TV Torrents — When Piracy Is Easier Than Purchase

An anonymous reader writes "NBC's recent withdrawal from the iTunes store leaves the millions of Apple's customers who have Macs or iPods without a legitimate way to purchase and watch NBC's content. Online media stores such as iTunes, Amazon and Walmart have never been able to compete with the pirates on price, or freedom and flexibility — as the content they sell is typically wrapped in restrictive DRM. The one advantage that legal purchase offered was ease of use. CNET looks into the issue, and discovers that with mature open-source media players such as Miro supporting BitTorrent RSS feeds, it is actually trivially easy for users to subscribe to their favorite shows. Want to wake up to the latest episode of The Colbert Report, Top Gear or any of hundreds of TV shows automatically downloaded and waiting for you? CNET offers an easy three step guide."

Comments

No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[Anonymous Crowhead]

Turn on the fucking TV you stupid fucking asshole.

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[Rakishi]

1. I have no working TV.
2. TVs with resolutions comparable to my computer are expensive.
3. I don't have a sound system for a TV.
4. I don't have cable.
5. I don't want to dick around with HDMI and whatever other crap I'd need to get a HD signal to said TV.
6. I'm at work quite often and at odd times. Tivo costs money.

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod Insightful. One could look at this as that NBC has withdrawn, and therefore will lose relevancy in pop culture -- oh wait -- they never had it to begin with!

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[im_mac]

Last season NBC & ABC had most of their shows on their website. You didn't have the flexibility of a torrent but they were great for people who couldn't watch the broadcast. As I'm currently without cable, I plan on watching Heroes & Lost this way. Other shows that I can't get this way... well maybe I'll find a torrent or crash on my friend's couch - at least until I move again & get cable.

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[everphilski]

1. you have a computer
2. nbc.com has their shows available to stream, on-demand
3. enjoy.

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[megaditto]

All the things you list are no excuse for you to steal their content. Think about it: you probably cannot afford a Citroen C Metisse either, but that doesn't mean you get to steal it.

The only question here is whether your downloads constitute a lost sale (and therefore a loss caused by theft) to the publishers, or not. I believe it could be shown that people would buy at least some of the stuff they download illegaly if the illegal sharing were shut down, so they are indeed thiefs, but one might argue differently.

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[Pope]

Man you people are whiny.

1. Get one cheap, or a tuner card.
2. Most TV shows are usually lower res than computer screens, so no loss.
3. TVs have had these wonderful things called built-in speakers for a very long time.
4. You don't need cable to watch TV, there's these things called rabbit ears that have worked for years.
5. It's one simple fucking cable from the tuner to the TV for HDMI, or a triple set for component. It's not exactly rocket science.
6. VCRs are dead cheap, or you can install MythTV for your tuner card.

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[FatAlb3rt]

While I do think that free TV content should be freely available on the internet, none of the reasons you've given above justify downloading material illegally. Just because you don't want to spend the money doesn't mean you can steal their shit.

Our time is better spent convincing the media execs why making their content available is a Good Idea.

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[Rakishi]

>>1. Get one cheap, or a tuner card.

Which would cost me space, time and so on.

>>2. Most TV shows are usually lower res than computer screens, so no loss.

I can get rather nice HD downloads.

>>3. TVs have had these wonderful things called built-in speakers for a very long time.

And are crap usually compared to the speakers my computer has.

>>4. You don't need cable to watch TV, there's these things called rabbit ears that have worked for years.

Worked being a relative term.

>>6. VCRs are dead cheap, or you can install MythTV for your tuner card.

Yet more time and annoyance wasted to get it working.

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[Anonymous Coward]

4. You don't need cable to watch TV, there's these things called rabbit ears that have worked for years.

You mean the things that come with a playboy bunny outfit?

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[Rakishi]

All the things you list are no excuse for you to steal their content. Yet it's NOT about money really, it's about convenience. I'll gladly pay for easy to get, not exorbitantly overpriced, easy to play, good quality tv shows. Sadly downloads are often better quality and easier to use than dvds even.

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[Rakishi]

If I later buy the DVDs (which are actually worse than downloads in terms of quality and convenience) am I still stealing?

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[zakezuke]

1. I have no working TV. TVs are cheap... no excuse not to have at least a standard resolution one. Hit up craigslist.

2. TVs with resolutions comparable to my computer are expensive. I can agree there, I'm using an old sony 20se which I find perfectly great for personal viewing. You could always go with a PVR, most have firewire these days.

a 1080P is twice the price as 720P, but most people are thinking that buy the cheaper one now, buy the better one later when it's 1/2 the price. Most i've seen sold offer HDMI, DVI, and VGA ports.

3. I don't have a sound system for a TV. TVs are no more special than PCs as far as sound goes. That is NO excuse.

4. I don't have cable. That's a good excuse... but HD-TV works rather well.

5. I don't want to dick around with HDMI and whatever other crap I'd need to get a HD signal to said TV. This I know less about, however if you are able to do HD resolutions presently, then odds are you can do HD resolutions on a HDTV if you were interested in buying it, or go with an HD tuner on your PC. Near as I'm aware HDMI handshaking is only really required for presold media.

6. I'm at work quite often and at odd times. Tivo costs money. You could use a VCR or go with a more modern VCR. I've not priced HD PVRs, but i'm sure they exist in one form or another.

It's not like I don't feel for you. It would take some money to invest in the gear required to record off the air broadcasts in the same level of quality you can get pre-pirated. Pirating is easier, and cheaper. It's still a form of piracy.

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[heinousjay]

So you've made your point - you want entertainment, and you don't want to have to pay for it. Congratulations, you're an asshole.

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[Sandbags]

My question is still this: Is it illegal to "steal" something that was already broadcast, typically in High definition, for free??? I guess you could argue that some of these programs are on chanels I can't get for free, and this technically would be stealing, assuming the broadcaster did have some way of collecting revenue (there's no legal standing for theft if there's no provable loss of value or goods, and in the case of free broadcast TV, good luck proving that)

Then again, if I'm paying for basic cable (or a premium service), and thus authorized to watch these shows in the first place, again, if I torrent them, is it still illegal as I could just as simply recorded it with a VCR, DVR, TV Decoder card, or even just as simply a line-in video feed to a PC...

I thought anything broadcast on TV was covered by personal use rights, as long as it's not rebroadcast for profit or trade of goods. Operating a torrent (if I did) technically would cost me money (in terms of electricty, hardware and time) and I get no goods or money from doing so, thus no profit. It's not a broadcast in that sense and thus not illegal in my interpretation of the laws. Provided the downloaded stream is "as broadcast" unedited, and containing all the appropriate commercials.

Distributing pay-for programming to those who do not have license to receive it would of course be illegal, and distributing illegally pirated or unreleased media would be as well. However, distributing legally broadcast footage to those who could otherwise recieve it already, or the reverse, downloading content you could otherwise get legally, should not be illegal. That stated, it should not be the government (or a companie's) job to make it illegal across the board, but that it should only be punishable if one is proven to be using the technology to illegally receive content. I challenge then the government to do so, prove I have actually downloaded content that I'm not already authorized or paying to recieve.

What NBC is arguing here, as are all other broadcasters who charge for downloads from sites for already broadcast content, is that they loose revenue. Really they're arguing to get more revenue then they would have gotten otherwise. They're arguing for the legal right to bill us for something they already give us for free! Downloading edited versions of these programs (where comercials have been stripped and thus advertisers are losing viewership) is a different arguement as we may actually be talking about misrepresentation of viewership and hence lost ad revenue, but these numbers are based on surveys anyway and are grossly inaccurate as noone can tell for certain what people other than cable TV subscribers watch (there's no feedback from broadcast TV or sattelite systems to pattern viewership or neilson ratings, it's all a guess).

Their argument is that people pay for TV episodes on DVD willingly, and in great numbers. Sure. Many people will not only pay for the convenience, but it's a professionally produced media, saves time, saved disk space, saves bandwidth, and MOST importantly, the commercials have been legally removed. By itself, many will be willing to pay for TV without commercials. Again, not the argument here is not "is it illegal to download,", but is it illegal to download "as broadcast" which is not the same thing.

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[Rakishi]

I never said that. I'm perfectly willing to pay for entertainment. I'm not however willing to pay for things which I have no need for to view that entertainment with simply because someone said I need them. It's quite wasteful to buy redundant things and I already have too much junk.

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[Rakishi]

I watch an absurdly small amount of tv shows, maybe 1 hour a week on average of new tv-only shows. Consider for a second how much all that crap would cost me, the time to set it up and so on.

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[spoop]

I believe that it is legal to download a TV show if it is over the air or a cable tv show which you pay for (by subscribing to cable or satellite that gets that tv show). It's essentially the same thing that a DVR does, from a different source. However, the illegal part comes in when you download a cable show that you don't get on your cable/satellite or share to other people. Not that I have any qualms about downloading and sharing Top Gear :)

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[toriver]

You mean if I want to watch a certain show at 10:00 AM, then NBC magically will actually be sending that show then? No? You mean TV is still a medium where they decide when shows are broadcast, meaning they are NOT a proper alternative to downloaded episodes you can watch when you want to?

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[heinousjay]

Right, that means you aren't willing to pay for the entertainment. Does this somehow justify piracy? I don't see how, but then again, I'm not an asshole.

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[ThatsNotFunny]

7. I don't have a computer or an internet connection.

Hey... wait a second...

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[xquercus]

4. You don't need cable to watch TV, there's these things called rabbit ears that have worked for years.

Not where I live. Olympic Mountains to the West and the Cascades to the East. Even with a moderately priced directional rooftop antenna multipath is too much of a problem here. Any OTA broadcasts are simply unviewable. I'm sure this isn't the only area with multipath problems.

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[Rakishi]

Right, that means you aren't willing to pay for the entertainment. Does this somehow justify piracy? I don't see how, but then again, I'm not an asshole. Interesting. So the only form of entertainment available in the world are tv shows which are never released in another medium. god, I feel bad for whatever world YOU live in. Unlike your world in this world there is lots of nice convenient entertainment I can pay for. For example I can buy DVDs or I can pay to download legal versions of tv shows. The fact that they don't offer any of these options, be it because the show just aired or because the executives are morons, is not my problems.

Essentially if you don't allow me any way to pay you for something that I want (ie: other than watching ads on a tv) then it's not my problem that if I can't pay you right now. I'll pay you once you finally get something in place but I'm not costing you anything anyway by my current actions so you shouldn't care.

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[heinousjay]

Ah, so that's your justification. It's interesting. It has a certain logic, so long as you ignore the rights of the people that you have to trample on to achieve your goal.

As for me, no, there are many ways to get TV shows in my world. TV, for one. I never feel justified in pirating to fill my greed for entertainment. Possibly because I don't have that greed. But as I said, I'm not an asshole.

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[Q-Cat5]

I disagree.

I find no validity to the argument that a broadcaster has televised a show for free, but then somehow still expects that they're going to be able to retain the right to dictate when and how a person is able to watch.

Now, if someone was making commercial use and selling the intellectual property of the content provider, then I'd say there's a solid case that that person is committing theft of revenue. But downloading a torrent of an episode of Lost from bittorrent because you missed it and want to watch it while on the train ride to work, or whatnot, is not significantly different from recording it on your DVR for playback later in the day.

What this is about is getting people used to having their Fair Use rights to time-shift and place-shift denied, so we all slowly forget that we ever *could* watch programming on our own terms.

I don't see how a broadcaster can argue that their show, that they broadcasted FOR FREE one night previous, somehow gains monetary value because someone downloads it.

How is this lost revenue? Because of the redacted commercials? The sponsor's message didn't get to that viewer anyway if they missed the episode. Sponsors base their advertising on a speculative audience pool anyway, based on ratings from a sample, rather than actual viewing habits. Since the ratings are based on people who actually *did* watch it on television, the downloaders fall outside of the ratings pool. And if it weren't for VCRs and DVRs, most of those shows would be completely missed to begin with.
The ratings pools would still be entirely speculative even if you took time/place-shifting completely out of the equation. Remember what life was like before TiVo? Did you sit like a good little drone and soak in all that commercially goodness? Or did you, more likely, use it as a chance to go to the bathroom or get a snack? Personally, if I'm watching live TV on a non-DVR, I'll mute the damned commercials. Is that theft?

When they do finally get the broadcast flag fully imposed, clearly most shows will be blocked from DVR recording. If they didn't mind recording, they wouldn't put up such a stink about downloading. But I'll bet you there'll be other provisions to prevent you from muting the commercials too. After they've gotten us conditioned for a few years, I'm sure it'll be mandatory to watch the whole broadcast if you watch it at all. They'll probably find a way to apply the DMCA to say that muting the show, or walking away during the commercial, somehow constitutes circumventing their DRM.

I see the rig from Clockwork Orange in the near future, coming to a home near you. Strap in, or no Seinfeld re-runs for you!

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[Rakishi]

Greed? I do pay for them once I'm allowed to so I don't see why I'm greedy. Actually if you ever skip or ignore ads you are being a lot more greedy than me.

But as I said, I'm not an asshole. No, you're apparently just a self-righteous idiot.

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[doomedpr0digy]

who says it's illegal to download TV shows that have already been broadcast that i paid to watch with my cable subscription?

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[painkillr]

in what way does the volume of tv you consume justify it as an entitlement. you're just a big fucking baby, that's about the sum of it

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

My question is still this: Is it illegal to "steal" something that was already broadcast, typically in High definition, for free??? I guess you could argue that some of these programs are on chanels I can't get for free, and this technically would be stealing, assuming the broadcaster did have some way of collecting revenue (there's no legal standing for theft if there's no provable loss of value or goods, and in the case of free broadcast TV, good luck proving that)

Just because you had rights to one broadcast (with comercials on a specified channel at a specified time) doesn't mean you get unlimitted rights to it. Kind of like songs being on the radio doesn't mean you get to download them for free, or songs that were played at a free concert for that matter.

At least thats how the laws work. Now if you want to argue ethics, thats different.

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[heinousjay]

No, it's not being self-righteous. It's recognizing that my greed for entertainment doesn't trump the rights of others. It's actually consideration, something you apparently don't fully understand, given your stance on collecting the copyrighted works of others on your own terms.

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[Rakishi]

"Well, maybe I'll buy it but I wouldn't have otherwise if I didn't steal it first" No I justify it as "there is no way for me to buy it now, if I was able to I would buy it. since I can't I will download it now and buy it once I can."

Oh, yes, and please inform me of how making a copy of something is not theft. Since the original version still exists it is copyright violation not theft. Legally and ethically there is a big difference. Theft for example doesn't have fair use.

If you got your hands on a copy of my company's source code, you bet your ass you'd be in jail. Ah yes, the lovely "invalid example" argument. I'd love you to find me a jury that would put me in jail for having the source code for a company after they publicly and officially distributed millions of copies of it to the public (in say newspapers).

And you'd be there for theft. Yeah, you whine on about making copies and what not, but the fact is you are fucking thief. Well I'm not legally.

You are a criminal. So are you probably. Lots of fun laws on the books like:

I'd give you the American History X treatment if I meet your pasty ass on the street. Interesting. You threatened me which is illegal so you are guilty of a crime. So how do you feel mr criminal?

Yeah, I'm an internet tough guy but you are a filthy fucking criminal. You are no better than the drug addict who breaks into cars. You are just feeding a different habit for other reasons. So is that how you justify illegal vigilante justice?

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[Rakishi]

It's recognizing that my greed for entertainment doesn't trump the rights of others. It's actually consideration, something you apparently don't fully understand, given your stance on collecting the copyrighted works of others on your own terms. *shrug* Rights are a social construct and illegality does not make something unethical. Likewise life isn't black or white. I see nothing really unethical about what I do.

How is it any different from me using say a tivo on airwave traffic and skipping all the ads?

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[Rakishi]

No it just makes it silly to argue that I should pay for all that worthless and redundant hardware simply so that I am officially in the legal right. After all who cares about the absurdity of something or the ethics of it when all you need is to be within the letter of the law.

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[jtdennis]

Last year I wanted to watch the NCAA Basketball tournament in HD, but had no HDTV. I bought a cheap USB HDTV Tuner (Pinnacle HD Pro Stick). It worked great with the over-the-air broadcasts on my computer. I hooked it up to a projector in a conference room at work and it was even better.

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[Rakishi]

Well good for you. I simply find no point in spending effort and time to be within the technical letter of the law.

After all the only real difference between me copying a tv show from the air and ripping out all the ads versus to me downloading it is that the former takes more time to set up. After all who cares if the producer gets no money or ad views if you're technically within the letter of the law. Who cares about the ethics of it or the impact on the producer.

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[0100010001010011]

1. Turn on my computer
2. nbc.com
3. ????
4. Watch on iPod on train to work.

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[Rakishi]

You could apply that logic to stealing anything. "When I can pay for it, I will. But for now, I'll just take it free of charge." Not really. Unlike you I don't see everything as black or white, neither do most rational people in the world.

Also a slippery slope argument does not work when I apply my argument to a very specific case, specifically me and only certain types of content. Also you still don't understand the difference between theft and copyright infringment. Theft steals actual money from someone while copyright infringement only lowers their future income. My argument by definition can't be applied to actual goods because then me paying latter is not equivalent to me paying now (as they cannot sell the same product to someone else).

And now I will kneecap you prior to X since you explained to me about how copying something is not theft, when I asked you not to. If you can't cope with reality, that copyright infringement is not theft in most senses of the word, then that's your own limitation not mine.

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[SP33doh]

the answer lies here: time to read all of those over 9000 page long documents you signed.

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[porksoda]

1a. move to the States

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[zehnra]

If it's legal to tape it, what law says that you can't watch that tape of a show (or listen to a tape of a song) over and over? If the content you are downloading is as-aired (no commercials have been removed) and you could have watched it live with current air wave broadcasts (or cable/satellite reception), what law says that you don't have rights to that same broadcast in digital form? To me, this whole thing is a bit of a gray area. As the GP stated, over-air broadcasts can't be counted in any form. There is no provable loss of viewer-ship for those shows. For instance, Alias aired on Sunday nights at one point. I wasn't home during that time period, didn't have more than a TV (no VCR or PVR), and therefore could have never watched the show. If it weren't for the availability of episodes online, I never would have watched it as it aired when I was finally able to, because I would have no idea what had gone on before. Serialized shows are particularly susceptible to this.

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[zakezuke]

I watch an absurdly small amount of tv shows, maybe 1 hour a week on average of new tv-only shows. Consider for a second how much all that crap would cost me, the time to set it up and so on. Considering.... About $130 for a Pinnacle USB tuner and antenna.

I'm not here to guide your moral compass. I'm just stating a simple fact. Downloading shows off the net without permission of the copyright holder is a form of piracy.

I agree, at present buying into a HDTV is rather spendy and at this juncture its far more cost effective to use a computer monitor. While typically smaller than HDTVs they usually have the resolution and clarity required.

I also agree that it's easier and cheaper to download then it is to get into the equipment required to record shows in HD quality. You are too cheap and too lazy... nothing wrong with that.

It doesn't change the fact that you are violating the copyright because you are too cheap and too lazy.

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[megaditto]

Right, except this content is not released "for free" in the first place, and the copyright is retained by the owner. If you read the thread, the reply was to a guy that does not pay for cable service or even a television set. He has no means to aquire the content legally...

In other words, the guy has no content which he can time-shift in the first place. He proceeds to steal some content, then time-shifts THAT... and this makes it fair-use how?

Could he also, using your reasoning, burn a pirated Windows Vista and release it under GPL due to fair-use (hint: NO)

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[Anonymous Coward]

>How is it any different from me using say a tivo on airwave traffic and skipping all the ads?

*raises hand* I know, I know!

Because you're not using a Tivo?

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[Anonymous Coward]

>Rights are a social construct and illegality does not make something unethical.

You know, a statement like that, coming from a person that admits that they break the law for their own entertainment, is really frightening.

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[Rakishi]

Had you preferred if I said ethics is irrelevant as long as something is technically legal? That is what most of the people arguing against me seem to believe.

I guess ethics is really dead, after all if you won't be put in jail or sued for doing something why shouldn't you do it. Who cares if someone gets hurt or dies, after all you'll get off scott free which is all that matters.

You know, a statement like that, coming from a person that admits that they break the law for their own entertainment, is really frightening. I wonder how often you break the law and for what reasons.

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[Rakishi]

Well I am lazy and I admit to the piracy. As for cheap, well I buy DVDs if/when they are available.

Ethics is a more interesting question, after all legality and ethics are not equivalent. I try to make sure that I pay the owners for what I view, which is a lot more than I can say about all the people who skip ads with tivo or the like.

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[zakezuke]

Well I am lazy and I admit to the piracy. As for cheap, well I buy DVDs if/when they are available.

Ethics is a more interesting question, after all legality and ethics are not equivalent. I try to make sure that I pay the owners for what I view, which is a lot more than I can say about all the people who skip ads with tivo or the like. You do what you can, rather after the fact, as in a given show to remain on the air requires the backing of advertisers, advertisers who base worth on ratings. In all fairness to timeshifters like tivo users, at least they record the commercials. In the case of Tivo users I believe that data is fed back to the master system.

Now whether or not internet downloads help to increase viewership is an interesting question. But like your self I too am cheap and lazy and welcome the networks to provide legit downloads.

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[Scudsucker]

doesn't mean you can steal their shit.

Don't be a tool for the industry. It's not stealing, never has been and never will be. Else the RIAA would be pressing charges of theft against downloaders rather than suing them for copyright infringement. And it's also not about getting it for "free", as it's only free if your time is worthless. It's about the convieneince. And NBC is making it far less convenient to get their shows legally.

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[heinousjay]

Ah, the "everyone's doing it, or worse, so what I do is just fine" line of reasoning. Still as morally bankrupt as the day it was first thought up, of course, but hey! why let that stop you.

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[speaker of the truth]

All the things you list are no excuse for you to steal their content. Holy shit, Rakishi was able to get all of the copies in the whole world of the tv shows he watched? No? Was he able to take away ANYONE's copy by downloading it from a torrent? No? Guess he didn't steal it then.

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[Dan541]

I wouldn't watch what I cant download so that blows the theft argument out the window

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[lupis42]

Yeah, but the BBC has persistently and rudely turned down all of my offers of Top Gear related money, including the one that went "Don't persecute the torrent sites and will personally send you 5$ for every episode I have so far downloaded through them." Their letters tend to sound like "We don't care about America, and we have no plans to sell or broadcast this in America, but we don't want you watching it either."

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[Doctor-Optimal]

You probably don't have enough battery life (or a long enough extension cord) to make it to the states after you turn on your computer. I'd wait until you were here to turn it on.

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[Sandbags]

No, i'm not saying there are unlimited rights. However, I could just as easily record music from the radio (or via streamripper from the internet) and that is also as legal as using a VCR or DVR. Once recorded, I have the right to replay that recording, in part or full, as often as I see fit for personal use.

Whether I personally record the media, or have a friend record it for me, fair use allows the transfer of that recorded medie from my home to his and back (as long as it either is not considdered a permanant transfer, or that he could have equally received and recoded the stream).

Using a torrent to get copies of eppisodes that I for some reason did not record, but could have, through a network of individuals who have agreed to record these episodes just in case others in the network wished to view them. This would be a different story if a company was providing this as a service, but in this case, we're talking about simple sharing of content we could otherwise have legally acquired ourselves. In fact, using cnet's described process, this is in fact selective in a way no different from DVRs that permit remote access to your own recorded content. It's not illegal to watch TV shows existing on your own DVR across the internet. Lets take that a step further...

Time Warner Cable is proposing DVR functionality via their own remote storage facility. The set top box simply selects the programs you want recorded. Time Warner will be recording all broadcast video on all chanels on their own hardware in central offices. Your DVR will simply connect, download a program you wanted recorded, and allow you to see it in real time, and keep it on their server until you choose to delete it (up to a storage limit) How is this technically any different than a torrent assuming you are only downloading programming that you could otherwise have legally watched?

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[Sandbags]

what document I signed? I signed nothing to receive free over the air broadcasts... There's no legally binding agreement to recording and using for personal use those recordings. The argument that I also can't have that broadcast recorded elsewhere and dowload it over wire, even including time shifting and fastforwarding or skipping commercials, is dead. Time Warner Cable is testing (and planning to roll out) centralized DVR services where their own servers record the programs, and you can view via VoD any program you pre-selected to record. How is pre-selecting a torrent RSS and downloading this content over wire for over the air or other legally paid for programs illegal if Time Warner can offer the exact same service, but more over, as a SUBSCRIPTION, fee based service offering legally (as a part of basic cable with no other requirements or seperate subscription charges for that right). They're doing it as a business, for profit, and NBC gets no part of it, but I can't do it personally?

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[SMS_Design]

So, who decided to make you the moral crusader for the entertainment industry? Do you realize the irony in fighting for MORALS on behalf of the people who make today's music and movies?

Now, let me go ahead and document your sig in a post:
"If I convince just one reprobate pirate to stop infringing, I'm not working hard enough."

How do you expect to convince anyone of ANYTHING while issuing a blanket description of that same group as "reprobate??" Are you unaware of the definition of the word? Here, let me give you one from the dictioary. "Rejected by God and without hope of salvation." As an individual who would rather download a movie than go to a theater and battle the legions of 'tard that make up the movie industry's customer base, I feel that your description of "pirates" is offensive and unwarranted.

I would like you to tell me why you feel you have this moral charter from whatever higher power. I would love to know what you think you have over someone who simply elects that their options for the consumption of entertainment products are not satisfactory. If you don't want to post it here, send it to me in private.

Please.

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[X.mpls]

Yeah that and Miro has an embedded trojan/rootkit.

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[X.mpls]

Oops I might be wrong.

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm in the UK. There is NO way to buy many of these shows legally. Quite often they don't even make it to DVD. My choices are: 1) download it - costing them nothing at all, as they aren't prepared to sell it to me 2) wait 1-2 years, and watch it on the BBC which I've already paid my licence fee for. 3) wait 2-3 years, and hope THAT series is one that comes out on DVD. I often choose 1, and feel no guilt whatsoever.

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[moco]

I am located in Mexico and I got a "Sorry, the content is not available for your location". They were kind enough to let me watch the commercials though.

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[heinousjay]

I don't believe in any higher power, and I don't feel I have a charter. I do it because it amuses me. You pirates trip over yourselves in silly attempts to make justifications.

And if you don't like being offended by people describing what you do, don't do what causes the description.

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[redcane]

He has no means to acquire content, because the schedules on which that content would be provided were no use to him. Hence he did not need any of the TV related hardware normally used to access broadcast, or cable television, which of course includes a PVR. However, by the power of bittorrent, he has access to the same content, in a way that is convenient for him, and avoids the purchase of a PVR or any TV related hardware, whilst achieving identical functionality for him. You could argue he should pay for Pay-tv, but then they'd come and install useless cables and boxes in his house, so he has the "moral" right to view the content, when it would still be more convenient for him to torrent it. It's just not a very strong value proposition. Hell, I know I pay more for internet than I would for PAy tv, and I'd be very happy if all my favourite shows were provided from the content provider via a .torrent link. Especially in the case of public content, or other freely broadcast content, where it is currently provided without charge, and it makes no sense for them to charge me to receive it via the internet instead of via a DVB tuner.

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[lebjoot]

1. you have a computer
2. nbc.com has their shows available to stream, on-demand
3. enjoy.
4. Content not served to your country.

Yet I can download tru bittorent.

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[SMS_Design]

I don't need justification. I don't CARE about NBC's bottom line. Oh, boo-hoo, I might be stealing from billionaires.

Also, I don't care about how you choose to describe "pirates." You are a sad little man who thinks that he has a "cause." Enjoy that feeling of righteousness.

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[heinousjay]

Go on putting your own interpretation on my motivations, and go on believing it's billionaires you hurt. You couldn't be more wrong in either case, but like all piracy justifiers, you have nothing but weak sauce on offer.

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[joeh3rd]

Let's see... Networks withdraw their programming from a revenue stream (iTunes). Possible motives?

1) Want their programming to be free and are thus willing to give up income from distributors. 2) Microsoft release of Vista - DRM Edition now provides for a way to guarantee that people must pay-per-view and cannot copy or distribute copies of their programming having seen an opportunity to shut down their free streaming and go to a full pay-per-view distribution. This would allow them to charge more in a high demand, low availability market (e.g. get a bigger cut of the profits by charging more and having no third party involved as well).

While I am sure that there are many other variations on the above, I believe these are the most likely.

Re:No legitimate way to watch NBCs content?

[Q-Cat5]

I know this is a hopelessly late reply, but what the heck, I'll keep being argumentative.

Ownership of a television set or cable apparatus is not required for reception of publicly owned airwaves. At least, thus far, and in the US. I know that licensing is or was required for receivers in the UK and other parts Europe, but in the US, the broadcast frequencies are considered public property, and are administered by the FCC as a public trust.

If you have fillings in your teeth that are able to pick up the audio portion of a television broadcast, you're entitled to do so. At least, until the broadcast flag makes your mouth an illegal analog hole, or something of that nature. The equipment is irrelevant. The networks don't release their copyrights by broadcasting, any more than the GPL broaches copyright ownership of Linux. But when they broadcast, they do so without an implied contract on the part of the receiver that the program will be diligently watched, commercials and all, and only on equipment they approve of and during the broadcast time. They can't, according to fair use, have an expectation that they can dictate terms of use to the end user. This is like the author / copyright owner of a book stipulating that the book should only be read at night, or only while wearing their patented brand of reading glasses, and threatening to sue anyone who fails to comply with these restrictions. (In fact, not a bad analogy there to DRM. If they patent special glasses that expire one month after first use, maybe by going opaque, and then scramble the letters in a way that their glasses can re-assemble the text, you'd have a book form of DRM. And probably cause just as many headaches as music DRM causes.)

Again, if they can show that they experience a direct loss as a result of people being able to watch a torrent of their show, then the law would protect them. As it is, the person who gets the torrent had the right to watch it when it was broadcast, and nothing, yet, dictates that they lose that right after the show is over. Why do they not have the right to watch a torrent of that show?

As to your last point, that's an utter straw-man argument. Vista is a licensed product that users pay for. Television shows bear no contract or license with the viewer, and they are free. You're comparing Apples to T'ang dynasty chopstick rests.

Uh, OK...

[glwtta]

Welcome to 3 years ago, I guess...

Re:Uh, OK...

[Anonymous Coward]

My first torrent was 24.S01E01 back in 2001, so it's more like "Welcome to six years ago". Of course, we had to actually "click" a torrent link, kids today with their feeds and their filters and non-python clients...

Re:Uh, OK...

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember Farscape being the first TV show to really gather a Internet following. This was 1999

Re:Uh, OK...

[Anonymous Coward]

Shame to say: but same accounts for software sometimes. I (unlike most i guess) like to buy stuff because i like to award the creator. And always when I buy something one of the following rules starts playing, problems that you just don't have if you download and crack software/music:

Software:
- Next day new version, have to pay again (software guys really have to give away more to consumers that bought it short ago)
- The 'activation' stuff breaks the software on newer OS (or if it's windows, it breaks itself ;().
- Re-installing the computer means calling all those numbers (like windows activation), because I do this too often (yeah, 2x a year!)
- I need to leave the DVD or CD inside my computer while the program runs (ow, i brought that junk back next day)
- And when it's software that didn't have a trail: buggy and never a way to return the product because you broke the seal (so I never use software anymore that doesn't have a trail version).

Movies/Video:
- DRM prevents me from playing it on my phone (which I use as my mp3-player, e.g. all WMA)
- It has some form of virus (e.g. sony rootkit junk) or just won't play on my PC-DVD (which is my media center).
- The DRM-party stops (e.g. planet.nl) so i can't play my music anymore

And I could go on, but you guys get my point.

Makes you think right? You pay, and get more problems... (still I keep buying in the hope for newer versions (and support of course), or more music from the artist or at least for having the good feeling of buying it).

Re:Uh, OK...

[Alaria Phrozen]

Uhh, try Simpsons on DAL.net, that's like 1994. And BBSes filled with GIF of the Budweiser girls accessed from 1400 baud. This has been around since, oh, before you were born.

Re:Uh, OK...

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently it was around before you were born too, otherwise you would know that there was never a modem speed of "1400 baud". Perhaps it was a typo for 1200, 2400 or 14400. Budweiser girl gifs? I'm going to bet on 2400, that seems about the right era.

EZTV + uTorrent + XBMC

[hansamurai]

I simply use EZTV to find the torrents and RSS feeds, uTorrent to download them automatically with its built in RSS reader, and XBMC on my Xbox to watch them comfortably in my living room.

Re:EZTV + uTorrent + XBMC

[wyip]

You can also use TVersity to transcode your video files in real-time to play it on an XBox 360 - no modding required. It's good for HD content that xbmc can't play well (I think the xbox only has a 733mhz PIII CPU or something?).

Re:EZTV + uTorrent + XBMC

[hansamurai]

I only have a regular Xbox right now, but I would definitely do this if I had a 360. There's starting to be more and more native HD content available.

Re:EZTV + uTorrent + XBMC

[cmeans]

TVersity also works with the PS3, though I've had difficulty with some content, and am in the process of getting the suite of codecs setup correctly.

Re:EZTV + uTorrent + XBMC

[ahoehn]

This is a pretty excellent system, I used it myself for quite a while. In my personal setup I've cut out XBMC by running an HDTV as my computer monitor. With the addition of OTA HDTV broadcasts it's a pretty nifty and affordable setup. The only downfall is the inability to watch live sporting events that are broadcast only on Cable, e.g. Monday Night Football.

The obvious way for the cable company to battle back against this is A La Carte Cable. All the programs I want to watch are on 4-5 channels, but to get those channels in HD I'd have to pay at least $60/mo with with 70 other channels that I'll never watch. Add affordable A La Carte programming and the Cable providers have essentially eliminated any reason for me to pirate shows.

Now to the question of what's affordable: Right now Time Warner Cable offers A La Carte packages in San Antonio that work out to be about $0.80 per channel per month. Say more than double that for the ability to choose exactly what channels you want, and my 5 cable channels cost me $10 / mo. Piracy problem solved. I get to watch what I want and the Cable company gets my money.

I'm sure there wouldn't be subsidized DVR's and the like under a system like this, but I'd want a cable card in my PC anyway. Though I suppose a fully functional cable card is another pipe-dream.

Re:EZTV + uTorrent + XBMC

[NoPantsJim]

I do the same thing, but I have run into a problem. I prefer everything to be as automated as humanely possible with very very little interaction from me. What I'd love is for my folders for the Daily Show and Colbert Report to automatically delete anything more than a week old, but haven't found anything to do this yet. Any ideas?

Re:EZTV + uTorrent + XBMC

[laxcat]

I use tvrss (which aggregates EZTV and others), but otherwise same here. XBMC FTW. I would pay for this service, but I can't find anyone providing it legally. Won't anyone provide it for me? Someone smart stands to make a lot of money here.

Re:EZTV + uTorrent + XBMC

[Anonymous Coward]

just add this to your crontab:

   find ~/mydownloaddir -mtime +7 -print0 | xargs -0 rm

Re:EZTV + uTorrent + XBMC

[hansamurai]

I wonder if something like Miro would have this built in? I don't know, never tried it.

I'm on a Windows box right now and if I wanted to do this quickly, I'd probably write a perl/python/etc. script to browse a directory and check the dates to see if they're older than 7 days, and if they are, delete them. Write a .bat file to run the script and then setup a Scheduled Task every morning or whatever to run the .bat file.

This is actually not a bad idea, if I get around to doing it I'll post the code.

Re:EZTV + uTorrent + XBMC

[Anonymous Coward]

The XBMC handles HD content fine... just need component cables. It will even upconvert for you. TVersity is actually the solution that needs a powerful system, because it encodes in real time to a format the 360 will use. I've downloaded HD content and looks amazing on my plasma.

Re:EZTV + uTorrent + XBMC

[gmb61]

Miro does have this functionality built in. Click on File, Options, Disk Space tab, and select a value from the drop-down list labeled "By default, videos expire after".

Re:EZTV + uTorrent + XBMC

[NoPantsJim]

"if I get around to doing it I'll post the code." please do, because I have no fucking clue what you just said. (I am new to programming)

Re:EZTV + uTorrent + XBMC

[Sancho]

It's honestly not the greatest solution. You lose all seeking/skipping when you transcode this way, and the colors really looked washed out.

Re:EZTV + uTorrent + XBMC

[Gizzmonic]

TW San Antonio's standard HD PVR (Scientific Atlanta 8300) has a FW output. Hook it up to a computer or DVHS VCR and you will get whatever HD channels you pay for in the clear, including ESPN HD. Don't know how long this will last, but as of now you can record HD that way (although it's a little glitchy).

Re:EZTV + uTorrent + XBMC

[pintpusher]

cron job

find /path/to/{daily_show,colbert_report} -ctime +6 -exec rm -f '{}' +

be sure to check it first by replacing rm with echo to confirm it gives the output you want.

Re:EZTV + uTorrent + XBMC

[Anonymous Coward]

I use the same setup, just a older pc instead of XMBC to get it to my TV. Like a few have posted IF content providers would have their own torrents with commericals embedded in that would come out before the ones on EZTV i would download them instead, assuming they weren't all DRMed up to the point they were useless and about the same quality that the scene releases. I actually watch commericals when im somewhere else.. since i havent seen any in so long.. But of course they would screw it up where i couldnt play the thing in the player i wanted to play it in, then their player/codec/whatever would get hacked.. etc.. besides the obvious thing that they wont do it till it is too late.. Then they would also look like some jackasses for using p2p to distribute considering how much they have bitched about it.

Re:EZTV + uTorrent + XBMC

[Emetophobe]

What codecs did you find TVersity was unable to play? Did you install ffdshow?

I'm curious since I just recently set up TVersity with my PS3.

Re:EZTV + uTorrent + XBMC

[cmeans]

It's not that TVersity was unable to play certain content, it seems more that those codecs had memory leaks or whatever, and tended to make my system unstable. I'm referring to the ACE Mega CoDecS Pack. It could have just been user error, but my system seemed to be come very unstable soon after I'd installed that codec suite. Given my general lack of familiarity with codecs, and a lack of time, I've really not had time to even figureo-out how to uninstall them (not sure if I can just delete files...things under Windows are much more touchy than some other OSs I could name).

Once cleaned, I'm hoping to get the CCCP (Combined Comunity Code Pack) installed, as I've read a few good things about it, and hope it will get my media machine going again.

Currently, I'm only using my original IO Data server code on the machine, and it won't talk to the PS3 or my DVR (DirecTV HR20).

Re:EZTV + uTorrent + XBMC

[Anonymous Coward]

so you researched, modded your xbox, setup XBMC, downloaded and installed uTorrent, networked your xbox to you pc, and found the best places to download your shows...and you can't be bothered to learn how to write a simple vbscript for windows or shell script for linux to delete files older than a certain date?

Re:EZTV + uTorrent + XBMC

[Zach978]

There are no linux transcoders that work with Xb 360 though, plus XBMC works pretty well for HD content in my experience...

Re:EZTV + uTorrent + XBMC

[stephanruby]

It sounds like netflix would work for you (thought I'm not sure if you'd be willing to wait for that content to show up on netflix).

Re:EZTV + uTorrent + XBMC

[NoPantsJim]

None of what you listed required any programming knowledge, whereas the scripting does. Additionally, I did ask about it didn't I? I never said I was unwilling to learn, just uncertain of where to start.

Re:EZTV + uTorrent + XBMC

[totally bogus dude]

There's a utility called FORFILES.EXE which I think is in the Windows 2000 resource kit. One of the options is to delete files older than a certain number of days.

If you don't have the resource kit around: http://morose.quex.org/Forfiles.exe (but only a fool would download a random exe from slashdot, right?)

FORFILES v 1.1 - by Emmanuel Boersma - 4/98

Syntax : FORFILES [-pPath] [-mSearch Mask] [-ccommand] [-dDDMMYY] [-s]

-pPath Path where to start searching
-mSearch Mask Search files according to <Search Mask>
-cCommand Command to execute on each file(s)
-d[+|-][DDMMYY|DD] Select files with date >= or <=DDMMYY (UTC)
or files having date >= or <= (current date - DD days)
-s Recurse directories
-v Verbose mode

This command should do the trick:

forfiles.exe -m*.avi -d-7 -c"CMD /C DEL @FILE"

Re:EZTV + uTorrent + XBMC

[ahoehn]

Yep, forgot to add that in there. Netflix is wonderful. Particularly since I live about 5 miles from a distribution center. But again, it doesn't solve the "Live Sporting Events Only Available on Cable" dilemma.

Fox has there shows online with less ad's then on.

[Joe The Dragon]

Fox has there shows online with less ad's then on tv and it download a lot faster then an torrent.

Tonight at 11

[Anonymous Coward]

CNET is accused of secondary copyright infringement and sued for $486785498557474566 due to allowing people easy access to copyrighted tv shows.

Re:Tonight at 11

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll watch the torrent in the morning.

Usenet rules!

[Anonymous Coward]

Newsgroups are far faster. A 45min program takes roughly a day for me via BT. It takes around 11min with a multi-threaded newsreader.

Re:Usenet rules!

[meringuoid]

Newsgroups are far faster. A 45min program takes roughly a day for me via BT. It takes around 11min with a multi-threaded newsreader.

Usenet? What is this Usenet? There is no Usenet. You do not talk about Usenet.

The truth of the matter is, kids, that newsgroups are old-fashioned, slow, full of spam, and incredibly fiddly to use at all. And nobody really does any more because we're all Web 2.0 nowadays. Don't bother with it. Go back to thepiratebay. Nothing for you to see here. Nope. Nothing. Really.

Re:Usenet rules!

[User 956]

Usenet? What is this Usenet? There is no Usenet. You do not talk about Usenet.

Exactly. The #1 rule of Usenet is YOU DO NOT TALK ABOUT USENET.

Re:Usenet rules!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's cute when you have an ISP with a decent news server, or are willing to spend money on Giganews, etc. For the rest of us who aren't twitching with impatience, a good private BT tracker works wonderfully.

Re:Usenet rules!

[meringuoid]

That's cute when you have an ISP with a decent news server, or are willing to spend money on Giganews, etc. For the rest of us who aren't twitching with impatience, a good private BT tracker works wonderfully.

True enough. I haven't really used newsgroups myself since 2003, when the BBC put Buffy on hold in the middle of season 6. P2P'd the rest of that season, caught up to the US, and found the binaries group that had new episodes a couple of days before the US airdate.

As for other shows: popular anime is always well seeded, and comes in large blocks of many episodes so you're not downloading stuff with the intention to watch it all right now. The only time I'm in a rush is when I've somehow managed to miss an episode of Heroes (following the BBC again here - I don't want to catch up to the US with this one, I'd be all spoileriffic). And if ever there was a well-seeded torrent, it's an episode of Heroes.

Re:Usenet rules!

[Hatta]

"Decent" when it comes to news servers mostly has to do with retention times. If you set something up to poll the news server every so often and automatically download only the things you want, i.e. much like RSS & bittorrent, retention times become moot because you're pulling things off the server pretty much as soon as they get there.

Re:Usenet rules!

[Cpt_Kirks]

Yep, I only get (some) pr0n off USENET now. I get my BBC goodness via "The Box". Took about a day to get all of Torchwood series one. Though, it comes to 4.7GB for all 13 episodes. WHO thought it was cute to have it just a wee bit over 4.37, anyway?

Re:Usenet rules!

[Anonymous Coward]

stfu

Re:Usenet rules!

[Anonymous Coward]

The Doctor did.

Re:Usenet rules!

[Cpt_Kirks]

Soon as I typed that, I expected a similar answer...

Re:Usenet rules!

[painkillr]

my private bt sites offer wayyyyyy more variety and organization (like whole seasons of tv shows) than newsgroups, fuck that shit

Re:Usenet rules!

[totally bogus dude]

A 45min program takes roughly a day for me via BT.

Then there is something hideously wrong with your internet connectivity or torrent client configuration. Or, possibly you just get really unlucky with your choice of torrents, but if it consistently takes roughly a day for you via BT then I'd say there's something wrong.

That said, use what works for you.

Re:Usenet rules!

[yabos]

What, you think they can actually shut down usenet? If they can't shut it down because of all other stuff on there(kiddie porn etc) they won't shut it down because you can download tv shows.

Re:Usenet rules!

[Anonymous Coward]

Usenet? What is this Usenet? There is no Usenet. You do not talk about Usenet.

Exactly. The #1 rule of Usenet is YOU DO NOT TALK ABOUT USENET.

The second rule of usenet: YOU DO NOT TALK ABOUT USENET!

So, are you saying that

[greenguy]

...there are cases where piracy is not easier than purchase?

Re:So, are you saying that

[Deadplant]

Usenet binaries?

Re:So, are you saying that

[Tatarize]

This torrent is passworded.

Find the fifth word on the fourth page of this website:
signup.spywarecrap.com/~9393032/leadidiotshere.htm

Re:So, are you saying that

[slazzy]

itunes - as long as money isn't an issue

Re:So, are you saying that

[Kjella]

If you compare kazaa and the iTunes store, yes. Smart people have found high-quality sources for many years, but the general public hasn't. Also most people don't have a HTPC setup, they want a nice pressed disc to put in their DVD player. Preferably a Chinese one which disobeys the use restrictions, but beyond that they don't feel the DRM and the prices are quite fine. And if you extend "purchase" to record shows instead of downloading them over the Internet, it probably is if you happen to live in the coverage area. It's not like you have to struggle very hard to find examples where it's not the case though...

Re:So, are you saying that

[Fireye]

Windows. I got so fed up with the constant WGA workarounds, I took the cheap way out and bought a legit OEM copy.

Re:So, are you saying that

[Tatarize]

Easier is one thing, faster is another. Honestly if the networks want to stay ahead, they should host their own torrents of the shows, in good quality, with the commercials built into the file and release them before they air. You could have the episode before it comes out on TV and thus many hours before the episode is released by other groups. Though, the folks are just going to download your ep and clip the commercials out. So you might want to imbed them in the show, or do quick ten second flashes of stuff from time to time.

I think they can stay ahead of the curve if they really need to. However, I don't think they will.

Re:So, are you saying that

[Anonymous Coward]

"Usenet binaries?"

More difficult, maybe, but definitely more fun! I love getting 137/138 chunks of a file and having to send a request for the last chunk and wait a couple weeks for it to be filled. More fun than watching grass dry... or paint grow... whatever...

Re:So, are you saying that

[mewsenews]

Steam.

People who had paid for Half-Life 2 were playing the game a full day before the pirates, which was a landmark in my estimation because usually pirated versions of games are flooding the internet a full week before the discs arrive on store shelves.

My regard has changed a little bit with the Steam version of Bioshock arriving with Securom (this mystifies me).

Re:So, are you saying that

[Captain Splendid]

Smart people have found high-quality sources for many years,

This is Slashdot. We tend to be those sources.

Re:So, are you saying that

[Anonymous Coward]

"constant WGA workarounds"? What? The only "workaround" you need is to use a serial key that's not on the blocked list.

Re:So, are you saying that

[xeoron]

How about downloading for time-shifting, if I pay for cable or whatever media service? I try and watch shows that networks post on their websites, if and when I miss a live broadcast, but Miro and other options sound far nicer than a DVR or VCR....content is already payed for by me so does it matter where I grab the content? If ads being stripped out or not is key to your answer, then realize I ignore ads, fast-ward, or take a break from the show until they end, so me watching them rarely happens anyways, thus it is a mute point.

Re:So, are you saying that

[NMerriam]

More difficult, maybe, but definitely more fun! I love getting 137/138 chunks of a file and having to send a request for the last chunk and wait a couple weeks for it to be filled. More fun than watching grass dry... or paint grow... whatever...

How is the weather back there in 1997?

Re:So, are you saying that

[cayenne8]

"More difficult, maybe, but definitely more fun! I love getting 137/138 chunks of a file and having to send a request for the last chunk and wait a couple weeks for it to be filled. More fun than watching grass dry... or paint grow... whatever..."

You might want to look into PAR and PAR2 files for these USENET posts...they will help you recreate the missing parts.

Err...well, they would do something like that, if, errr.....there were any useful content on USENET, which of course...there is not.

;-P

Re:So, are you saying that

[d0rp]

I've been thinking for years that they'd be better off putting up their own torrents with the commercials intact at the same time as it airs. I'd be more inclined to download that than the one that surfaces several hours later with the commercials stripped out.

But I like your idea of releasing them before they air, that would really give people even more incentive to download the legitimate copies (in which they can still have their commercials). Though, I absolutely hate the idea of them embedding the commercials into the show itself, that's just tacky and distracting.

I got optimistic when some of the major studios started offering their shows online, until I found out that the quality was no where near that of your typical torrent,you have to watch it in a tiny box inside your web browser and they only offer it a day or more after the broadcast. They still don't get it.

The funny thing is that offering the shows online in an easily downloadable and viewable format, without any DRM (and even without the commercials) would actually help their shows a great deal overall, but they seem to fail to see the big picture. There are still a lot of people out there that don't know how to find and download the shows online and don't have a DVR that records for them automatically, so when they miss an episode of a show that will leave you clueless and baffled if you miss an episode or two (such as LOST or 24), they'll likely just stop watching. If they could easily watch the episode(s) they missed on demand, then they'll keep watching the show when its broadcast (and thus watch the commercials).

Re:So, are you saying that

[compro01]

bought a legit OEM copy.

and wound up having to use the same workarounds, as WGA is a steaming pile of false positives.

Re:So, are you saying that

[bughunter]

there are cases where piracy is not easier than purchase?

Yes, there are cases. Here are some examples:

- Content available on iTunes. So easy my wife does it.

- Content available via broadcast. Get a tuner card and EyeTV or MythTV. Add Toast Platinum if you want to watch on iPod.

- Content available via Netflix. (Wanna keep a copy? MacTheRipper + Toast. Not that I've done that...) - Bittorrent breaks your Airport. I dunno, but it does. Thruput trickles to a halt in about 30 minutes, and nothing on the WiFi network can get any kind of bandwith, on any protocol, until the Airport is reset... Read somewhere that the packets confuse Apple's WEP encryption firmware.

If somebody wants to help me fix the last one, I'd be happy to use Miro for the things not available via the first three options. (Can't switch to WPA -- wife's Windows laptop VPN connection to her office breaks.)

Re:So, are you saying that

[J-1000]

Easier is one thing, faster is another. Honestly if the networks want to stay ahead, they should host their own torrents of the shows, in good quality, with the commercials built into the file and release them before they air. You could have the episode before it comes out on TV and thus many hours before the episode is released by other groups. Though, the folks are just going to download your ep and clip the commercials out. So you might want to imbed them in the show, or do quick ten second flashes of stuff from time to time. I think they can stay ahead of the curve if they really need to. However, I don't think they will.

I'd settle for them releasing the DVDs in a timely manner.

Re:So, are you saying that

[halcyon1234]

OK, I'll chime in on this one.

I download seventeen and a half craptons of TV (stuff I've missed or that isn't available in my area). I hate commercials. I can't afford the same craptonage of DVDs (I'm a student), nor would I actually purchase most of this watch-once stuff.

HOWEVER...

If:

• the broadcasters / content owners were to host high quality episodes on their website
• IF that content was near HD quality, proper resolution, proper sound, no "fake black bars"-- call it ~800MB for a 1 hour show
• those episodes were just as fast or faster than the sometimes-slow-as-molasses "pirated" sites (I'm fine with Torrents, if taking some of the bandwidth load is a pre-req to them offering large media files 24/7)
• Those files were available at the same time, or minutes earlier, than the broadcast
• These were actually downloadable files that I could watch on my own time, on my own machine, with my own software, without any DRM (read: *NOT* in a flash player)

Then I could tolerate ONE commercial per break without reaching for the mute or fast-forward button. One 30-secondish commercial. It might be a benefit, in fact. I kind of like that brief pause between "scenes". It gives you a minute to digest it all before leaping into the next scene. I *MIGHT* even tolerate a 10-second overlay ad at the bottom of the screen (provided it's small, silent, and doesn't cover up any on-screen text like they do now you fuckers!). In fact, if the providers were smart, they'd have a script that inserts different commercials every week so that they aren't stale (and they can sell more "time" to advertisers)

That's my conditions. Anything more than that, and it becomes easier/more desirable to fast forward the commercials, or find someone who has clipped the commercials, or clip them myself.

Re:So, are you saying that

[zCyl]

In fact, if the providers were smart, they'd have a script that inserts different commercials every week so that they aren't stale (and they can sell more "time" to advertisers)

This is quite right. One of the worst things about video advertising on the web so far is its painful redundancy. For example, if I watch 30 short videos on metacafe, I can NOT tolerate seeing 30 identical advertisements for the Bourne Ultimatum. All things like that do is make me irritated with both the service and the product being advertised.

Re:So, are you saying that

[Goldrush]

I think CBS is somewhat doing this with Jericho. They are offering the whole season free in many places like Veoh to generate hype for Season 2.

Re:So, are you saying that

[pilgrim23]

I gave up on network television around 1982. Now and then I tune in the networks on my set (Arial only, no cable, and when that goes digital it is good bye for good!). What I have seen of late makes me glad of my decision. I do watch television though, My main interest is BBC documentaries (not available by any means in the US except torrents), some Canadian shows (also blocked), Finish TV, some fascinating stuff out of Australia. In other words: the promise TV gave us back in the 1950s; a chance to view our whole world. For pure entertainment I buy DVDs and yes, grab torrents but that is usually of things I recall with fondness from the 1970s. oh and the torrents of shows back then are usually of private VHS recordings in that the originals are sometimes gone (find me the Jim Hutton Ellery Queen PLEASE!!!) or the color balance is ruined with age. I want entertainment, and INFORMATION the current crap is whatever it is but that it is not.

Re:So, are you saying that

[Bluesman]

>Now and then I tune in the networks on my set (Arial only, no cable...

Huh. I tend to watch network TV in Comic Sans.

Re:So, are you saying that

[Sancho]

Check out hellanzb.

Re:So, are you saying that

[Sancho]

The funny thing is that offering the shows online in an easily downloadable and viewable format, without any DRM (and even without the commercials) would actually help their shows a great deal overall, but they seem to fail to see the big picture. I doubt that enough people miss an ep and then stop watching to even matter, and that's really the only scenario where providing the shows online and commercial-free would help. Including commercials, they'll just be skipped anyway (like they are on DVRs.)

And frankly, if you aren't watching commercials, you don't matter to the network.

Re:So, are you saying that

[pilgrim23]

the news is in wingdings. I typed "aerial" and was corrected by my spellchecker..

Re:So, are you saying that

[Anonymous Coward]

The question was, "there are cases where piracy is not easier than purchase?"

One of your responses stands out to me:

"- Content available via broadcast. Get a tuner card and EyeTV or MythTV. Add Toast Platinum if you want to watch on iPod."

You actually think that's easier than simply browsing to your favourite torrent site, clicking on a single link, and having the entire TV show downloaded to a file on your desktop in twenty minutes? I don't know, I tend to think torrents are a lot easier than buying and configuring a tuner card, then setting up MythTV properly. Granted, your suggestion is pretty simple, but I don't think it's easier than the alternative. Plus, you'd have to edit out the commercials yourself.

This article has a very valid point: pirating TV shows currently is a lot easier then acquiring them legally. I don't want to stream things from the network's website, I don't want files loaded with DRM that'll prevent me from viewing it on another medium, and I don't want to mess around with ripping my own content. I can literally click the mouse four times on a Friday afternoon and within 30 minutes, I'll have the latest Mythbusters to watch. Hell, if I wanted to get technical with RSS feeds, I could have the file download itself at the same time each week without any intervention whatsoever, and I'd simply notice a new file on my desktop when I got home from work. You cannot tell me that there is an easier way to obtain shows legitimately.

I should also mention that I'm not in the United States, and that torrents are essentially my only option if I want to watch a TV show without waiting the 9 to 12 months it takes for our networks to air stuff.

Re:So, are you saying that

[bughunter]

I don't know, I tend to think torrents are a lot easier than buying and configuring a tuner card, then setting up MythTV properly.

Well, perhaps you don't know. I suspect you've made some difficult choices to compare to torrent videos. I recommend you try an Elgato external tuner and their EyeTV 2 PVR application. I had it out of the box and was watching TV on my iMac rev A in under 5 minutes. Configuring the hardware was a matter of selecting my tuner hardware model number from a drop down list. The biggest hassle was waiting for the autotuner to find all the channels on my cable feed, but that took all of 2 minutes. It was exactly like setting up a new VCR.

I just downloaded Miro and set it up, and it is indeed easy -- relative to previous BT clients I've used. However, not compared to EyeTV -- it took more than 15 minutes to D/L and install the application, find an RSS for a program I wanted, figure out exactly which URL the application wanted, and get the download started. And then I waited an hour for the 22-minute program to download. If I were not already familiar with the concepts of BT and RSS, I probably wouldn't be calling it "easy," at all.

Now, if Miro came with RSS feeds to the entire repertoire of network programming, licensed by the networks, pre-configured and well-seeded -- THEN it would be easier.

If the networks were smart, they'd be looking at this application as a model for their future distribution medium. However, based on their past neophobic tendencies, i fear that they will be afraid of it rather than embrace it.

Re:So, are you saying that

[empaler]

"The key you have used has been activated too many times. Please call our support hotline if you believe this is an error.".


!!!!!!

Re:So, are you saying that

[LordSnooty]

Then I could tolerate ONE commercial per break without reaching for the mute or fast-forward button.

My, that's very generous of you!

Re:So, are you saying that

[RobertLTux]

and the problem is what happens if
1 some worm/virus decides to begin scooping keys and they then get posted
2 somebody uses a keygen and begins to post/broadcast lists of keys
3 Microsoft then finds the listings and begins to block those keys
4 your key is posted
5 you get a new key and then 1 happens again (or 2)
6 the rep decides that you are the one posting the key

Re:So, are you saying that

[DocSavage64109]

Actually, I'm just like him. I happen to detest commercials and don't watch *any* live tv anymore because of them. Netflix and torrents provide my tv entertainment now. I do, however, believe I can withstand just one 30 second commercial per break. They could even charge the advertiser more for the spot, as the commercial doesn't have any competition and would make a bigger impression because of it.

Re:So, are you saying that

[jamstar7]

Windows. I got so fed up with the constant WGA workarounds, I took the cheap way out and bought a legit OEM copy.

I took the cheaper way out. I installed Ubuntu.

Re:So, are you saying that

[mpe]

Easier is one thing, faster is another. Honestly if the networks want to stay ahead, they should host their own torrents of the shows, in good quality,

This means without things like on-screen ratings, station IDs, promos for other things, credits being talked over/squashed, etc. In other words a "cleaner" version that would be available from a broadcast

with the commercials built into the file and release them before they air.

You could have the episode before it comes out on TV and thus many hours before the episode is released by other groups. Though, the folks are just going to download your ep and clip the commercials out.

Commercials are likely to be removed for several reasons. They increase the size of the download. Nearly a third of the output of some broadcasters is advertisments of some kind or other. They are a distraction from the actual content. Most of these adverts are utterly meaningless to most potential viewers, they couldn't buy the things being advertised even if they wanted to (or it would be easier/cheaper to buy from a local supplier. Rather than from the other side of the planet, paying shippers and bankers.).

So you might want to imbed them in the show, or do quick ten second flashes of stuff from time to time.

The latter may well result in something nobody would watch without editing. Unless you did the same to the actual broadcast then "pirates" would simply use that as source material, since it requires less editing.

Re:So, are you saying that

[mpe]

How about downloading for time-shifting, if I pay for cable or whatever media service?

Most likely copyright issues make providing such a video on demand service difficult.

but Miro and other options sound far nicer than a DVR or VCR....

A video recorder is only any use if you remember to set it...

Re:So, are you saying that

[mpe]

You actually think that's easier than simply browsing to your favourite torrent site, clicking on a single link, and having the entire TV show downloaded to a file on your desktop in twenty minutes? I don't know, I tend to think torrents are a lot easier than buying and configuring a tuner card, then setting up MythTV properly.

In practice you may need multiple tuner cards to actually be sure of getting the content you actually want to watch :)

I can literally click the mouse four times on a Friday afternoon and within 30 minutes, I'll have the latest Mythbusters to watch. Hell, if I wanted to get technical with RSS feeds, I could have the file download itself at the same time each week without any intervention whatsoever, and I'd simply notice a new file on my desktop when I got home from work.

Mythbusters is an interesting example, given that in the latest series they put extra scenes on the website. It probably wouldn't be too difficult for Discovery to put together a "director's cut" thus being able to offer a legitimate download which is better than any pirate version.

I should also mention that I'm not in the United States, and that torrents are essentially my only option if I want to watch a TV show without waiting the 9 to 12 months it takes for our networks to air stuff.

It isn't always the US which gets things first. What do you think US based Doctor Who fans do?
There are even some series where the first episodes air first in the US, but the last episodes air first in the UK or Canada.

Re:So, are you saying that

[Anonymous Coward]

- Content available on iTunes. So easy my wife does it. Is she also stupid?

The point of this article is?

[paullb]

TV shows have been available on bittorrent since it came about and before that they were (and still are) on newsgroups and irc.

Re:Zonk

[Anonymous Coward]

Check your grammar retard.

Ok - I just checked on him, and everything looks fine. His water bowl is full, he's got a fresh copy of Roget's Thesaurus and he's dressed in his "Eats, Shoots & Leaves" pyjamas. Am I missing something?

NBC Offers Their Shows on Their Site

[baez]

If you go to www.nbc.com there's a big ol' link right there at the top: Watch Episodes. Why would you pay for or "steal" something that they're giving away for free anyway? Works great in Firefox/Kubuntu for me as well...

Re:NBC Offers Their Shows on Their Site

[Lev13than]

If you go to www.nbc.com there's a big ol' link right there at the top: Watch Episodes. Why would you pay for or "steal" something that they're giving away for free anyway? Works great in Firefox/Kubuntu for me as well...

Because NBC won't stream videos to foreign IP addresses, and running through an open proxy is rarely fast enough for video.

Re:NBC Offers Their Shows on Their Site

[prockcore]

Not only that, but last night I used Amazon's Unbox to download a bunch of NBC pilots to my tivo. It was painless and free.

Re:NBC Offers Their Shows on Their Site

[athdemo]

Yeah, I recall in the story about the pull from iTunes there were number of posts about how now it's "easier to steal," but not only can you get them from their own website, but you can purchase the DVD's. Sure, waiting for DVD's means you won't be able to see them the second they come out, but since when were you entitled to that right, anyway? Especially in light of their availability online through legal means.

Re:NBC Offers Their Shows on Their Site

[Kelson]

Well, the image quality on the video at NBC's website isn't as good as what I've seen on the few random episodes of shows that I've watched on iTunes. And they do take stuff down over time. I remember there was something like a 1-month gap between NBC dropping the season 1 Heroes episodes from their website and the release of the first season DVD set.

Re:NBC Offers Their Shows on Their Site

[Deadplant]

"We're sorry, but the clip you selected isn't available from your location.
Please select another clip." -NBC

Also their decent shows are not available at all. They only seem to be posting full episodes of their crap shows. (no Heroes for you!)
They also seem to take longer to get their new episodes online than do the torrenting pirates. ...Also... it seems to be one of these crap flash player things. I'm not sure how easy it would be to get that to display full-screen on my TV.

Re:NBC Offers Their Shows on Their Site

[baez]

I haven't had the image quality problem. In fact I was just watching the Friday Night Lights pilot, and I was surprised at how good it looked. Also I'm not sure if you're saying that the image quality was good on iTunes or not...? But I must say I really hated watching the episodes from iTunes (granted this was when TV eps first appeared on iTunes, so things may have changed). They were formated for the iPod, so they were only something like 320 resolution. Scaling that up to watch on my 1600x1200 PC monitor was ... painful.

Re:NBC Offers Their Shows on Their Site

[baez]

The Heroes episodes were available a day after they aired last season. I expect they'll do the same this season (11 more days, woohoo!). And I think the episodes were available for quite some time after the season ended. But as another poster above mentioned, they removed the Heroes eps from their website after the DVDs were released. I'm not sure I can fault them for doing that...

Re:NBC Offers Their Shows on Their Site

[Captain Splendid]

They also seem to take longer to get their new episodes online than do the torrenting pirates

No kidding. I made it home too late one wednesday night to catch Lost, but I had it ready to watch less than two hours after the show ended.

Re:NBC Offers Their Shows on Their Site

[suv4x4]

they removed the Heroes eps from their website after the DVDs were released. I'm not sure I can fault them for doing that...

You can, don't worry. Would it hurt them too much to offer cheap downloads online. Cut the middleman, get more sales.

Not to mention they limit it all to US audience.

Re:NBC Offers Their Shows on Their Site

[Hatta]

With my favorite torrent site, all the shows I want are available in one place with an easy RSS feed. I don't have to open a web browser, or look for anything. They all just automatically appear on my hard drive. Until they can match the same ease of use, piracy wins hands down.

Re:NBC Offers Their Shows on Their Site

[TheSkyIsPurple]

Why would I want to step away from my remote control?

I have my Mac Mini setup on my TV, and I drop movie files on it from my real desktop.
I don't want to have to browse to their site on a screen too small to fit everything, have it not use the full screen, have depend on my network connection working, etc...

I want to sit my ass down, hit the remote, select my show, and get fat.

Re:NBC Offers Their Shows on Their Site

[Scrameustache]

If you go to www.nbc.com there's a big ol' link right there at the top: Watch Episodes. Why would you pay for or "steal" something that they're giving away for free anyway? Works great in Firefox/Kubuntu for me as well... Because they're sorry that this content is not available to people outside of the united states?
Or because their player sucks like a million shopvacs?

Re:NBC Offers Their Shows on Their Site

[Kelson]

I think it depends on the show. The few episodes I've seen were of Veronica Mars this past spring, and they were definitely higher-res than 320px, possibly 640x480. They looked fine at fullscreen on 1280x1024. I got the impression, though I don't recall where, that it'll downsample video to the lower resolution when syncing to an iPod, but I could be mistaken.

As for the website's streaming quality, maybe I just need to get a faster connection.

Re:NBC Offers Their Shows on Their Site

[Poeir]

I suspect people pulling from the iTunes store were loading video onto their iPod and watching it while commuting or the like. At any rate, on their iPod without Internet access.

Re:NBC Offers Their Shows on Their Site

[Onan]

Because watching the content through nbc's website is hugely inconvenient:

- I'd have to be watching it on a currently-net-connected computer. No watching it on my phone while on a plane.

- They probably only offer current or at most current-season episodes, right? So I'd still be locked into watching one episode per week, missing something if I skip a week, and unable to start from the beginning with new-to-me shows that have been out a few years?

- If they don't let you keep episodes locally, there goes finding a good show and then bringing friends into watching it later on. You all start at once or they miss parts.

- I don't want to have to maintain different sources and interactions with shows based upon whether they're distributed by NBC, ABC, HBO, BBC, or anyone else. I don't even want to know or care who distributed them, I just care about the content itself.

Captive streaming from a distributor's website is worse than using something like the itunes store for all the same reasons that watching live television is worse than using something like tivo. It locks you into the scheduling of the broacaster rather than granting you the freedom to interact with whatever content you want when and how you want.

If you're really really really broke, I guess that watching via a captive website or antenna might be the only choice. But if your time and flexibility are worth much to you, paying a couple of bucks per episode of content you find worthwhile seems to be an immensely good deal.

Re:NBC Offers Their Shows on Their Site

[HTH NE1]

I just connect my Mac to my cable box with a Firewire cable and use it to record the episode in HD as it airs. If I want to I can transcode it to anamorphic DVD with 5.1 sound or to 3x DVD. And the websites for TV series provide assets that can be readily turned into homebrew DVD menus and extras as long as they're not too Flash-dependent.

Unfortunately, when some networks decide to cancel a series, rather than airing the remaining episodes, they sit on them or only show them on the web, like Fox with Drive, so even homebrewers can't get a complete series. And will they even bother to release such a short-run series to standard DVD let alone HD? (With TV contracts as they are, can they if they were never broadcast? I'm still waiting for a US release of the Fox Doctor Who TV-movie, apparently held up by a contract requiring one more broadcast airing by Fox before a Region 1 release can be made. FX and other cable channels apparently don't count.)

My ethics demand that if I make my own set and later they release it commercially, I buy that version too. After all, it should have features I couldn't get for myself.

Re:NBC Offers Their Shows on Their Site

[Kelson]

But as another poster above mentioned, they removed the Heroes eps from their website after the DVDs were released.

Just a minor point: they removed the episodes before the DVDs were released. They pulled them from the site (or at least planned to) early in August, and the DVDs came out at the end of the month. There were several weeks during which the episodes weren't available at all. (Well, maybe on iTunes, now that I think about it!)

Re:NBC Offers Their Shows on Their Site

[repvik]

I see your ease of use and raise you with an SMS-alert ;-)
My HTPC keeps track of all my favourite TV-shows using a RSS-feed, grabs new torrents hourly (bit overkill actually, but good for sleepless nights), sends me an SMS that the show is downloaded and seeds the torrents for a while to up my credit. It took a fair while to set up, but damn it's convenient. My router runs linux, so all bandwidth-intensive traffic is shaped. I never notice that the bandwidth is being used. I'm not demanding an equally nice solution from content-providers, that would be unreasonable IMHO. But I'm quite willing to pay for a solution that approaches mine and is completely legal and DRM free.

Re:NBC Offers Their Shows on Their Site

[antdude]

Streaming sucks. You can't put it on iPod and other portable players.

Re:NBC Offers Their Shows on Their Site

[Sancho]

Glad it works for you. Clicking on an episode just does nothing on my box.

Ubuntu 7.04, most recent Flash player.

Re:NBC Offers Their Shows on Their Site

[Mr. Arbusto]

Because it was a painfully designed website, and every episode I watched was sponsored by the Government's click or ticket campaign which is bullshit on two fronts.

Re:NBC Offers Their Shows on Their Site

[Chrontius]

All full-length episodes are posted by 5am ET the day after they air. Episode are available for a limited time only. Click on a show below to watch now.

        * 30 Rock
        * Age of Love
        * Andy Barker PI
        * The Black Donnellys
        * Friday Night Lights
        * Last Comic Standing
        * Late Night with Conan O'Brien
        * Miss Teen USA 2007
        * NBC Primetime Preview
        * Passions
        * Raines
        * Victoria Beckham: Coming to America

Note the distinct lack of Heroes and Battlestar Galactica, the only NBC shows I'm interested in. Fuck, Passions? Why waste the drive space on that shit.

Re:NBC Offers Their Shows on Their Site

[Brett Buck]

Look at the list of shows available, and I think you will quickly see that you are getting what you paid for...

        Brett

Re:NBC Offers Their Shows on Their Site

[Anonymous Coward]

Because NBC won't stream videos to foreign IP addresses, and running through an open proxy is rarely fast enough for video.

Interestingly enough, at least in Linux, it seems that the Macromedia Flash player does not obey Firefox's proxy setting. Last I checked, those websites do the country check in the browser, which can use a proxy, and then Flash doesn't go through the proxy -- and thus streams at full speed.

I wouldn't be surprised if this was changed recently, or if it was to change in the near future.

Re:NBC Offers Their Shows on Their Site

[GiMP]

When TV on iTunes first appeared, the videos were at 320x240; however, that was since changed to 640x480, and I believe for some shows, 720x480. Immediately after the upgrade, there were a lot of complaints, however, that the older shows were upscaled from the original 320x240 files and that only new shows were being encoded at a true 640x480/720x480 resolution.

I'm not sure if they ever re-encoded the files that were at one point upscaled from 320x240, but I haven't run into any such files personally.

Re:NBC Offers Their Shows on Their Site

[GiMP]

Not to mention they limit it all to US audience.

Well, they were just showing Heroes over the summer in Poland. I'm not sure if it was a hit or not, but its hard for such shows to be successful when they're voiced-over... I really wish Poland would move to subtitles, but then again, it could have something to do with the literacy rate -- and quality dubbing is expensive.

Re:NBC Offers Their Shows on Their Site

[GiMP]

I'm not sure what is going on over at NBC. Last year they had The Office available to watch on their website but pulled it mid-season -- I suspect that is why The Office was consistently iTunes' top TV download.

I love Heroes, but I won't watch it this year if it isn't available on neither their website or iTunes. I could watch on bittorrent, but it really is NOT convenient, no matter what CNET says.

Re:NBC Offers Their Shows on Their Site

[suv4x4]

Well, they were just showing Heroes over the summer in Poland. I'm not sure if it was a hit or not, but its hard for such shows to be successful when they're voiced-over... I really wish Poland would move to subtitles, but then again, it could have something to do with the literacy rate -- and quality dubbing is expensive.

It's more about wrong perception. You see, in USA people are really receiving subtitled movies poorly. I've heard of plenty of silly stories where they'd by a non-US title (such as Pan's Labyrinth - outstanding movie) and returning it, whining "but it's subtitled, I didn't know that!".

So the studios demand that titles are dubbed in other countries, hoping for a better profit. Likewise for the translated game titles.

And just like you, I think they just wreck it and make it unwatchable/unplayable. Their target audience knows English quite well, but they can't figure it out we prefer subtitles versus totally ruining the sound of the movie.

Re:NBC Offers Their Shows on Their Site

[Anonymous Coward]

I love it how all the foreigners love to pirate our stuff yet don't realize that the reason shows are so good is because of the money poured into all the development from advertising.
That is the reason a lot of foreign shows/movies and a lot of other things fail to take off or actors/actress come to America to really expand their carrer and talent.

I don't like foreigners snubbing their socialist noses about our economy yet all they do is leech all of the great quality material America produces. All foot in mouth from a lot of the nerds view of the world by their 17x17 inch view of the world.

If copyright is so bad with capitalism than why haven't the other Socialist countries produce material that people actually demand since so many people around here claim that if the copyright laws were loosened that the music industry would somehow become better.
Music/movie industry has its highs and lows; yet the internet nerd is preying on this down slope as an excuse to change some laws and complain about the RIAA. /capatilist rant over

Re:NBC Offers Their Shows on Their Site

[crazybilly]

I don't know what's up right now. But I watched 100% of Heroes that way (I wanted to support them doing something that was at least on the right track) and the second half of Studio 60 the same way. Lost (on ABC) is going the same way--I used to torrent them, but if they're going to post them online (for free with minimal commercials), I'll sit through the commericals as long as they're not long or overly obnoxious. I'm not willing to pay for my TV--i don't love it that much. But I'm willing to watch commercials if I don't have a choice, and I want to send a message to the people who are making decisions that alternate distribution models are good ideas.

Re:NBC Offers Their Shows on Their Site

[Masked Phrogg]

If you go to www.nbc.com there's a big ol' link right there at the top: Watch Episodes. Why would you pay for or "steal" something that they're giving away for free anyway? Works great in Firefox/Kubuntu for me as well...

They should be paying the viewers to watch that #!#$#
Yes, it's viewable in Firefox (on Debian#etch# Linux)
But why anyone would want to....

btw that's a Penguin on Jessica Alba's panties
for anyone that got to see the _Good Luck Chuck_ commercial a zillion times during a show

Seriously, how stupid do you have to be...

[Man On Pink Corner]

... to be a TV executive? Is there some kind of test you have to fail, or something?

Clue stick to head of NBC: Jobs knows what he's doing. Trust him. Give him your content, tell him to do whatever he wants with it, and go play golf or something.

Why don't NBC's stockholders revolt against the kind of mismanagement that throws away free money and turns content-distribution power over to pirates?

Re:Seriously, how stupid do you have to be...

[yincrash]

Jobs knows what he's doing. Trust him. Give him your content, tell him to do whatever he wants with it, and go play golf or something.

Um. I don't know about you, but if I was an executive, I'm not sure I would agree with that at all. "Shareholders, I'm going to trust our content to another corporate executive in another company, how does that sound?"

Re:Seriously, how stupid do you have to be...

[Colin Smith]

Narcissistic personalities. Got to be in control.

Re:Seriously, how stupid do you have to be...

[techpawn]

Didn't someone say the same thing about the bush administration after 9/11? To just give him what he wants he knows what he's doing?

If they don't like the business model they don't HAVE to follow it, they can TRY to compete, in the end it will be fruitless but we'll have, what we call, competition.

Re:Seriously, how stupid do you have to be...

[levork]

Why don't NBC's stockholders revolt against the kind of mismanagement that throws away free money and turns content-distribution power over to pirates?

NBC's stockholders have other, perhaps more compelling reasons besides this to revolt. NBC's Nielsen ratings have been terrible for at least two years. There have been entire weeks in 2006-2007 where NBC doesn't even have a top-ten show in the ratings - not exactly great for attracting advertisers, which is really what the whole business model is based on. Their top-rated show in April was "Deal or No Deal" - coming in at #23. At this point coming up with shows that attract eyeballs on television should probably be the more important priority. Yes, that still doesn't excuse NBC from being short sighted when it comes to pulling their few shows that actually are popular from iTunes.

Also: NBC's stockholders are GE stockholders, and GE has been doing pretty well.

Re:Seriously, how stupid do you have to be...

[Bruitist]

"Why the fuck would you do that?" "He's the guy who came up with the iPod" "Oh... "

Re:Seriously, how stupid do you have to be...

[Nimey]

The obvious difference is that Jobs *does* in fact know his business, while Bush... damn.

Re:Seriously, how stupid do you have to be...

[garett_spencley]

NBC is a distributor. They don't produce the content, they buy it and then redistribute it. Jobs is also a distributor. See the conflict of interest ?

You make it sound like NBC produces the content themselves and that they should let Jobs distribute it. The problem is that NBC is, and always has been, in the distribution business. Not the production business. They may purchase and license the exclusive rights to distribute the content, but it's not *their* content. So the only way it makes sense for them to set up shop with Apple is if they, as a distributor, are making money by letting Apple redistribute the content.

In this scenario NBC becomes a middle-man. Now I'm only speculating but I would think that NBC believes that they, as a distributor, can make more money by distributing the content that they're already distributing themselves rather than letting someone else do it for them while they sit back and do absolutely nothing to further or grow their business at all. When NBC is a middle-man it's only thanks to sticky contracts that producers don't just go to Apple and other online distributors directly. That's probably a very likely scenario in the future and one which NBC wants to make sure doesn't ever happen.

Re:Seriously, how stupid do you have to be...

[Selfbain]

I think the RDF is a better reason.

Re:Seriously, how stupid do you have to be...

[TheGreatHegemon]

Jobs knows what he's doing to help APPLE. Why the hell should he have NBC's best interests at heart?

Re:Seriously, how stupid do you have to be...

[fishdan]

Maybe NBC doesn't like the ITMS model, and believes once you buy content, it's yours to do whatever the hell you want to with it? Maybe NBC wants to move to a subscription model? Maybe NBC realizes there is nothing significantly innovative about the technology behind ITMS except that its content is defective by design.

Maybe not

Re:Seriously, how stupid do you have to be...

[MushMouth]

Steve Jobs is also the largest shareholder (by a huge margin) of one of NBC's 3 largest competitors, ABC. There may be a little bit of a conflict of interest there.

Re:Seriously, how stupid do you have to be...

[Anonymous Coward]

Creating the iPod is not good enough a reason for entrusting Jobs with contents. Creating a viable download market for music is, though. I don't think anyone - aside from record label executives - forgets that before iTunes (Music) Store opened, record labels were losing money hand over fist from investing in fragmented, consumer-unfriendly download services that couldn't compete with P2P services. Jobs got them together, put down a proposal for a DRM that didn't overly screw customers for a reasonable price and promised that customers would pay for such services. 3 billions downloads later, $0.99 and iTunes Store's term of use are very much the standard in the industry and iTunes Store has made tons of money for record labels.

Faced with the same problems as the music industry did, Jobs could do the same thing for video downloads. However, the NBC executive dinosaurs fear Jobs gaining future bargaining power than they fear losing money to the P2P services. Control, that pretty much sums it up.

Re:Seriously, how stupid do you have to be...

[RealGrouchy]

Why don't NBC's stockholders revolt against the kind of mismanagement that throws away free money and turns content-distribution power over to pirates?

Because as stockholders, they (more or less) give the company a bunch of money, tell them to do whatever they want with it, and go play golf or something.

- RG>

Re:Seriously, how stupid do you have to be...

[B3ryllium]

I think you might be misinformed on the size of the NBC corporation ...

Re:Seriously, how stupid do you have to be...

[c]

> Why don't NBC's stockholders revolt against the kind of mismanagement

Well, it's a whole lot like US presidential elections. The stockholders have a choice between a moron with a degree from Yale, a moron with a degree from Harvard, a lunatic who claims "profit isn't everything", and a monkey with a lot of inherited shares.

Now, if you ask me "why did NBC stockholders vote for the monkey?", I'm afraid I don't have a good answer.

c.

Re:Seriously, how stupid do you have to be...

[Oktober Sunset]

I think you are misunderstanding the concept of reputation here. Reputation is based on past performance, so Steve Jobs has his successes with the Mac, the iMac, the iPod, and iTunes here. Thus getting him to distribute your video content would be a sensible course of action.

Bush on the other hand, after 9/11 has the achievements of snorting a lot of coke, being an alcoholic, lying, fucking things up and getting bailed out by rich friends or daddy, dodging the draft, lying, desertion during time of war, cheating an election, lying, and responding to the 9/11 attacks by reading a book about goats for half an hour. One thing he was well known for not doing was catching terrorist, and protecting America, with a total of 0 terrorist caught,and 2,974 Americans dead, his reputation could not have been much worse.

Based on his reputation at that point, letting him have free reign to fight a crazy war against terrorist would be a bad course of action considering his reputation, the best course of action would probably have been to shoot him straight away before he fucked up even more.

Re:Seriously, how stupid do you have to be...

[DannyO152]

It may just be a paragraph in the deal some money up front and a percentage of ownership down the road, but they are producers now as well. Their ownership in a property is a factor in deciding scheduling and renewal.

Re:Seriously, how stupid do you have to be...

[Eskarel]

TBH NBC shareholders should have been revolting when NBC spent an entire year filling thursday nights(the nights NBC totally owned) without nothing but episodes of a show that was going to finish at the end of that year(this was "Friends" for those who can't remember 3 years ago). Or before that when NBC played the time-slot shuffle with every new show they brought out so that no one knew when anything was actually on(except of course friends) and shows that were doing reaosnably well ended up with no ratings and cancelled. Everything they've done since just made life worse.

For all intents and purposes NBC was seinfeld, friends, fraser and maybe will and grace. Guess what none of those shows run anymore.

Re:Seriously, how stupid do you have to be...

[Scudsucker]

Jobs knows what he's doing to help APPLE. Why the hell should he have NBC's best interests at heart?

Because the more NBC shows he sells the more money he will make. Duh.

Re:Seriously, how stupid do you have to be...

[Scudsucker]

There is no conflict of interest, as they both want to distribute content and get paid for it. The conflict is over NBC wanting to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs, and Jobs refusing to go along with it.

Re:Seriously, how stupid do you have to be...

[Scudsucker]

There may be a little bit of a conflict of interest there.

Since ABC was getting the same deal as NBC, I think you maybe a little bit worried over nothing. It wasn't a conflict over interest, it was a conflict of NBC wanting to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs and Jobs refusing to go along.

comma

[Anonymous Coward]

Check your grammar, retard.

Re:comma

[pclminion]

Silly offtopic question. Is a comma really a part of the grammar? Punctuation is not spoken. Writing is synthetic. When is the last time you pronounced a period, for instance?

The brief pause between the words "grammar" and "retard" helps convey the proper meaning, but it is really a part of the grammar?

Re:comma

[lazarusdishwasher]

When is the last time you pronounced a period, for instance?

I do not pronounce punctuation that often, but I have seen it done.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7L02tCNi0I

Re:comma

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually I think it's the other way around.

Is grammar == spelling?
Is orthography == grammar?

google tells me
The orthography of a language is the set of rules of how to write correctly in the writing system of a language. The term is derived from Greek ortho- ("correct") and graphos ("that writes") and, in today's sense, includes spelling and punctuation.
# en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthography

# The art of spelling.
www.catch-word.com/glossary.html

And about grammar
Grammar is the study of the rules governing the use of a language. The set of those rules is also called the grammar of the language, and each language has its own distinct grammar. Grammar is part of the general study of language called linguistics.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammar

So no, a misspelling should not be a grammatic error but the wrong placement of a comma is.

Or did I get anything wrong?

Re:comma

[pclminion]

If a comma is a grammatical element, then what is the name of its grammatical category? For instance, "Dog" is a noun. "Under" is a preposition. A comma is what now?

Re:comma

[PitaBred]

Yes, it is. If you verbalized it, you could differentiate between the meanings of the two interpretations of the sentence by the tone and length of pause between words. It's a visual form of syntax and inflection that is most certainly part of grammar

Re:comma

[pclminion]

I'm not a linguist, but I study it and write code which manipulates natural language. I have always been under the impression that punctuation has been considered a part of morphology, not grammar. I have a stack of linguistics books that would reach the ceiling, and I've never seen punctuation enumerated in any "sentence tree." As far as I can tell, from a grammatical standpoint it is treated as if it does not exist.

I have seen PLENTY of discussions on punctuation in discussions on morphology, however.

If a real linguist would care to contradict, I'd love to hear it. I don't claim to be an expert.

Re:comma

[PitaBred]

"Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana". You may write code for it, but there's no way to disambiguate the sentence meaning without the proper punctuation. So, it may not be part of the "grammar" like you understand it, but it is part of the grammar as far as English teachers and people who read books understand it. But then again, natural language processing is eons behind what a human can understand.

Note, that to have a sentence tree, one needs a sentence, which is necessarily ended by a period. You are using punctuation in your work, it's just implicit, rather than explicit.

Re:comma

[Gizzmonic]

A pause.

Re:comma

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah - in this context "grammar retard" is a noun. The commenter is talking about one whom they are in the habit of defining by means of the perpendicular pronoun.

(apologies to messrs Jay and Lynn)

Re:comma

[jmac1492]

Punctuation.

Re:comma

[GaryPatterson]

Punctuation affects the spoken words, so in effect it is spoken. It certainly changes the meaning of the sentence, as does stressing any word in a sentence when speaking:

Check your grammar retard. (why aren't you checking?)
Check your grammar retard. (don't look at mine)
Check your grammar retard. (your spelling is okay, but your grammar...)
Check your grammar retard. (god, you're such a bozo)

The punctuation provides some of that stress, and the last sentence above equates to placing the comma between 'gammar' and 'retard.'

Crap. What has my life become, that I write posts like this? (sigh)

Ease of use...

[ttapper04]

You can also download a whole season of a show with torrents.

Re:Ease of use...

[jamstar7]

You can also download a whole season of a show with torrents.

Sometimes. I'm STILL looking for Episode 21 of Charlie Jade...

Not the issue

[eln]

I don't think most people WANT to illegally download things rather than purchasing them. However, I do think everyone has a threshold at which they'll download illegally rather than deal with the pain of buying something legitimately. For most, that pain is provided by unreasonable prices. For others, it's by formats (DRM) that force you to jump through hoops to be able to watch something you legitimately paid for. So they don't have to make it as easy as the free alternatives, because that's impossible. They only need to make it easy enough that most people will decide that their process is better than breaking the law.

Content providers need to make these downloads as cheap and easy as possible, and they will make money. The more painful it is, the more people will turn to free alternatives out of frustration. Most people that are not generally criminals will only break laws if complying with them becomes too onerous.

Right now, the providers seem to be trying to crack down on free providers and make the legitimate versions ever more restrictive. This is counterproductive, and will only push more people away.

Re:Not the issue

[Bartab]

I want to illegally download television rather than purchasing it. Particularly at the price points offered. I'd pay a grand total of absolutely nothing to watch Daily Show/Colbert report, for example.

On the other hand, I wouldn't bother stripping out starting/ending commercials either. Of course, I don't promise to pay attention to them, and commercials in the middle of the show would definitely get me moving the slider past them.

Re:Not the issue

[Artifakt]

Right. One of the first posts to this thread mentioned the difficulties of getting certain TV shows for someone with a good, heavy work schedule. Let's put that thought together with the claim that the average amount of TV watched in the USA is about 4 hours/day.
      That average comes from several groups. There are some people who watch TV Zero hours a day, some 12 hours, and so on. By and large, the ones who watch most are unemployed or under employed. They aren't much inconvenienced by fixed programming times, but they also don't have much money to spend on a solution to the personal problems created by fixed programming times.
      The ones who watch less are more likely to be seriously employed. By most estimates, a person with a 40 hour a week job is likely to only watch an average of about 2 hours a day of TV, or less. Even studies that don't match that number generally show a person with a fulltime job watches less than half the national average. He or she is the one more likely to be inconvenienced by fixed program schedules. He or she also has money to fix the inconvenience. That person can spend money on other entertainment, and give up TV entirely in some cases. They can persue legal solutions, or illegal ones. They have spare money that could go to advertisers if they get to watch their programs. All the anti-piracy methods in the world can't keep the people who have discressionary cash available from picking another entertainment form legally available.
        That's the biggest problem I have with the RIAA's and such now. They seem to be assuming that the typical, regularly employed and probably middle class consumer is very likely to be dishonest by nature, when just about the whole rest of our society works only by assuming the opposite.

Re:Not the issue

[garett_spencley]

As a musician (and one who encourages people to "pirate" my music and shareit etc.) I've often thought about this. I've come to the realization that the price factor is a "problem" that is going to grow exponentially as time moves forward.

A while ago I did some math and realized that for someone to legally acquire 20GB worth of music at $1 / song it would cost over $5,000. What I've realized is that as hard drive space gets bigger and cheaper / GB, as broadband access spreads and gets faster and as more and more means of illegally downloading media which can be trivially copied and reproduced come to be, the price factor eventually dwindles into obvlivion.

What is a tv show worth to the average user ? What is a song ? Today it might be $0.99 but as people get the means to acquire more and more media with the same investment of hard drive space and time that number is going to keep decreasing. People want more and more as their iPods and hard drives can handle more. And no one is going to spend $5,000 on an mp3 collection. Perhaps I shouldn't say "no one". But no one that I know personally would ever consider spending that much on something that can be had easily for free. $1 for a song, sure that's quite reasonable. But oh wait, I've got a 20GB iPod that I need to fill with these things. $5,000 !? Think of what $5,000 means to me. No more credit card debt. No more dying engine in my car. A new bathroom etc.

So I think we are WELL past the threshold of 'worth paying for'. The minute someone pirates their first song they have just crossed that invisible line where they become someone who "pirates" media. And once you do it once it becomes so easy to do it again. I'm making it sound like a drug, lol. But it's true. If you download a song for free why would you ever go and pay for one ? The only reason I can think to pay for something that you can get very easily for free is if there's a lot of added value for paying for it. And in cases like that people become very selective about what they pay for and what they download for free ... and the media itself is still dirt cheap (meaning you might pay $20 for a HUGE collection of songs when each song costs a fraction of cent when you do the math etc.).

If media companies ever hope to sell what they produce directly to the consumer eventually a single copy of a song or a tv show are going to have to cost fractions of a cent and they're going to have to be very innovative in terms of how they offer it to the consumer. It's going to have to be easier than downloading each song/show/whatever independently and it's going to have to have a lot of other added value.

I'm thinking maybe with regards to tv shows, companies should be experimenting (assuming they're not already, and I'm sure many are) with traditional tv broadcast models that are "upgraded" for the Internet. Meaning broadcast shows over the Internet and make money via ads. As for music, artists should probably look to selling to distributors who distribute their music in huge packages. Then offer their music for free to download to their casual fans while also selling cds/dvds with added value to their loyal fans who will gladly shell out a few bucks to support them directly etc. There's lots of ways to be creative and make money off of media still ... but the per unit / per copy model is dead. The single song or tv show just keeps getting devalued more and more as technology progresses and there's not really any end in sight.

Re:Not the issue

[LWATCDR]

Yes they do.
1. TV in the US is traditionally "free" if you get it over the air. Why pay for it.
2. DRM and ease of use. I want to put the shows on my media player no matter what it is. I want to store them on my HD or Burn them to a DVD. Just like I can do with any show I capture with my VCR, DVD-R or capture card on my PC.

Frankly the producers of the TV shows must have mixed feelings. They would probably love to cut out the networks, local stations, and cable companies. They could have all the lovely ad money. But they would loss all that money from syndication and selling the DVDs.

Re:Not the issue

[imgod2u]

There is a flaw in the first part of the argument. You're assuming that the amount of content a consumer consumes is limited by the storage capacity he/she has. I don't think this has been true for quite a few years now. Consumers consume what they like and I don't think that the majority of consumers eat up every TV show or ever music album release. I know that I currently have more than enough space on my iPod and removable HD's to exhaust all of the shows that I get weekly that I'd like to watch. I rarely archive them after watching.

Music may be a different matter as people like to store those for the long-term but as far as *new* music that a consumer adds to his collection, I would argue that the pace at which he/she consumes isn't limited by his digital storage capacity. So the price to consume isn't directly growing with the increase in storage capacity and at some point, will not be restricted by it at all.

That being said, it means that there *is* a limit at which point a single consumer will be able to buy everything he wants and not break the bank. Not everyone fills up their iPods with downloads within weeks of getting it. Hell, I'm only up to 50GB and that's with all the stuff I've gathered (and not a one I paid a cent to those greedy a-holes for) long before I got the iPod.

Re:Not the issue

[Gizzmonic]

Oh, Slashbots...I never thought you would make me yearn for your poorly-thought-out car or Nazi analogies.

Re:Not the issue

[garett_spencley]

Hell, I'm only up to 50GB and that's with all the stuff I've gathered (and not a one I paid a cent to those greedy a-holes for) long before I got the iPod.

Would you spend $12,000 - $13,000 on your 50GB collection ? Wait you already answered that.

10 years ago, would you have even conceived that you'd have a 50GB mp3 collection ?

I mean, I remember when 4GB - 8GB drives were "freakin' massive!" and that was well into the "Napster era".

Granted, people buy larger storage devices because they don't have much of a choice (I can't count the number of times I only *needed* a small drive but ended up getting something way overkill because it was the smallest drive I could find), but people still find ways to use them. Also, storage capacity and price / GB has improved far faster than bandwidth and other technology. So we are hitting that point where people have more hard drive space then they intend to use. That doesn't mean people will never find a way to use it. Remember 640k is enough memory for anyone and all that jazz...

I mean, do you *really* think that the value of media per unit is ever going to *increase* ? My only point is that the value of an individual song or video continues to decrease as people consume more. And people consume more as technology progresses. Bigger hard drives, faster burning devices, more bandwidth, streaming flash videos etc. have all given people access to more material. And whether or not they were ever going to pay for that media and whether or not media companies are losing money because of it is irrelevant. The point is that the value to the consumer keep decreasing and it will continue to do so for the forseeable future. The Internet is a content delivery platform and with that comes media delivery. The more media someone is exposed to the less value each individual "unit of media" has.

Re:Not the issue

[Mista2]

It still comes down to what you can do with the file once you have it. I don't have an ipod as my palm plays my MP3 just fine thanks (and .ogg which the ipod wont). The only thing I can't do is play songs downloaded from itunes. They will only play on my wifes windows PC, which is a big ol' tank that sits in my office at home. I would pay $1 for a song, as long as I could play it on my xbox, my gnu/linux laptop, the mp3 player in my car and on my phone. If it's cheap and easy to download, then people wont bother to pirate. All of MP3 proved the only thing adding cost to the songs downloaded is the stupid DRM which has to be maintained. And if the DRM provider changes format or shuts up shop or does not have an outlet in my country (thanks Microsoft for the zune and fairplay) then the collection is worthless. Oh and thanks to the RIAA for killing my internet radio stations. Damn right I'll download the files from torrent sites while these big players try to dictate what I will do with my own equipment.

Re:Not the issue

[Eskarel]

The $1 a song $10/cd price has never been a sensible one. I haven't been in the US for a couple of years now, but last time I was there you could walk into a Best Buy and buy a brand new actual cd for between ten and twelve dollars. That album usually has between 10 and 12 tracks.

This basically means that if you want most of an album from iTunes, that you're paying the same price as a CD(which was too much to begin with) for a DRM encumbered lower quality format. I don't know which genius came up with that one, but in an era where the price of CD's is considered too high, charging the same or even close to the same for something which costs them less and gives you less was always a daft idea.

TBH the price point for music is probably closer to one of the prices quoted by Rick Rubin in his NYT interview(not the first price, the second one) $3-5 dollars a month for access to any song you want to listen to on any device you want to listen to it on. I'd pay that, so would most people, hell if the quality was decent, I could live with that being taken out of my salary directly as a tax.

$3-5 dollars/month across even the adult population of the United States would provide enough money to give the artists quite a reasonable living and even keep a few thousand scum sucking record executives living reasonable life styles.

Maybe it wouldn't pay the salaries hollywood stars expect, but other solutions for tv and video are available. Most folks don't really mind unobtrusive advertising(note to folks out there doing web ads, if you didn't pop up windows all over the place trying to get people's attention then a lot fewer folks would use flash/ad blocker and you wouldn't have to worry about the end of advertising on the internet).

Re:Not the issue

[Wayne247]

This, sir, is the most insightful comment I have ever read on Slashdot regarding music/tv piracy on the internet.

Thank you for sharing.

Re:Not the issue

[imgod2u]

Would you spend $12,000 - $13,000 on your 50GB collection ? Wait you already answered that.

Over the course of how long it took me to get that 50GB, absolutely. The mistake here is to think I got all of it overnight. Think of how much you've spent over the past, say, 5 years, on DVD's, cable, utilities, etc. Think about how much you've spent, aggregate, on gas. It adds up. If you were to phrase the question "would you be willing to spend $6,000 to get to work?" it sounds ridiculous. But at 12k miles/year, 30 mpg and $3/gallon of gas, that's how much you spent over 5 years driving to and from work.

So while popping $12k on music may seem like a lot, consuming habits over the course of years may, indeed, aggregate to much more than that.

10 years ago, would you have even conceived that you'd have a 50GB mp3 collection?

Erm, yes. I owned maybe 10 cd's (was 14, didn't have much money) back then and could very well imagine that over the course of 10 years, I'd have bought maybe hundreds if not thousands of cd's. Of course, a year later, Napster came around and I forgot about such ridiculous ideas as buying cd's.

I mean, do you *really* think that the value of media per unit is ever going to *increase* ? My only point is that the value of an individual song or video continues to decrease as people consume more.

And my point is that increase in storage capacity is not directly tied to consuming more. At some point, I will have more space than I will be able to fill unless I actively get stuff I don't want (for the sake of getting it). This will not happen at $0.99 per song. I'd say that around $0.10 per song, I'd be able to get everything I want at a price I would feel is to the level of my income and still not miss anything out there. Half the things I download, I don't even listen to but did it because, well, it's there.

$5/episode

[iamacat]

Sure Apple, will not be able to maintain complete control of online store pricing or terms of use. Still, five bucks per episode is insane for a product of lesser quality than full movies and that is also available for free with ads. It's better for Apple to drop NBC altogether than offer something that will be ridiculed by customers.

"Flexible pricing" would be more appropriate as offering some combination of episodes and movies as a bundle, at a discount compared to everything bought separately.

Re:$5/episode

[prockcore]

That $5 per episode figure is from Apple, not NBC.

Notice how Amazon Unbox still has NBC's content for $1.99 an episode? Huh, how do they pull that off? Maybe because Apple was exaggerating if not outright lying?

Re:$5/episode

[Anonymous Coward]

I hear that. I downloaded Heroes season 1 via bit torrent. I enjoyed it. I spent $40(US) on the dvds when they came out. I'm a perfect example of how downloading can make them money. I don't have any tv provider so I only see stuff via the internet. It also demonstrates what I consider to be appropriate price. 23 episodes for 40 dollars is less than 2 dollars per episode in a a format with much better quality and portability than any legal download service.

Re:$5/episode

[Sancho]

Unbox has more stringent DRM. I bet NBC wanted $5 unless Apple would increase the annoyance of the DRM.

Since when was purchase easier than piracy?

[rehtonAesoohC]

Legitimate media download:

1) Get out your credit card and enter in all those pesky details
2) Enter your address and phone number and then wait for it to verify
3) Download it and watch it in the DRM-rich environment.

Illegitimate media download:

1) Search for what you want on your favorite torrent site
2) Download the torrent
3) ?????????????
4) Profit!! (by not having to pay)

Re:Since when was purchase easier than piracy?

[kailoran]

You fogot step 0, that is "Find out that the show you're looking for is unavailable for legal download. Half a year later, after it gets realeased on dvd, realize it's only in US/UK/whatever and not in your country. Enjoy the fact that ordering the dvd from overseas will take 2 weeks and cost twice the already outrageous price"

Re:Since when was purchase easier than piracy?

[Rude Turnip]

Or on Xbox Live:

1. If you're inclined to buy TV shows, you just enter your CC info once when you set up your console. Or buy a prepaid points card to refill your account.
2. Download and watch it.
3. Save time by not having to scrounge around on the web for torrents.

Or, get a Netflix account and build up a nice little library of movies and shows.

Re:Since when was purchase easier than piracy?

[TaoPhoenix]

You have this all wrong.

Legitimate media download:
1) Get out your credit card and enter in all those pesky details
2) Enter your address and phone number and then wait for it to verify
3) Card Declined. "Bill Address Does not Match". Call Bank.
4) Bank says "You forgot to change your billing address when you had it delivered here."
5) Change Billing Address, Hang up from Bank. Try again.
6) Card "Accepted". Take Screenshot. Media does not download. Call Bank.
7) Bank says, "The charge is on hold, waiting for the vendor to verify".
8) Tell Bank "Let's do a 3-way call". Bank says "We cannot start it."
9) Call NBC. "Let's do a 3-way call". NBC: "It's not our policy to do that."
10) ... Give up in despair because Good Citizens Don't Download. Suffer and LIKE IT!

Re:Since when was purchase easier than piracy?

[kannibal_klown]

For most things I've seen step 1 is only done once, usually around the time you setup your account. After that it's usually 1-2 click downloads.

Re:Since when was purchase easier than piracy?

[Anonymous Coward]

3) Wait 7 days for the torrent to download.

Still, it beats paying HBO $100 for season 3 of The Wire.

Re:Since when was purchase easier than piracy?

[PitaBred]

Legitimate media is more like:

1) Figure out which media company has what media you want
2) Go to their site, figure out where it is
3) Enter your credit card details
4) Download content
5) Install protected media player, drivers, reboot system
6) On reboot, system crashes due to shoddy DRM implementation. Reboot again.
7) Start video, nothing happens. Try to get in touch with tech support.
8) Celebrate birthday and New Years while on hold
9) Get told that you need to reinstall your operating system, as it can't be their fault
10) ???????????????????
11) Someone finds you dead of an aneurysm in front of your computer

Re:Since when was purchase easier than piracy?

[Scudsucker]

Don't forget "and buy a region 1 DVD player, also at twice the price."

Wow

[Achromatic1978]

What a fucking non-article. "Content provider decides not to allow iTMS (or indeed any, but hey, iTMS is all that's important, right?) users to buy their content online. Solution: Spin. Find ways to justify copyright infringement (look, I didn't call it piracy, I didn't call it theft. Go ahead, deny that it's copyright infringement. You lose if you say "information wants to be free" - information is sick of being anthropomorphized). Apparently it's okay to torrent things from ThePirateBay if you can't get what you want, in the way you want.

Perhaps it's a protest. "Show content owners how much you value what they have to offer - by finding ways of avoiding compensating them for their endeavors!".

I'm serious. I've downloaded movies in the past. TV shows too. But enough with the ridiculous fucking denial, the self righteous indignation of "they took away our 'right' to see their content". You want to break the law to get it, do so. But let's not pretend it's oh-so-evil-NBC's fault.

Re:Wow

[QuasiEvil]

Yup, won't argue it's copyright infringement. Never said it was alright, it's still illegal. Morally, well, that's up to you. However, this past weekend I wanted to watch some old TV shows I remembered from years ago. Nowhere to be found through legit channels (DVD releases, DRM-afflicted downloads, etc), so I loaded up good ol' uTorrent and went to town. It's called, "Hey moron, I want to watch this, and you're not interested enough to try to make money off of it." I personally would rather support the content creators, but if they don't provide what I'm looking for, I'll seek other channels. This is one place that I can't really sympathize with the music pirates - nearly all the content they can get, they could acquire legally on a non-DRM CD. I legitimately own all my music - for each MP3, there's either a corresponding CD or iTunes download.

That argument doesn't hold up when looking for obscure 1970s/80s/90s TV shows. While it's copyright infringement in the eyes of the law regardless, I personally find it non-objectionable it if there is no *legal* way to acquire the content I'm looking for. After all, if nobody's providing it, there's no sale being lost and you can't argue I'm "screwing" the content providers out of their cash.

Re:Wow

[d3ac0n]

Oddly, as a Pirate, that's the way I look at it.

I want it and I can get it for free easily as long as I am willing to break with my otherwise sterling principles to get it. I know perfectly well I'm "infringing" and I don't care. I want it, I don't want to pay for it, and I can get it. So I do. End of story.

Strangely, I would NEVER consider physically stealing something from the company I work for or anyone else. When I left my last job I even returned the PENS because they weren't mine. Hell, I WROTE their corporate security policy, with an emphasis on corporate IP. So I'm not a thief or a dishonest person by nature. But when it comes to TV, Movie and Music torrents I'm a complete Pirate. Go figure.

Re:Wow

[ShiNoKaze]

Ha ha. You said information is sick of being anthropomorphized.

Re:Wow

[Nephilium]

So... If I'm downloading a torrent of a show that is broadcast on standard television... that's infringement, but if I hook up a Tivo or VCR, record it, and then transfer it over to my computer... that's not infringement?

Mind explaining the difference?

Nephilium

Re:Wow

[Creepy Crawler]

what would make sense is if the network bigwigs used Bittorrent to trade around their network shows.

They could seed them in that they would have paid ads in them. Who would set up a anti-nbc BT client just to remove ads? I'd gather that the pirates (arr matey) are too lazy to rip out a few seconds here and there.

NBC would get their ad revenue, and pirates would get high quality goods. Win-Win.

Re:Wow

[Hatta]

But enough with the ridiculous fucking denial, the self righteous indignation of "they took away our 'right' to see their content". You want to break the law to get it, do so.

You're damned right. It's illegal. But it's not immoral, and that's what I really care about. Same thing with smoking pot. I don't feel I need to justify breaking the law, when the law is unjust in the first place.

Re:Wow

[polygamous coward]

It is not a case of doing what we're doing. It a case of a bunch of stupid idiots refusing to get a new business model. TV shows should cost 25 cents. Movies should cost a buck. Most of them suck anyway.

Re:Wow

[prockcore]

Content provider decides not to allow iTMS (or indeed any, but hey, iTMS is all that's important, right?) users to buy their content online.

As pointed out earlier. Amazon Unbox has NBC content for sale. $1.99 an episode too. Apple lied about the $5/episode bullshit and you people ate it up.

Re:Wow

[TubeSteak]

Who would set up a anti-nbc BT client just to remove ads? I'd gather that the pirates (arr matey) are too lazy to rip out a few seconds here and there. That's a highly naive thing to say.

Someone would do it... just because they can.

Re:Wow

[Achromatic1978]

It's not immoral? By whose standards? Yours? (Sure, they're the standards you live by). Leave aside the intent of copyright for the time being. What about the moral right of the author to be able to do something on their own terms? Is that, in itself, less morally important a right to protect than your 'right' to their content? (For the record, I think current copyright laws are a farce and a travesty - but I do think someone who creates an original work should have some say in it.)

Re:Wow

[Achromatic1978]

It's their choice to refuse any business model (note that their current idea of trying to have congress /enforce/ their business model is highly wrong, IMO). That's still not a justification for your breaking of the law because you disagree with their model.

"Most of them suck anyway" - yeah, but they're still the most downloaded things - whether that's because most people 'suck', have sucky tastes, or whatever, whenever I look at the top ten lists of a torrent/P2P site, I never see it filled with indy movies or music, you know, the stuff people like to claim they use P2P for, "things I can't easily find", it's Fifty Cent, it's Britney, it's Michael Bay's latest dump, and so on.

Re:Wow

[patternmatch]

I agree with what you're saying...the only thing I will add is that you should let the content providers know that you are looking to buy these shows that are currently unavailable. If they don't know that there's a market for them, they'll never release them.

Re:Wow

[Hatta]

It's not immoral? By whose standards? Yours? (Sure, they're the standards you live by).

Exactly, they're the only standards that matter.

What about the moral right of the author to be able to do something on their own terms?

No such right exists. "their own terms" is merely a nice phrase for using force to suppress the non-violent activities of others.

Is that, in itself, less morally important a right to protect than your 'right' to their content?

I don't have a right to anyone's content. I do have a right to copy bits though. If someone gives me content, and I decide to copy it in the privacy of my own home, frankly that's not anyone's business.

Re:Wow

[Achromatic1978]

Interesting that your morality allows you to disregard someone else's requests when it comes to something that is theirs, that does not impinge upon you. You say you have a right to copy bits. Do you have a right to copy bits against someone else's express wishes?

Do I have a right to do as I wish upon and with your property and creations? Say someone gives me your credit card numbers and I choose to copy them in the privacy of my house, it's not your business, right? If I choose to use this information without your consent or authorization, well, that's not your business either. Don't hide behind 'one deprives of use, one doesn't'. I am not talking about that, I am talking about 'using something which is not yours, against or in contradiction of terms imposed by the owner of said item', be that item a creative work that the author has said "I do not want you to copy without consent and/or reparation or your credit card numbers that you refuse to allow anyone to have.

Re:Wow

[miskatonic alumnus]

I am talking about 'using something which is not yours, against or in contradiction of terms imposed by the owner of said item

Who owns what? If a creator wants ownership and complete control over their creation, they may have it by keeping it to themselves. Once they release it into the wild, it ain't theirs anymore. It belongs to everyone. In return, under the law, the creator has certain limited rights --- but exclusive ownership of the creation is not one of them. All this business about property is irrelevant to the actual issue.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

the most clever comment i've seen in a while hahahahahaha

Re:Wow

[56]

Maybe, but by then the ad-laden content would be the most widespread, and would therefore be the fastest to download. It seems like a good idea to me. Not that it's likely to happen anytime soon.

Re:Wow

[Neoncow]

Yes, the person who uploaded you the file did not obtain the right to distribute the show. When you copied it from your Tivo to your computer, that falls under fair use.

If you turn around and create a torrent for it, you cross the line once more and are a copyright infringer.

IANAL HTH

And those without iPods?

[PadRacerExtreme]

customers who have Macs or iPods without a legitimate way to purchase and watch And what about those that don't have iPods (yes, we exist). With only having the stuff on iTunes, I don't have a way to watch it right?

Re:And those without iPods?

[Fex303]

With only having the stuff on iTunes, I don't have a way to watch it right?

Nothing except that big box that's sitting on your desk running iTunes...

Re:And those without iPods?

[phedre]

I don't have an ipod either. I also do not own a television. Is it unfair that I cannot watch most television shows because I choose not to buy a TV? Or are you saying this because you own some other video capable mp3 player that just isn't an ipod?

Re:And those without iPods?

[Kelson]

And what about those that don't have iPods (yes, we exist). With only having the stuff on iTunes, I don't have a way to watch it right?

You can watch it right on your computer. Of course, this assumes that you have a Windows or Mac box to run iTunes on (I'm not sure how much of it will run under WINE, never having tried it), both for purchasing and playback.

(Having done that a couple of times, I began to realize just how blurry my TV is. Playing an iTunes video at full screen on a 17" monitor is considerably sharper than watching a standard 20" TV set. I suppose I'll have to start seriously looking at HDTVs soon.)

Re:And those without iPods?

[PadRacerExtreme]

Or are you saying this because you own some other video capable mp3 player that just isn't an ipod? That was what I was saying.

Re:And those without iPods?

[PadRacerExtreme]

Hmm. Since I haven't used iTunes before I assumed you needed the iPod to watch. Did I just learn something on /. ?

Re:And those without iPods?

[toriver]

Did I just learn something on /.?

And the he woke up screaming, sweat dripping from his face.

Re:And those without iPods?

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel your pain, my brother.

I don't have an iPod, or a television. I live in a damp, dark cave, without electricity and a lot of twisty little passages, all the same. There's no DSL up here and I'm too cheap to pay for cable, since entertainment wants to be free. The nearest television transmitter is 500 miles away, beyond 2 mountain ranges. The UPS man was eaten by bears, so I can't get stuff from Amazon any more. I'm also blind. And deaf.

It's totally unfair that I can't watch television programs on my Sandisk Sansa.

NBC, you are insensitive clods!

Dehydrated grape bricks

[dpbsmith]

That article reminds me of the dehydrated grape bricks my dad told me about. They were sold during prohibition, and they came with a packet of yeast, and a detailed warning explaining exactly how not to add the yeast to the rehydrated grape juice.

Re:Fox has there shows online with less ad's then

[lelio]

when using good ratio sites I consistently max out my cable connection. about 700k/s . And of course all commercials are edited out.

TV Piracy is a godsend...

[Creamsickle]

No way I could otherwise watch unsynchronized TV shows (I live in Austria), there isn't even the option of e.g. watching the Simpsons in English here (except waiting a few years for the DVD release). So much subtle nuance is lost and so many glaring errors are made in translation it's not even funny. Very frustrating. My thanks to all Americans making their TV shows available via Bittorrent.

Re:TV Piracy is a godsend...

[Poromenos1]

Here in Greece all shows are subtitled, so at least someone that speaks English can watch them. It's not that they make mistakes in translation, it's that the text is effectively untranslatable. Puns, cultural references, all the stuff that makes Family Guy, Futurama, etc great can't be translated into any other language. Plus, not only do you have to speak English, you need to have a rather extensive knowledge of American pop culture in order to understand the jokes (especially with Family Guy)...

Re:TV Piracy is a godsend...

[Yer Mum]

Doesn't the broadcaster broadcast the programme in dual (two soundtracks, dubbed and original version)? They might do even if they don't announce it. If your TV has it, try the dual option.

Re:TV Piracy is a godsend...

[absolut_kurant]

Thanks for proving my point by c&p'ing my post from 3 years ago *g*

Re:Fox has there shows online with less ad's then

[Deadplant]

Fox has there shows online with less ad's then on tv and it download a lot faster then an torrent. Fox has their shows online with less ads than on tv and they download a lot faster than a torrent.

you're welcome!

That's why "pirated" content is popular

[Opportunist]

Not because it's "free" (the beer kind). But because it's free (the OSS kind).

Do I mind paying a sensible price for content? No. Do I mind the restrictions imposed? Yes. Simple as that. Yes, I can afford it. Yes, I do afford it, if the supply matches my demand. Unfortunately, usually it does not. If I cannot store it on my content providing machine and display it on my TV-enabled machine, the content is of no use for me. Simply because I cannot use it. What? Oh, I could store it directly on the machine that connects to the TV? Sure I could. I don't want. You don't provide it the way I want, I don't buy. Simple as that.

What manufacturers (not only in the content business) today fail to see is that you cannot sell things to people that they do not want. At least some people will rather abstain from having something before they are forced into unfavorable contracts or conditions. You provide it the way I want it and I will buy. You don't, I won't.

Free market at its finest.

Re:Fox has there shows online with less ad's then

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear god,

Could you please have 'Joe the Dragon' reply to this post explaining that English is not his first language?
If English is Joe's first language, could you please help him out?
That would be great, thanks!

Love, Me

P.S. In case god isn't listening today, try:

"Fox has THEIR shows online with FEWER ADS THAN on TV and they can be downloaded a lot faster THAN A torrent."

Missing out on an opportunity

[timholman]

Given the number of TV shows that can now be streamed directly from the networks' own web sites, why don't they take the next logical step and seed their own torrents complete with embedded commercials?

They wouldn't even have to make the torrents particularly high in quality. I suspect that most viewers would be perfectly happy with 352x480 pixel (DVD-lo) quality if it was free and legal. They're not looking for full DVD quality for archival purposes. They just want to see the episodes they missed. And yes, although the commercials could be stripped out, most people simply wouldn't bother.

Sell the higher-quality commercial-free episodes on DVD or iTunes, and everyone is happy. You're no worse off than now, bandwidth requirements would actually go down (TV torrents are invariably HD quality, with corresponding larger file sizes), and advertisers would still reach viewers. The networks could even reseed old torrents with new commercials on a periodic basis.

Re:Missing out on an opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell a local TV station owner/franchisee that you (a network) will be making torrents freely available.

Watch the explosion. That owner would go ballistic. The networks make a shitload from each market they have penetration in. This is a cozy arrangement nobody wants to change. Same for the a la carte cable movement.

When a consumer has a choice, it usually results in a decrease of aggregate revenue. The networks don't want to have to compete on the internet, because they know they will lose to other types of entertainment.

Re:Missing out on an opportunity

[imgod2u]

It's difficult to prove to advertisers that a show distributed through torrents is reaching a certain number of people. It's easy to track IP's who visit your website. In the end, it's about the money and advertisers simply aren't creative and/or imaginative enough to get past the Nelson-era broadcasting model.

Re:Missing out on an opportunity

[timholman]

Tell a local TV station owner/franchisee that you (a network) will be making torrents freely available.

Watch the explosion. That owner would go ballistic. The networks make a shitload from each market they have penetration in. This is a cozy arrangement nobody wants to change. Same for the a la carte cable movement.

Then why aren't they going ballistic over the shows already being streamed from network sites, or the shows already available from iTunes? The secret to keeping the franchisee happy is simple: you don't make the show available for downloading until a few days after it has aired on local TV.

Re:Missing out on an opportunity

[adolf]

Perhaps they are going ballistic, and that this reaction is the dominant cause for the fact that the networks' online offerings suck.

If you were a station owner, would you immediately bite the hand that feeds you and start publicly slinging mud at your only content provider, or handle things quietly and internally?

Re:Missing out on an opportunity

[gomiam]

Are you saying you can't track Bittorrent users? I certainly hope not, since there are lots of trackers out there keeping statistics per user and/or IP address to calculate ratios. It's just the same IMO.

Re:Missing out on an opportunity

[Mista2]

If they seeded the torrent themselves, or even compiled the file on the fly they could even imbed region appropriate ads. I once heard SF channel or someone had previews of upcoming shows on their official site. I went there, signed up, subscribed via mail, confirmed my account (I'm in New Zealand, my email address was .co.nz, my IP address was an NZ one) all fine, I hit the first show, sit through the downloaded ad for a product I cant buy in NZ, then to be told, "we cant show you the content as you are not in the USA." Fukken thanks, I just wasted 20 minutes of my life and the bandwith to watch freeken ad for something I can't buy and don't want anyway, and gave you my personal details for your marketing department, just to be told I cant even watch a preview for a show that I won't be able to see on my own TV here for another year or so. Wow, way to kep your protential customers happy. NOT! Back to bit torrent and downloaded the Erueka pilot in 20 minutes then watched it from the TV connected to my xbox. Liked it and downloaded the rest of the season overnight. More lost sales? I don't think so as the product is not available in my region, so they have lost no revenue.

Re:Missing out on an opportunity

[master_p]

Good solution, except for the fact that when playing back a movie at your own leisure, you can skip commercials by pressing the 'forward' button. Nobody will watch those commercials, if they can be skipped.

Re:Missing out on an opportunity

[imgod2u]

It's not the same because it's not as accurate. And those torrents that track statistics don't necessarily have the information for *all* or even the majority of people who used that tracker. And once someone has finished and deleted the torrent, they're off the list.

It wouldn't be impossible to track but as long as it's not clear-cut that x number of people are downloading *and* watching the ads off of a program, advertisers won't go for it.

Re:Missing out on an opportunity

[gomiam]

Torrent trackers can have quite accurate lists, mind you. Many even ban known "evil" clients. And many keep logs, so no, when the client disconnects, its connection history is still available.

And most Flash video viewers allow me to jump back and forth, anyway. Are you sure people will bother skipping a one minute ad every four minutes either way? Think again.

Re:Fox has there shows online with less ad's then

[Anonymous Coward]

I count seven errors in twenty words, good effort.

Re:Fox has there shows online with less ad's then

[missing000]

I would like to file a bug report...

Re:Fox has there shows online with less ad's then

[Anonymous Coward]

Even faster than that will be the spelling and grammar Nazis on your post. And mine.

First line of summary is completely untrue.

[Animixer]

>>NBC's recent withdraw from the iTunes store leaves the millions of Apple's customers who have Macs or iPods without a legitimate way to purchase and watch NBC's content.

Watch it on cable (pay) or broadcast (free) television!

"Totally Illegal"

[bmajik]

Really?

If these are shows that are broadcast over the airwaves, don't you have the legal right to receive them? If you _download_ a show that you already have rights to watch as an OTA broadcast, how is it copyright infringement?

Has this been tested in court?

Re:"Totally Illegal"

[glwtta]

You are "copying" the show when you download it, that's why copyrights are involved (the waves have nothing to do with it).

Re:"Totally Illegal"

[Creepy Crawler]

If we capture it in a format like Xvid..

Tell me: did the producers emit the shows in Xvid? I think not. You are not copying "restricted" content.

Due to Nyquists theorem, you are NOT copying the data, as it is not digital. You are approaching an infinite value (that of the broadcast).

Re:"Totally Illegal"

[suv4x4]

If these are shows that are broadcast over the airwaves, don't you have the legal right to receive them? If you _download_ a show that you already have rights to watch as an OTA broadcast, how is it copyright infringement?

It doesn't need to be tested in court: bittorrent means you also broadcast as you download.

You definitely have no license to broadcast.

Re:"Totally Illegal"

[glwtta]

Due to Nyquists theorem, you are NOT copying the data, as it is not digital. You are approaching an infinite value (that of the broadcast).

I assume you are being disingenuous at this point. Copyright is a government granted monopoly on the copying and distribution of content; I can't see how it's possible to argue that recording broadcast content is not "copying". The system may be fabulously broken, but this part is pretty clear.

Also, I have a pretty hazy understanding of Nyquist's theorem, but doesn't it state that given enough bandwidth, an analog signal can be reproduced exactly from digital sampling? So, the opposite of what you seem to be implying.

Re:"Totally Illegal"

[Anonymous Coward]

yup your understanding is hazy. thats probably why it doesn't make sense.

Re:"Totally Illegal"

[Bluesman]

You're very close. I have no idea what the grandparent was talking about.

Nyquist's theorem says that if you sample data (with infinite precision) at a rate greater than twice the bandwidth of the original signal, you can reproduce that signal exactly from the sampled data.

The infinite precision part means that the samples are mathematical samples, that is, not quantized samples like on a CD.

I'm sure the laws against rebroadcast and retransmission would make the distribution of any digital copy illegal, however.

Re:"Totally Illegal"

[Kjella]

IANAL and not American either, but I think most countries consider all copies of an illegal copy to be illegal. Since whoever you downloaded it from doesn't have the right to distribute, it doesn't matter if you make what's otherwise a fair use. Strangely enough, how you go about getting a copy is important, though it'd never show up in a checksum...

Re:"Totally Illegal"

[smoker2]

bittorrent means you also broadcast as you download.

Utter crap.
Broadcasting is a "push" technology, bittorrent is a pull technology.
The most they can get you for is "making content available".
And don't pervert perfectly reasonable terms in future. Remember "standards" ? They exist so that we all know what we are referring to. When you start bastardising them, we are left with confusion. This applies to spelling, grammar and programming alike. Invent a new language if you're not happy with this one, but on this site we use English.
Insightful my arse !

Re:"Totally Illegal"

[stickyc]

It doesn't need to be tested in court: bittorrent means you also broadcast as you download.

Actually, I've always wondered about the validity of that argument. Doesn't the material have to actually be consumable in it's original context to constitute rebroadcasting? If I'm DLing via torrent (or most any P2P software), and sending out some random packets of whatever I'm downloading, if those packets can't be re-assembled into a (for instance) playable movie, am I still violating rebroadcasting rules? Doesn't the lack of contiguous signal (packets) constitute some form of encryption, making it illegal for the authorities to interpret without a warrant?

Re:"Totally Illegal"

[suv4x4]

Doesn't the material have to actually be consumable in it's original context to constitute rebroadcasting? If I'm DLing via torrent (or most any P2P software), and sending out some random packets of whatever I'm downloading, if those packets can't be re-assembled into a (for instance) playable movie, am I still violating rebroadcasting rules?

If it was like that, I'd cut off the titles and credits and claim it's not the whole movie. Truth is, unless it's a fair use exempt, it's illegal rebroadcasting.

Claiming it's not, on a technicality, makes the opposition seem as low as the lame tricks RIAA tries on their consumers.

Re:Fox has there shows online with less ad's then

[Mantorp]

You forgot to put ads in bold.

tv feeds

[Deanalator]

I use azureus and some custom mininova queries to make sure that my TV shows are always delivered in a prompt manner.

That is the problem though. You never know when the new daily show will come out. Sometimes they are released around 9pm (pacific) and sometimes as late as 4am. There are also issues when multiple groups release, or someone does a crappy job with the encoding. Groups also change filenames, making it annoying to maintain a good regex that isnt going to accidentally try to download some new 1.2 TB pack of simpsons rips or something.

I make enough money to pay for a good service, but I have not seen anything (and I am not going to duel boot or something every time I want to watch a tv show). Some sort of DVR style thing would be nice, without having to pay to get a cable line installed. Hell, you could even distribute over bit torrent so the service provider wouldn't need to pay as much to keep the bandwidth up. All that and simultaneous releases with the actual content, and I would be totally sold. I am sure that it will happen eventually, but until then I think my system works fine.

Re:tv feeds

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't go wrong with Azureus, TVRSS and the ScaneRSS plugin. My filters are very basic (just the show name) but I use the history functionality and I very rarely have any problems. At the peak of the US season (I'm in the UK) I have 6-8 shows a week downloading and I get maybe 2-3 problem torrents a year and have never in 3 years have I had my setup attempt to download a huge incorrect file.

Re:Zonk

[Captain Splendid]

he's dressed in his "Eats, Shoots & Leaves" pyjamas

Niiiiice attention to detail there.

See kids, that's why you can't set your comment prefs to ignore the ACs. They leave all the best comments.

If only the studios could hear you

[Overzeetop]

A legitimate site with actual content - preferably high quality - that I could download and watch? Ads...bfd - if I'm going to watch it a bunch of times I might go to the effort of stripping them out, but I'll probably just tivo-skip with the player instead. One issue I have with torrents is that the older stuff never gets seeded, and it I want to find anything that's not hot, it can be days to get it, if at all. A content-owner seed would always be available, while the high-traffic seeds wouldn't overwhelm the central server.

They could even make the ads dynamic, changing the ad content to keep it fresh (and keep the ad revenue flowing). Of course it will never fly.

a withdraw

[Edie O'Teditor]

We does not withdrawal, we does the advancings!

Always.

[C10H14N2]

Bauble du Jour: $49
Time to make $49: 1 hour
________________________

= Stealing more expensive than purchasing

Re:Fox has there shows online with less ad's then

[suv4x4]

If you're in US. Otherwise, bittorents it is... It's funny that physical borders are off and we can travel wherever we want, but now we have to fight legal borders.

if a forest falls in the trees....

[wardk]

does losing NBC content mean anything to the typical ipod user?

I've had one for years and this is the first I'd heard of NBC ever having content on itunes.

the news is the same, the sitcoms are the same, the reality shows are the same (as any other channel)

Damnit. Preview...

[C10H14N2]

Cost $49
Time to make $49 < 1 hour
Time to steal > 1 hour

= cheaper to buy than steal

Re:Damnit. Preview...

[glwtta]

Eh? Time to "steal" is expressed in minutes (if that).

Re:Damnit. Preview...

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh. You don't have to babysit a torrent. If you're making more than $50/hr, you probably have a fast connection anyway. This should be more like

Cost of foresight: free.
Time to find a torrent: 5 minutes

Oh well, a fool and his money are soon parted.

Re:Damnit. Preview...

[mpe]

Time to find a torrent: 5 minutes

The original article mentioned having an RSS feed to do the torrent finding. Which rather reduces that time...

Re:Fox has there shows online with less ad's then

[Rude Turnip]

I'm pretty sure Joe was just trolling for spelling and grammar nazis. Mission accomplished!

Re:Fox has there shows online with less ad's then

[ScrewMaster]

It's funny that physical borders are off and we can travel wherever we want, but now we have to fight legal borders

Some of us are more worried about illegal boarders but that's another story.

I dunno about Fox being faster than torrents ... more consistent maybe for older shows, but I've never been impressed by Fox's servers. On the other hand, I usually pull anywhere from 2 to 10 mbit/sec out of any reasonably active torrent.

If you have the choice

[Anonymous Coward]

For those of us who lives in countries where you can't get any of these features, it is even better/worse. Because either you wait a year for popular series to get on TV(and maybe never for non mainstream content), or you download them.
Microsoft says they will start bringing content on the xbox to Europe by the end of the year and I am really looking forward to see that happen since it will then be the only source where I can get TV shows in (hopefully) proper quality. But since no one yet have been willing and able to give us the same choices as Americans, I am not bringing out the Champagne yet.

Re:Fox has there shows online with less ad's then

[Deadplant]

thank you.

Re:Fox has there shows online with less ad's then

[Anonymous Coward]

What if English is not the poster's native language? You might want to cut the guy some slack unless you're certain.

Re:Fox has there shows online with less ad's then

[Anonymous Coward]

Your so rite its preaty rediculos how stupid the grammar nazi's are. Grammar nazi movment should be nipped in the butt.

Re:Fox has there shows online with less ad's then

[Deadplant]

No.

Copyright matters on when it's GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

Movies, TV shows, music - the copyright on those do not matter and can be ignored completely. These are available for the taking and I (we) will take as much as I (we) like.

Yes, I see the irony in defending GPL copyrights for those who will never lose a dime from theft of their copyrighted but free GPL-licensed (et al.) IP, but that's different. Trust me.

I'm confused about one thing...

[Anonymous Coward]

Haven't the broadcasters and TV companies already made money by putting the show on air? (through ads, i.e. consumer goods manufacturer buys an ad on NBC, NBC gets money - NBC pays TV show company for TV show, TV Show company gets money).

I don't think it's stealing on the same level (Yes you lose "potential" revenue, but the people who downloaded wouldn't pay to watch anyway, so there was not much "potential" revenue in the first place)

However, I do think that it would be outright stealing if "another" broadcaster downloaded torrents then broadcast torrents on TV.

Arguably, in order for TV show companies to make more cash they should do what movies do and have product placements. Broadcasters like NBC would be out of luck to make back lost revenue, but again the "potential" for revenue was low to begin with.

To be very honest though, I wonder the current model of television is flawed. I wonder what would happen if TV show companies (i.e. content producers) had to pay to get on the air and not the other way around. It'd be a dependency inversion. Then ideas like product placement would be way more popular and content producers would actually be happy if people pirated shows (more market).

So? iTunes video wasn't available outside the US

[Anonymous Coward]

either.

Umm, you have that wrong...

[d3ac0n]

Let me just correct your math there:

Buy:
Money Cost = $49.00
Time Cost = ~ 1-2 hours of working time
Misc Cost = Loss of ability to spend or invest that $49.00 in something else
Benefit = DVD box set or other "digital" item.

Steal:
Money Cost = $0.00
Time Cost = 0 as torrents are automated and can be downloaded while sleeping or at work earning $49.00.
Misc Cost = none
Benefit = DVD box set or other "digital" item, $49.00 saved, no productive time wasted, able to invest or spend that $49.00 on something else.

Result:

Buy Cost > Steal Cost

Sorry, Piracy wins again. YARR!

Re:Umm, you have that wrong...

[Chineseyes]

You've got it right. you just forgot to add to the time cost of having to watch previews, fbi warnings, and other nonsense you can't skip through on the BUY side.

Re:Umm, you have that wrong...

[Antony.Muss]

An amendment:

Shopping:
Money cost mitigater = $0 because what's $50 if your budget isn't strict and/or you don't buy many things. (psychology)
Time cost mitigater = 0 hours, because you were forced to work anyway.

Piracy:
Patience cost: you wanted to watch an episode tonight, but it isn't downloading that fast.

And on another matter, you don't necessarily (or ever) have to sit through the previews, and the FBI warning is at least short. Media players like VLC don't even respect it anyway.

Re:Umm, you have that wrong...

[Sancho]

You forgot to factor in the possibility of being sued when you pirate.

Re:Umm, you have that wrong...

[Anonymous Coward]

He also forgot to add the small chance of getting charged with infringement - while low, it's a high cost if it happens. I don't know how an economist would represent something like that, but I think it should be taken into account.

something like a 0.01% chance of getting caught, calculated with a $10 000 fine/damages payment - so on those completely arbitrary figures an average $100 additional expense for the piracy side. Perhaps someone can find out what the actual figures are and take that into account, because it is the real trade-off with pirated materials.

It's like saying stealing food is always cheaper than buying it - yes, it is. Until you get caught and locked up for stealing. I guess then all your food is free, but you aren't so it's kind of missing the point....

I could harp on about the industry you love dying because you failed to pay, but i won't because it's pretty ludicrous, even for a devil's advocate post such as this.

Re:Umm, you have that wrong...

[Thaelon]

Odds of being sued in the US by the 0.000099621456066736971299261070800414 in 1.

Rough approximation based on 30k (they sued 20k by July 2006 and haven't stopped..) people sued and the population of the US.

Re:Umm, you have that wrong...

[Electrum]

a 0.01% chance of getting caught, calculated with a $10 000 fine/damages payment - so on those completely arbitrary figures an average $100 additional expense

You did the math wrong:

0.01% * 10000 = $1

Re:Umm, you have that wrong...

[Sancho]

As long as we're involved in intellectual masturbation, I don't think that you considered the fact that not every US citizen uses Bittorrent to download pirated content. I bet it's a fairly small percentage of US citizens.

Re:Umm, you have that wrong...

[cthulhu11]

For Steal, add in the cost of an MPAA lawsuit, or the cost of being fired when the MPAA's lawyers send a nastygram to your employer. I have a job, so I can pay $1.99 if I want to see a TV show. If it's a show that I can't get from ITMS, I wait until it comes out on DVD and rent via Netflix.

Re:Umm, you have that wrong...

[FailedTheTuringTest]

Verizon calculates like that too!

Re:Umm, you have that wrong...

[ghyd]

Buy: Money Cost = $49.00 Time Cost = ~ ONE to SIX hours of working time (btw just fuck you, I wish [not for me] that everyone was paid at least 25$ an hour which is the minimum salary you acknowledge). Misc Cost = Loss of ability to spend or invest that $49.00 in something else Benefit/problems = Having the choice between all existing movies (including rare and old ones, including previously hard to see Middle eastern of African movies) at the speed your line can do (lets say at least a dozen mbps to account for countries where people have good connections) > not available Historic of the work, advices on interesting similar choices, movie analysis > not available Steal: Money Cost = $0.0 Time Cost = 0 as torrents are automated and can be downloaded while sleeping or at work earning $49.00 (do you even know that not everyone earns 50$/hour) Misc Cost = none Benefit/problems = "digital" item, poor choice, long to download (one hour for a DVD is a lot, honest business could do better if they decided to), dishonesty I think that music and movie distributors could have changed the face of art propagation, and that they could have provided us with a fantastic access to our heritage and lesser known works, and not just last weeks blockbusters. They've decided to not do so, because their old system was good enough for a moment (but they did loose the momentum) I won't shed a tear for them.

Re:Umm, you have that wrong...

[ghyd]

Buy:
Money Cost = $49.00
Time Cost = ~ ONE to SIX hours of working time (btw just fuck you, I wish [not for me] that everyone was paid at least 25$ an hour which is the minimum salary you acknowledge).
Misc Cost = Loss of ability to spend or invest that $49.00 in something else
Benefit/problems =
Having the choice between all existing movies (including rare and old ones, including previously hard to see Middle eastern of African movies) at the speed your line can do (lets say at least a dozen mbps to account for countries where people have good connections) > not available
Historic of the work, advices on interesting similar choices, movie analysis > not available

Steal:
Money Cost = $0.0
Time Cost = 0 as torrents are automated and can be downloaded while sleeping or at work earning $49.00 (do you even know that not everyone earns 50$/hour)
Misc Cost = none
Benefit/problems = "digital" item, poor choice, long to download (one hour for a DVD is a lot, honest businesses could do better if they decided to), dishonesty

I think that music and movie distributors could have changed the face of art propagation years ago, and that they could have provided us with a fantastic access to our heritage and lesser known works including rare foreign ones, modern ones, etc, and not just last weeks blockbusters. They've decided to not do so, because their old system was good enough for a moment (but they did loose the momentum) I won't shed a tear for them.

Re:Umm, you have that wrong...

[d3ac0n]

(btw just fuck you, I wish [not for me] that everyone was paid at least 25$ an hour which is the minimum salary you acknowledge).

(do you even know that not everyone earns 50$/hour)

Wow. You're an ass.

The $49.00 figure was from the OP, NOT ME. He actually had 49 bucks an hour on his post. I bumped it up to 1 to 2 hours since I made about 20 bucks an hour at my last job. Of course, I'm currently making much less than that due to being on unemployment after being downsized out of a job. So yeah, I know ALL ABOUT not making much money. Jerk.

Apple is a poor source for TV anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't support any moble video player except iPod and they have no rental option. Someone else needs to win the monopoly battle if there has to be a monopoly. I'd prefer NBC to offer tv shows through a variety of online sources, however.

It does for me!

[Anonymous Coward]

A while back I realized that every single show I watch on TV was available from the iTunes store. About 2/3 of these shows are from NBC. Some quick math revealed that if I bought every single episode of every show that I might want to watch it still came out to only about half of what I was paying for basic cable. I cancelled my cable TV the next day and have been happily buying all of my programming through iTMS ever since.

It works out perfectly for us. New episodes go on the iPod, and the wife and I either pipe them to the TV (via iPod dock) or when we're travelling watch them on either the iPod or on one of our laptops. No need for cable, no need for a DVR, and we can take unwatched shows with us effortlessly. Additionally, I genuinely like the iTunes interface and have the program running all the time anyway, so syncing requires no effort beyond dropping the iPod in the dock once a day, which I do out of habit.

Now NBC is pulling out but I'll be damned if I'm going to pay for cable again just so I can watch commercials and be tied to their programming schedule. Frankly I'm not terribly interested in buying shows from non-iTunes online stores either and then importing them into iTunes, even in the highly unlikely event that they don't raise the price. So yes, after my season passes lapse I'm going to start pirating NBC shows. Unethical? Probably. Illegal? Probably. Do I care? Not one bit. NBC needs to realize that I'm absolutely willing to pay for their programming, but I'm not willing to be inconvenienced for it and I'm not willing to sit through commercials ever.

Mod -1: Flamebait

[KingSkippus]

Two huge differences:

1) Steve Jobs has a proven track record of actually being right and far exceeding the expectations for him that people place in him.

2) We don't really expect the media companies to put blind faith in Steve. If things start going south, by all means, they're justified in pulling their content. But that wasn't the case here. NBC was making a lot of money from their iTunes sales, and was contributing to an exciting new distribution medium. An equivalent analogy would be if the Iraquis really were greeting us with flowers and candy, and Bush decided to pull everyone out halfway through and let the place go to hell anyway.

iTunes isnt the only digital distribution system

[djwavelength]

I just downloaded all of the new NBC pilots onto my Tivo for free from Amazon unbox. Just because something isnt on iTunes doesnt mean there is no way to legally get it.

Yes, really.

[Toby_Tyke]

If these are shows that are broadcast over the airwaves, don't you have the legal right to receive them? If you _download_ a show that you already have rights to watch as an OTA broadcast, how is it copyright infringement?

Even though you have the right to receive them over the airwaves, you do NOT have the right to redistribute them. And since someone has to redistribute them in order for you to download them, there is clearly copyright infringement taking place.

Even if you could argue "I have the right to a copy of it because it was freely broadcast" (which you probably can't, but lets pretend for a second) you certainly can't argue that because they broadcast it freely you have the right to distribute copies.

Not that I give a fuck. I download every show I watch from TV Torrents.

Re:Yes, really.

[Anonymous Coward]

What happens if you copy a tv show on a vcr tape and lend the copy to a friend?
In the digital world capture it to file send to friend over bittorrent or email or something. I don't see the difference in the 2 methods? But not sure how copyright law applies to analog vs digital copies? Also a good point is capturing it in one location and watching it another remotely? If i have a big enough atenna i can watch broadcasts 100's of miles away. With internet if i have a tv capture card in somepart of the world i can watch it remotely over the internet from anywhere i am at. Is that copyright infringement. It seems that there needs to be disinction between analog and digital versions of a broadcast and how copyright applies?

Re:Yes, really.

[imgod2u]

Fair use. The argument isn't that your buddy sent you a TV show. It's that some anonymous stranger sent the show to thousands (if not millions) of people.

Not that I think that's wrong but that's how the corporate-purchased law made by our corporate-purchased legislators works.

Re:Yes, really.

[Toby_Tyke]

What happens if you copy a tv show on a vcr tape and lend the copy to a friend?

Well, where I live (UK), that's copyright infringement, and technically illegal.Not that you would get prosecuted for it.

In the digital world capture it to file send to friend over bittorrent or email or something. I don't see the difference in the 2 methods?

Under UK law, also illegal.

Also a good point is capturing it in one location and watching it another remotely? If i have a big enough atenna i can watch broadcasts 100's of miles away. With internet if i have a tv capture card in somepart of the world i can watch it remotely over the internet from anywhere i am at

Probably not copyright infringement, since you are not making a copy, although there may be other legal issues.

Re:Yes, really.

[Bluesman]

"Also a good point is capturing it in one location and watching it another remotely? If i have a big enough atenna i can watch broadcasts 100's of miles away."

That's interesting.

Let's say a bunch of us decide to chip in some money and buy a piece of land in Kansas somewhere, and set up an antenna farm there. The antennas demodulate TV signals, and immediately send the data to each of us via the Internet using a bittorrent-like protocol.

Our computers can record the incoming data just as a Tivo would.

So we get all this set up, and offer "shares" of the antenna farm for $5, which buys you lifetime access to the data. Millions of people sign up.

This would provide essentially the same service, but I see no legal problem. The only difference between this system and an antenna on top of your house is how many people own it and the length of the wire connecting it to your TV.

Re:Yes, really.

[marco0009]

And suppose you set your bittorrent client to halt seeding at the 100% ratio (1 bit uploaded for every bit uploaded). I have not distributed "thousands" of copies. At the most I've distributed a SINGLE copy. Does this fall under fair use?

Re:Fox has there shows online with less ad's then

[Anonymous Coward]

"Fox has THEIR shows online with FEWER ADS THAN on TV and they can be downloaded a lot faster THAN A torrent."

You almost got it right:

"Fox has ITS shows online with FEWER ADS THAN on TV and they can be downloaded a lot faster THAN A torrent."

It's the price as much as the freedom

[Toby_Tyke]

I agree with everything you say, but in my opinion the prices for these downloads are just insane, and that's at least as off putting as the DRM. itunes sell episodes of, say, Greys Anatomy (hate that show) for £1.89. So, a twenty two episode season will cost £41.58. Well, for £34 I can have the same twenty two episodes delivered to my door.

So, for less money I can get a better product (nice box, extra features, physical copies, I can rip it to any format I want.). Why the hell would I choose to pay more for less?

Re:It's the price as much as the freedom

[Opportunist]

Well, you know, from time to time you just can't get an episode through .torrents...

Re:Fox has there shows online with less ad's then

[Scrameustache]

Fox has there shows online with less ad's then on tv and it download a lot faster then an torrent. That reads like Fox material :-|

Re:Fox has there shows online with less ad's then

[Anonymous Coward]

Fox has there shows online with less ad's then on tv and it download a lot faster then an torrent.

I can tell you like watching Fox, as you're not intelligent enough to spell "their" or "than", when to use "less" and when to use "fewer", that the verb "download" is plural while "downloads" is singular, that if a word starts with a consonant it's "a" and not "an", or when and when not to use apostrophe correctly.

How in the hell did you ever wind up at slashdot? And no, I don't want fries with that and please wipe the drool from your chin.

old torrents? good luck!

[Scrameustache]

...there are cases where piracy is not easier than purchase? When you want older stuff.

Now that my idea is no longer patentable...

[Anonymous Coward]

Put the show up on torrents before it airs, except some of the keyframes and the msbs of the audio... then bring up a seeder with just the keyframe blocks and audio when the show airs.

Re:Now that my idea is no longer patentable...

[Tatarize]

Why not do what valve does and encrypt it? You wouldn't need much encryption at all, just enough to stall the decrypt for a few hours. Though, seeding 99% of the show in a near unwatchable manner and suddenly have that last 1% flash at the end would pretty well do the same thing, without needing a secondary decryption part tagged on. Though it wouldn't be hard to setup a file with a quick and dirty password. In fact, even a zip password would be more than enough. Though the problem with that is it's harder.

The reason to scoop the broadcast is to be the first torrent on the market by several hours and have the commercials embedded. You could also do an RSS of that feed. So I could go to the CBS website, select several shows I want to watch, put the RSS feed into my torrent client and then by the time they air on TV I have the same thing waiting for me at home.

Re:Now that my idea is no longer patentable...

[Per Wigren]

Why not do what valve does and encrypt it? You wouldn't need much encryption at all, just enough to stall the decrypt for a few hours. Because it would require custom client software.

Legitimacy question

[nekid]

One situation that comes to my mind is this:

Suppose I pay for cable and get every channel that has a show that I download with bittorrent. If I keep the show until I watch it, then delete it, I haven't done anything except time-shift the show, correct? And since time-shifting is legal, I think it would be fair to say that I am more or less playing by the rules.

Granted, most people probably archive their shows, which would certainly violate laws. Still, for the very few of us that actually care about not breaking the law, this seems like an adequate solution.

Re:Legitimacy question

[ianbnet]

There are actually two issues here, AFAIK:

1: if you download with a torrent, it's not typically a legal download. The reason is that by definition, a torrent will upload as long as you are downloading, and typically for some time (seeding) afterwards. You have no way to guarantee that everyone you are uploading to has paid their cable bill. Therefore, you are likely illegally distributing private content.

2: Again as far as i know - and i'm no lawyer - archiving shows in itself is not illegal at all. Fair use rights from VHS days work just as well with PVRs. I record many shows with BeyondTV, and i'm sure that's perfectly legitimate (perhaps the auto ad-stripper isn't, but hey).

All that said, I'm with you -- I regularly download torrents, typically because my PVR was off, or I'm not home and don't feel like recoding the file. I'm of the opinion that this is perfectly ethically legitimate, if not legal, as I pay my overpriced cable bill every month just like the next guy.

Re:Legitimacy question

[Anonymous Coward]

IANAL, even so, as I understand it, the issue here is NOT so much archiving, but that said archiving on modern media usually involves a change in presentation format. Simply recording on a VCR for time shifting/ archiving doesn't normally change how the program is presented (maybe removing the commercials might apply, but still...) whereas a DVD, file on the hard drive, etc. often alters presentation significantly. (analog converted to digital, as an example) This format change I believe is what is covered by the DMCA, and excepting VERY specific circumstances, is generally disallowed.

          Now, if the presentation format were preserved in some manner, and could not be easily alterable (DRM? digital "watermarks"?) so that the content remained consistent even in an archived state, the fair use rights MAY be applicable. I'm thinking the relevant case is Sony vs Betamax, but again, IANAL. There are likely more recent legal precedents that are more relevant.

tvrss.net + azureus

[Saeger]

And for quite a while now I've been using tvrss.net's "Unique" feed -- which is the intersection of EZTV and VTV releases -- along with Azureus' RSSFeed Scanner plugin. Very convenient.

At the same time I also use Miro/Democracy for other vids (like the occasional NBC Nightly News), Liferea for text RSS, and another app + gtkpod for audio podcasts. Quite a mess of apps that I really should consolidate at some point.

On iTunes and TV Show/Movie Content...

[dontspitconfetti]

I've found as an iPod user that most general TV Show and Movie content available for purchase within the iTunes store have horrible quality. I mean just plain crappy, not worth whatever they charge per episode or per movie. This can especially become apparent with some older shows. So, why make us pay for crap when we can find it outselves in a more desirable format and quality?

Don't forget about his ABC holdings

[MushMouth]

Remember Jobs himself is the largest shareholder (7.5%) of Disney, which owns ABC. The next largest shareholder owns less than 1%.

RTFS

[Scudsucker]

From the summary:

NBC's recent withdraw from the iTunes store leaves the millions of Apple's customers who have Macs or iPods without a legitimate way to purchase and watch NBC's content.

System requirements for Amazon's Unbox:

• System Requirements
  Microsoft Windows XP or Vista (32-bit versions)
  Windows Media Player 9.0 or higher
  1.5 GHz processor & 512 MB RAM
  Broadband connection

Re:RTFS

[darrylo]

Yes.

Also, I'm surprised that no one's brought up the open letter at iLounge: http://ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/an-open-letter-to-nbc-re-leaving-apples-itunes-store/

It's generally pretty good, although there is a paragraph or two near the end that may make you go, "wtf?".

Re:RTFS

[toddestan]

While the iPods are still out in the dark, Macs can now run Windows.

Re:RTFS

[Scudsucker]

New Macs, yes. However, there are many millions of older Macs out there that can't run Windows natively. However, they can run Azures just fine. :)

Re:RTFS

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you kidding? You expect Mac users to say "Hmm...I want to watch an NBC TV show. I know, I'll just go reboot now..."

Re:RTFS

[toddestan]

That's basically what all the fanboys say when they argue that companies should start buying Macs for their workstations (replace "Watch an NBC TV show" with something appropiate).

Re:RTFS

[Scudsucker]

Except for the large and obvious difference between porting a Windows-only application and pulling content from an established store.

Not only easier to subscribe

[QuietLagoon]

it is actually trivially easy for users to subscribe to their favorite shows.

It is not only easier to subscribe, but without the DRM it is easier to use as well.

Why is it that paying customers are subject to more hassles and more difficulty in use than those who do not pay? Who came up with that business model?

Beauty.

[pseudosero]

Sometimes a Slasdot post just, to me, represents pure Earthly beauty.
I haven't even read the article (lazy).

Re:iTunes isnt the only digital distribution syste

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't Tivo-To-Go them over to your PC for decrpytion and transcoding to your iPod, though, can you?

Remote Control

[SonicTheDeadFrog]

I'll join the fray attempting to boil this down to its essence, and probably failing somewhere along the way.

For me, this has nothing to do with legal/moral/ethical arguments. I'm not saying I don't have my opinions on all of those fronts, but what it boils down to for me is control. I'm utterly sick of being forced to enjoy my media on someone else's terms. I stopped watching broadcast TV years ago because I worked nights. The absence of having to plan my time around when the station decided to air my show and the absence of commercials didn't seem so profound to me until I started working days again and tried to watch broadcast TV again. Yeah, I know about DVR's, but I don't use them because of crap like the "broadcast flag". It's just another system of control and I am steering clear.

My advice for the content providers involves far more change than they would even read through, let alone seriously consider, so I'll save it and just say, if you don't like it you can sit and spin.

Dumb

[adrianbaugh]

"NBC's recent withdraw from the iTunes store leaves the millions of Apple's customers who have Macs or iPods without a legitimate way to purchase and watch NBC's content"

Uhh... since when weren't TVs a legitimate way to watch NBC's content?

Re:Dumb

[cnystrom]

> Uhh... since when weren't TVs a legitimate way to watch NBC's content?

You still have one?!? That is sooo cool! Does it still work?

Torrent = Mafia

[UrbanSim]

I find it amazing. I bet if there had not been so much corruption in gambling related to the mafia, there would have been less need to enforce it. Of course, there is always a few people who need to steal in order to get their kicks ... and of course as a result the government increases laws which end up ruining a good thing like the internet for EVERYONE. It is because of all the people out there that can't control themselves that we end up giving up our liberties. Now one might say that the companies shouldn't charge for the services the spend millions of dollars investing in. They say that NBC is in the wrong for charging a buck for their millions of dollars they spend making these shows. However, I am able to be honest with myself. I am able to say enough is enough. If I am that desperate on money that I can't afford it, maybe I should be spending less time watching videos on my ipod and go get a job!

Re:Fox has there shows online with less ad's then

[Anonymous Coward]

Fox has there shows online with less ad's then on tv and it download a lot faster then an torrent.

Fox has their shows online with less ads than on TV and they download a lot faster then a torrent.

Apparently all that TV watching has affected your command of the written word.

RULES ONE AND TWO

[soupforare]

Nice save, not :(

NBC?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who cares about NBC? The Today Show has about as much journalistic integrity as any crack whore, and it's shows are shit. Frankly, the bandwidth should be re-allocated for more WiFi - remember, kiddies - the TV folks are there to serve US ala the news. As a benefit, they're allowed to have a spot in the spectrum. Damn shame we didn't have an FCC commissioner who gives a fuck - the current broadcast 'journalists' are passing advertising off as news.

Re:Easier? I'll tell you whats easier

[toriver]

I'll kick the next kids ass that does it.

So child molestation is not a crime where you live?

The point is I don't have the option

[Jaro Cooke]

I use Ubuntu on my only computer, I don't dual boot, etc...

This means that whether I want to pay or not I can't.

There is simply no way for me to legally buy a watchable copy of any TV shows to watch on my computer. As an example of my willingness to pay for things I want to see on my computer, yesterday I bought webisodes 1-8 of Sanctuary (www.sanctuaryforall.com) for $6.99. The downloads are either quicktime or windows media, neither with DRM so they work just fine on my Ubuntu laptop and I am a happy customer waiting for the next episodes to be made.

That's the point, if you can't buy something, then your illegally downloading it can't cost them money, can it?

Not the issue

[DogDude]

I don't think most people WANT to rape people rather than fucking them with their consent. However, I do think everyone has a threshold at which they'll rape rather than deal with the pain of dating someone legitimately. For most, that pain is provided by unreasonable prices. For others, it's societal norms that force you to jump through hoops to be able to fuck somebody you legitimately paid for (via dating). So they don't have to make it as easy as the free alternatives, because that's impossible. They only need to make it easy enough that most people will decide that their process is better than breaking the law.

Women need to make fucking as cheap and easy as possible, and they will be happy. The more painful it is, the more people will turn to free alternatives out of frustration. Most people that are not generally criminals will only break laws if complying with them becomes too onerous.

Right now, women seem to be trying to crack down on rapists and make the legitimate versions ever more restrictive. This is counterproductive, and will only push more people away.

Oh well. Rape it is, then!

Just another shade of gray.

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone care about the 1% or more of the people that pay for cable, but forget to set their TeVo, VCR, or computer to record the shows? It's nice to go out online and grab it from a bittorrent. After all, I paid to see it once. Why do I have to pay for it again when I can grab the show online, instead of waiting and hoping that the next time it airs I will be free to watch it? I like talking to my friends about the show. Discovery and Scifi do a great job at running the show at a later time which helps but if you miss it then you are stuck until next time. I understand that few people do things like this and that most people do abuse the bittorrent. However, what is the difference between me recording the TV show with a VCR or other or downloading it? Also, how much of a difference is it if I recorded the show with a VCR and gave the tape to a friend to watch the show or maybe provide a link to the bittorent?

Just another shade of gray.

Whats wrong with downloading tv shows?

[shlepp]

Honestly i don't see what the problem is with downloading TV shows, i pay for every channel on satellite, i can't always watch the show when they air it and i dont have a PVR, maybe On-demand service needs to be a standard for Cable/Satellite and i bet piracy for TV shows will stop or come to a crawl. Whats different from recording it to a DVD, VHS or a PVR? All I'm doing is time shifting basically, on my own terms, not by the times the stations decide to air it. Then there are shows that are aired in the US months before Canada, so i download them because i want to watch them when they are first aired, not months later. Maybe the stations need to pull their heads out of their butt's and wake up and realize maybe their should just air the shows globally at the same time. Maybe my rambling makes no sense, maybe it makes some, just my opinion though.

Re:Whats wrong with downloading tv shows?

[shlepp]

Also an addition to this, CTV and Global both have their shows (the latest) available on their websites in fairly decent quality, completely Free and are available the morning after they have been aired. Maybe all stations should just do this with every show, thats another way to stop TV show piracy. CTV and Global know what they are doing, at least this way they also get ratings, and you do have commercials, but way less then on TV which is a plus.

DRM?

[antdude]

Wouldn't they be DRM'ed too?

Re:DRM?

[Tatarize]

That's the reason they probably won't do it (they loves the DRM). The entire point is to make it just like the other torrents, but faster and with the commercials.

Re:Fox has there shows online with less ad's then

[PitaBred]

If a corporation counts as a person to the government, it's good enough for it to be one in the grammar as well ;)

Where?

[antdude]

The last time I checked, they were streaming. Where are the download options?

Re:Easier? I'll tell you whats easier

[Anonymous Coward]

> It's easier to mug elderly people than it is to hold down a job. Then, it's easier to

Depends on whether the elderly or the boss has a gun and what either of them require of me in order to get money from them.

> just spend the money on drugs, than it is to deal with the guilt of the old lady you killed.

1) Depends on the conscience - some people don't have any so they don't need drugs.
2) Depends on the drugs - some people have such an overwhelming conscience that taking drugs makes it all the worse or all the better....depending on the drug(s) they take.

> It's easier to rape women walking down dark alleys at night, than it is to meet
> "that someone special".

Not for me. Women walking down dark alleys at night are either running away from me or are not the kind of women with who I want to have any kind of relationship, let alone a sexual or a violent one. In contrast, my someone special sought me out in plain daylight and without restraints or any kind of violence. It was real easy. For both of us.

> It's easier to shoplift at Best Buy than it is to RSS your bittorrent web shows, too, for that matter.

Er. No. Not having shoplifted in a long, long time, but best I can remember is that reading some tech info and clicking with a mouse is a *lot* easier than keeping a watchout for "the man" and waiting for the opportunity to slip things into a heavy jacket or pocket or invisible truck and then try to get past the new fangled thingys at the door that go beep when you try to steal something.

> Assholes. Since when is laziness a justification for breaking the law? Even if it is easier to cut
> across my lawn and trample my bushes, I'll kick the next kids ass that does it.

Dunno why, myself. Maybe you know. Why is it easier to break a law like assault than it is to put up a fence?

OTA & DMCA?

[antdude]

Has anyone actually got DMCA letters/complaints with TV shows OTA? I know they happen for cable/satellite ones. How about OTA?

Re:OTA & DMCA?

[Sancho]

If you're willing to trust some random stranger on the Internet, I can tell you with great certainty that people have received DMCA complaints over Heroes (an NBC OTA show) and House (a Fox OTA show), both before the respective seasons were released on DVD.

too bad the streaming quality sucks.

[johnpaul191]

i watched some of those shows that way and the quality was kind of crappy. it's also possible some of it was Comcast being a crappy ISP. i'm pretty sure at least one of those two shows only has the most recent episode up for streaming, so if you are, god forbid, busy.... you are out of luck. generally commercials drive me up the wall, but the online ones don't really phase me.

i have a TiVo w/out service and sometimes miss the beginning of the season. this happened to me with Lost last year. i ended up just buying the missed episodes from iTunes because they were no longer streaming. personally i will sometimes get busy and not watch any TV for a few weeks, in that case i would have to use the TiVo to archive, or download it. i gotta agree with Apple though, even at $2/episode i only buy a few shows. i bought the first two seasons of It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia because my old cable company did not have FX. after i bought them, a DVD set of season 1 + 2 came out and it turned out to be cheaper than what i had paid. there is no way in hell i would have paid $5 for a 24 minute episode of anything (or whatever an hour show shakes out to be). in that case i can wait till the next year and just get the DVDs from Netflix.

Re:too bad the streaming quality sucks.

[colfer]

The NBC streaming quality is also too *good*. It does not degrade well on a slow DSL line (384 Kbps). It's unwatchable because it will not buffer, even if you pause it. I found out why when I tried to save the .flv file from the cache. It's not cached. And the Flash embed they use has no UI for changing the bandwidth setting. The functionality is pre-Real Player!

I long ago gave up trying to watch Comedy Central online, even on fast DSL.

Fox streaming works fine for me, politics aside.

Re:too bad the streaming quality sucks.

[Anonymous Coward]

>but the online ones don't really phase me
So, you managed to stay mostly in this dimension throughout?

Re:Fox has there shows online with less ad's then

[Clete2]

Can someone point me to where Fox has shows online for free? I don't see anything but clips on fox.com.

Re:Fox has there shows online with less ad's then

[Poromenos1]

Also, FEWER ads. At least get your nitpicking right.

Re:Fox has there shows online with less ad's then

[Poromenos1]

Nah, I'd bet it's his native language. A non-native speaker would never mistake words based on what they sound, due merely to the fact that they don't hear them spoken that much, but rather write them. They'd make a whole different class of mistakes, mainly involving omitted or extraneous articles, wrong tenses, etc etc. I'm a non-native speaker and I've seen MANY people trying to speak/write it, so you tend to notice the pattern of mistakes.

Re:Fox has there shows online with less ad's then

[bruciemoose]

Fox has its shows online with fewer ads than on TV, and they download a lot faster than a torrent.

You're welcome!

Only Fox??????

[Propaganda13]

ABC, NBC, CBS, and CW also have full episodes online. I believe most have one 30 sec. commercial in their normal commercial spot.

I used all of them. They're not perfect, but a step in the right direction. You're usually using WMP, Realplayer, or a proprietary player for playback though. They don't want this cutting into their DVD sales.

Re:Only Fox??????

[GiMP]

SciFi has Eureka online as well. Unfortunately, none of their other shows... as such, I still haven't seen the new Dr Who or Flash Gordon. (SciFi is an NBC network)

TV Torrents Australian TV channels

[Anonymous Coward]

ahh TV Torrents .. a way to stick it up to the Australian TV commercial channels for stuffing us around.

Depending on the show, we sometimes get it weeks after the US broadcast. If it doesn't rate well, then it gets axed or moved into another timeslot without any knowledge.

BT and RSS feeds have been a godsend for me and several American and UK TV shows.

Re:Fox has there shows online with less ad's then

[jmac1492]

I know I watched a few of last season's episodes of 24 on Fox's 24 page on MySpace. They don't seem to be there anymore (because they want you to buy the DVD.) And the part about ads true, there was one commercial (about 30 seconds long) during spaces where they would have had a full commercial break during the broadcast.

Re:iTunes isnt the only digital distribution syste

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't Tivo-To-Go them over to your PC for decrpytion and transcoding to your iPod, though, can you? Can you transcode iTunes Store television episodes to play on any other portable device besides the iPod? Can iTS video be played on any other set top box other than Apple TV?

Restrictions like these suck, and Apple is also guilty.

Re:Fox has there shows online with less ad's then

[anagama]

Re misconception about the usage of "their":

It is not correct to refer to _a_ person as "they" or "their". If a corporation is considered "a" person, then, "their" is just plain wrong. The correct pronoun to refer to one person is "he" or "she". For example, it is incorrect to say "A person should mind their own business." The correct format is "A person should mind his/her/his or her own business" (choose one from the set in italics). It is only correct to use "their" if talking about more than one person: "People should mind their own business" is correct.

The only way "their" can be used to refer to a corporate "person", is if the corporation is actually considered a group. But then we would have to write things like, "The ___ Corporation are evil bastards" -- which should sound funny (unless you are British), because while a corporate entity is made up of many people, the corporation is itself a single entity. Being a non-human despite legal status as a person, a corporation is quite simply an "it" (remember, legal usage is a form of jargon, not standard English).

Ummm, Fair use?

[evilviper]

[...] leaves the millions of Apple's customers who have Macs or iPods without a legitimate way to purchase and watch NBC's content.

Umm, what?

Unless I'm mistaken, NBC is that TV channel which broadcasts its megawatt TV signal through my head 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, just about everywhere across the entire country.

You know something...? It's perfectly legal to capture a signal being broadcast to you, and do just about anything with it.

So, for the price of a simple $30 TV capture card, an hour plugging it in, and installing the software, you too can record any of NBC's shows, in a format that can be played by Quicktime on most any Mac, or fed to iTunes and converted for use on your iPod. And it's FREEEE!

Make them deliverable and reasonably priced.

[Slagothor]

Personally I hate commercials, but if they offered shows even with commercials, it wouldn't be worth the hassle to remove them. Besides some older commercials are a piece of Americana. I even remember an Ovaltine commercial from the 80's that occasionally gets stuck in my head. I wouldn't even mind seeing it again for nostalgia.

Re:Fox has there shows online with less ad's then

[Eivind Eklund]

Only native English speakers does that kind of misspelling. Sorry. You'll need to fix you school system.

Yours truly,

God.

Re:TV Torrents Australian TV channels

[Tatsh]

And for me too, except the other way around. I love the fact that I can download TV from other countries, shows that would never play in the US, at least not uncensored, especially shows like Little Britain. Censorship is one of the reasons we don't get certain UK shows in the US, besides the fact that the US stations have little interest in showing the sitcoms anyway.

Re:Fox has there shows online with less ad's then

[patrickcalsing]

I suppose that would depend on his stage of learning. In this day and age it is not uncommon for a person to hear the English language spoken quite often while developing their understanding of the meaning of the words. When it comes to the understanding of written word (should it come later), however, the base of learning is of basic letters and their pronunciation which would lead to jumping to conclusions as far as which spell-checked words are correct. I only state this with the understanding that you began by positing '...I'd bet...'.

I can download legally.

[kahrytan]

But here's how I accept legal episode downloads. 1. It's got to be free. Use product placement in episodes to make your money, networks. 2. Video must be DRM Free. 3. I can burn it to DVD-Video or [trans|en]code it to format my media player accepts. 4. And I have to be able to download it on my favorite OS, Linux. If The video has similar DRM like Apple's new Music DRM then fine just as long I can burn it to DVD-Video on Linux. And then download client works on Linux w/o WINE.

Re:I can download legally.

[NiteShaed]

1. It's got to be free. Use product placement in episodes to make your money, networks

Yeah, that'll work pretty universally......

"Starbuck, Apollo, get back to Galactica now and meet me for a couple of Coors Lights in my quarters"
"Roger that Galactica Actual, just gotta stop and get my Reeboks first"
"Yeah, and I'm really craving some White Castle burgers!"

Product placement works just fine in contemporary settings (as long as it doesn't become too prominent), but stories that are historical, fantasy, or just long long ago in a galaxy far far away doesn't work very well.

Re:I can download legally.

[kahrytan]

You took it to the extreme

CNET complicit in copyright infringement?

[DragonTHC]

I would love to see NBC sue CNET for showing people how to download tv shows from bittorrent. We'll finally get some precedents which make sense.
The fact is, it's way easier to download TV shows via torrent. Easier than even my TIVO.
My local NBC affiliate gives these shows away for FREE over the broadcast airways.
I can do what I want with these shows. I can re-encode them for my phone if I like also.
I primarily watch television on my pc now anyway. I watch about three shows on Tivo now.
The greatest thing that ever happened to television was the Leaking of this fall's Shows on BitTorrent this summer.
Now we know which shows will make it and which shows just suck ass.

a correction on your correction

[Scudsucker]

Steal:

For the 1,000,000,000,000th time, that is copy, thank you. The number of thefts in the history of Napster/gnutella/Azures/etc: zero.

And you forgot something: downloading from p2p is only free if your time is worthless. With p2p, you have to deal with poorly encoded/incomplete/fake files and crappy connections. If you make decent money, it makes far more sense to get a subscription on iTunes: fast, reasonable quality, guaranteed downloads. If you don't make decent money, you are unlikely to buy the media in any format in any case.

P2P was never about "free". To borrow that old line about the economy: it's about the convenience, stupid. And NBC is making it far less convenient for many people who would happily buy their shows on iTunes. They are killing the goose that laid the golden eggs.

Re:a correction on your correction

[mpe]

And you forgot something: downloading from p2p is only free if your time is worthless.

Typically with P2P the downloading is automatic.
If you want time consuming a better example would be downloads on web pages

With p2p, you have to deal with poorly encoded/incomplete/fake files and crappy connections. If you make decent money, it makes far more sense to get a subscription on iTunes: fast, reasonable quality, guaranteed downloads.

Assuming iTunes is available to you. With P2P all you generally need is a reasonable Internet connection. With the iTunes route you also tend to need a specific operating system and to be located in a specific part of the world. Typically "iTunes" isn't even trying to compete with P2P.

I just don't understand

[Enrique1218]

I must not understand the full dynamics of how a broadcasting company makes money. I thought those annoying interruptions to my favorite show that try to sell burgers that will make me fat and cars I cannot afford were the one that paid for my favorite show to be made. Then, when I saw my favorite show on FX, TBS, or SCIFI and again was annoyed by a new set of interruptions that include selling me pills to enhance my johnson, burgers that will kill me, and a cartoon fox that is trying to con me out of what little money I have. I mistakenly thought that those also paid that broadcasting company and add to its profits on my favorite show. But, low and behold, that poor broadcasting company is still not making enough and must charge me more when I want to watch my favorite show from iTunes. Is it Steve Carrell that gumming up the works? He is not that funny. Just fire his ass and keep the stupid shows on iTunes! The days when I watch your shows on your schedule with your selection of annoying interruptions are coming to a close. Listen to Apple, I will not pay 4.99 for BSG. Season 3 started off strong but the only thing positive about the season finale was the remake of "Along came the watchtower".

copy and paste

[Scudsucker]

All the things you list are no excuse for you to steal their content.

Don't be a tool for the industry. It's not stealing, never has been and never will be. Else the RIAA would be pressing charges of theft against downloaders rather than suing them for copyright infringement. And it's also not about getting it for "free", as it's only free if your time is worthless. It's about the convieneince. And NBC is making it far less convenient to get their shows legally.

torrent != as-aired

[voidstin]

The odds that the torrent is the same as the as-aired broadcast are slim to none. Local affiliates instert their own ads, as do cable and satellite providers, local and national.

So, if you watch the torrent rather than the broadcast, someone who paid to have their ad displayed to you (even though you can fast forward over it with Tivo) is not getting what they paid for.

Personally, I think internet distribution offers much more possibilities for advertisers, but I don't think NBC sees it that way.

Re:torrent != as-aired

[Doctor-Optimal]

What if you live in Racine Wisconsin (or Kenosha, same deal) which is between Milwaukee and Chicago. If you can get two NBC affiliates (WTMJ in Milwaukee and W-whatever in Chicago) and pick one over the other are you "depriving" the other of ad revenue by getting NBC content via an alternative mechanism?

Also, if NBC is already distributing the shows via their website doesn't that deprive the local affiliate of ad revenue just the same?
I don't torrent TV shows, if I want it I'll 'flix it, but your argument seems off.

Re:torrent != as-aired

[Sandbags]

Local facilities have no guarantee that I'm not receiving via cable or satelite a different version of that aired program. I'm in their viewer base, but since it's an over the air broadcast, there's no way of tracking how many people actually watched the program, let alone how many watched the commercial. As far as those local broadcasters paying for their comercials to be also broadcast over cable TV syndicates, cable set top boxes track viewership, so the cable company would be aware I did not view the program containing those comercials, and thus it will effect the local neilson rating, and thus they can provide accurate information to their advertisers. There is no theft of revenue as i'm simply choosing to receive the national broadcast vs the local broadcast, and this has held in courts already to be perfectly legal.

Also, it's not illegal to bypass adds in the first place, so should I have made the personal choice to allways fast forward past them. My VCR has a function called Commercial Advance, which automatically displays a blue screen and fast forwards past commercials for me automatically. Should I choose to download broadcasts, even those missing commercials, but in cases where I have decided to opt out of the advertising anyway, is this still illegal, even if i's legal for me to have devices that do this automatcially?

Re:torrent != as-aired

[Blain]

This is where the networks and studios are missing the boat -- chasing the "pirates" who are "stealing" instead of seeing an opportunity for income that they could easily be receiving instead. It's very, very simple -- make their episodes available in decent quality for free download, without DRM, but with commercials inserted on the breaks. Make them available using bittorrent, so they don't have to provide all the bandwidth, and with RSS feeds so they can integrate with savvy media players and it will be easier to use their versions, with assured quality and content, than it is to hunt up questionable "pirate" torrents. They track the number of copies downloaded and the advertisers pay based on that number.

This method would also work for shows that don't quite have a large enough audience to justify taking up a time-slot on their broadcast channels, but which do have a large enough audience to advertise to to justify producing them.

This would do nothing to erode their potential for revenue from the sale of these same episodes on DVD, which will include extras that aren't offered on the downloadable versions, which real fans will want anyhow. So this would be an entirely new source of revenue for the same production costs, without the expense of DRM or even all the bandwidth necessary to distribute the product.

I'm scratching my head as to why they haven't figured this out long since and done it.

Re:Fox has there shows online with less ad's then

[empaler]

I'm amazed he even tried. There was just so much I wouldn't have read the original comment without the replies...

Mature?

[empaler]

...with mature open-source media players such as Miro supporting BitTorrent RSS feeds... If it's so mature, why does the OS X version crap itself after half an hour after install? It does on my computer, no matter what I do. Yeah, yeah, I know, I could go to the support forum or twiddle a bit around, I'm just saying that "beta version 0.9.0" is not the same as mature.

Wrong!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the price for Season 2 of Grey's Anatomy is £32.99 on iTMS (when bought together, as the episodes on your DVDs would be). So you'd be paying less, though the DVD does have some extra stuff (nothing that would interest me though).

Re:Wrong!

[Toby_Tyke]

I didn't realise they did season bundles. They don't support my platform, so I couldn't install itunes to check.

Even so, that amounts to a one pound saving. In return for that one pound you get physical copies, a nice box, all the extra features, and in a format you can rip to disk and do whatever you like with.I still maintain that the pricing on itunes is straight up insane. I would be willing to pay a maximum of 50p for an episode on itunes, which makes a season cost about one third what the DVDs cost. I'm convinced that would be a fair price, because it takes into the lower value of a download as opposed to a physical copy, and the fact that their costs for a download must be far lower.

What about old shows not available in the area?

[master_p]

Torrent is a fine solution for old TV shows not available in your country or area. For example, If I leave in Turkey, there is great difficulty to get the original Battlestar Galactica from anywhere. But the torrent is just one click away.

Re:What about old shows not available in the area?

[Abcd1234]

Assuming you can find a well-seeded torrent, or you're willing to wait weeks for your download to complete (assuming it does). Personally, I would argue that old or niche programming is precisely where bittorrent falls down.

Re:What about old shows not available in the area?

[master_p]

I have no problem with waiting. If I program my downloads well, I can view one season while downloading the next.

Re:Fox has there shows online with less ad's then

[ghyd]

Faster than average 10 mbps ? I'm impressed, I didn't think old networks would pull their act together on internet diffusion.

NBC's exit from iTunes

[SuperRushman]

This move again highlights the lack of intelligence of the commercial media concerns. Greed, not brains lead this group. They will now introduce a whole new group to the Torrent technology. Smooth move! iTunes is easy, fast and legal. But then again, why let logic get in the way.

Re:NBC's exit from iTunes

[SoulRider]

oops you missed a couple of words.

This move again highlights the lack of intelligence of the commercial media concerns. Greed, not brains lead this group. They will now introduce a whole new group to the Torrent technology. Smooth move! iTunes is easy, fast and legal. But then again, why let logic get in the way of profit.

Re:Fox has there shows online with less ad's then

[stdarg]

English is slowly adopting "they" and "their" as the gender-neutral way to specify people and possession. For instance, "Someone stopped by looking for you" with the reply, "What did they want?"

I agree it can be abused, but we really do need a replacement for constantly staying "his or her" and "he or she" in sentences.

Why I haven't purchsed....

[Churla]

I don't feel any compelling need to go shell out hundreds of bucks for an HD player before the standards even settled.

OTOH, I can just let a torrent run in the backgound for a while and have HD copies of entire SEASONS of shows. Shared over my home network, played on a Win MCE PC attached to my DLP set.

Ease of use trumps spending lots of cash.

Re:Fox has there shows online with less ad's then

[l0cust]

As another non-native English speaker, I totally agree with the point you have made. The process of learning a new language (almost)always starts with reading it rather than trying to speak it, and I mean speaking in the sense when you can converse in that language to some degree rather than learning special words/phrases for some purpose like "Yes", "No", "Sorry", "Thank You" etc. This usually makes them aware of the difference in the words which may sound very similar to each other even to a native speaker.

Ofcourse, like you already pointed out, the non-natives have different sort of problems. I, for one, sometimes mix up between when to use "I" and "Me" in sentences like "Both I and Mr. X went..." or "it was trying get him and me to sign this...". Will check up the usage rules one of these days when I am not feeling this lazy.

(I am sure that at least one sentence in this post is grammatically/syntactically incorrect)

TV content IS free

[nurb432]

Well, you already paid to view it via your cable/sat bill, or via those damned commercials.

If the show was broadcast during the time you had service, you had The right to 'timeshift' record it, ( via tape, dvr, etc ) so logically you have a right to get the video somewhere else, at the same level of quality that was available to you at the time of the broadcast.

If it was not broadcast in your area, or you didn't have 'access' at that time, then perhaps there is a argument.

Affiliates

[jbeaupre]

The one remaining glitch may be the affiliates. All those local stations have agreements with the networks. Probably something along the lines of exclusive distributors for initial broadcast in exchange for a cut of the advertising revenue. Downloads confuse the situation. Cutting out the local affiliates would have them screaming bloody murder.

Re:Affiliates

[Tatarize]

Probably, again, a reason it won't happen. I simply cooked up a way to push Piracy back to second rate. Even though it certainly wouldn't go through or be considered.

Best to keep piracy the easiest option and never make a dime off the content you put sweat and blood into.

But what about the Morthrai?

[dubiago]

What about when purchase is impossible? I've been looking for War of the Worlds Season 2 on Torrent. Paramount will more than likely never release it on DVD. It was sub-par, especially in comparison to the first season, but it was something I didn't see as a kid because of all of that parental advisory crap. So, I have to resort to what's probably extremely low-res capture from VHS and piss-poor cable TV off of Torrent to finally catch up on a series that's nearly 20 years dead.

Re:iTunes isnt the only digital distribution syste

[sketchydave]

And when they're broadcast you can Tivo them and use TivoToGo to sync it to your iPod or any other device. Or you can do what I did and buy an Elgato EyeTV 250 and turn your Mac into a DVR box that automatically syncs to iTunes and your iPod. Those are a few easy ways for those with a Mac and are completely legal.

What really annoys me is when the media companies try to stamp out these types of technologies by trying to push through broadcast flags, copy protection through HDMI, encrypted signals, dragging their feet on CableCard compliance, and the list goes on. I'm not a pirate, I'm a consumer. I have no problem paying a reasonable fee for my entertainment. I DO have a problem with them making it continually difficult to actually use the products I pay for. If they brought more products to the market that were easy to use, convenient, and reasonably priced they would be able to curb a significant amount of casual piracy. AND MAKE MONEY AT THE SAME TIME!

Cheapest Legal Way To Watch TV Programs

[pandrijeczko]

If you're someone with patience and won't, like me, pay for TV with advertising in it (satellite/cable), then the cheapest legal way to watch a TV show is to buy the series on DVD, watch it, and then sell it on used on eBay - or indeed, buy it used on eBay, watch it, then sell it again.

If I buy a TV series on DVD for £30 over here in the UK, someone on eBay will generally buy it for £20 if it's sold on relatively quickly. In effect, that means I get around 25 hour-long episodes for £10, which works out to about 40 pence (80 US cents) an episode.

So if they want to sell me downloadable episodes for 40 pence each or less, then I'll happily pay for them. Otherwise I'll do it my way or, if I want to be mega-patient, just wait for it to hopefully come on the BBC advert free (since I already pay for a TV license anyway).

Old irrelevant distribution channels

[^_^x]

Easier than purchase? Forget buying shows online, grabbing a torrent is easier than watching the shows on TV! I have a digital satellite receiver (100% legit and paid for) and I rarely bother to watch TV on it - if I like a show, the networks will shift the time around without warning and I end up missing half of it, or I get a garbled episode when there's a really bad thunderstorm. ...so I grab a torrent of a season at a time, watch it whenever I want, wherever I want, on any device I want, and I have more than a few that play video on the go. On my TV (which is used as a PC monitor) the downloads often look sharper if more compression artifacts because my satellite box only has composite outputs. Most of them I don't pay for other than satellite bills. Some of them I do. I just watched 90% of the first season of Dexter after grabbing it to see what it's like - after work today I'll probably run out and buy the DVD set I saw in the store a couple weeks ago that made me think of it.

The TV networks, like record labels, just need to chill out a bit, keep an eye on their IPs but not enforce them with thuggish tactics. (heh... I got busted for downloading Battlestar Galactica once... a coworker was busted for KNIGHT RIDER! Gimme a break!)

The sad thing is that if they offered legal free torrents and included a sponsor pack or something that would give them money per view, I'd watch a few ads to show my support. However when I buy the DVD I'm sure it'll force me to sit through 5 minutes of crap every time I watch it, so I'll just circumvent it and say to hell with them... hahaha

not theft, it's copying

[Anonymous Coward]

All the things you list are no excuse for you to steal their content. Think about it: you probably cannot afford a Citroen C Metisse either, but that doesn't mean you get to steal it.

This is not theft. Theft assumes the loss of use of the object to the original owner.

If I were to steal the "Mona Lisa" then the Louvre (and its patrons) would not be able to enjoy viewing it. If I make a picture, or photocopy, or molecule-for-molecure using some SciFi machine, and take that copy home (and leave the original), then the owners have not lost the use of the original.

Stealing a DVD from a store is theft. Ripping a copy from a rental place and bringing back the original disc is not theft.

You have to get out of thinking of this in a physical sense. Trying to restrict the flow of information is next to impossible (unless you post a Marine with shiney shoes and a .45 ACP by the computer to watch over you).

Please stop mapping physical concepts onto "virtual reality".

rTorrent TV shows

[phatmonkey]

You might interested in this if you use rTorrent to download your torrents.

Actually

[Anonymous Coward]

He pretty much shredded every one of your arguments. But don't let that stop you. I find it pretty entertaining the way you make internet threats.

Are you the man in this video?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-kNaLQ65HY

--Amused

Or alternately

[Anonymous Coward]

The guy is stupid. Time to cut the coddling of intellectually lazy people who think "leet speak" is high English. Nobody is expecting great grammar or spelling, but he's broken the boundary on that and gone into the a land where things are stupid.

Re:Fox has there shows online with less ad's then

[notwrong]

I, for one, sometimes mix up between when to use "I" and "Me" in sentences like "Both I and Mr. X went..." or "it was trying get him and me to sign this...". Will check up the usage rules one of these days when I am not feeling this lazy.

I am a native speaker, so this might not help you, but your English seems proficient enough to me that I would be surprised if it doesn't also work for you. I find it easier, rather than remembering some specific rule, to instead use a test that only requires a little intuition. Simply remove the other person/people and any associated conjunctions etc from the sentence, and see whether "I" or "me" fits better. In your examples, this would lead to "I went..." and "it was trying to get me to sign this" which are both much more natural than "Me went..." and "it was trying to get I to sign this".

Hope that helps a little.

I don't watch nbc, but I love Bittorrent

[razpones]

I use Bittorrent to download bicycle races, they are almost imposible to watch on tv in the USA and on directv they suck, directv puts so much advertisement that is anoying to watch anything. I can download 21 days worth of a tour (italy, france, spain) and watch with out comercials thanx to the uploaders work. I use demonoid and even if you are not a suscriber you can download 3 torrents a week (they have to be fresh uploads), since the mayority of the torrents are from european television, Bittorrent is a superb alternative to watch other nations tv.

and another false mod!

[Scrameustache]

Fox has there shows online with less ad's then on tv and it download a lot faster then an torrent. That reads like Fox material :-| Yup, some coward has mod points he should not.

Re:Fox has there shows online with less ad's then

[l0cust]

Thanks for the informative reply. That makes perfect sense. I follow the same rule but still mess up sometimes, specially with long sentences, when I lose track of the sentence's structure. :)