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TV Industry Using Piracy As A Measure Of Success
mrspin writes "Last100 has an interesting post from Guinevere Orvis, a web producer who works in the broadcast industry, who describes the way in which 'unofficial' but sanctioned BitTorrent leaks are being used as a measurement of a TV show's likely success. Orvis writes: 'Broadcasters aren't posting their shows directly on PirateBay yet, but they are talking informally and giving copies of shows to a friend of a friend who is unaffiliated with the company to make a torrent ... it's partially an experiment, but the hope is that distribution of content this way will lead to new viewers that wouldn't have been reached through traditional marketing means.'"
How would you feel if you made a product so bad that no one would steal it?
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
I thought the whole industry was supposed to be on hold while they figured their union shit out. I do wonder if they'll have to start importing british shows to fill the dead air that's left when they've rerun every episode of friends and sex in the city.
Since piracy statistics are being used to help with marketing and increase profits, is this a measureable reduction to the actual cost piracy has on the industry?
What they call 'Piracy' will continue to rise - there is no point at which it will retract. I wonder if they have added into their estimations the accelerating growth of this piracy they are measuring.
Which brings me to something that I've been wondering about for a while; how would the entertainment industry survive if there was theoretically no way to protect their intellectual property from open and free distribution. How would they handle a world where there was no legal route to enforcing a royalty-style or licensed payment system?
Because it is my thoughts that as our world further connects itself together that this is exactly what will happen in the (no so distant?) future.
At least in the technological sense, the legal sense is difficult to gauge, though I hope the legal system will suffer a major overhaul in the coming decades.
Read my Very Short "Stories"
I'm glad to see some signs of intelligent life out there, perhaps the MPAA and RIAA will take the hint too?
Many television networks are putting many of their popular shows online now, for free. All the major networks: CBS, ABC, NBC, Fox -- are all putting full episode content on their websites now. Even Sci-Fi is starting to do it, although they don't have too many shows with full episodes up (but a. they're owned by NBC, who is getting into the online distribution format quite rapidly and b. they're probably realizing that a good number of their shows are popular with geeks that know how to share their shows via bittorrent quite readily). I wouldn't be surprised if a few more networks, like Comedy Central, get into the action. I think what's happening is that the corporations that run the networks have seen how a site like Youtube has practically sprouted up overnight, and they're seeing this as a way to reach out to more people (and thereby increase their advertising streams and revenue).
If possession of pre-release material is a felony, then why would a TV exec condone this? So downloading is ok if it helps make the companies money? Am I the only one that sees something fundamentally wrong with this?
Personally, I never saw the problem with the piracy of TV shows: a large proportion of those who watch them, assuming they like them, will probably watch the original broadcast or the next episode when it's aired anyway. It's a different matter for large-scale, large-budget Hollywood films, but in instances like these, I think that this is a move in the right direction.
Many new shows this year were leaked weeks and months before their pilot aired, undoubtedly creating early talk about the shows that they wouldn't get otherwise.
I watched a few and they helped me make decisions, half of the Geico Cavemen pilot was enough forever, and the Sarah Connor Chronicles pilot renewed my interest in the Terminator series and I'm totally pumped for the show this January or February.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
And then if the show doesn't take off, they can always recoup their losses by suing the pirate...
I hear some corporations have also taken to "broadcasting" their TV shows wirelessly for free to those with the required receiver technology. I have no idea how long they can keep that up -- there is after all valuable intellectual property involved.
I know I saw House M.D steadily increase in seeds over the course of the first two seasons, and I'm pretty certain the same thing happened with Heroes last season.
It's not too bad a benchmark, I mean, if something is popular people are gonna want it. So they should see increased viewership and piracy as something gets popular. Which is kinda "duh" when you think about it.
Insert Sig Here
For network TV, I fail how to see this as piracy. With an antenna and DVR, I can record it and replay without their express permission. So if someone else does it for me, is it still pirating? I'm gonna watch the show with my DVR or a torrent version from someone else, but the end result is the same. I watch the show.
This is exactly how I got hooked on Jericho. I watched the series after it got canceled. I really liked it and ending up watching it again with my friends, who, in turn enjoyed it. Now, we're waiting for the show in mid-January. With HD recording software of course.
import system.cool.Sig;
I, for one, can attest that I've definitely discovered a few new shows by simply checking the list of most-seeded torrents on some web site.
:)
I've also discovered that it's not always an indication of quality.
I canceled my cable TV about a year ago now. I still watch a few shows: House, The Daily show+Colbert Report, Lost, BSG, and 24. The TV torrent tracker I use provides an RSS feed, so I setup a few filters and shows get downloaded automatically when they're available. It's usually 1-2 days behind the broadcast by the time it finishes, but that's fine for me I don't mind waiting.
Now if only this damn strike hadn't happened, but I suppose it's worth it if the writers end up getting more.
Ok, so what if I, Joe Pirate, go and download the latest episode of Lost from the pirate bay and subsequently get sued for copyright infringement. What if this episode was something that was leaked "unofficially" by the studio. Since it is done under the radar, the mafiaa officials won't know the difference. They're basically baiting you.
It's like putting a diamond ring on a park bench, hiding in the bushes, and then calling the police when someone picks it up.
I got nothin'
I remember many people thought Michael Moore's "Sicko" movie was released on BitTorrent on purpose.
This is why the record labels decided to go after Napster to begin with. If the songs are available for free download all the "albums" containing one hit and 9 filler songs got split into pieces. Everyone got the hit and ignored the ballast.
The P2P sharing shows immediately what people want, and allowing that would force the record labels to produce high-quality music rather than mediocre one that can be forced down the customer's throats (ears ?). And high-quality music is a lot harder to come by than the turn-of-the-crank filler that we have been blessed with in recent years. No wonder the CD sales are decreasing.
Its crashed and burned when they tried to redo it stateside, but I think Coupling would do really well here. Its so funny. Hell air Footballers Wives in the Desperate Housewives time slot, and see I'd would think it would be a mini hit. Little Britain might be the first as the show is moving over now anyways.
I know that the IP owners watch piracy to see what's hot. I noticed this a long time ago on usenet in a few .mp3 subgenres. Some extremely rare audio tracks that were not in print and only available in very old, extremely limited editions on vinyl were restored by certain (ahem) users. They were immensely popular, were constantly reposted, and basically became the only copies available in any media. The studios apparently noticed the popularity of these tracks, and the vinyl LPs were suddenly released on CD. I've seen this happen numerous times. They watch to see what the collectors consider worth investing their time in audio restoration, what the users consider worth collecting, and then they see money and rerelease the product from their vaults.
Anyday TV stars might only make 90 grand a year, producers the same, directors maybe 200k. Soon there insane pay rates might drop in order to let the media giants profit slightly! OH THE INSANITY
So basically, -1 troll/offtopic is really slashdots way of saying "I hate that you thought of something before me."
Because you can pick it up, unencrypted, right out of the radio spectrum just about anywhere. People have been stealing television content for years, with equipment kits you can buy at most garage sales.
Some content providers have started to insert commercials both as a deterrent against stealing content, and as a way to recoup the massive losses. Advanced piracy tools already have hacked this system, with things like a 'mute' button.
I oppose the mute button on moral grounds. Also, I am miserable.
I wouldn't be surprised if a few more networks, like Comedy Central, get into the action. I think what's happening is that the corporations that run the networks have seen how a site like Youtube has practically sprouted up overnight, and they're seeing this as a way to reach out to more people (and thereby increase their advertising streams and revenue).
Comedy Central recently added the entire library of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart to their website. This is a tremendous amount of content that you could spend weeks watching if you wanted to and not see the same episode twice. This is good, since new episodes are currently suspended due to the Writer's Guild Strike or something similarly silly.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
That's how I got into Stargate Atlantis. You have to be kidding me if you think I'm going to pay for cable for 8 shows. Now I can get it (legally) on iTunes, and I do. Bonus, goes to the ipod automatically(for travel watching, etc.. hooks into my portable screen). There should be more shows on services like this, and more solutions like itunes/ipod(zune comes to mind, so does amazon unbox).
The MAAFIA has been using the services of "Big Champagne" to do the same.
Nothing new
http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=p2p+ratings+%22Big+champagne%22&btnG=Search&meta=
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
One minute, it seems like the industry finally gets it. The next, they immediately revert back to their old ways. I wouldn't be surprised if the same thing happens here.
Interestingly, The Bionic Woman, the most heavily promoted show on NBC, has been CANCELED, and I - uh, I mean MY NEIGHBOR, um, has never seen the show as a popular torrent on any of my- uh-his popular torrent sites.
I SWEAR!
As the copyright holder they can distribute episodes freely if they desire. However their distribution doesn't grant you redistribution rights. So what they will nail you for is uploading, not downloading the file. Since that is how P2P networks are supposed to operate they would be baiting you in a sense.
The unofficial 'friend of a friend' aspect seems nonsensical. It doesn't matter if they're a friend, a subsidiary, a third party, or the CEO, so long as they are authorized to distribute the files. If they aren't, then whoever is doing it for them is as liable for infinity billion dollars as anyone else, and whoever is leaking the stuff is subject to termination, being sued, perhaps criminal charges, etc. So for the sake of whatever suckers seed these things, I hope they're authorized.
I download all my TV shows from Bittorrent. I don't even have cable. Why should I? If I'm just going to Tivo/MythTV the shows and skip commercials anyway, why not cut out the cable-TV middle-man?
Though I think it may have had the opposite long term effect on my viewing. I don't see ads for new shows so I don't hear about them like I used to. I only have like 4 shows that I watch regularly and if they were ever canceled, chances are that I would simply watch less. So downloading shows and skipping commercials has weened me off of television on the whole.
Doesn't bode well for the producers. They have to balance between the number of people who might, like me, just give up on broadcast television and those who'll use Bittorrent only to sample shows and then switch to regular TV. I suspect that more people will begin to see what a ripoff cable/satelite TV is and switch to "piracy" in the long term.
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
My prediction is, eventually, a compulsory license will be the only way.
You probably can't stop piracy short of Trusted Computing, and that's if and only if trusted computing turns out to be 'unhackable', which history shows is probably unlikely. And the down sides to Trusted Computing aren't worth it anyway.
So, eventually, the only way is a flat fee compulsory license that is tacked onto your ISP bill. Then some system of measuring "# of downloads per show/song/movie", distribute funds accordingly.
Now, the elephant in the room is, this may lead to a situation where meat-puppets who won a genetic lottery that makes them nice to look at will not be making 7 and 8-figure salaries for a movie that takes less than a year to shoot.
Historically, actors and musicians were somewhere between working class types and prostitutes, on the social status ladder. It may end up returning to that eventually. Same with producers and directors etc. These guys seem to think that they're entitled to office space at 100 bucks/sq. ft, private planes, and 7-figure salaries, like it's in the constitution or something.
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
Hollywood has actually been doing this for years. They use the negative publicity after a torrent is "unintentionally released" specifically to generate more press. Take careful notice of who in Hollywood fights for DMCA versus the ones that get media coverage for "something leaking that I never meant to leak". How many years has that been going on?
Its only the really shitty ones that have been going after consumers as criminals, the rest caught on, I'd say.....8 years ago ish.
That's what the Writer's Guild strike is all about. The studios would vastly prefer to distribute their shows via the internet, because they do not have to pay royalties for online distribution. None. Zero. This gives them a huge incentive to avoid distribution under the well-negotiated royalty rates for broadcast TV, and instead, use the internet, which did not really exist when the last contracts were negotiated. That's how they can afford to give the shows away for free, they don't have to pay for them.
Every authorized internet distribution of a TV show is screwing someone who worked hard to create it.
I perfect example of how pirating helps the networks, IF the shows are good. People will tune and and buy the DVDs for the best quality image and sound of a show they already like.
It does make a lot of sense. There is a delay between a torrented show and its original airing, unless it is a leaked show. We have some viewers who talk about a show to their friends, who missed a few episodes, so friend is curious so downloads the first few to see what it is about, they find they really enjoy it, So start watching it regularly, probably on tv, if it is available since that is where they will usually find the newest episode first. Plus also you have missed episodes available, which is very important with a lot of the more serialized shows, because you miss a couple shows and you are lost, so now if people miss em they will often download them to catch up. If a show is popular it's torrents would definitely show a lot more activity.
Hasn't this argument been made for years in favor of file sharing? New markets, new audience, of course the most wanted things are pirated the most. Wanna see what hot movies are out there? see how many people are seeding axxo's files. effin' duh!
Well Joe, anti-piracy lawsuits, and the fear that goes with them, are actually a healthy part of the Media Ecosystem. You see, there exists a test bed for new shows, where they are usually created, and then individual market players can get all sue-happy, or whatever they like, confined in the test-bed known as the 'united states of america'.
Because you see, my dear Joe Pirate, nobody of consequence (eg. me, in calm Canada) gets sued. It's all these imaginary "americans", who as you know from watching television, are a make-believe people that couldn't possibly exist in real life. I mean, just imagine some of the whacky hijinks these "americans" get up to every week. They're ridiculous, really only a Corporate-Media creation for our entertainment.
This allows the consumers, you and me, to download all the shows we like in peace, secure in the knowledge that immoral copyright lawsuits and whatnot will only happen in fictional programming, where it belongs.
While your demographic might be a bit different than the General TV Watching Demographic, this is an obvious, free, and valuable way to determine popularity, probably as good as the Nielsons, and mabye slightly less useful than Tivo data (since they can, as I understand, know whether you actually played, and ostensibly watched, the show using Tivo data).
If it weren't for the advertiser-driven model that we currently have, the bittorrent "content delivery system" would be nothing but positive for the industry. What they need to do is make high definition, high quality video files available for download for a reasonable fee, and remove all ads (or at least make that an option). I'd say the removal of commercials is the second most valuable aspect of getting shows off the Internet compared to the tuning in at 8PM (the first being able to watch it when I feel like it, something about as novel as the VCR).
File sharing can't be stopped. Well it could, but it would involve stopping the Internet, and rather large economies would collapse if that happened. The writer's strike is all about writers getting revenue from "new media" and I have to say, I think they have a point since it's pretty clear that before long the boundary what is TV (coming over cable) and what is being delivered by the Internet (which, in my house, comes over cable already) will be less and less distinct.
A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous, got me?
besides, everybody knows that we're not the pirates, they are!
I have a sneaky suspicion this is what happened with season 2 of Dexter. The first two episodes had been floating around various torrent sites a good 2-3 months before they had aired on Showtime, not to mention the final two "pre-air" episodes had leaked out about 2-3 weeks ago (the season finale airs this Sunday). For those of you who havn't seen Dexter, oooooomg you don't know what you're missing. I'd say it's easily the best show on TV right now.
Does this mean that at least some of the media cartel believes that there is a legitimate use for P2P after all?
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
The North American Anime distribution companies have been using Bittorrent distribution of fansubs to tell how popular new shows are for years now. The thing is, is that it works very well. The popularity of the fan subbed version either means that there is a strong niche/cult following, or that it will have strong widespread popularity.
How is a "sanctioned" release "piracy".
Broadcasters ... are ... giving copies of shows to a friend of a friend who is unaffiliated with the company to make a torrent
Methinks the notion that it is "piracy" just evaporated.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Too late for Global Frequency - allegedly, after the pilot became incredibly popular on bittorrent the studio said that they wouldn't run the series because of piracy fears.
Stupid flounders!
Count me as one of those that got hooked on a few TV shows due to downloading them on TPB. Currently, I am watching season 1 of Heroes. Saw zero shows of it until I recently downloaded it. Sopranos is another one where I will be buying the DVD's for it after only watching it off bittorrent.
Just apply liberal amounts of doublethink.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
I'd guess its probably because the 'friend of a friend' who releases it has permission to do so, other users do not.
It would be interesting to see what royalty collection agencies would say about this. I'd love to see them sue tv companies over lost income.. at $222,000 per infringement.
Didn't some major clothing designer (Tommy Hilfiger or Abercrombie and Fitch) actually tell their employees to allow shoplifting but to note which clothes were being shoplifted, to spot clothing trends in lower-class urban youth? I think I read this something like ten years ago. Isn't this similar (and can someone provide corroboration for this)?
DIACF. You're not even the first troll.
Good point, that's true, still not 60 min, but still better than network TV. And the lack of interruptions is very, very nice.
Personally, I get most of my TV shows (BSG/Dexter/The wire/Sopranos/the office/30 rock) from bittorent. And speaking as somebody who just recently gave up my cable TV, I can't help but wonder if we'd be better off if the whole TV advertising industry went the way of the dodo.
Nothing's really been proven, but there's been some psych studies that have suggest that the deliberate manipulation of your emotions/unconscious motivations by the advertising industry may not be good for society as a whole. I mean, can it be good for a democracy to have regular doses of messages telling you to not trust your own judgment, and that you'll be happier if you just buy [product X]?
And that's without even discussing the impact that the huge high cost of TV advertising has on elections. I can't remember where I heard this (or verify it's veracity) but the statistic I heard was that a US senator needs to raise $10,000 a day every day he's in washington to pay for his re-election. So there's definitely a relationship between the high cost of TV advertising and how beholden politicians are to monied interests.
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
Why would someone putting that up on PirateBay (some sort of nautical website or something?) include that? Why wouldn't it be cut off....UNLESS it was actually posted by the broadcaster? I have most often seen this with basic-cable shows. I mean my friend did. Not me.
Don't put advice in your sig.
they play 8 songs in a row with a common theme...
A common musical theme?
Or a common poetical theme?
Let me guess... it's the poetry?
Music education: a huge success for North America!
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
This is like cutting your own arm to measure if a blade is sharp.
Although in this case, your arm is going to get cut anyway...
"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it."
- Thomas Jefferson
The magical number is: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Your opinion is based on a perverted perspective - you're getting the stuff for free by doing something illegal and immoral. Not everybody can take the route of downloading TV from bittorrent because then nobody would be paying for the shows to be made so no shows would be made. If you want a real taste of an advertising-free world then buy the DVDs. OK, DVD is only a not-very-heavily-advertised-on medium, but it's the closest we've got.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
If I was a network and had a number of pilots I was unsure of, I'd "leak" them and listen to the chatter. While you can't guarantee your demographic with that, it will give you some feedback.
"Your opinion is based on a perverted perspective - you're getting the stuff for free by doing something illegal and immoral. "
I have to take exception to that assertion, because, like everybody else in Canada, I'm paying for this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy#Canada
And, according to the Competition Board (sort of the Canadian equivalent of the FTC) private non-commercial downloading is perfectly legal in Canada.
And whether or not it's immoral is a matter of opinion, not a matter of fact. Given that I could just as easily record most of those shows from over-the-air TV signals on my VCR or DVR, I fail to see how it's immoral. Unless you're making the assertion that by not watching ads on a TV show is immoral?
That aside, I'd be perfectly OK with renting or buying the DVD's of the above shows, were downloading not available somehow.
On top of which, I don't think it's my distorted perspective that brings me to wonder if we'd be better off without TV advertising, because I lived without TV entirely from about 1999 to 2001, and did exactly zero downloading then. And I still felt the same way then on the subject of the effects of TV advertising.
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
Seems like a pretty sound idea. I told a friend of mine about Dexter, she downloaded the first episode or 2, loved it, and bought the season 1 DVDs.
A friend of mine, who actually works as a club DJ on the side, and probably owns 10,000 CDs, describes a similar process by which he downloads music to check it out, and if he likes it, buys it.
On a similar note, I heard one of the musicians for the Canadian band Broken Social Scene interviewed on CBC radio. He said that thanks to P2P, almost before they even had an album released, they had enough of a fan base in Europe to tour 5 or 10 European cities.
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
... a three 'Arrrgh!' rating.
Have gnu, will travel.
I think that we would indeed be better off without such ads. One of my favorite authors has said that the creation of "silly luxuries and sillier advertisements to sell them" are useless work, not productive, and I think he was right. And he died back in 1963!
We don't need someone shouting at us in our homes to buy this product, and infecting our kids' minds with materialist greed. I've lived without a TV for two years. Occasionally I'll watch TV at my mom's house, but I don't miss it at all. I get my news online, and I don't rot my brain on sitcoms. My radio (commercial free station) gives me all the live content I need.
I hope our society moves away from TV, perhaps toward streaming content. I'd love the State of the Union speech (sorry, but I'm an American) to be available online.
Frodo Lives!!
Actually, what you're doing is illegal. After reading your Copyright Law, it expressly permits private copying of sound recordings only, so downloading TV and movies off BitTorrent could still get you in a whole lot of trouble.
Reference: your own damn law
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
TV broadcasters don't care if you 'steal' their stream. Who would, you don't pay for the TV screening of a particular show. What the TV broadcasters are most worried about, is that when the ADVERTISERS realise that less and less people are watching TV streams, theres less reason to advertise on TV, and more reason to advertise on the Internet.
Google spotted this way back with the acquisition of YouTube. (note: Google is an innovative and progressional company, as apposed to TV/Music/Movie industries)
Thats the basis of it. Internet gives you great coverage. Hell the viewers can even do the work (and cost) of transporting the show globally. Theres nothing to lose, except money - advertisers money.
Is that such a bad thing? Who in their right mind pays $100k for 30 seconds of advertising.
Yep, a company with profits (inflated prices that CONSUMERS pay for) that allow for the disposal of $100k.
Some would say its the somewhat intelligent humans on earth that are watching their TV shows around their hectic (i mean, slave for a dollar jobs) lifestyles, rather then having to offset dinner because is on.
Between my work schedule and social life, I don't have much time for television during prime time. I sometimes use bittorrent for timeshifting - which is really convenient. It's about time networks embrace P2P networks - and what they should do is host the torrents, embed ads in the downloads, DRM-free of course, and they can get some idea of ratings/popularity through tracker statistics. Granted, it would not be a perfect system but it would easily be as accurate as the old Nielsen rating system.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Well, IANAL, this is not legal advice, YMMV, but one might make the case that at the time that the copyright board expressly stated that downloading of _music_ was permitted, that downloading of video files was not yet as common in Canada as it is now, so the copyright board didn't address that question, and that if they were to do so, they might rule the same way for video files as they did for music.
Really, on an ethical/moral level, what's the difference between somebody downloading last week's episode of "house" and setting my VCR to record it?
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
Yep, Carl Sagan made a similar argument in "contact", the idea that companies (for example, pepsi vs coke) spend millions convincing people to buy one product over the other, when both in fact are nearly identical. If they didn't spend a fortune on advertising, maybe they'd, y'know, like, actually put that money into making a better product?
I seem to recall that Buckminster Fuller made a similar argument, but I can't remember where, I could be wrong.
This is just one more reason why I think the way copyright/pirating/infringement debate will be settled will be a statutory/compulsory license, using the radio airplay royalty system as an inspiration, you pay it as a surcharge on your ISP bill. I don't see that you'll ever be able to stop pirating of TV shows/movies/music. Now, that's not a problem for movies, ticket sales continue to be strong, but the other two? They're going to be in trouble eventually.
So, we can either interfere in the free market and civil liberties of everybody with a compulsory "Trusted/Treacherous Computing" model, or we can just pay an extra 10 bucks or whatever on our ISP bills.
Of course, copyright holders/owners don't want this, because they don't want any discussion of 'fairness' when it comes to pricing. For a compulsory license to work, they'll have to forget about charging the same amount for 2 episodes of "Battlestar Galactica" as you'd pay for a 2-hour movie that cost 150 million to make.
You can see the same attitude in how the record labels fought against the 'flat rate of 99 cents' for ITMS. (which, IMO, is still about 2 or 3 times too much...)
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
Thanks for taking the time for the comment, especially about K-narc.
I live in Portland also but usually only listen to KBOO or the rich, over-educated, politically-brain-addled ladies on NPR (KOPB locally). I'll flip on to K-narc whenever I can't stand to listen to the bozos on KBOO or KOPB for another second. K-narc's not my style, but it's not bad and I need the flexibility. I would have never heard the "they're trying to make go to rehab" song except for occasionally listening to KNRC. According to marketing surveys and research, I should be listening all the time to Kay Gone (KGON), but they bore the piss out of me. I outgrew them in 1975.
The TV marketeers are wise to post an occasional new show to the pirate outlets. Myself, I don't watch TV anymore and never will again. So I will be missing anything that is good if by some odd chance a quality show appears on TV.
I don't use pirate download services. I have dial-up internet access and it is too slow. The only opportunity that I get to see the TV shows that people write about as excellent is when they appear in the local library in DVD form. Which means I see the same shows about two years after everyone else. But what difference does it make? It's free and I get to watch the entire season (usually about 15 to 18 hours of episodes of a series) over the course of a few nights at home. No commercials, no credits and skip over the endless corporate logos.
Works for me.
A friend told me about an awesome show that I had to see. I didn't have TV and the first season was already over, and the 2nd wasn't playing for another few months. I found a torrent and downloaded it, and was hooked.
A few months later at my new place I got cable just for that show, and watched the whole 2nd season as it came out. Sure, if I missed an episode torrents would be out within an hour, so I didn't HAVE to get TV for it, but at that point I wanted to.
So your idea does present an interesting perspective and a sound reason for ending copyright. So no more copyright and no more drunken drugged up minstrals, no more media executives demanding BJs in limos, substantially fewer recruits for the scientologists, no more has been has been actor politicians etc. ect. ect., and of course in will immediately end the existence of 'perverted' copyright pirates.
Now that's a way of really sticking it to the pirates, end copyright and put them right out of business ;).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
It makes sense. I was also curious how a network show like Aliens in America was online weeks before the first episode, even being added to youtube unofficially
Some of the issues raised in this are things I have blogged about, here and more recently here.
Modern television is by many to be considered solely a form of entertainment -- a mechanism for television channels to deliver their true product to customers, i.e., consumer attention for advertisers. I feel however that it has a different meaning, where we can use the TV shows that someone professes to enjoy as a kind of Socratic mirror, in which is reflected the true intentions, ideals, likes and fears of the viewer.
So, what are we to make of the current plethora of television shows which grace our TV screens (or Bit Torrent trackers?) Can we learn something about our Western culture (I am confining myself to the current "Rex Artis" or cultural hegemony of the USA and its satellites in Australia, UK, New Zealand and even Canada) by identifying the themes which rise to the surface?
Paul Gillingwater
MBA, CISSP, CISM
at least as far as the law is being applied, anyway.
Is this why there have been so many "PREAIR" torrents released this past Fall? I guess there's an incentive for producers to show earlier-than-airdate statistics to broadcasters as a way to convince them of the program's expected popularity. http://www.mininova.org/search/?search=PREAIR
That Levy covers your for AUDIO recordings for personal use. No more, no less. Certainly not TV/Video.
And it doesn't cover redistribution at all. (Redistribution being a necessary process in most torrents.)
If there's a castle floating upside down in the sky, then there's a castle floating upside down in the sky.
The levy doesn't cover me RIGHT NOW for tv/video, the copyright board has never addressed the question, so one might make the argument the jury's still out. They made no reference to tv/video at all, yay or nay.
I think they'll eventually address that question, so we'll have to wait and see. I'm prepared to eat some crow if they answer 'nay'.
But, again, I ask you - what's the difference between me downloading a TV show vs me recording it on my VCR? Movies, different story, but I fail to see the substantive difference.
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
I think they'll eventually address that question, so we'll have to wait and see. I'm prepared to eat some crow if they answer 'nay'. Which means right now, you'll have to fall back on exiting canadian copyright law, which if they're properly enforcing their Berne Convention/WIPO treaty signatory status, means you are NOT authorized to make unauthorized copies for others. If I'm reading canadian copyright law correctly, you are still entitled to a personal use copy. (We've got differing "fair use" standards here in states than y'all up north, so I could well be wrong)
So go crazy grabbing them off the network sites. Tape them all you want. Stick em on the DVR. Strip the commercials if you like. It's your copy, and your business. But, again, I ask you - what's the difference between me downloading a TV show vs me recording it on my VCR? Movies, different story, but I fail to see the substantive difference. But torrenting is redistribution, which IIRC is still strictly prohibited. With torrents you UPLOAD while you download.
As far as personally recording vs. downloading, assuming we're talking about broadcast, commercially supported work, there's a pretty big difference, you're ignoring the publishers/boradcasters rights.
The broadcasters have usually contracted to be the exclusive distributors of the media in question. They're granted the explicit say in who, and under what conditions, (In this case, with advertisements) a particular work is released. You're subverting the creator's, (or in this case, his appointed representative's) will.
Really this is no different than the GPL licensing waffles that slashdot gets so riled up about. If the distributor says "No, you can't redistribute my show!" then you can't do it. If you don't LIKE the license, you're free to walk. When they show that little "All Rights Reserved" notice, they mean it. ALL RIGHTS.
If there's a castle floating upside down in the sky, then there's a castle floating upside down in the sky.
"Berne Convention/WIPO treaty signatory status"
Um, sorry, we've signed that treaty, but we haven't _ratified_ it. Just like the Kyoto protocol. When any government of Canada decides to take steps to ratify Kyoto, talk to me about the WIPO treaty.
All your discussion of broadcasters and exclusive rights seems a bit sophistic to me, sort of a 'how many angels can dance on the head of a pin' argument.
All I'm saying is, in terms of the actual consequences, I can download a show, and have a private, non-commercial-use copy of it, or I can have essentially the same thing by downloading it.
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
FFFFFFF IIIII NN NN AAA LL LL YY YY !!!
FF III NNN NN AAAAA LL LL YY YY !!!
FFFF III NN N NN AA AA LL LL YYYYY !!!
FF III NN NNN AAAAAAA LL LL YYY
FF IIIII NN NN AA AA LLLLLLL LLLLLLL YYY !!!
only took them a decade. not bad, for them.
expandfairuse.org