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South Park To Be Available Online Free and Legal

Posted by Zonk on from the i-like-the-crazy-future dept.

garnetlion writes "South Park is coming online, free and legal. My brief research has not indicated if it will use DRM, require some silly Windows-only software or be otherwise substandard. According to a Wired blog article, 'Parker and Stone said they were inspired to start the site when they got 'really sick of having to download our own show illegally all the time. So we gave ourselves a legal alternative.'" In this regard South Park joins fellow Comedy Central notable The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, whose archive was made freely available online late last year.

15 of 277 comments (clear)

  1. Illegally? by Brian+Gordon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    But they literally have the right to copy their own show (that's the meaning of copyright) so how is it illegal for them? And how is DRM free?

    1. Re:Illegally? by Rob+T+Firefly · · Score: 5, Informative

      Not sure how their particular deal works, but I think if Comedy Central actually owns the show they make, then they could have actually been criminally breaking the copyright of their own employers and in theory could be sued for it. IANAL, etc.

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    2. Re:Illegally? by boguslinks · · Score: 5, Informative

      Dont' assume they have the copyright to the show just because they're the creative guys behind it. When Arthur C. Clarke reprinted a chapter from 2001: A Space Odyssey in the sequel novel, he had to get permission from the publisher of 2001.

    3. Re:Illegally? by snowraver1 · · Score: 5, Informative

      They don't own it, Viacom owns it.

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    4. Re:Illegally? by eln · · Score: 5, Funny

      He's not just sure, He's HIV positive.

    5. Re:Illegally? by HolyCrapSCOsux · · Score: 5, Funny

      If it's the same orange pen I got, it summed up vista and office 2k7 nicely:
      it looked like a fairly standard retractable ballpoint. It had features that were pretty but pointless (led lights) that were activated using the interface (clicker at the end) that is normally reserved for the pen tip Hide/Unhide function. To Unhide the pen tooltip, you had to turn the barrel (requiring both hands). Making it twice as difficult to use as opposed to it's implied functionality.

      Furthermore, it crapped out on me halfway through the keynote.

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    6. Re:Illegally? by deanlandolt · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Not sure how their particular deal works, but I think if Comedy Central actually owns the show they make, then they could have actually been criminally breaking the copyright of their own employers and in theory could be sued for it. IANAL, etc. Wow -- it's all almost as illogical as academia, where professors have to beg permission from publishers to distribute their own works to students. Almost.
  2. More free, legal TV online by DogDude · · Score: 5, Informative

    Just discovered last week... NBC has the entire season 4 of The Office online, watchable in full screen, with traditional TV-like ads interrupting the shows. Of course, nobody likes ads, but it's worth it to me, at least, and I'm glad to see some of the old-school media companies like NBC FINALLY starting to "get it".

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  3. Obligatory by OverlordQ · · Score: 5, Funny

    First (Cat) Piss.

    Now we'll see which mods have seen s12e03 yet.

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  4. "Oh my God... by LM741N · · Score: 5, Funny

    they killed DRM! You bastards!"

  5. Re:Wrong tense. by Chris+Burke · · Score: 5, Funny

    The episodes are already online. Not "coming soon", not "to be"... you can see them right now.

    Not "to be", eh? Well I guess that finally answer that question.

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  6. no drm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    it's a flash based web player. there's no drm. same deal with all the new video from mtv networks. flash players, no windows stuff, etc.

    * i work for mtv networks doing video syndication, so i'm posting anonymously.

  7. Re:Wrong tense. by Pazy · · Score: 5, Funny

    Even worse when I tried to watch it said 'sorry england' now im pissed cause im Scottish and in Scotland :( lol

  8. They don't mind by Apoorv+Khatreja · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I have been watching South Park since the first season aired on Comedy Central. But then I got bored of waiting for a new episode every week, so I waited for a lot of episodes to pile up and then downloaded them off BitTorrent. Next, I found a site called southparkx.net, which offered news on South Park and offered episode downloads.

    Their FAQs said that "Matt and Trey do not mind when fans download their episodes off the Internet; they feel that its good when people watch the show no matter how they do it." I felt good when I heard this, not because they legalised what I was doing, but because they made a truly great show and didn't believe in all the evil copyright laws.

    Now, when they have offered a service to watch full episodes online, and to make small clips from episodes embeddable, I am a bigger South Park fan than ever.

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  9. Re:Wrong tense. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Do you mean "pissed" in the American-English sense or in the British-English sense? Because both seem entirely plausible for a Scot.