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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.
...there are cases where piracy is not easier than purchase?
What if I do the same thing, and I do get different results?
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?
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...
... 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.
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.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
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.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
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
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.
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"
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.
I would like to file a bug report...
1. you have a computer
2. nbc.com has their shows available to stream, on-demand
3. enjoy.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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