NBC Still Down On P2P But Plans To Use It Themselves

Cotton Eye Joe writes "Ars Technica has an interview with Rick Cotton, the general counsel for NBC Universal who is best known for saying that piracy is a more serious offence than robbery. Cotton still has some strong opinions on P2P, even though the network will be using it for distribution. 'He's convinced that the pirate problem is costing NBC Universal real revenue and that the scale of the problem is so vast as to discourage investment in the carrots, positive solutions like Hulu. "With all that pirated material available, it creates tremendous disincentives to content owners who need to invest in new content," Cotton says, "and that just hurts consumers over time."'"

Comments

Huh?

[sm62704]

piracy is a more serious offense than robbery.

Huh? And this guy makes how much money every year?

Re:Huh?

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Its more serious to them. They believe that a single stolen dvd set of Seinfeld will cost them less than one guy putting it up on bittorent.

Sort of like the old addage " Steal a fish from a man, he won't eat for a day. Tell the whole village how to steal his fish, and he'll never eat again."

Re:Huh?

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Then why is it worth pirating?

Re:Huh?

[hairyfeet]

They also seem to forget the gains they make,not only in advertising,but in new customers.I ended up buying the complete Joss Whedon collection because I caught a couple of Buffy season one episodes on P2P.They didn't show it here and I never would have gotten into it otherwise.They also seem to forget folks like to collect things.I could have downloaded the entire thing on P2P,but it looks a lot nicer on my bookshelf with a couple of Sideshow collectibles as bookends(which I'm sure they get a cut of in licensing).Now if you figure in the price of the collectibles I spent over $600 for all the seasons of Buffy+Angel+Firefly.And I have known a lot of guys that have gotten into a game series or shows the exact same way.Sure,you could have gotten it off of P2P,but then I wouldn't have had the cool behind the scenes stuff,the director commentaries,etc.Since they weren't insane on pricing when it came to the seasons it was worth the extra expense.

If they don't rip off the people when it comes to price(Star Trek series,ouch) folks will buy simply to have the nice box and extras.There is also ways to make money on ads playing while they download,licensing,etc.They simply need to use their brains and adapt.The more they pull draconian DRM BS or say crap like "piracy is worse than armed robbery" while screwing the artists in the same breath,the more customers are going to say "they are screwing everyone for everything they can get,why shouldn't I do the same?". It is hard to sell hypocrisy,especially when you are making record profits while trying to have passed even more draconian copyright protections.

There is still plenty of money to be made,especially for those that treat their customers well and give them what they want.Whether they choose to make those profits,or end up shooting themselves in the foot like RIAA,only time will tell.But as always my 02c,YMMV.

BSG anyone

[T-Kir]

Isn't Battlestar Galactica one of the biggest traded shows on P2P? In that case he is probably getting the subject and Mediasentry-like buddies up and going for the new series premiere next month.

Just my first thought and £0.02

Simple economics

[elrick_the_brave]

I love it when spin doctors change the reality of the situation. From an economics standpoint, if there is no supply (e.g. meeting market demands with new product and services - how long have we been asking for newer methods to access and enjoy our entertainment ) then how on earth do you expect demand to come into play?

I have always wanted to buy cool things... I reward convenience with my cash. I reward innovation with my cash. I reward customer service with more cash than if I find a cheaper competing product or service.

If a company didn't respond to market changes in the past, it was called incompetence and the management was fired. These days it seems like the short term desire for quarterly profits blinds people to that.

As I said, you can spin the results any way you want. What makes the money is selling what people want.

Re:Simple economics

[TubeSteak]

I love it when spin doctors change the reality of the situation. If you want spin doctoring, his comment about disincentives is hilarious.

Piracy is just another variable in the "will this be profitable" equation. The equation for DVDs and movies is stupid simple, but is a bit more complex for TV.

TV: Possible advertising sales - cost to produce - possible eyeballs (ad revenue) lost to piracy = X
If X > alternatives for that timeslot then you have a keeper

Does he really expect us to believe that "not making as big of a profit" is a disincentive?

NBC's real problem

[peragrin]

is the lack of quality programming and the massive amounts of commercial breaks per 30 minute episode.

The last things on NBC I watched was Hero's and the Knight Rider Movie. Both of them felt very funny like i was watching 4 minutes of show and 4 minutes of commercials. by the time i got through 2 hours of the Knight Rider movie I was pissed off.

Watching NBC is like listening to Wil liam Shat ner speeeeaak. Ev ery thing is drawn out.

sorry I couldn't keep it up my brain kept fixing the errors.

Cut the ads down to less than 15 minutes per 30 minute episode and people might start watching again.

Re:NBC's real problem

[flajann]

All the networks, indeed all of cable, suffers from a lack of quality programming. Even "newcomers" such as the Discovery Network, the Sci-Fi Channel, and the Science channel started off great but sled down the slippery slopes to mediocrity.

Why should I spend $100 a month for lack of quality programming despite the vast array of "choices" of hundreds of channels

There was a time I had both Satellite and Cable TV; now I have neither. It is simply easier to BitTorrent the few things I like, and sans the rest. Then I can watch what I want at my leisure, on my schedule, free of commercials that rarely, if ever, promote anything I am interested in anyway.

If the network providers like NBC, CBS, etc. can't understand that, the to balls with them. I am more than happy to pay for quality, and that also means not being inundated with bazillions of commercials that take me out of the story anyway.

NBC is its own problem. They now have to compete with YouTube and MySpace and MMORPGs and everything else we can do online. That's the real thing that is killing them. They just can't compete, and they use P2P as a scapegoat to whine about their "losses".

Even the news outlets like MSNBC and CNN leave a lot to be desired, which is obviously more interested in the corporate bottom line and political correctness than reporting real news. I always find it amusing to read on the BBC website interesting news happening in my "backyard" here in the US without seeing any reference of the same on our own news outlets. Funny that.

Give Me Quality Content, and I will be more than happy to give you my eyes, and maybe a few bills as well.

Re:NBC's real problem

[TheLostSamurai]

The last things on NBC I watched was Hero's and the Knight Rider Movie. Both of them felt very funny like i was watching 4 minutes of show and 4 minutes of commercials. Wow, you got more out of it than I did. The whole time I was watching that Knight Rider "movie" I kept thinking that the entire thing was just one big car commercial.

Nothing to see here... move along

[zappepcs]

You can (IMO) ignore this guy as uninformed, or more dangerously, misinforming the legislative processes.

"You have to start with the first proposition," Cotton says, "which is: should we collectively be concerned about the fact that 50 to 75 percent of the total bandwidth of broadband ISPs is today taken up by P2P traffic which is in fact overwhelmingly pirated? I have to tell you, I think the answer to that is yes." Lets see some facts and resources here? Prove it was pirated! I dare you.

He goes further; P2P protocols themselves disrupt the Internet by passing bandwidth costs from content owners onto ISPs. Cotton told the FCC in a recent filing, "P2P applications shift the costs of centralized storage and distribution to end users and their broadband network providers." Obviously, he thinks that we, the end users, have not paid for the use of the bandwidth? WTF? Perhaps he believes that Google should pay for ALL OF THE INTERNET since they index it? Or maybe Facebook should pay for their 15% of the Internet in North America? This is just double speak so they can end up double-dipping. If they are able to establish clear end to end connections for content distribution then it will clearly be easier to determine who they want to litigate against for illegal content and bandwidth usage. They WANT the Internet to be a series of trucks running through tubes they build and control all the way to your eyesockets.

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts

[johnny cashed]

"and that just hurts consumers over time."

I see no mention of consumers in there. I didn't realize that patents and copyrights were to protect consumers. Please, explain this to me.

Re:Piracy also hurts corn growers

[un1xl0ser]

I don't think that any corn growers are wondering what to do with their product these days, what with ethanol production ramping up everywhere and driving the price up.

P2P is the solution to NBC

[binaryspiral]

and that just hurts consumers over time.

No, you dumbass... I think you don't understand that P2P was the answer to all the things you did to piss off consumers.

Forcing TiVo to eliminate the commercial skip pissed off consumers.
Using outdated ratings and canceling popular shows pissed off consumers.
Eliminating popular distribution methods (like ITMS) pissed off consumers.

When you alienate enough of them - they fix the problem themselves. P2P is the solution to the problems you created.

TV itself was a gamble when it first came to the public. NBC invested in it. Now they say they won't invest in new mediums because of pirates... give me a damn break. Quit your bitching and listen to your viewers - yes, even the pirates.

Re:The summary...

[Brian Gordon]

It also uses the word "carrots". I don't get it.

He is right!

[Belial6]

He is right. Piracy, and thus by definition, P2P has STOLEN so much profit that there is no longer any incentive to create new work. NBC should immediately show us that they truly believe this and cease doing business in a money loosing market. In fact if they do not, the shareholders of NBC should immediately initiate a class action lawsuit, as the NBC executives are clearly harming the financial health of NBC by spending millions of dollars on the creation of new content where there is no incentive to do so.

Well, who's fault is that?

[Digital_Quartz]

"[The] problem is so vast as to discourage investment in the carrots, positive solutions like Hulu."

And who's fault is that, exactly? Who sat on their heels, clinging desperately to their sinking and outdated business model while new distribution systems were built? Who refused to license content to the new distribution systems? Who, after years of being thrashed by modern technology, finally tried to counter the problem by building DRM encumbered systems that gave the customer far less value than the "pirate" option, while charging much more?

Content owners have, in effect, "trained" the public to be pirates. If a DRM-free system for downloading TV shows and music had existed 10 years ago, most people would probably never have bothered with Napster, and this whole problem would have never existed. If 6 years ago, the content owners had responded to Napster and other P2P technologies with innovation instead of lawsuits, likely software like Napster would have remained a niche product, used by the technically competent (as opposed to, say, my mother). All this senseless talk of "ISP level filtering" only tells us that the content owners have not yet learned the lesson. They are doomed to failure.