Slashdot Mirror
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."
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...
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.
1. you have a computer
2. nbc.com has their shows available to stream, on-demand
3. enjoy.
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.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
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.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
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.
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
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.
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.