through 30% commercials (though I'll go back and watch eye-catching ones I glimpse while skipping forward, so advertising models aren't totally dead) to watch marginal crap, when I could just go read a book.

For some things, like The Daily Show, timeliness does matter, or context is lost, and you should take it up with your provider if you have a problem. Enough complaints can get some action, so do a bit of organizing. But actual time-relevance is rare, if you think about.

I see NetFlix as pretty much meeting my needs for the few movies worth watching, without buying DVDs and providing a higher level of support for the RIAA. I refuse to go to the local theater--I value my sanity. So basically, DVD rentals (I admit to the rare purchase), and no problem with most any delays on weeklies.

Another cool thing about not having the 'must-watch-weekly-ASAP' mindset is that I occasionally leave three episodes on the drive, and watch them all at once. Skipping through commercials, that's the equivalent, time-wise, of a movie, if the episode are one hour, and they're about 30% commercials (the norm here in the US). Right around two hours. The downside is that the continuous stream can also drive home how bad some shows really are--to the point you just never watch them again.

If you relax, and don't treat things as time-sensitive unless the material really is, you burn less time in front of the tube, and have a better (in a less crappy sense, anyway) experience when you do watch. For less money. Media companies do a very good job of convincing people that something Must Be Watched Now. They're so good that most have been completely conditioned, without even realizing it.

Some have even been so conditioned that if they shrink the tube hours, they don't know WTF to do with the time. I've seen that, when a couple of buddies got laid off, money got tight, and they cancelled cable. It was both sad and very, very, scary.

Re:Piracy is bad

[Lerc]

The #1`reason why I download video.

It's the easiest way to get what I want when I want it. My daughter unplugged the aerial on our TV and it took us two weeks to notice. Broadcast TV just isn't worth the bother, especially because there is an absence of ads on the downloaded material.

Television production is about revenue gathering. TV networks get money from advertising. I think I'd be prepared to pay the equivalent of a viewers worth of advertising income to get ad free programs. iTunes has some programs but they cost too much.

As far as I can tell, for advertising to be worth it, it has to result in an average influence per viewer that results in purchases causing an increase in profit for the business that is greater than the cost per viewer for the advertising.

There is no way I am influenced to buy more than a dollars worth of stuff per hour of viewing, let alone the larger amount of purchasing that would be required to cause a dollar profit for the advertising company.

How much does advertising cost per viewer hour? Why aren't networks directly selling ad free programs for that? I don't mind giving them money if they'll give me what I want when I want it (I demand, could they please supply)

Re:Piracy is bad

[Deliveranc3]

Government's lose money on their media, BBC is subsidized, CBC sibsidized, CNN subsidized.

These are the equivalent of cultural propaganda machines and no country can afford to fall behind.

The whole pokemon thing scared the crap out of U.S. parents and government officials.

For reasons why this is important see Korean War, Hearts and Minds, and fall of Soviet Union.

When people talk about movie gross they mention that movies never register a profit, it's funny how the IRS has lost it's teeth in that particular region of the U.S.

Re:Piracy is bad

[BigZee]

The problem though is more about the potential impact to local broadcasters. If a producer of a program starts to sell that program directly via the internet, then you may be undermining a local broadcaster who won't get the ratings they require to sell advertising. As I'm often in the habit of reminding people, with one or two exceptions, the rest of the broadcast TV industry uses our favourite TV programs as bait to watch adverts. This is often the reason why we see programs we enjoy disapear. It's all about ratings and ratings means people watching adverts. It really is a sorry state to be honest and is the reason why the whole TV industry needs a serious shake up. Now, I realise that producers also make money off selling the programs but the broadcasters are not always producers and the smaller a broadcaster is, the more they rely on someone elses productions.

Re:Piracy is bad

[VENONA]

"undermining a local broadcaster who won't get the ratings they require to sell advertising"

That's a point I hadn't considered at all. Perhaps because the area where I live doesn't have a lot of local broadcasters, if I were to define that by how many television stations can deliver a watchable broadcast signal. Just checked, and I still only get two stations, plus one that is very marginal. The thing is, they don't deliver much content that with any meaning, other than the one that's PBS. The others already deliver local news via Web, and other than that, all they have is a couple of 'morning' shows that are pretty lame. These channels are serving several towns and cities with populations from 20-100K. So I doubt that they can afford very high production values, in any event. Plus, not *one* of them is locally owned.

If I expand the definition to include the closest major metro area, which is about an hour away, and population around 1M, the situation is somewhat better. In my case (sample size of 1) those small-town stations (none are in _my_ small town) will probably never be relevant to me, other than the news they deliver via Web. And local small newspaper's Web sites do as good a job there.

So are these small-city broadcasters already irrelevant to me? Probably. Regional? More, but not hugely, relevant. That's kind of depressing--I'm not a fan of big media. But it seems that it's rise was inevitable, if even a statistical outlier such as myself was part of it. OTOH, the 'narrowcast' (ability to reach small segments) capabilities of the Web supply most of needs for things that are time-sensitive.

So how much should I care? To what extent is this an iresitable trend; a done deal? Much food for thought, and thanks for the post. It's pretty clear that one thing I should do is that when an advert on a local channel takes me into a local merchant, I should tell the merchant. I've always tried to do that, as it's a good practice in supporting local businesses--it's hard to get feedback on their advertising spend. But I should get a lot better at it; I should form the habit of doing it each and every time.

But that doesn't really support local broadcasters, does it? I've spoken to the guys peddling adverts--they give demographics you don't know if you can trust, how well that translates to your widget, etc. The local merchant is usually buying in blindly, to a process that marketing folk from the broadcaster are going to attempt to 'tune' for him. An ongoing process that sells more adverts. Shades of the advert guy from the old WKRP series...

What's your idea of a resolution? How does that local (remember that in my case none are locally owned--well the PBS station may be) broadcaster not only stay in business, but deliver programming I want to see? What steps do I take in doing my bit to ensure that?

The real problem

[mdboyd]

Is the that the toilets in Australia flush counter-clockwise. This really messes with Ted Steven's tubes and prevents licensed content from quickly reaching the country.

You heard it here first folks...

Re:The real problem

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.snopes.com/science/coriolis.asp

Re:The real problem

[F1re]

I have lived in Australia for all of my 32 years and I can tell you I have never seen a toilet flush clockwise or counter clockwise. They just don't work like that.

Re:The real problem

[Anonymous Coward]

If you flush your toilet clockwise, then the people on the other end of the tube have to flush counter-clockwise to match the rotation. So, if the Aussies had the same habit of flushing clockwise, the content of the tube would have to reverse its rotation half-way down.

The real problem lies in the fact that even the people down under don't like the shows you flush down the toilet!

Re:The real problem

[f4hy]

Toliets do not flush different directions in the hemispheres. The myth comes from the Coriolis effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coriolis_effect which causes storms to be oposite directions in the north and south hemispheres. However the scale of water going down a drain is so small that the coriolis effect is negligible compared to random motions of the fluid or geometric factors that would cause drains to favor one direction over the other. My fluid dynamics proffesor laughed at me when I said drains would flow different directions yet my only reference was the simpsons.

Re:The real problem

[Max Littlemore]

They just don't work like that.

Struth, you've never left the farm. If you go to one of those big cities like Tumbarumba, they have the toilets inside the buildings, and once you've done your business, you pull this chain hanging off a tank on the wall, and bloody water comes out and washes it away. No hole in the ground for these fancy city folks.

The whole 'entertainment' experience is wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

TV in Australia sucks because of the constant barrage of overly loud advertisements for 3 minutes after every 5 minutes of TV show.

Cinema in Australia sucks because of long queue lines, high prices and poor quality movies, as well as the 20 mins of lead-up-to-the-main-feature advertisements.

DVD release in Australia suck because we have to wait and wait and wait for a DVD that gets superseded 1 month after arrival by the Gold Edition, then the Extra Gold Edition, then the SuperMegaHypeUltraBlaster edition shortly after.

The whole experience of entertainment via TV/DVD or cinema is completely wrong. It lacks that all important component - ENTERTAINMENT.

Why bother? I can buy a bootleg copy of just about anything, download it if I can be bothered or borrow someone else's copy of whatever it may be. Either way, these three elements of access to entertainment guarantee I get my entertainment fix.

Yes - I am an Aussie.

Re:The whole 'entertainment' experience is wrong

[Overzeetop]

Let me just say that, as an American, I feel entirely superior in my media consumption, as I have the ability to watch 3 minutes after every 5 minutes of TV show, stand in long queue lines, pay high prices for seating and refreshments, all to watch 20 mins of lead-up-to-the-main-feature advertisements before I get to watch the poor quality movie, only to then wait several months before I can purchase the DVD, which rapidly gets superceded by the arrival by the Gold Edition, then the Extra Gold Directors Cut Edition, then the SuperMegaHypeUltraBlaster edition, up to a year or more before you get to get caught up in the whirlpool!

Quite honestly, I'd say you're in the perfect position. With global commerce, you can get the DVD, rip it to disc, and watch the whole thing before the theatrical release even get to Australia! Of course, that's 6 months after you could have downloaded it of oosnet-yay (the first rule of...) as a screener or cam-capture (they're getting better you know, thanks to the Canadians).

Of course, none of this makes up for the fact that we (and I mean "we" in the most generic, ugly American sense, not me personally) are churning out an amazing volume of absolute crap every year, which we so carefully delay in sending you.

Somehow, in the era before the internet and digital cinema, it made a certain amount of sense to have a staggered release. Given enough theaters with digital projection capabilities, it shouldn't really matter. I know that time is not here yet, but it's close enough that it could be. Maybe it's a little like HDTV in the US. If the FCC had had a backbone in the 90s, we could have all been happily watching 720p already. (And for you 1080i zealots - wouldn't it have been better to have 720p that actually worked than the spaghetti that is HDTV now?)

exuse me...NO, bartender, I'm just fine...in fact you can top me off if you would. Of course I won't be driving home...

Re:The whole 'entertainment' experience is wrong

[askegg]

The problem is even worse than that - the networks are unwilling to change. Advertisements are constant and loud (to spite investigative "reporters" proving otherwise - have they never heard of dynamic compression?), the repetition of shows is repeatative in the most repeatative of ways you can repeat, the switch to digital is slooooooow (when can we get a proper EPG that shows more than the current and next shows?).

Of course, all of these issues are a little off point. The fact is most shows are delayed by around 6 month, probably due to the seasonal structure of programming. Even so, I am quite willing to download Lost, Heroes and Dr. Who 6 months before they are aired here, then watch them at my convenience, not the networks.

Re:The whole 'entertainment' experience is wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Well mate, it's the same in the UK and the US. Life can suck, eh?

Re:The whole 'entertainment' experience is wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

I was waiting for someone to raise the issue of seasonality.

Australian networks will have to weigh the cost of
- showing shows concurrent with the US/UK broadcasts but in a time of the year in the southern hemisphere when people generally do not watch as much TV, or
- waiting for TV viewership to increase, but risk losing viewers to other media (ie the internet).

I'm sure they're working on it.

Re:The whole 'entertainment' experience is wrong

[typicallyterrific]

Quite honestly, I'd say you're in the perfect position. With global commerce, you can get the DVD, rip it to disc, and watch the whole thing before the theatrical release even get to Australia! Of course, that's 6 months after you could have downloaded it of oosnet-yay (the first rule of...) as a screener or cam-capture (they're getting better you know, thanks to the Canadians).

Bzzt! Wrong! Or at least, it would be wrong if there weren't some less scrupulous DVD manufacturers that sell players with all regions (I'm almost certain it breaks SOME contract they signed up to or SOME standard).

If it were up to our media overlords, our aussie friend would be stuck waiting 'till there were Region 4 releases of everything, given that distribution rights are sold regionally over the world.

Hurray for artificial markets!

Re:The whole 'entertainment' experience is wrong

[Overzeetop]

What, you can't buy a R1 DVD player off of ebay just as easily as you can buy the DVDs? There are also a plethora of region free players. If you're going to break the law by importing contraband content, you may as well illegally import somehting to play it on. ;-)

No surprise

[Dan East]

I guess a bunch of execs are sitting around the board room table, still thinking it is 1970 and they have exclusive control over video distribution of their content. It will probably take an entire generation worth of executives to die off before some of these industries can reform. It really takes serious denial to think that consumers would prefer to wait for them to broadcast the content over their channels, when it can be obtained immediately, on-demand, in HD without commercials for free.

Dan East

Re:No surprise

[Max Littlemore]

It really takes serious denial to think that consumers would prefer to wait for them to broadcast the content over their channels, when it can be obtained immediately, on-demand, in HD without commercials for free.

What? Who would break the law downloading the latest "Americas Most Incredibly Stupid Psychic Wildlife Cops Behaving Badly In A Queer Make-Over With The Fattest Loser", when they could wait five years to see it hosted by Sandra Sully? I mean really...

Thanks for the car analogy

[Anonymous Coward]

We need this car example to make things clear to people. thanks for your input.

Don't impose your values on the rest of us

[Per Abrahamsen]

It is unauthorized, which in some peoples opinion makes it Wrong. Other people have no problem with that. And to a sizable fraction of the people, it is Wrong only if there is an option of authorized copying.

Claiming that your Wrong should be the viewpoint of everybody isn't going to help. On the other hand, providing an authorized option is going to change something, as it will make the last group switch to that option. That is why the article, unlike your opinion, is interesting, it shows a way to change status quo.

[ I personally never do unauthorized copies, not because I think those are Wrong, but because I want to argue against current copyright laws without being accused of trying to justify my own behavior. ]

Quit Overreacting, You Big Babies!

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, you guys. Studio Executives always have to re-dub shows each time they go to a new language region. They do this when the show goes to Germany, they do this when the show goes to China. And of course, they re-dub shows when they go to Australia. The reason it takes so long is that Australian is notorious for being one of the worst languages on the planet.

Re:Quit Overreacting, You Big Babies!

[RavensDark]

As opposed to US English which isnt a language at all. LOL

Not only AU

[Anonymous Coward]

I always loved seeing christmas episodes, in mid summer. Made me feel like living in Australia I guess. Too bad Europe is in the Northern Hemisphere.

I could never, rationally, understand the year and a half delay either.

Thank you P2P.

now I wished i watched television

[atarione]

so i could tell all our Australian friends how the shows they are still waiting for ended =p

seems like there are similar problems everywhere..I for example really like TopGear on the BBC..... sadly however there is no legitimate way for me to watch it here in America.... So naturally I never watch it at all =p (pro tip never admit piracy or other crimes on teh interweb)

TopGear- On later tonight.

[RotateLeftByte]

TopGear is apparently the most pirated(sorry watched) BBC show after Dr Who worldwide. It is very un PC and that is what makes it so attractive.
Goody, 55mins to go before this weeks edition. The lads are messing around in Tractors trying to grow their own Fuel.

Keep up the good work lads. I'll be at Dunsfold next week for the show.

Perhaps the BBC should copy UK Channel 4 and setup a pay downoad site for non serial shows like TopGear
Off Topic:-
  The place where the show is filmed is the place where the Harrier VTOL Aircraft was flight tested before delivery to the like of the RAF, USMC and Spanish Airforce..
I worked there in the late 1970's.

Re:TopGear- On later tonight.

[atarione]

Keep up the good work lads. I'll be at Dunsfold next week for the show

you lucky bastard =p seriously I would be so excited I wouldn't know what to do if I could goto the filming of the show.

Re:TopGear- On later tonight.

[Winckle]

I can make you even more jealous, since i'm a licence fee payer and it's a BBC show the tickets for the filming/recording of any BBC TV/Radio show are free of charge, you just ask for them. :D

Re:TopGear- On later tonight.

[Anonymous Coward]

They cut a train crash stunt from broadcast two episodes ago, but finally they've caved in.

Re:TopGear- On later tonight.

[zerocool^]

Sooo... Gambon Bend is YOUR fault!

You've nearly KILLED the Stig!

Re:TopGear- On later tonight.

[Builder]

Who do you ask ? I'd love to go!

Re:TopGear- On later tonight.

[Winckle]

http://www.applausestore.com/Site/shows/show/Shows Main.php?id=21

Re:TopGear- On later tonight.

[hcdejong]

Warning about that link: Applausestore are spammy bastards who make it impossible to get off their mailing list.

Re:TopGear- On later tonight.

[Winckle]

It's worth it for Top Gear tickets!!

The same is true in Germany

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only do we get most movies much later (if at all). We also get TV series MUCH later (if at all), and to add insult to injury, it's all in some crappy translation (you just can't translate puns, nor can you really adequately translate interesting dialog), spoken by speakers with totally different voices than the original ones, and so forth...

As a result, I don't even own a TV anymore (just not worth it, especially since the government makes us pay >$15/month), only watch DVDs once in a while, and otherwise watch downloaded stuff from overseas.

It's like the war on drugs: wake up, nobody cares if it's illegal. When people want something, there are two choices: sell it to them in an open, competitive market, or prohibit it and live with the results (mafia gangs, illegal distribution). But you can't change people.

Re:The same is true in Germany

[Anonymous Coward]

As a result, I don't even own a TV anymore (just not worth it, especially since the government makes us pay >$15/month)... If you own a Computer which is able to (just has to able to. doesn't need to be connected to the internet at all) connect to the internet (with a modem, cable, dsl...) the goverment now makes you pay 5,52EURO/month for that.
Also make sure you don't have an old radio (doesn't matter if you haven't even used for a decade) laying around somewhere, because they want to get money for that, too.

Re:The same is true in Germany

[Anonymous Coward]

(I don't have radio, either. The amount of CDs I can buy for 5/month is sooo much better than the same boring music they play every single day.)

Yes, they want to charge me for my internet connection. Well, we'll see. First they'll have to send be a bill.

how do they even know the shows exist??

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like they deserve what they get for reading stuff on the internet.

They can't?

[Leuf]

This situation different. If the material is not released in any pay format, the content producer cannot possibly suffer any negative consequences by banned groups' piracy.

Just because they haven't released it YET doesn't mean there's no potential harm. If they can't get the content in a timely fashion and everyone has already watched it off bt, then why bother releasing it late? You don't get to decide when and how they have to release the content.

The reality is that we have a global audience now. Aussies can get on the net (except for the Tassies that are still working on that whole fire thing) and want to talk with other fans of the show, but it's impossible for them to do so because the dominate online presence is a year ahead of them. The content providers have to do a better job releasing things everywhere at as close to the same time as is reasonable or else human nature is going to take over.

Re:They can't?

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't get to decide when and how they have to release the content.

I keep getting told that as a "consumer" I have the power to do exactly that. So which version do I believe?

Re:They can't?

[anagama]

Just because they haven't released it YET doesn't mean there's no potential harm.

And I recognize that fact in my original post. However, there are questions in my mind about whether it is wrong to illegally download shows when they are 17 months behind (note I make a distinction between wrong/illegal). I believe that illegal downloads have the potential to cut into profits. However, when a content producer makes a choice to not sell their product within a reasonable time, it seems somewhat unreasonable for them to complain about potential lost profit at some unspecified date when they may or may not decide the time is right to sell. That's I want to know whether all shows become available legally in AU eventually. If there is a chance a show will never ever be released, why wait? The content producer obviously doesn't think the market is worth much because they make no effort to sell.

On the other hand, if it is just that the AU media companies won't pay the price (as was pointed out to me elsewhere), then the content producer could simply go straight to the viewer. The fact is, if the show is not available in AU, there is no way the media company will be making money. If it might become available, then I might think it is wrong to illegally download if one can be _certain_ it will be released in a _reasonable_ amount of time.

People like directly getting commercial free content. I'm happy enough with netflix and iTunes. Problem for people in AU is that they don't have this option. The media companies can piss and moan about piracy, or set up a way for people to legally obtain their products. For that matter, right/wrong and legal/illegal are beside the point. People are gonna get content -- the question is whether the media companies want to profit or not off that desire.

Brainwashed

[clang_jangle]

You sir are brainwashed.

The people who began calling the process of copying files from the network w/o the permission of the "IP owner" "piracy" and "stealing" are the **AA parasites, and they add little to no value while conspiring to hold us all back technologically and for what? To keep milking a clearly obsolete business model.

Data wants to be free; we can only restrict distribution and charge $$ for it by making some artificial arrangement (which is always going to be defeatable). Even so if they would price their "IP" at a level the market is willing to bear and provide it in a format people find useful (vs restictive) most people would rather just buy it, it's easier.
These are some *reasons* piracy happens.
So the real excuse makers and criminals here are the **AA .

All this is not big news --- do try to keep up old man!

The post about copying the ferarri is spot on and should be modded up.

Re:Brainwashed

[Wicko]

You sir need to be modded up. How piracy managed to get in the dictionary with respect to copyright infringement, I'll never know. This is a slang term which in its actual definition has very little in common to the acts described by the **AA. I can't stress enough how twisted this situation is, with all the brain washing and "studies" performed by **AA and friends. People need to start thinking for themselves instead of horribly disfigured articles and news reports doing it for them.

Re:Brainwashed

[Richard_at_work]

Data wants to be free;
Oh god, not that crap again - data isnt tangible, it doesnt want to *be* anything, let alone free. Its owned by someone, someone controls access to information and the price is whatever that someone says. Data doesnt sit on a hard disk somewhere tunneling under the wire, it doesnt hide in supply trucks, it sits there until an external entity does something to it.

we can only restrict distribution and charge $$ for it by making some artificial arrangement (which is always going to be defeatable).

Be very careful, because the only reason you can leave your car in a car park with a reasonable expectation of it being there when you get back is also because of artificial limitations called laws. Those same artificial limitations also are the reason why you have a reasonable expectation that you work gets paid for. Why is this any different?

Re:Brainwashed

[Anonymous Coward]

Data wants to be free; we can only restrict distribution and charge $$ for it by making some artificial arrangement (which is always going to be defeatable).

In that case, please give me your social security number, your ATM pin code, and your medical records.

Data wants to be free doesn't it? I guess you would have no problem with that right, boy?

Re:Brainwashed

[Anonymous Coward]

Data wants to be free;
Oh god, not that crap again - data isnt tangible, it doesnt want to *be* anything, let alone free.

Just because you don't understand it doesn't mean it isn't the truth. The saying is an observation: Data doesn't exist in a vacuum. The value of most data can only be realized by sharing it. A movie isn't valuable unless you are willing to show it to someone else. At that point it's hard to keep data from being distributed further. This tendency of data to become public is what "information wants to be free" means.

Re:Brainwashed

[Dun Malg]

Data wants to be free;
Oh god, not that crap again - data isnt tangible, it doesnt want to *be* anything, let alone free. Hey genius, let me introduce you to the fascinating world of Rhetorical Devices.
Note that those with "nothing to lose but [their] chains" need not actually be confined by chains, nor does a comment of "I wouldn't want to be in your shoes" have anything to do with the relative merits of footwear.
"Information wants to be free" is a catch phrase, shorthand for the larger, more complex principle that the entire purpose of information is to be shared. But you knew that. You were just being an ass.

Re:Brainwashed

[Anonymous Coward]

Would it be your use of that information that is illegal, not your possession of it?

Re:Brainwashed

[Farmer Tim]

How piracy managed to get in the dictionary with respect to copyright infringement, I'll never know.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Copyright_infrin gement#Examples_of_use_of_the_word_pirate_or_pirac y_in_this_context

Interestingly, the first reference predates both the term "copyright" and the first English dictionary.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_Alphabeticall

Re:Brainwashed

[Maxx169]

I think the best way to think about the phrase "data wants to be free" is: Data wants to be free in the same way as water wants to leak. Water doesn't sit on its back patio thinking about the good ole days before rubber seals became common place, when it was free to leak and drip as much as it wanted, even if it had to flow through miles of scalding hot pipes on its way to school. It's just, if water is free to leak - if people don't constantly try and prevent water from leaking though patching holes and creating seals, then it will. It has a natural tendency to leak, just the same as information. It has a natural tendency to want to be free.

Re:Brainwashed

[mapkinase]

If you do not like paying for a digital copy of some "data who wants to be free" (what the heck is that? Are you talking about Startrek Data, 'cause I do not know any other "data" that have "wants"), find one who does not mind giving you his data for free. There are tons of legally free content on the Internet, use it.

If you do not like Australia being poor backwash country, move to Indonesia.

Re:Brainwashed

[BarneyL]

Data wants to be free

Sorry, I'm quite happy with all sorts of data costing me money. Personally I want to see more BSG, Dr Who, Heroes and the like and the only way that happens is when someone pays for it to be produced. I like seeing the writers actors and everyone who has worked on a series rewarded for it rather than having to give up and go and work in burger king because it pays better.
Some way someone (and that is ultimately us the viewers) has to pay for what they watch otherwise it won't get made. We have two choices, we pay a fee for cable or a DVD or we watch adverts. Even worse the programme becomes an advert like the two hours of product placement that was last James Bond film or the words "Nissan Versa" being uttered repeatedly in Heroes.
The issue here is allowing us (particularly those of us outside of the US) to pay a fair price at a fair time for what we want to see rather than having to wait in some cases years to pay double what it costs in the US.

Other benefits to consider.

[Blimey85]

Lets not forget the other benefits from downloading tv shows. As the article discusses the main one is acess to something you otherwise wouldn't be able to watch at all, or at the very least much sooner than you'd would otherwise be able to watch it. The benefits do not end there. I recently moved and switched from Dish to DirecTV. I missed approximately two weeks of tv shows that are on the first dvr while I am now using the second dvr. There is now way (that I know of) to move shows from one to the other so I hopped online and downloaded what I had missed... along with a few movies but that's beside the point.

After burning the files to a dvd and popping them into my divx capable dvd player I was able to watch the shows in widescreen format without commercials. I could have gotten them in surround sound as well but my player doesn't support surround for divx files so I went with the smaller non-surround sound files.

When watching these shows via my dvr I obviously have to contend with commericials, but because I don't have a high def setup, I can only watch the full screen version of most shows even though I would greatly prefer a wide screen version. By downloading I get exactly what I want, with no hassle of fastforwarding past commercials and I get it whenever I want it, not when some company says I can have it. I don't think this is something they can compete with. It's like when Napster fell the RIAA thought people would suddenly stop downloading just because Napster was gone. I have access to a better product then what DirecTV is selling me for free so what incentive do I have to keep their service? I will because at some point it becomes a hassle to download everything you want to see. Would be nice if there was some automated program that would access the torrent site and retrieve the latest files for each of my favorite shows and now that I think about it, I could easily right such an animal in perl. I think I'll do just that. Maybe I will drop DirectTV after all.

Re:Other benefits to consider.

[Anonymous Coward]

Search for 'ted' - torrent episode downloader...

Good TV or Good Broadband? Hmm........

[LibertineR]

First, it isnt just the Aussies.

Germany has a thriving torrent culture for the same reason.

I often wonder if I would trade their lack of good media with our lack in America of good fast and CHEAP broadband connectivity?

Were it not for Battlestar, Firefox and 24, I would probably vote for the broadband.

Re:Good TV or Good Broadband? Hmm........

[Anonymous Coward]

Firefox: it's not just for browsing anymore

No

[Anonymous Coward]

The real problem is clear if you study the history of Australia. It started as a penal colony. So, the fact that the Aussies are committing crimes isn't entirely unexpected...

It's the same for Australia. Now!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Much of the piracy of new releases is by those of us who can't stand the theater and don't want to wait half a year for the DVD."

Man! It's amazing how your founders managed to make it without the benefit of instant gratification. Good thing societies are ditching that mindset. Now! Now! Now! is the wave of the future.

Trade agreement

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey did US & OZ sign a free trade agreement recently. Shouldn't that allow us to download these movies. Or is it a typical one deal.

Re:Trade agreement

[Hucko]

If you re-read your Australian Constitution, you will find it is the responsibility of Australian politicians to ensure foreign corporations, especially those originating in the U.S., have free access to all aspects of Australian citizens lives including personal data, encouraging reducing levels of value to said citizens. The way you said, one may come to think that the politicians are working for the Australian people!

Well, duh

[Cholten]

I don't pirate software (there's enough very good free stuff out there).

I don't pirate movies (anything worth having is worth buying on DVD).

I don't pirate music (same as DVDs).

However I do download 7-10 TV episodes off usenet every week. I pull them the day after they are on in the US as they won't be shown here in the UK for months - if at all.

What I can never understand is why Murdoch et al don't sign deals with the American networks to show their channels as part of their cable / satellite packages. Same goes for the BBC in American (the "proper" BBC channels - not BBC world).

If I could just record these shows on my PVR my own "piracy" would drop off to almost nothing (and the networks would get me watching more adverts instead of my current number of zero).

Re:It's Still Wrong -- NOPE!

[Visaris]

If the copyright holders are unwilling to sell a copy of a digital work, how can it possibly be morally wrong to obtain your own copy at zero cost to the original owner? The owner can't even try to claim that they lost "potential sales", because they were not selling copies in the first place.

Longer life expectancy driving people to murder

[jbf]

The delays that people experience before they die is driving many would-be inheriters to murder others or contract for their death. The problem is compounded by the fact that increasing medical costs for seniors is decreasing the available inheritence. According to a survey based on a sample of life expectancies and previous estates, generation X is waiting 8 to 10 years longer than previous generations for their inheritences. Those who believe they deserve such funds earlier have resorted to poisoning or even shooting their parents in a bid to preserve a larger portion of the estate and to obtain earlier access. Poor kids.

This has nothing to do with rights. This has to do with laws created to reward the rather expensive production of TV shows, which the networks choose to monetize in ways some people don't like.

Re:Longer life expectancy driving people to murder

[Anonymous Coward]

But now, thanks to the power of the Intarwebs, people can press a button and get a much better quality inheritance right away, without having to interact with their parents at all. In fact, it's so much larger, faster and less restricted that the parents are complaining that the kids never visit any more, even just to stand around saying "Aren't you dead yet?"

Happens in America too.

[kahrytan]

I know how it feels to wait a long time for TV shows. And I suspect many Americans do too.

      Scifi channel delayed finishing up Stargate Atlantis' Season 3 and Stargate SG-1's last season until April. But Canadians and UK (Sky One) have been watching it since December and January. So many Americans have to wait 4 to 5 months just to watch their favorite show.

Re:Happens in America too.

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

I know how it feels to wait a long time for TV shows. And I suspect many Americans do too.

            Scifi channel delayed finishing up Stargate Atlantis' Season 3 and Stargate SG-1's last season until April. But Canadians and UK (Sky One) have been watching it since December and January. So many Americans have to wait 4 to 5 months just to watch their favorite show.

Not if you download the torrents! Hmmm.... wait 6 months to see the show on crappy analog cable (the only thing that is available in the dorms), or see it now in HD. Big choice there.

Re:Happens in America too.

[kahrytan]

Awe. Bit Torrent. The Stargate fans best friend in America.

Tape Trading

[mrshowtime]

It seems that in the torrent age, everyone has forgotten that tv shows used to be traded on VHS all over the world. I used to get Dr. Who episodes from my cousins in England (I had a very expensive PAL/NTSC converter-player) and I used to trade episodes with a lot of people all over the world. Now I can just download whatever tv episodes that I want. I don't understand why nobody gave a shit about tape trading, but now if I share a private torrent or a custom made dvd of a tv show with my friends, instead of sending them a tape, I am a now PIRATE! Television has always been regarded as "disposable" entertainment. It was not till Lucille Ball started filming all her show that anyone thought that a tv show could hold any future value after once it aired. Look at the BBC, they have had a policy of no reruns past the original broadcast. While we here in the states got to watch Dr. Who/Blakes 7 over and over again on PBS stations, it was difficult to find old episodes in the UK.

Re:Tape Trading

[tymbow]

They did care, but the physical aspect of tape trading and the cost to make tapes limited potential damage. It was also constrained to the physical borders of the country of origin. The other significant issue is that it is near impossible to police this type of trading activity. The Internet changes this - the impact is huge because the reach is orders of magnitude greater, it extends well beyond physical country boundaries and duplication costs are near zero. Policing is where changes are the largest; this is addressed through technologies such as DRM, AACS and law (argue all you like for or against these). I would imagine that ultimately when governments control Internet access within a country border (you know it's going to happen eventually) the media companies will get the level of control they want.

As much as I hate copyright, DRM and all the crap that goes with trying to access to media I want, I do see some point to media companies concerns. Ultimately they see a worse case where they release a film song or whatever which almost no one pays to use because everyone watches a copy of it. Obviously this is not sustainable but I don't know what the solution is.

Re:Tape Trading

[Anonymous Coward]

There is not massive trading of VHS tapes between buddies like what goes on the internet.
Other countries love to complain about our way of economy and dealing with business; yet their economies can never seem to produce anything worthwhile watching and love to bash our way of culture.
Capitalism rules and it brings out the best skill in the American way of culture; as ruthless as Hollywood seems it was a lot snobbier back in the days and I still tip my hat to all the work that they have produced which other countries or crappy Indie films.

Re:Tape Trading

[Anonymous Coward]

No one forgot anything. It's just that you and the other 13 people that thought it was a good use of time to send and recieve VHS tapes all around the world and pay for a PAL/NTSC converter never posed a real threat to the distribution of media.

Compare your puny insignificant number of VHS trades with the current millions of torrent downloads on a daily basis.

Are you getting it yet?

Not just an aussie problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Its also a problem in Europe where we are probably 6 months behind on Neighbours or Home and Away dammit!

Same for Battlestar Galactica series.

standard addiction.

[Anonymous Coward]

"The delay in airing doesn't bother me, but being forced to wait four months for the resolution of a double episode pushed me over the edge."

Did you climb to the top of a clock tower with a high powered sniper rifle? I want to see a reality show, "411 TV viewer", as time runs out, and they steadily take a dive towards the worse. Kicking the dog, snarly to coworkers, and as they finally lose it...Ahhh!! The download finally finishes.

Sweden used to be like that

[the_arrow]

In Sweden, many american tv-series and moves could take quite some time before getting shown or released. It's much better now though, with many tv-series only a couple of episodes behind, if even that.

Canada Too

[Anonymous Coward]

Battlestar Galactica out on DVD before it airs on tv? Our tax money going to co-produce a BBC Program (Torchwood) that won't even be shown in Canada until 2008? They wonder why people download tv shows?

Here are some examples of the delays

[dns_server]

It is really that bad for a majority of programs especially scifi:

Alias for example, according to wikipedia it was shown 2005-2006, It has not been shown in australia yet with no plans from what i can see to have it shown, There is also no release date for the dvd. Star Trek: Voyager was the worst you finished in 2001, we finished in 2005.

With Battlestar galactica we just showed the last episode of season 2 a few hours ago (started at 11:40pm but would be shown anywhere between 10:30pm and 2:30am) You are half way through season 3.

Stargate sg1, we finished season 9 last month, Stargate Atlantis we are at season 2 episode 6.

Extras started their second season last week.

The O.C. Is one exception though, channel 10 actually showed episodes of this within a week of the us, You showed it on the 22nd we showed it on the 23rd or 24th (the Australian rules pre-season has started so some regions where delayed).

Most programs are put on a 6 month delay much of this is because of the difference in ratings periods, yours is around September ours started a few weeks ago.

Re:Here are some examples of the delays

[TekPolitik]

Add to this that the networks stop shows mid-season without explanation (most of the time they don't even tell you it won't be on next week let alone when it will be on next), then move them to another time slot without ever advertising the new time slot to viewers. When you find out that 6 episodes of one of your favourite shows have aired at 2:30am before you found out about it, you can either pick up the season with some badly lost context (not an attractive option), wait until it comes onto Foxtel (actually not a bad option - Foxtel are pretty good about these things and treat their audiences far, far better than the networks), drop the show altogether, or download it illegally. If you don't have Foxtel, the only viable options are ditching the show or downloading it. Ditching it doesn't help the network or the producer, so in such cases having the customer download it may be in their best interests if it means the customer is catching up and will continue watching the free to air version - when they actually know it's on.

Re:Here are some examples of the delays

[Anonymous Coward]

I've stopped watching TV altogether over the last few months. I didn't decide to stop, it just sort of happened. I used to watch shows like 24 and Boston Legal and Alias and so on religously, but I got sick of the stupid loud ads (seriously - ads are at least 50% louder than the explosions in 24!) every 5 mins, the delays in showing the episodes and constantly moving the timeslots around.

Now everything I watch is either on Youtube (like High Stakes Poker and stuff like that where I don't care about the video quality) or I just bittorrent it 3 hours after it airs in the states for stuff like 24.

The Aussie TV channels can go fuck themselves.

However, lately something interesting happened. Shows like 'The daily show' and the Adult Swim guys decided to make their content available online. And I actually watch these! They still have ads on them, but at least I get to watch them immediately after they air and I can watch them any time I like. If all shows did this, I'd probably stop bittorrenting files altogether.

I still wont watch Aussie TV though...

Re:Here are some examples of the delays

[hoojus]

You forgot the other major problem we have in Australia. Non-continuity! It has been quite often the case (CSI a prime example) that the network would just stop the current season for no reason and start playing reruns in the same time slot. If it wasn't for Grisham's beard showing up in the first few minutes you would have to rack the brain to figure out if you saw it. Then they move it to a new time slot without warning and you end up missing part of the season until you remember to check through the TV guide for new schedules. And finally living in a sport loving nation any program can and will be stopped half way through a season just because some stupid men in white have to stop some little red ball from hitting their wickets!

And then they wonder why we download instead of attempting to watch a season on one of our useless commercial stations (we have a whole 3)

Yes I am bitter! but I do have difficulty discussing Heroes with friends as I am 12 episodes in front.

Re:Here are some examples of the delays

[dbIII]

You forgot the other major problem we have in Australia. Non-continuity!

Good point - after only watching Farscape (made in Australia) five times on TV I had seen the same episode twice, and this is only over the course of three months, so I didn't bother staying up late to watch it. There wasn't much point seeing it at all until the DVD's came out - and this is a show partly funded by the local network and still buried at a changing timeslot around midnight on it's first release.

Re:Here are some examples of the delays

[dbIII]

We're not so far behind with Galactica. Season three turned up not long ago, but the special effects are crap and look like they are out of the 1980s. I don't like the superhero kids on earth thing and Lorne Green really isn't such a good actor. I can't understand why so many people on the net are so worked up about Starbuck - a lot of gay men must be Galactica fans I suppose.

Yes, we are way behind with TV series and movie releases.

Re:Here are some examples of the delays

[goonerw]

Stargate sg1, we finished season 9 last month, Stargate Atlantis we are at season 2 episode 6.

Hell. The boxed set of Season 9 of SG-1 came out here before it was even aired on the Free-to-Air networks.

Re:Here are some examples of the delays

[AeroIllini]

Star Trek: Voyager was the worst

Right on.

Money

[forgoil]

The first who can get 720p/1080p high bitrate surround sound TV series on the net, in a way that is fairly priced, is bound to make a huge amount of bucks, and make it a hell of a lot easier to start convincing people to pay instead of pirate. It is about two things first and foremost:

1. Convenience. I can watch it when I want, where I want, with no commercials or similar horrors.
2. Quality. TV/iTunes just doesn't cut it. I want full widescreen 720/1080 HDTV with full quality surround and top notch bitrate choices (I'll pay the double for 2x the bitrate).
(3. Price)

Ever heard of, if you can't beat them, join them? I'd hire the big boys in torrent/ftp to run my systems instead of trying to give them jailtime. They are sure to run a tight ship (they didn't even get paid before! well, kinda not at least:)) and they will be sure to upset the other nets so they can get more profit:) I'd pay them by the download ofcourse:)

Re:Money

[Overzeetop]

There are three things stopping them:

(1) Poor penetration of high speed net access. Delivering ATSC 720p ODP programming will saturate all but the absolute fastest residential pipes, and even then there would only be one stream at a time available. Overcompression and pipe optimization help the few iptv over fiber providers. If some people have this and others don't, then its more likely to lead to

(2) Piracy. Who wants all those precious little bits out there, just waiting to be swapped for free? I mean, except everyone save the studio execs.

(3) Product cannabalism. If you can get what you want, when you want it, for a "reasonable" fee, it's likely to cut someone or some product out of the media food chain. Since the law of media is that no revenue source shall ever see a reduced cash flow (except when complaining about those nasty pirates), this causes problems. Overhauling the way you do business to make "just as much money" some other way is not a viable business strategy when you control the game. Preserving revenue streams and expanding into non-competing streams is where they really want to go, not replacement of revenue streams.

Re:Money

[MojoStan]

2. Quality. TV/iTunes just doesn't cut it. I want full widescreen 720/1080 HDTV with full quality surround and top notch bitrate choices (I'll pay the double for 2x the bitrate). Wouldn't 720p or 1080i be much more than 2x the bitrate of iTunes Store 640x480 video?

640 * 480 = 307,200 pixels
1280 * 720 = 921,600 pixels

And that's not counting the full quality surround sound.

BTW, Xbox Live Video Marketplace offers 720p HD television downloads for $3 (240 points), but you need an Xbox to use this service.

gaming industry likewise ..

[appelsiini]

Many people in europe could be willing to buy lots of games from online-retailing places like Ubisoft's Direct2Drive, but nearly all titles say "Only to be sold in North America". I really do wonder what makes my Visa or Amex worse than any John Doe from Newark. We would both want to buy a product. It's very lame excuse to say that I pirated some game cause I couldn't either buy it online nor it wasn't available on the local store, but I do think this is common dilemma. Same thing with the movies. You would want to buy it, can you can't. What happened to Globalization?

Re:gaming industry likewise ..

[Anonymous Coward]

One word: LICENSING

When Bubi Dickkopf buys the European distribution rights, then the original owner can not sell them in the European Union anymore per his own licensing/distribution deals. When Der Bub' decides to sell the product at a considerably higher price, then that's what you just have to pay. Yes, also if you just run the "English" version and don't care about "Deutsch" "Polski" "Nederlands" "Francais" "Espanol" "Portugues" etc. etc.

So it's not just DRM that bites you in the behind, it's other "R" too.

Re:gaming industry likewise ..

[cdrguru]

Number one is probably licensing. The game or movie was licensed for the US market and cannot be exported without a license. UK says "change scenes 33 and 57 and we will approve it". France says "you cannot violate our customs with the anti-French statements in this game, change them if you want approval." Saudi Arabia says all references to biblical persons and events must be removed. And so on and so for, endlessly.

Globalization? Maybe when there is a single government that approves distribution of media everywhere on the planet at once. Until then, you can forget about it.

Atleast they are getting the shows..

[Anonymous Coward]

Here in Norway the only series we import is mainly reality shows, which i have absolutely zero interest in. I myself am mostly a sci fi fan, but sadly there is currently only one single sci fi show being aired on norwegian tv and that is season 1 of battlestar galactica. Firefly did never air here, stargate did never air here, no enterprise, no star trek ds9, no farscape and so on.. My only option was then to resort to illegal downloading over p2p and similar.
This actually made me buy dvd set of shows that i would never even have watched if it was not for the internet.

SG-1, Doctor Who, Torchwood

[Anonymous Coward]

The first two I see have already been mentioned, and then there's Torchwood, the Doctor Who spinoff. There's no way we're going to see Torchwood here in the US... Too much swearing and nudity... Likely too much homosexual 'activity', as well.
And Sci-Fi channel, while I'm grateful you picked up SG-1, there's nothing you can say to convince me to wait until April to watch a series you've killed off and won't allow other networks to pick up since you have exclusive TV rights. Oh, and the whole wrestling thing... Screw that. Your credibility dies a little each time. In the meantime, you're bringing the whole piracy thing upon yourselves by trying to call the mid-season cliff-hangers "season finale/premieres"
As for Atlantis, well, same thing. You delay airing it by six months or so, all the while, the customers of other carriers of that program have this really neat series of tubes...
If your best argument is "you're breaking our copyrights" or "violating the law," then you need to re-think your lineup strategy, because I am not really interested in waiting THAT much longer just to watch your commercials. Maybe a few days, OK, if SkyOne is airing Tuesday, and you on Friday...

Re:SG-1, Doctor Who, Torchwood

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell them that.

Seriously.

(Leave out all the stuff that can be used against you in court, though.)

Re:SG-1, Doctor Who, Torchwood

[nmb3000]

The first two I see have already been mentioned, and then there's Torchwood, the Doctor Who spinoff. There's no way we're going to see Torchwood here in the US...

And thank deity for that. I watched the first season and was ASTOUNDED when it was renewed for another one. The BBC must be desperate for shows to kill airtime.

Too much swearing and nudity... Likely too much homosexual 'activity', as well.

You've just defined the entire show. Really. That's all there is to it.

Torchwood is proof that Doctor Who fans will watch anything, anything mind you, that even vaguely mentions the Doctor, and they can completely forget the previous 40 minutes of torture if they hear the TARDIS sound at the end. As I watched I kept hoping that it might get better, but the end of the season had some of the worst episodes of all. That show is the absolute worst thing I've ever been unfortunate enough to watch.

Re:SG-1, Doctor Who, Torchwood

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate it when people get all... accurate and stuff. Fair enough points. I can't think of any episodes I want to re-watch, now that you mention it. But still... Same arguments, different shows... Now excuse me while I go try to find some torrents of the Sarah Jane Adventures.

In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

This happens everywhere outside the USA. Just take a look at all the people downloading series as they air on the USA and all the non english speaking people looking for subtitles on the net to watch those series.

Who wants to wait a minimum of 6 months to see a series in low definition, poorly dubbed, with commercial breaks and surely not in 16:9 format?

I don't have any moral issues downloading those series nor I call this "piracy" or "stealing". The word is "sharing".

MOD DOWN (-1, urban legend)

[mangu]

southern hemisphere CRTs (i.e. older TVs and computer monitors) ARE manufactured to compensate for a different magnetic field direction than northern hemisphere ones

Then I guess I was lucky to get by mistake a super-secret military monitor when I lived in the US. I later brought that monitor to Brazil, and guess what? It worked absolutely perfect in any position at all, just like it did in the US.

The earth's magnetic field varies everywhere, not just from the northern hemisphere to the south. Besides, the natural magnetic field is so weak compared to many other forms of interference against which CRTs must be shielded that variations in the natural magnetic field are totally irrelevant.

Re:MOD DOWN (-1, urban legend)

[PPH]

southern hemisphere CRTs (i.e. older TVs and computer monitors) ARE manufactured to compensate for a different magnetic field direction than northern hemisphere ones

I guess this explains why my monitor only works when facing Mecca.

Re:MOD DOWN (-1, urban legend)

[Anonymous Coward]

Just quietly us tv sets are worse than southern hemishpere ones (prior to dtv) as they adopted too early and couldn't justify changing the infrastructure

Re:MOD DOWN (-1, urban legend)

[Builder]

Whoosh!

Re:MOD DOWN (-1, urban legend)

[Znork]

"not just from the northern hemisphere to the south."

Not only that, the effect it has would vary with the direction you put the TV, so actually 'manufacturing' them to compensate would require having different models depending on which way it's going to face...

Still, my 32 inch CRT TV actually has a geomagnetic correction setting. And I recall that when I moved the tv from one end of the living room to the other I actually had to use that one as the display had changed tilt a few millimeters (noticable in a MythTV gui, where a previously straight line across the bottom now tilted slightly, otherwise I'd never have noticed it).

Wether it was actually geomagnetic causes for the tilt or changing distance to nearby power installations or something else I cant say tho.

The whole 'It's not free' experience is wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

"TV in Australia sucks because of the constant barrage of overly loud advertisements for 3 minutes after every 5 minutes of TV show.

Cinema in Australia sucks because of long queue lines, high prices and poor quality movies, as well as the 20 mins of lead-up-to-the-main-feature advertisements."

And piracy is going to change that how?

This.

"DVD release in Australia suck because we have to wait and wait and wait for a DVD that gets superseded 1 month after arrival by the Gold Edition, then the Extra Gold Edition, then the SuperMegaHypeUltraBlaster edition shortly after."

And this.

"Why bother? I can buy a bootleg copy of just about anything, download it if I can be bothered or borrow someone else's copy of whatever it may be. Either way, these three elements of access to entertainment guarantee I get my entertainment fix."

And when the "Gold", "Extra Gold", and the "SuperMegaHypeUltraBlaster" all come out you have to rebuy, or redownload. So all you've done is to experience the same, only cheaper.

Aussies have always been behind

[nickrout]

My family went to Brisbane for a holiday in 1973, and Coronation Street was behind even what we were seeing in New Zealand.

I'm an Australian, and I'm a downloader

[BigLug]

It all started with Lost. I really got into that on our local Free-to-air. Great show (well, back then :)). But what was it all about? Where were they? Who were 'the others'?

Being a highly connected person, I decided to check the internet. Surely there'd be people there who loved the show also and wanted to discuss it? Woohoo! There was. There's hundreds of sites and thousands of people talking about it. But THEY'RE ALL A SEASON AHEAD. I have to stop looking. I want the drama of the play-out. Don't tell me. Don't SPOIL it. But I still want to be able to talk about it. I still want to swap theories on what's going on.

So I decided to put my bandwidth to good use and catch up. So I caught up and watched it with only a slight delay from the US air time. I was able to discuss it with people and make wild guesses about things that weren't already a year old.

So now I watch the most part of my TV via BT. I watch Pay-TV for documentaries and most other 'time-wasting' television. I hardly ever watch free-to-air any more.

Cheers!
Rick

Oh, and I remember they advertised they were going to show one of those Survivor things just hours after it aired in the US. I'm told the US pilot was 2 hours but we were only shown the first hour. So really, the whole series was at least 1 week behind. I assume they did the same with Jericho which they advertised in a similar matter. Treat the viewers like crap and expect to get treated like crap yourselves Free-to-air!

Sweden aswell

[eMbry00s]

This happens over here in Sweden aswell. I saw people do this lots and lots with both Prison Break and Lost, since the episodes aired about one or two weeks later over here, people downloaded them from BitTorrent.

Some companies are adjusting

[big4ared]

I think it's worth noting that because of this issue, some companies are changing their tune. I saw the first half of Season 2 of Battlestar Galactica in the US, but then moved to Canada, where the whole series was delayed by several months (on Space Network). But, now in season three, the Canadian episodes are not delayed. So, companies are adjusting.

bullshit laws just suck

[zogger]

Now I am old enough and ornery enough and imbued with a certain sense of basic right and wrong. And as such, some of the things I did when I was younger was I walked in protest marches where the bullshit laws said people of a certain color could not use certain public facilities or go into certain open to the public businesses. Yes, that was "the law" back then and the pigs tried to enforce it, sometimes extremely violently, on orders from their masters, their pig political bosses and pig lawyers and pig "businessmen" who were worried about their pig "profits" should "the law" change, or some other weirdo crap they spewed. The law needed to be violated en masse once it became apparent the system was corrupt and so hopelessly broken that the only actions left to take was either break the law peacefully as possible or break the law violently and have a revolution. I can say it got close probably.

Back before my time, they tried to enforce "no, you can't ever have a drink, for any reason", and that was "the law", and the law was bullshit and it needed to be violated, en masse, and it was, because of basic human nature, that humans can see when things get to the "fuck you, that is total bullshit" stage. Humans can have a drink if they want to. I don't drink, don't like it, did for a long time but just quit, grew tired of it and prefer to be with all me wits all the time-but I don't care if other folks want to because it is their right to buy it or make it and drink it. The bullshit law eventually got changed back to medium non-bullshit. Because of mass "civil disobedience" which is a polite way of saying "you are full of bullshit and I no longer am going to respect your asinine "law".

It's something you can either see or not, two choices.

Right now copyright and patents are hopelessly broken, because of pigs and their profits, so they are being ignored, because it is basic human nature to not be gouged, lied to, taken advantage of, and so on.. People all over the developing world can't get affordable medicine to save their lives, so now they are just going "ok, enough,we've tried for years to be reasonable, but now that it is patented bullshit with extremely high artificial scarcity prices based on western income levels, which don't exist where we arem we are just going to make the medicines and fuck you and your gouging bullshit pig profits", because it is way past the obvious to anyone rational "bullshit stage" over there.

Now I personally don't download or violate any copyrights with music and movies, because I don't give two craps about hollywood movies and screeching popular music. I have more than what I want, bought it legit years ago, keep getting nailed with format changes, etc, so enough already, noticed the price gouging and bullshit "laws" that keep getting extended, so I quit buying their crap new. And if I can't get it over the air for free by the support of ads, either music or movies or shows, I just don't care, but I *certainly*, on general human principles can relate to people who are human and know they are being lied to, price gouged to the extreme, and forced into technological serfdom by the bullshit pigs of the media industry who want to keep technology to themselves and charge 1000% markups complete with more DRM and other bullshit buggywhip job protection practices and "laws". What do they expect, people will jump up and down and scream HALLELULAH! WE CAN KEEP BEING PRICE GOUGED OR IGNORED!

It used to be illegal for those pesky "commoners" to READ, that was "the law", it was bullshit and got violated and people learned anyway.

The redcoat pigs tried to say the early settlers had to pay taxes to some ignorant drunk royal "king" 3 thousand miles away for no representation, that was obvious bullshit,so the "law" got broken, along with enough redcoat heads to make the point stick.

And so on. Once stuff starts to get into the obvious bullshit stage, you can just expect it to be ignored/worked around/resisted, and depend

Re:bullshit laws just suck

[Anonymous Coward]

Couldn't you have just said, "People who have something to lose, fear change." without the big long rant?

Would drive me batty...

[A_Non_Moose]

BSG's pilot, I watched a year or so after it aired after I downloaded it. Liked it and
watched "33" on Sci-fi's website for about 10 minutes before saying "screw this".

Real media (blech, but whatever) 3 inch window (c'mon, 640x480 days are long gone)
and of course frequent pauses for buffering.

Fired up BT client and all of the rips were from Aussie satellite and looked fantastic.
Also, they were 1/2 to 3/4 through season 1, so "what the heck" snagged them all before
they even showed on Sci-fi. Still watched them on Sci-fi (hey, Sci-fi/charter how about
a hi-def channel, or ffs a bit more gamme on your output, please! This is BSG, not
DooM3).

Still bought the DVDs.

Same thing with Dr Who, heck season 2 was worth it for the Daleks vs Cybermen exchange of
"Daleks would not be at war with the cybers, it would be more like pest control" (pause)
BWAAAHAHAHAHA.
Heck, I forget where Sci-fi is with Dr Who, but doesn't matter much as the DVD's are
released shortly after the British season ends, if I'm not mistaken. 80 bucks is
rather steep, but as I said, for some eps well worth the price.

Torchwood, too. Show grew on me quite quickly. Depending on season2, might actually
be worth it to get the DVDs.

Heck, the US/UK/Aus TV ppl would make a killing money/ratings-wise with an P2P/iTunes like
distribution without the bullshit delays and some easy way to unlock it/burn it.

Heck, the shows are going to get to viewers eyeballs one way or the other, and you'd think
something that benefits the studios bottom lines (rating/$) with them in the picture would
be better than out.

Global market whether they want to admit it or not, and as one quip by a brit I recall:
Yanks get Dr Who/Torchwood, and we get Sopranos and 24...fair trade.

Agreed, heck that 7month hiatus for BSG almost hurt, tho giving American Idol to the Aussies
first and us waiting a year sounds splendid.

Re:Would drive me batty...

[Anonymous Coward]

"c'mon, 640x480 days are long gone"

Uh, riiight. Call me when they start making Family Guy in HD.

They can't?-Stop me.

[Anonymous Coward]

Moral realativism in the context of this discussion is problematic because it leaves open to interpretation, unquantifiable words like "cost", or "reasonable". Moral absolutionism avoids such issues and their consequences by not permitting them to come about. Either it "is" or it "isn't", but it is based upon constants that don't sway with the current climate, social, technological, or otherwise.

Re:They can't?-Stop me.

[anagama]

Sorry, I'm just not that rigid. We don't live in a black and white, good and bad, evil vs holy world. Some things are sometimes good, sometimes bad. If you can't comprehend that, I feel sorry for you and hope you avoid all positions of power. One need only look to the middle-east to see where rigid thought takes you.

Re:They can't?-Stop me.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Sorry, I'm just not that rigid. We don't live in a black and white, good and bad, evil vs holy world."

No, we live in a world were such distinctions would mean that we could no longer engage in the self-serving behaviour we do now.

"Some things are sometimes good, sometimes bad."

The "gray" comes from humanity lacking the will to examine issues too closely for fear that it might not say what they want it to say.

"If you can't comprehend that, I feel sorry for you and hope you avoid all positions of power."

Like an atheist would be a better choice?

"One need only look to the middle-east to see where rigid thought takes you."

And I could look at all the damage your free-wheeling has brought about.

Re:They can't?-Stop me.

[anagama]

That's pretty amazing stuff you write. Perhaps you are trolling me. Anyone who cannot see that things can become foggy in the right circumstances is foolish. Yes, label than ad hominem attack if you like, but before that, consider this example:

let's assume you believe this to be true: "it is always immoral to lie".

Now consider this fact pattern: You are at home with your family. You are watching TV with your wife and son. You're daughter is upstairs in her room. A crazy person breaks in, shoots your wife and son dead, then asks you if anyone else is in the house. In this situation, is it wrong to lie? You would say yes, I would say no.

For you, the only way to misdirect the murder from your daughter would be to believe that is never wrong to lie. So what if an ambulance driver asks you for directions on the way to a serious accident where time is of the essence? If you believe it is never wrong to lie, then you would feel it is perfectly OK to lie even though that would contribute to someone's death.

Let's presume you believe it is never wrong to cause death. You then end up in a situation of conflicting values in the first or second instance depending on your rigid belief about lies, unless you believe it is never wrong to lie, and never wrong to cause death. In which case, I would say your morals are so screwed up it just doesn't matter what you think about copyright.

This is so crazy, I'm almost certain I was trolled. Congrats.

Re:They can't?-Stop me.

[anagama]

oops -- that should be:

Let's presume you believe it is never right to cause death.

Though "moral" would proabably be better than "right".

Re:They can't?-Stop me.

[Anonymous Coward]

"This is so crazy, I'm almost certain I was trolled. Congrats."

No, you just can't fathom any belief system that's not approved by the "widespread" majority. Now who should feel sorry for whom?

Re:They can't?-Stop me.

[anagama]

I see you have craftily avoided answering any points related to how you make a choice when moral beliefs collide -- when following one requires violating another.

Blame the delays?

[DoofusOfDeath]

Saying that "TV delays" drive piracy ignores the Australian citizens' free will in the matter. TV delays may whet their apatites to the point where the Aussies are willing to break the law, but the delays certainly don't force them to.

An alternate headline could have been: "Australians chose to break the law rather than patiently await delayed entertainment."

TV Delays Driving AU Viewers To Piracy

[PigIronBob]

After seeing some of the offerings, I wish I could wait for ever.

Re: TV Delays Driving AU Viewers To Piracy

[dbIII]

I've been watching mostly Japanese TV - there is something about a TV series having a fixed term instead of facing the threat of cancellation nearly every episode that allows development of a story.

It'd damage your car's status

[Peter Cooper]

Yeah, but the only reason you'd own a poseur car like a Ferrari is because few other people have them. If they did, and you were interested more in driving experience, you'd buy a good driving car rather than a poseur one.

It shouldn't come as a surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, good old Oz and its protected free to air (FTA) cartel. We have three, count them, three commercial tv chanels, so as you can imagine, there isn't much incentive for them to get us new episodes to watch in a timely manner. But it doesn't stop there. Our pay tv networks are mostly re-runs of old shows that have already been broadcast on the commercial stations. There are some exceptions, such as shows that are not picked up by the FTA networks, like Deadwood, but if an option has been contracted by an FTA network, then it won't be shown on pay tv for some while. And when you factor in the huge amount of sport and reality tv drivel on the networks, it doesn't leave much time for real programming.

The networks are always squeezing for a higher rating margin, so if a show doesn't perform straight away, they either bin it or change it's schedule. This usually makes the ratings worse, so if the show does stay on, chances are it will be moved to at least 10:30 at night. Imagine what happened to Firefly happening to nearly every show you care about. An example is Battlestar Galactica. It is show at 11pm, and there is no advertising to let you know when a new season has started. The Sci Fi network has just started here on cable (yours for only AU$52 a month), but it only has season 1 of Battlestar. It will have season 3 after it has shown on network 10 at 11pm....

I started watching pirated programs when channel 9 binned Smallville midway through season 2. Two years latter, network 10 picked it up and started showing season 4. Needless to say, I just kept downloading the episodes from P2P.

Until the government and the networks actually start caring about the viewers enough, I can't see the use of Bittorrent as a alternate tv network declining.

Re:It shouldn't come as a surprise

[WilliamSChips]

Imagine what happened to Firefly happening to nearly every show you care about.

If Hammer and Stern get their way this will happen in the US as well.

It's the same in the UK

[ditoa]

I am a big fan of 24 and until this year I have always downloaded it from usenet as we were always a few months behind the US. This year it is only one week, I can wait a week and so I do not download it.

Some say a few weeks or months isn't that bad however with the internet a couple of months is a long time! Long enough for you to accidentally read about something that happens in 3 episodes time and ruins the show for you. True this can happen with the one week delay I have now but the worst it can do is ruin one episode, not half a season!

Re:It's the same in the UK

[Tomfrh]

I am a big fan of 24 and until this year I have always downloaded it from usenet as we were always a few months behind the US. This year it is only one week, I can wait a week and so I do not download it.

Same as me. I used to download it but now I just watch it on Free to air.
I think the stations are learning...

It's Still property.

[Anonymous Coward]

I really don't feel like dragging out the legal dictionary (not that any would read the damn thing), but it's not a legal requirement of theft for one to actually make off with something, nor deprive one of the actual item. Otherwise we could never have "theft of services".

Now in fairness here's the court case that most base their argument on. I recommend reading it in it's entirety before making a judgement. Make note of the "congress shall..." part as well because it's important.

I'm an Australian

[Vacardo]

I can say I'm truely frustrated with how tv shows are handled down here. We're lucky to even get shows aired here at all, if not after huge delays.

Another point to bring up is, when the shows finally do get aired, it's at a unreasonable timeslot which forces the network to pull it prematurely because it "doesn't pull in the figures". Let me ask you this: does playing a show at 11pm ever expect to pull "good numbers"?

TV as a necessity?

[alphamugwump]

I find it strange how people tend to think of TV as a necessity, like food, clothing or shelter. Supposedly, there are loads of families living in the US who can't afford daycare or health insurance but can afford a nice 21-incher. The article makes it sound like the aussies are experiencing some sort of "TV famine" and are willing to do ANYTHING to get their episodes. It makes it sound like they're being forced to use bittorrent, like villagers forced to eat rats during a siege or something. You can't blame people for stealing food when they're starving, right?

Wake up. TV isn't a necessity. Nobody NEEDS to watch Lost, or Idol, or any of that stuff. This whole thing is really more like prohibition. The governement has made copyright infringement illegal for real, justifiable reasons. However, nobody knows whether p2p actually hurts content producers. Furthermore, like having a drink, people are not really conditioned to think piracy is wrong, and hence you see a thriving "black market" run by swedes and russians and the like.

When content distributors (in Australia or anywhere else), hold a monopoly on content, you cannot buy a show unless they want to sell to you. In fact, the only reason they can afford NOT to release those shows in Australia is because they do hold a monopoly. In a free market, you never make more money by not selling product. But in a monopoly, you do.

The real problem with a restricted market is that it's suboptimal. Ayn Rand fans might wax lyrical about the virtues of free enterprise, but the fact of the matter is that monopolies just plain suck for everyone involved. When the FTC split up Standard Oil, stock prices jumped, and they actually made more money in the end. When media companies try to lock down their content as hard as possible (HDCP, AACS, CSS, WMV, pick your favorite ancronym) or when they refuse to distribute to a specific country, they are losing revenue and creating the perfect environment for piracy.

Piracy isn't exactly right, but it's quite appealing when it's more convenient than the legal alternative.

Re:TV as a necessity?

[Handpaper]

TV isn't a necessity, but some form of entertainment is. Me, I'd rather read/post to /. or other forums (fora?),read a book, or, better still, hold a realtime, intelligent conversation in convival surroundings (go to the pub!).
Sadly, for many people, intelligent (or even coherent) conversation appears to be impossible, so they have diversion spoonfed to them via TV. This keeps them docile and occupied, and prevents them from importuning those who would really prefer not to be asked "Wot you lookin' at? Fink yore 'ard, doo yoo?".

Ayn Rand fans might wax lyrical about the virtues of free enterprise, but the fact of the matter is that monopolies just plain suck for everyone involved
Go read 'Atlas Shrugged'. Ms Rand makes that point quite well herself.

Thought experiment

[StarKruzr]

If you ever invent a star-trek replicator, burry it in your back yard and speak no more of it 'cause anything else is going to dump you in all know forms of pain and misery and probably a bullet in the brain.

Actually, the first thing he should do is make many, many more copies of the replicator and then distribute it all over the world.

Cost of production goes down to zero. No one ever starves again. Material goods become worthless. Humanity evolves.

Re:Thought experiment

[WobindWonderdog]

40 years pass... Humanity dies from obesity and sloth from not having to do -anything- to survive.

Re:Thought experiment

[StarKruzr]

ALL of them? Every single man, woman and child on the planet?

Sure, there would be plenty, probably the majority, who would react that way. Some would find much more productive uses of their time, though.

Re:Thought experiment

[WobindWonderdog]

Never underestimate the self destructive powers of the human race. Especially if they had everything they need, and never needed for anything

The World is now one place....get a clue

[speedlaw]

Bizarre that anyone is amazed by this. My wife and I got hooked on an Aussie show, which ran on a minor cable channel. When it stopped, I was able to buy it from an Aussie website, and it was shipped to my CONUS home inside of a week. A region free DVD player closed the deal, and the PAL sourced video looks darn good after conversion. Copyright holder paid. Happy viewer. Too Bad about that region crap.

Re:The World is now one place....get a clue

[ZzzzSleep]

As an Aussie, I must admit I'm curious. What show of ours could you possibly be hooked on?

On the other hand...

[Vacardo]

I am so looking forward to this season's line-up of "quality" Australian shows, such as "The Wedge" and "Comedy Inc: The Late Shift"

/sarcasm

But let's not forget the "Up-late game show": that's done wonders for Aussie TV, amirite mates?

It's Still Beef.

[Anonymous Coward]

"But people don't know what we're talking about, that's my point. At least they haven't bothered to consider the full implications of what piracy is compared with theft (ie. to take a copy of something versus to take the original)."(1)

Well semantics really isn't enlightening either. There are different kinds of theft with different degrees of punishment. The same could be said for piracy (copyright infringement) as well in the US. Most of it is indeed a civil matter, but there are examples that fall under crimminal statutes with harsher punishments.

"Either way, they can and should be called on it so that the real facts on the subject can be presented and an objective and relevant debate can be had on copyright infringement."

A noble gesture except for the fact that even with correct terminology, a proper debate with facts and everything isn't happening regardless of what side one's on.

"As I said previously, that's not possible as long as one side believes copyright infringement to be just another kind of theft, in which case they will almost certainly presume that it is (or should be) subject to the same moral and legal standpoint."

As already stated, most falls under civil, but there are exceptions that fall under crimminal. So playing with words really doesn't help ones cause of one engages in "piracy". As for the moral aspect, that really is too amorphous to be basing a pro or con argument on.

OH! And in closing remember we're talking about an AUSTRALIAN issue. So these semantic games may not apply in the US, but there's nothing to prevent an australian court to equate the two.

(1) I should point out that I don't think your side has thoroughly thought out the consequences either. Weasel distinctions don't help either.

i have never understood this

[sepiid]

i have never understood this, i do not get why a production company gets so darn pissed when someone copies a tv show. why?? might you ask am i so confused? im so darn confused because they just broadcasted the entire thing OTA over the air for the whole world to see with a moving picture box and a fuzzy bunny sitting on top. so if someone were to copy that show onto VHS then to the computer then distribute it all they are doing in helping the tv station propogate what they already blasted at everyone

Re:i have never understood this

[PPH]

They get pissed because of the economics of OTS broadcasts. They receive their income by selling the shows to advertisers.

1. There is (presently) no mechanism to factor in a multiplier for the program's rating due to additional viewers of the copied material.
2. The producers want to sell the rights for each distribution channel separately. Why they turn around and sit on the potential profits of such a sale for many months is beyond me. Particularly when the value of such material diminishes over time. But that's a question stockholders should be asking of the studios.
3. The value of advertising sales depends on the market the viewers of copied material happen to be in. A show recorded (together with its advertising content) in one market but viewed in a different one is of no value to those advertizers.

Considering the above points, it would seem logical that the program producers would be motivated to get their content into as many legitimate channels as soon as possible. Both to avoid the diminishing value with time and to reduce demand for the pirated content. I'm not certain, but I'd put the blame on the distribution networks rather than the producers. To bring up the Ferrari analogy again; what makes a Ferrari valuable is its scarcity. In this case, the scarcity being created is that of distribution. The networks are in a position to extract additional profits from producers if they can control the producers' access to the marketplace.

In order to understand why some programs are delayed in certain markets while others are not, it would be necessary to investigate the levels of market control, collusion and kickbacks that occur between various distribution channel owners, producers and governments. I'm not sure about the laws in other countries, but here in the USA, this is all rather clearly addressed by antitrust legislation. The fact that market channel manipulation still goes on is an indication of how far from scrutiny these mechanisms operate.

Topicality would be nice

[svunt]

I'm an Aussie, and I download TV. One of the shows I download is 30 Rock. One thing I like about it is that it's very topical, a sit-com with Obama references, etc. It's really very current when I watch it, a few hours later than US viewers. I hate to think how funny Obama jokes will be in two years when an Aus network picks it up.

I guess that's why I'm handing over a dozen dvds a week to co-workers, full of Heroes, Prison Break etc....shows that you'll end up seeing a spoiler for if you don't get the new episodes yourself.

Oh yeah, and I really like that Hiro guy...he's so cute!

standard "borrowing" article

[Anonymous Coward]

"The current state of copyright no longer serves the purpose of making as much art as possible available to as many as possible. It needs an overhaul. Badly."

You do realize that's in the US constitution? While the original story as well as the follow-up complainers aren't in the US. Funny how you don't want us to tell you what to do with your culture, but you shamelessly borrow our laws to bolster your arguments.

"I follow several "currently airing" series. Battlestar Galactica, Stargate, SG Atlantis, Rome, The Simpsons, South Park to name a few."

All US creations. Don't you have a content industry of your own to download?

"Still, the content providers are more concerned with preventing the audience from viewing their product than making it possible for the audience to view said product."

DirectTV has this problem in Canada as well. Oh, wait! Good job on the blame game though.

Demand

[Anonymous Coward]

The demand is there: if there was a way to get the episodes legally, I would. But at the moment, the Bittorrent episodes are a much, much higher quality than DVD, and infinitely higher than the TV broadcast -- the episodes the scene releases are often 1280x768 H.264 episodes, in full widescreen, with 5.1 audio and no ad breaks (which make up 36% of Austrlaian TV). In comparison, the episodes broadcast by Seven, Nine and Ten (the three major Australian networks) are inflated with an extra 25 minutes of ads, pan & scanned, edited down, censored, and broadcast in 480i (standard) or 480p (digital) with stereo audio.

AU more ads than anywhere in the world

[pwylltwiceborn]

The MAJOR point should also be that australia has more ads per show than ANY country on the planet.. HEROES was almost 2 hours long for the first ep when it aired here (seriously 1min view for 1 min ad) We are, on average, at 20 minutes of ads per hour. (its sweden or norway next on the list at 17min) Also for all of us SCIFI watches - BSG, Stargate, Trek, DrWho etc, we want to watch it as it is released as well read the forums etc. Also in the 90's - did you know that they SPED UP the shows so that a 44minute show ran for 43minutes? Yeap - another minute of ads there. (channel 9 was the main user of this)And that was when they didn't choose to edit Star Trek:Next Gen to fit more ads in..(yeap that's right they cut whole scenes out!) Another example was with the Muscial Buffy Episode - they sped it up slightly (shown on channel 7) so it was a bit out of key - My Wife was soooo pissed, but loved me for my DVD copy i had got earlier (was first getting tapes sent from the states then dvds - love my mates) and all this quickly from memory while at work........

Re:AU more ads than anywhere in the world

[fatcop]

For sure! Sure its free-to-air commercial TV, and the cable TV market is doing well, but everyone I know who has cable says its mostly crap and they only watch one or two things. So money well spent there :| Still has ads aswell naturally AFAIK.

The thing is, its an understandable necessary evil to have commercial for something free, but what I don't accept is how far they have taken it. People's attentions spans are being shot to hell. This apparently doesn't mean anything to anyone. Its somehow acceptable. Its not called TV program for nothing, its programming. Like the parent said, barely a full scene happens and you cut to a loud obnoxious commercial about fake hair, yeah yeah. Maybe some "TV shows" are structured for dramatic pauses for ad breaks, but lots aren't.

Some commercials are almost like mini-movies now, trying to make them almost the entertainment. But they aren't. They are commercials. They are selling us something. When a movie or series tries product placement, thankfully many of us see the cheap shot and the movie/series gets a bad rep and the makers usually learn not to try that crap on any more. Even after the ad break is over, you get overlay ads across the bottom of the program, just a bit more ad squeezing. Sometimes its handy, news flash, or program info for whats on next week. But its always at the expense of what you are watching.

I guess I am trying to say, many of us are sick to death of either commercials gone mad or having to pay a lot for not much. The technology is there to allow us to circumvent this "like it or lump it" attitude, just as it is there for entertainment providers to accept a new model and charge a decent price for downloading content people want. They seem to forget through years of relentless programming, we now want everything. We are hooked on TV programs and they know it. Its like a cigaret company knowing its hooked all its smokers and upping their tar levels. But we know a guy who can get us low tar versions :) Sure we don't *have* to smoke em, but who's really the villan here.

I for one applaud the people who dare to risk persecution to fight for whats fair, over companies who hide behind the often outdated laws when convenient to them. If a portion of the population wants to watch shallow sit coms reaking of commercialism and aren't bothered by endless ads, thats their biz, but there is a huge portion of the community that do mind. A new fair model aligned with available technology is needed, and needed now.

Re:AU more ads than anywhere in the world

[quenda]

Also in the 90's - did you know that they SPED UP the shows so that a 44minute show ran for 43minutes? Yeap - another minute of ads there.

There is a good reason for that, and they still do it. Most movies and many TV shows are shot on film at 24fps, but TV here, like most of the world, is 25fps. The simplest fix is to speed it slightly. If you tried to duplicate one frame every second, it would look jerky.
    This does shift the pitch slightly, but most people don't notice. However, it can be corrected and sometimes is for musicals.

Obligatory wiki link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAL_speedup
BTW, its the same on PAL DVD.

Re:AU more ads than anywhere in the world

[Anonymous Coward]

Neither Sweden nor Norway has that much commercials per hour, and our commercial breaks are mostly between programs, not in the middle. The two biggest channels in both countries are, like the BBC, financed by taxes, and have no ads. How this can add up to 17 minutes per hour boggles me.

Re:AU more ads than anywhere in the world

[Anonymous Coward]

And fewer free stations (4 or 5). So easy to pander to the 'protected' incumberants, as well as stifle paytv.

Apparently, stupid Aussie networks pay DOUBLE per claimed viewer for the content, in return for 'exclusivity'. On a global benchmark, they are just plain inefficient, crying poor, when share prices tell a different story. Maybe they *hope* to drive people to pay TV, with with ads on aussie paytv, they can get lost.

Then they stuff then in a late timeslot, alternating between sex and phone tune ads. Interestingly, the video rental stores 'TV Series' section has exploded of late, and some direct importing.
This means fewer hours of ads.

I feel sorry for the advertisers, as they have no idea downloads pick up after the pilot. Unlike local car industry here, they are not admitting imports are bypassing them. As broadband drops in price, their 'market reach' will tumble. Seems they forgot aussies, and nordic countries have the fastest uptake. Hint, gen X'ers too old for it, and gen y'ers download . Yet when it comes to books, dual immediate publication is nowhere near as bad.

I live in Canada and I do it

[rikkards]

For me though it isn't delay, it's the fact that the 8300HD PVR that Rogers uses doesn't always record previously configured shows. Actually more often than not it is due to one of the following reasons:
1. Rogers changes the name so that it is different than what I had selected (i.e CSI rather than CSI (HD)) It appears that any variance in the name and the show won't tape. Sometimes I catch it before it happens so I can add the variance into the scheduled recordings but if I don't it's too late as you can't go back.
2. The show I scheduled to tape ends a couple of minutes later (i.e Heroes two weeks ago ended about 20 seconds before the end where Clair's mom talks to Clair's dad so you don't find out who it is (downloaded the episode the next day and watched the last 5 seconds)or gets preempted which happened with the Simpsons after the Super Bowl which I should have forseen.
3. Some shows aren't available in Canada (i.e Ghost Hunters and BSG when it was only on SciFi and SkyOne) or the HD/Widescreen version isn't aired and instead they will show the 4:3 version (Gilmore Girls)

Another view point

[Anonymous Coward]

Commenters outside Australia are probably not aware that we only have 4.5 free-to-air channels. Three purely commercial, one state sponsored (roughly equivalent to the old BBC1) and one semi-commercial that has negligble audience (sorry to afficonados of SBS, but it's true). The primary reason why the three commercial stations are so bad, now, seems to be that they are trying to do things as cheaply as possible. They have evolved to the point where they believe that their primary focus is on the advertiser, not the viewing audience, and treat the latter with contempt. Yes, sooner or later that will make the advertisers walk away. But it's a very small market, and these three are the only game in town. So they are getting away with it. It has only been over the last year or so where the smart end of their audience has begun to walk away. And you know what? The free-to-airs won't care. The government of the day here would be delighted to see the ABC and SBS vanish in a puff of smoke. The three commercial stations are parts of financial conglomerates that have pay-per-view options, so they don't care if nobody watches free-to-air. And so the downward spiral continues.

Eventually it will come to a head, and there will be some sort of rationalisation. Meanwhile, I wait for the DVD box sets to appear, and go that way. Not only do I get things in a reasonable time frame, I can control my viewing schedule (or rather, not be constrained by a schedule) and don't have to watch as much advertising as product.

The problem living in Oz

[Slotty]

I will use Scrubs as the sake of my argument in Australia. Scrubs has not started airing season 6 in Australia. Yet if I load up the iTunes store and choose the US as my location I can potentially download everything upto the current episodes. (assuming they don't have any i.p restrictions in place) Why is it that I'm not allowed to access digital content because of the continent I reside on? If I'm made to wait almost a year to watch something when I can download it off the net either legally or otherwise. Basic economic principles consumers demand products if someone can supply it then consumers will take it. Australian TV providers are slow and arrogant, Consumers are showing they want things faster. If US production companies want to grow they should start bypassing networks and distributing themselves.

It's Still the mob.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Laws and lawsuits notwithstanding, the media companies have a choice -- make some money and provide the content in a form people desire, or make little to no money and watch the people receive the content in a form they desire through unauthorized means."

Hey, that works for the Mafia. Why not everyone else? "That's some nice content you have there. It's a shame if something should happen to it."

Re:It's Still the mob.

[anagama]

It's called being pragmatic. Secondly, it bears no resemblance to organized crime. We're talking about widespread distributed human desire and behavior. You aren't going to have a signifigant impact on human behavior without resorting to police state tactics (an absurd notion with something as insignifigant as entertainment anyway). You can choose to fight a pyrrhic battle, you can choose to whine and moan, or you can choose to profit. The future of the entertainment industry probably belongs to the latter. Live with it.

Re:It's Still the mob.

[Anonymous Coward]

"It's called being pragmatic."

No it's being selfish. Being pragmatic would either be doing without. Or going through the prescribed method of change your society has.

"Secondly, it bears no resemblance to organized crime."

I bears a great resemblance. The mob believes in doing bad things to people if they don't get their way.

"We're talking about widespread distributed human desire and behavior."

Yes we are. Want to go through the historical record and see were the majority got it wrong?

"You aren't going to have a signifigant impact on human behavior without resorting to police state tactics (an absurd notion with something as insignifigant as entertainment anyway)."

Consumerism says otherwise.

"You can choose to fight a pyrrhic battle, you can choose to whine and moan, or you can choose to profit"

According to iTunes they appear to be doing just fine in spite of your mob tactics. And they still get one and two to boot.

"The future of the entertainment industry probably belongs to the latter. Live with it."

Good thing Italy chose to not "live with it".

Re:It's Still the mob.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Secondly, it bears no resemblance to organized crime." I bears a great resemblance. The mob believes in doing bad things to people if they don't get their way.

Oh well done.. are you going to do a hitler analogy next? How about this: arguing is attempting to discredit your opponent, and to discredit someone is doing something bad for them, and you are arguing against someone who is in your way - therefore by your logic, you are the mafia. Congratulations Don Anonymous.

Or going through the prescribed method of change your society has.

Are you blind, or drunk? TFA is about how THERE IS NO PRESCRIBED METHOD.

Additionally, you are a massive hypocrite if you've ever recorded a TV show or movie using a VCR/PVR/DVD Recorder (which is very likely, I have never met anyone who hasn't), because not only does this invoke your beloved "no copies" rule, but it also subtracts the advertisers value (as the product may no longer be for sale, and/or you fast forwarded/skipped through it anyway.

Anyways, so long as us Aussies who download said shows agree to watch it when it does eventually roll around to being on TV (some years later) then I see no harm done. In the ferrari analogy, it would be like cloning someone else's ferrari, and then when the dealership opens, going in and purchasing a ferrari. And if it never does show (often the case), then I simply "stole" a product which for all intensive purposes doesn't exist (and I dare you to argue that stealing a nonexistant thing is wrong).

LOOK AT THE RATINGS

[pwylltwiceborn]

Side point - didn't the lastest Aussie rating have our Pay , sorry, subscription service now have more watchers than our free-to-air service...

Re:LOOK AT THE RATINGS

[Anonymous Coward]

Far from it - Average Pay TV audiences are in the tens of thousands, while TV ratings for the top 10 shows will be around 1 million nationwide. Check any major newspaper which publishes the ratings (e.g. The Age's Green Guide).

This is news?

[Fourstrongwinds]

". . .as everyone knows, Australia is entirely peopled with criminals. . ."

Not to mention being the source of Iocane, chosen by more Slashdotters over other leading poisons. . .

Re:This is news?

[dbIII]

". . .as everyone knows, Australia is entirely peopled with criminals. . ."

So that's why you sent us the tobacco bribe ambassitor and Chaney has just come and gone. Were we supposed to keep Chaney and have him work in a road gang or something?

Re:This is news?

[onkelonkel]

Last week I flew to Australia, but I had a bit of trouble with the customs inspector. He asked me if I had a criminal record, and I said "I didn't know it was still required".

Thanks....I'll be here all week...try the veal...

Some are delayed, others aren't.

[Morden]

Australia tends to get the big-hit series in a fairly timely manner. We're in season 6 of 24, season 3 of Lost and season 2 of Prison Break for example.

But the not-so-big-hit shows, or the ones that are a little off-center and have a cult appeal (like scifi or fantasy) are often subjected to delays. They're the shows that, in the past, were regarded as having a "built in" / guaranteed audience -- the fans of the show would watch them whenever they were on and noone else. In the past, shows like Star Trek and Babylon 5 have fallen into that category in Australia, nowadays it's shows like Stargare and even extends to things like Scrubs. Cult appeal.

Part of the problem is that we only have 4 free-to-air networks, and we also have local content laws that mandate that the networks must show X hours of locally-produced content per day/week/month. That leaves only so much room on the schedule, so the proven hits from the US get the airtime. When the networks run out of episodes they might try something new or different, this often happens outside of our ratings periods. Pay-TV channels are starting to pick up shows that the free-to-air networks have passed by, too.

Another part of the problem is the US sweeps/rerun schedule, where networks usually air a couple of new episodes of a show then go into reruns until the next sweeps/ratings period. If we were to keep same-week-current with the US schedule, we'd likely be subjected to the same annoyances since they're not about to allow the latest episode of a big-name show to premiere overseas are they?

(As an aside, though, this happens with a lot SciFi Channel shows -- I believe they're joint-financed with Sky in the UK which explains why Sky's able to run episodes before SciFi. While we're on the subject though, a few years ago when Stargate was on Showtime, Australia got an episode before the US -- Stargate then disappeared from our schedules a week later)

The other problem is that our TV season really starts at the start of the year. The US season starts in October/November. So of course it will take time for the big hits to filter down.

The times, they are a-changing - on both sides of the Pacific, though.

Here, Channel 10 shows (or started to show) Jericho a day after its US airing. Channel 7's really not that far behind on Lost, 24 and Prison Break, and they gave Family Guy and American Dad a fairly consistent Thursday night timeslot for the last year or so which has gotten us closer to the US schedule than we've ever been. They're more behind on Heroes, but thats been on since the start of the US season so thats fair enough. However, I believe Channel 9's screwing its audience on CSI (complain to Eddie). Channel 2 isn't so bad with Doctor Who, but passing on Torchwood is disappointing. Foxtel channels are getting some things very quickly (BBC World is very fast with Top Gear, Fox 8 is around a day or two behind with WWE, and Comedy Channel gets Daily Show and Colbert Report a day later).

In the US, networks are learning not to erratically schedule reruns during a season. 24 airs 24 episodes in a row. Lost is airing episodes 7-22 all in a row. Battlestar Galactica had no 6-month mid-season break. The networks seem to be slowly trying to find ways to piss off their viewers less, and this might pave the way for international markets to get the shows in a more timely manner.

It's an uphill struggle, but there is some progress. It'll be interesting to see where it goes.

16 Month Delays in the Digital Age?! Unacceptable!

[Bones3D_mac]

Aside from the money to be raked off such delays, there should be no technical excuses preventing any network from having new episodes of any program available within a week of their US premieres, especially in an english-speaking country like Australia. There is no translation needed, and non-compressed high-definition content should be easily deliverable to any broadcast network using the internet.

Granted, the piracy concerns for Australia might be a greater threat to their local advertising economy, but they need to acknowledge user concerns when it comes to these excessive delays in viewing new shows... especially since it's next to impossible to hear about newer episodes at some point in that timeframe, which in turn will deminish the overall value of the shows to the viewers themselves.

That said, perhaps companies like Apple should be working with the networks and the Australian government to test run full-fledged internet-based television using some form of an iTunes Music Store / Apple TV device and boosting their internet backbone connection to the rest of the world to it's fullest potential, instead of relying upon over-the-air broadcasts. Then, it's just a matter of converting Australian citizens to convert over to the new system at a price that would offset the ad revenue, as well as the service itself. The 16 months that would have been used to delay these programs could then be used to both evaluate and tweak the delivery system in order to determine if such a system could realistically work elsewhere in the world, where both options are already available at some level.

This is true of Anime in the US as well

[WillAffleckUW]

Right now you can watch the 200th episode of a series that is only on episode 42 in the US.

Information wants to be free.

Same problem here.

[blinx_]

I have the same problem here in Denmark, if the shows are ever aired they are far far behind and as we have no HD channels here, the quality is also lots worse than what is available online.

So the choice is waiting a year and get low quality video and stereo only or download the day after the show aired in 720p and surround, I know what I do.

In defense of our practices

[Anonymous Coward]

Quite often if the series are shown they are shown with little concern for regular viewing. An interesting example is the Sopranos on channel 9. They might show 1 episode and then delay the next for 3 months. Sometimes these shows just don't come back. Honestly, its ridiculous here, you can't trust the networks to actually come through with regular episodes.

One case in point: The Amazing Race

[jonwil]

With one of the seasons of The Amazing Race (I don't know which one), channel 7 (the network here in .AU with the local rights to the show) aired the first episode(s) a few days or so after the US airing. But they didn't keep it up for long. One argument they put forward as to why they couldn't do it is that they couldn't guarantee that they would have the show in time to prepare it for airing (hence the need to have more time between the US air date and the .AU air date)

Not knowing how a show gets from America to Australia or what preparation channel 7 has to do to it, I can't say if that excuse is valid or not.

Re:One case in point: The Amazing Race

[Anonymous Coward]

This is one of the main reasons I download the amazing race. they have now started the "All Stars" series, yet, Oz has not been shown the season before as yet.

Also it was hard to get this show in the UK - on free to air (peasant) tv. My sister is in the UK at the moment, so I'm also downloading for her benefit and sending her DVDs.

You realise Free to Air is free right?

[bing212553]

I don't see why everyone is complaining. They(the TV Stations) give you this stuff for free. If you have a problem with the arrangement don't partake in it - read a book or something, or you go buy the show from the Americans and you give it away for free . I think us Australians need to give back, start uploading some Blue Healers and Water Rats too

Not only the price.

[noz]

I believe it is more to do with impotent television programmers. They employ a reactive purchasing policy: when something rates well in the USA, buy it for next year. It's that simple.

Helpful hint for non-USians to use iTunes

[patio11]

You *can* download from US iTunes. You just need an American address, an email account which is not the same as the one linked to your AussieTunes account, and a US payment method. For the American address, you can use the White House for all I care (or, if this scares you for some reason, use Google maps to pick out a city/state at random and use "1234 Maple Street" with the appropriate zipcode). The email can be whatever the heck you want. The payment method is the only tricky part, and its a lot less tricky thanks to eBay. You see, lots of people who get gift certificates but really wanted cash put them up on eBay and some other sites. Buy some gift certificates from eBay (at a discount to face value), get the codes mailed to you, use them to buy from iTunes. Since you aren't inputting a credit card they won't have the computer verify your address because there is nothing to verify it against.

I keep two iTunes accounts around, one for Japan and one for the US. Thankfully they don't do geotracking or anything, and they'll both happily integrate into the same iPod/iTunes/etc.

(Incidentally, the White House address:

The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
)

Re:Helpful hint for non-USians to use iTunes

[Anonymous Coward]

Terrorist! Handing out national secrets like that! The location of the White House is classified information! Wait until I tell Homeland Security about that!

*stomps off to call homeland security*

Re:Helpful hint for non-USians to use iTunes

[Neoncow]

So in order to avoid copywrite infringment, you have to commit fraud to obtain these shows?

Re:Helpful hint for non-USians to use iTunes

[Cervantes]

(Incidentally, the White House address:

The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
)

Thanks for helping the terrorists win. Expect to win an all-expenses-paid trip to Gitmo any day now.

If you're going to post sensitive national security information, you need to fuzz it out, just like they do with undercover agents on TV. Like so:

(Incidentally, the White House address:

The White House
#### Pennsylvania Avenue ##
##########, DC 2#5#0
)

HTH HAND

Rupert Murdoch

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd think with Murdoch at the helm of many big content producers, the Aussies wouldn't be getting as a fucked as they are getting. Foreign delays have nothing to do with technical issues. It's all about "staggering" release dates and shit and licenses. It's dumb-dumb

The 4% effect

[violet16]

Also in the 90's - did you know that they SPED UP the shows so that a 44minute show ran for 43minutes? Yeap - another minute of ads there. (channel 9 was the main user of this)

Hmm... you sure that isn't just an effect of NTSC/PAL transfer? Converting 24fps film to 25fps PAL can cause a 4% speedup.

But I'm totally with you on the networks doing everything they can to make Aussie TV not worth watching. One time I missed the end of "The Closer" because it was broadcast 20 minutes late. I downloaded the show for the last few minutes and discovered that in the US it had been a special ad-free episode. Channel 9 had decided that rather than (a) show it ad-free, or (b) schedule 90 minutes for the show plus ads, it would instead (c) cut around 15 minutes out of the show and replace with ads. No wonder I'd found the ep hard to follow!

Not to mention how Aussie TV stations routinely show episodes out-of-order, mix surprise repeats in with new episodes, throw up big ad banners during the show, never start on time...

Re:The 4% effect

[kent_eh]

Hmm... you sure that isn't just an effect of NTSC/PAL transfer? Converting 24fps film to 25fps PAL can cause a 4% speedup.

There is technology to stretch the timing of live video. The ad I saw (in a broadcast industry magazine a few years ago) claimed that the equipment could stretch out a live football game by up to 3 minutes, allowing for more commercial time, and without the viewers noticing.

I just tried searching for it, but my Google-fu seems weak the evening.

Clearwashed

[Anonymous Coward]

[8]
"entire purpose of information is to be shared."

[5]
"Information wants to be free"

Oh, yeah! A whole three words, and less clear than the first. Sure you weren't a politician in a previous life?

Obvious

[cdrguru]

Why nobody has seemed to catch on to this simple fact. Standards. Censorship. The whole "protect the children" thing.

Are the laws, standards and community requirements for television the same in Australia as they are in the US? Ignoring translation differences, aren't their things that Aussie viewers do not want on their screens?

One of the biggest issues with movies is licensing for different areas. And the airplane version, which has to be the most restrictive of all. In the US you can show things that I know are not legal in Japan. I don't know about Australia, but it would not surprise me to find government regulations that affect some television shows.

Re:Obvious

[Tsagadai]

Our censorship laws have been getting alot easier and better over the last 15 years (although with the recent rise of a christian right they are starting to ban alot more). It's not censorship that slows it is advertising and show cost prices.

It's Illegal, but is it Wrong?

[batwingTM]

They are not stealing it. I don't know about the law down under, but in the states, if you receive a copy from someone who made the copy, not only have you not stolen it, you also have not received stolen goods nor violated copyright law. Please explain this whole stealing business.

O.K. Let me come out and say this. I live in Australia and I regularly download TV episodes from the States, and the reason, you cannot trust Aussie TV stations. Many years ago in Australia a show was broadcast called American Gothic. it had received good reviews and Network Ten had the rights to it. So I watched the first episode, it seemed good, I watched the second episode, it was alright, I watched the third episode... And I had no idea what was going on. I spoke to friends in Oz, seeing if I had missed something, and they too found the show confusing and odd. I stopped watching.

I later discovered the Network ten screened (and I apologise if I get the numbers wrong here, it was a while ago) episodes 1,2,13. Thirteen! when a TV station cannot even screen a TV show in order there is a problem. "My Name is Earl" was screened out of sequence last year on Aussie TV. Seven screened at US children's puppet show called "Greg the Bunny" a few years back during the School Holidays at 11:00 am in the morning, so the kiddies could see it. If any of you have seen "Greg The Bunny" you will know that this IS NOT, nor could any reasonable person conclude that it WAS EVER aimed at children. but why would a TV exec actually WATCH the show before airing it. (Seven dealt with a large numbers of complaints from concerned parents)

So now I download almost all the TV I regularly watch. But the problem lies deeper that just this. as someone earlier mentioned is that when a TV station in Australia buys the show they buy the Distribution rights in Australia. Network Ten used to own the rights for "Xena" in Australia and that caused a few problems with Pay TV.

So am I stealing, nope, I am not. am I violating copyright. yes, yes I am. Funny thing is, legally I would be better off stealing. if I stole a CD from a music store I could be caught, fined $200-$500. If I am caught SINGING a SONG whilst walking down the STREET I can be fined $1230 for illegal broadcast of copyrighted material. Also applies to "Happy Birthday" (copyrighted until 2030 as I understand) so who in Australia isn't guilty of copyright violation? When you make criminals of your population, you're population will commit crimes. It's pretty simple

perhaps

[zogger]

perhaps, but it wouldn't be near as much fun, and you need a lot of background examples in order to get the impression across of what a clear and dangerous precedent this is for technology/humans in general. If you wait until things get real bad, it sucks to try and change it, that's why I gave examples, real world examples.

  If they get away with restricting advanced tech now-even just cheap digital copies, what will they stop at? The tech to make extremely cheap digital copies is sort of like the magic 200 MPG carburetor-but it exists, it's real. That they are trying to get away with it, restricting it, crippling it by law and on purpose, is very dangerous for the future, if you care about things like that. And it is not primarily because "they" have something to lose, it is because all of society has something to lose by allowing that precedent.

What on earth are you watching?

[Xenographic]

> In the days when I used to watch them, it used to be excruciatingly poor, with cringeworthy translation errors, unreadably wooden dialog, and typos galore; most of the effort usually seemed to be put into dancing animated karaoke lyrics for the opening song, rather than actually translating the script well. I glimpse the odd screen capture on blogs and so forth from time to time, and it doesn't look like things have improved much.

Depends on the series, really. Some of the older ones are just plain crap, yes. Others are quite good. Yeah, they're not always perfect (I've spotted more than a few typos, although this is far more prevalent in manga), but they're pretty good.

I don't know if they can always be blamed for the "wooden" dialog--usually, that's the problem of the anime itself, but the translations I see are at least in literate English and understandable. Some even have helpful cultural notes (the meaning of a raised pinky finger meaning that two people are going out, etc.). But I wouldn't hold them to too high a standard--sometimes they just have to make it understandable without giving you the lowdown on what "yoroshi[ku onegai [ita]shimasu]" (all those brackets indicate removable bits that go with varying politeness levels...) actually means. Yeah, at least one series did that, but the others threw in either some generic greeting or another random phrase appropriate to the situation.

Ironically, the worse (i.e. stupidly literal and actually wrong) translations are probably better if you want to learn Japanese. And I am, naturally, attempting to do so, but in the mean time, I'd much rather just watch the show. Besides, once you learn enough, you can figure out what's meant by all the random name suffixes (-san, -sama, -chan, -tan, -kun, or misc. titles like -taicho and -hime) and there's no good way to work such things into the dialog, anyhow. Unless you *like* oddities like "Kiba boy" or "Believe it!" for some reason...

Besides, if you understand enough Japanese, why not get the raw and ignore subtitles entirely? :]

True

[Xenographic]

You're right, the GNAA is somehow affiliated with them. And they do "YHTB" trollsubs (i.e. some other random video, usually when people expect a new episode, but one has not yet been produced). But the rest of the time, their subs are perfectly good *shrug*

So I wouldn't trust them (keep track of the release schedule, don't download the trollsubs, etc.), but I do watch them. Why? They have the sub out the night it's released, of course :] If you like Naruto or Bleach, there's hardly any competition. Well, I guess there's one other group doing Naruto: Shippuuden now, but no one else was that I knew of during the years of filler.

Someone I know....

[rat7307]

Someone I know really well..cough... likes a lot of UK television, and I...they...get it via other means because shows like Dr Who, Top Gear etc are nearly always a year behind... plus they don't show stuff like QI or Mock The Week at ALL...

I'd pay a provider for this if they got eps that were CURRENT, played in ORDER and not bumped for some sporting event or whatever....

I know fans of US shows get a bit miffed when they show 1/2 a series then roll in some eps from previous seasons or play a series out of order... Australian terrestrial TV is a fucking shambles....

It's infectious

[mgiuca]

I don't pirate TV, I just wait and watch it when we catch up (I'm in Aus btw). But it's getting to the point that it's hard to avoid all these spoilers.

Firstly, you have the Internet. Obviously most fiction-related websites have a "grace period" where they don't discuss spoilers of recent episodes. But when you're 5 months to a year behind, you simply can't visit any websites related to these shows (including Wikipedia articles) or you'll see months and months of spoilers.

Secondly, you have an increasing number of friends who give up, cross the barrier, and simply start downloading episodes at the same time as the US. And when your friends reach a critical mass (as they have done with shows such as Heroes and Lost), it's "did you see the latest episode of ..." referring to the latest episode from the US, and we who choose to watch the televised version have to go hide in a corner for 5 months while we wait to catch up.

All in all it adds up to a slippery slope of more and more viewers turning to BitTorrent because the TV networks can't keep up - whoever's fault that is. If you're going to take the stance of "It isn't the TV networks' fault because it's really expensive to get shows early," then I say the US TV producers need to realise that they'll lose viewership (or contracts) with foreign networks unless they start making it feasible to get shows at the same time, or near enough.

Network Ten in Australia is making headway here, showing Jericho at the same time as the US, the final episode of the OC within one day of the US, and Smallville (which began 2 seasons behind the US when Ch10 bought it) rocketing through three seasons without a break to catch up - currently half a season behind.

More to the point...

[Anonymous Coward]

... why is Australian TV insistent on showing such a high volume of low-braincell American crap at the expense of home grown content anyway?

I would prefer to see the screening delays reported in the article pushed out... to infinite and beyond.

As a side note, I don't think Australian audiences would care too much for the on-off-on-off nature of the American TV schedules. Series episodes are generally shown back to back here, unlike the US schedules for, say, Lost (9 episodes in 22 weeks) or Jericho (11 episodes in 24 weeks).

Re:More to the point...

[dangitman]

Australian produced TV isn't exactly high-braincell stuff.

I know what they feel like

[gordgekko]

None of the networks air South Park or Mythbusters the same time that they air in the U.S. In fact, the difference is about a month in both cases. Thank God for P2P.

Re:Obvious... The poor old British license payer

[Anonymous Coward]

Me, when you freeloaders in the states pirate the show, the bbc loses out on sales revenue in that market and the BBC demands more money for the license fee.

when YOU start paying the license then you can have the show quickly.

Scheduling and generally crappy performance

[Craig Ringer]

Australian TV broadcasters tend to keep only loosely to broadcasting schedules, so don't expect to be able to just watch one show. You'd best start ten minutes beforehand. And, of course, everything is on long delays as compared to the US, and often broadcast with weird gaps and sometimes even out of order.

Of course, they might just cancel the show if there's a football or cricket match on. Sure, they knew it'd be on weeks in advance, but they didn't bother planning for it.

To top things off, the ads are incessant and REALLY BAD. We're talking mind-bogglingly awful patronising badly-made crap.

So ... why would anybody endure free to air TV in Australia? Until the Internet became a useful alternative, I just stopped watching it. Borrowed the odd DVD from friends, bought the odd DVD, watched more than the odd CD of AVIs, but that's about it - it just wasn't worth enduring the suck.

So, let me see - I could put up with that miserable crap, or I could otherwise obtain the show and get it:

• when I want it (on time)
• in better quality; and
• ad free

I'd pay for HD downloads of shows - at decent prices and without that DRM crap. Unfortunately, most services don't provide access for Australians or are TV-like ("you'll watch what we want when we want you to"). They're also all DRM'd or at best streaming-only. The DRM is pointless, since the shows are ALREADY available on the 'net, so it deeply confuses me as to why they bother.

Sure, it's dodgy, but until the media industry is willing to move a bit and meet people in the middle, I'll continue to use the alternative means available.

The delay goes both ways

[TavisJohn]

In the US we have to wait for shows like Doctor Who. The us is currently about 18 months behind on Doctor Who! And I know there is no real excuse for it! At one point we were only a week behind. The suddenly for a year and a half there was NO Doctor Who to be had!

So this works BOTH ways! I am a HUGE Doctor Who fan. So it sucks that the BEST way to see it is over BitTorrent networks.

Re:The delay goes both ways

[Dubwise]

We actually seem to be better served in New Zealand. Heroes started here shortly after the show came back from hiatus in the US, and I can see The Daily Show four nights a week, within hours of it first airing (it felt weird not having to torrent it when that started).

Television New Zealand is about to launch a day-after download service with similar pricing to the iTunes Store. Unfortunately, it's all trussed up in Windows Media DRM and the files die after a week. TVNZ also can't sell imported programmes until they air here, which might be months after the torrents hit the wires. Given that our broadband sucks ass and their market is existing downloaders who are used to keeping up with the zeitgeist, I think they'll struggle.

We have bad broadband too...

[Anonymous Coward]

We have broadband issues too in Australia. Imagine if Bell was still one big country, and there was no alternative phone provider in existance. And that every ISP had to take Bell to court and to the FCC every time they wanted to try and get anything done and stop Bell's anticompetitive behaviour.

And that Bell was lobbying the government and tricking the shareholders into trying to get rid of regulation any time a competitor tried to get close to beating Bell at services, claiming that their competitors are leeches and foreign-owned companies "stealing" from the economy (less than 1% are foreign-owned).

Same thing here in NZ

[Anonymous Coward]

As I type this I'm watching episode 8 of Heroes on TV, meanwhile episode 17 is at 63% on my torrent client.

A sophisticated anti-piracy strategy: Aussie style

[acidbreather]

You guys seem to have forgotten that here in Australia, our leading media/telco company Telstra has a sophisticated and fool-proof strategy for battling BitTorrent piracy. It involves charging $150 per Gigabyte for downloads on their 'broadband' service.... and I put 'broadband' in quotes because only in this country could 256Kbs be counted as broadband. Please, oh please will a foreign telco come over here and kill Telstra! You might need to convince their largest shareholder (the government) to allow you in first, but once you are here, it will be so very easy.

Australia has sucked for TV for years!

[AbRASiON]

I recall being a teenager (this was over 12 years ago) reading in our local paper (green guide) that people were writing in complaining that Simpsons episodes were not only being played out of order but the TV station was cutting parts of the show out to FIT IN MORE COMMERCIALS - no I'm not joking.

and this was 12 years ago.

The days of the internet are upon us, it might be illegal but right now it's easier and better for me to simply fire up Azureus and grab the shows I want, when I want to playback when I want.

The important phrase is FREE-TO-AIR

[gsslay]

TFA clearly says "free-to-air". That does not mean the programmes were never broadcast before that in Australia.

The chances are that they are available a lot sooner on subscriber satellite and cable channels. If these channels buy them first, they buy total rights to show them within Australia. The free-to-air channels then have to wait until the subscriber channel has finished before getting a shot at buying the rights.

If you want the free-to-air broadcasts to be sooner, the free-to-air channels have to outbid the subscriber channels and buy the rights first. Clearly in Australia this is not often possible.

Re:Obvious... The poor old British license payer

[Festering Leper]

i don't have a problem with paying for a license. i can't buy one from here in canada. the bbc won't sell access to quality streams here in north america even if you (somehow) can prove you paid for one.

i have a clear conscience on this one.

PayTV anyone?

[donak]

The roll-out of PayTV has been picking up speed over the last 3 or 4 years, here in Australia.
Hell, it's even reached me, here out in the "boondocks".
So, is it really any surprise that shows are being delayed longer and longer?
The people installing satellite dishes or cable come around more often than the new shows!

Re:Australia has sucked for TV for years!

[moofo]

Well It's worse in Quebec....

People want those series translated in "Quebec French". You lose a great deal of intonations and such. Also, cable and Sat provider here must comply with stupid laws that prohibits you from getting more than 50 % English TV channels. To make the matter worse, you can't have HBO or Cartoon Network here at all.

That means we have to wait for stupid translations or worse 'Spin offs' that are totally not like the original series.

I understand the language laws, but I have the right to have as many choice as my south neighbors.

Re:Obvious... The poor old British license payer

[bigbigbison]

Again in my original post I said that I pay for cable and Doctor WHo is shown on the SciFi channel. I am not a ratings household, so their ratings are not changed by whether or not I watch it on SciFi (and I usually end up watching it when it is on SciFi). I'm not going to buy the Doctor Who dvds, so what does it matter?

Channel NEIN

[Anonymous Coward]

Channel nein (9) is the worst channel. They treat their viewers with contempt. I was glad when Star Trek: Voyager and Enterprise ended, since they were both on NEIN and they would do things like not keep to the schedule, and in the case of Voyager they were about 4 years behind the US.

When you want to record Star Trek on channel NEIN, the standard practice is to let a 2 hour or 3 hour tape run in the early morning and hope it caught the show somewhere.

Channel 10 has done a fantastic job with catching up with Smallville (after NEIN seriously stuffed it up).

Re:Australia has sucked for TV for years!

[ksheff]

I actually like Australian TV shows better than most of the US ones and use bittorrent to get the shows I like. I wish another season of Pizza would come out soon.