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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."
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.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
Fox has there shows online with less ad's then on tv and it download a lot faster then an torrent.
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.
When you have nothing left to burn you must set yourself on fire
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.
On the 0th day, God created C
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.
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!
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
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.
Remember Jobs himself is the largest shareholder (7.5%) of Disney, which owns ABC. The next largest shareholder owns less than 1%.
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.
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