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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."
...there are cases where piracy is not easier than purchase?
What if I do the same thing, and I do get different results?
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.
... 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?
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.
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)
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.
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.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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."
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.
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
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.
"We're sorry, but the clip you selected isn't available from your location.
...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.
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.
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.
either.
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.
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.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
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?
"I realise this is not a very popular opinion but it's the truth, and there for needs to be said" -Bill Hicks
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.
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.
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.
I think the invisible hand of the market has its middle finger extended
--A wise old fart named SC0RN
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 :)
I blame geof's speakers.
"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.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
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!
Raoul Mitgong: Unhelpful.
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.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
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)...
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
1. Turn on my computer
2. nbc.com
3. ????
4. Watch on iPod on train to work.
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.
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?
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.