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Despite Global Release, Breaking Bad Heavily Pirated
tlhIngan writes "One reason that many people pirate TV shows is 'it's not available in my country until months after it airs.' Which is why the second episode of Breaking Bad's final season was aired globally within a few hours of each other yesterday evening. Despite this, many users still decided to download it than watch it when it aired locally. Australia users we the top, perhaps because it was on FoxTel. This was followed by U.S. and Canada (who obviously got to see it when it aired), and the UK where Netflix had it within hours of the U.S. premier. Fifth on the list was the Netherlands, where it had aired hours before the U.S. premier on a public channel. It's obvious that despite the global release, the show was headed to top its previous highs in number of downloads. Could this spell the doom to future global releases, since the evidence is people just pirate them anyways?"
There would be no need to pirate it if everyone knew that it would be on TV. How many knew that this was the case?
Do they still broadcast TV shows?
maybe people are sick and tired of stupid commercials interrupting their viewing pleasure.
No commercials. here it shows on amc. Who pops in every 8 minutes to tell us about the breaking bad premier. other channels i don't watch. other crap i'll never want to see. useless products. and more ads for breaking bad!
I started to watch and the above annoyed the fuck out of me... Shut the set off and did something else. And pirated that shit an hour later.
So much better experience.
I paid for cable, they got their money. But they want more! Fuck them and their ads.
I'm so sick of ads. Everywhere.
They also doubled their viewership. It's obvious piracy is not a problem.
Could it have anything to do with the growing number of people that don't want to spend $200/mo on a cable subscription, fees, taxes, surcharges, digital tuners, HD subscrpitions/tuners, and DVRs?
Perhaps there are too many adverts during movies and shows aired on television.
I've become increasingly annoyed at how many adverts are shown while watching a movie or a show. Personally I think they're unwatchable.
If streaming services (e.g. I'm subscribed to Netflix) were to get content sooner rather than waiting months for a popular show to be available on their service then that may make a difference.
You tread.. very lightly..
Many people are simply in the habit of torrenting shows, and often have rss feeds or similar automation set up to grab them automatically. I personally wasn't aware that breaking bad was airing here, nor did i know when the rest of the season was due to start. I only found out about it when it popped up in the RSS feed, by which time it had already been downloaded via torrent.
If i had known it was on tv i may well have watched it there (or recorded it for later viewing), but i certainly wouldn't watch it via a drm encumbered streaming service.
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1. I can see it exactly when I want, not have to wait for when it's being broadcast;
2. I don't have to pay subscription or licence fees;
3. I don't increase the wealth of people who are doing just fine already;
4. I don't have to watch any adverts or listen to any annoyingly placed continuity voiceovers;
5. (not very often, but sometimes) I can find higher quality online.
Reasons for waiting for broadcast:
1. Requires less effort - not any issue for anything popular enough;
2. Nice to be able to enjoy something all at the same time - this one is occasionally relevant;
3. Nice to have someone else pace things for you - more relaxing;
4. Concern that unicast streaming is highly inefficient - this bothers me in technical principle, but in practice servers and service providers aren't run in the public interest, so I am happy to hammer them with all Adblocking in place;
5. Well programmed, twisted sense of ethics concerning "intellectual property" .
For a long time many defended their pirating of music and videos with the argument that they only did it because the industry didn't provide a legal, user friendly and inexpensive alternative with timely release across countries. Now that we have Spotify, Netflix, etc. and releases like this, and people still pirate, many of these arguments have proven to be just invented moral excuses for the people who continue to pirate. Too bad, because these services really are at a level now, in terms of a good, fair and user friendly offering, where they deserves to be supported by consumers, to continue to fund them and good content.
If you've been pirating TV shows for so long and have become accustomed to its benefits (no ads, offline watching at any time and not just when aired/networked, encoded in cross-platform, DRM free formats for easy transfer to multiple devices, etc), it's very hard to go back to traditional methods of watching TV shows.
I want to see it when I want to.
I don't even have an subscription on a cable provider because of all the ridiculous amounts of crap they broadcast.
I live in the Netherlands.
Downloading is much more convenient.
One would think that they would air it in all country's while the hype was in full swing, nobody wants to follow a has been. Kinda like following the U.S. government failure to it's people.
And certainly not for free. In most countries these series are being broadcast through channels that require a monthly or yearly subscription (i.e. satellite). Also lots of people download the episodes for their library..So, nothing new in this article
It's a TV drama set in Albuquerque, New Mexico (also produced there for authenticity). It's won a lot of awards, and rightfully so because the show is outstanding.
What it does best is blur the lines of morality. Rather than fall upon the hollywood cliche of "good guy versus bad guy", the viewer is never quite sure where the cast's motivations lay.
TV networks here in Australia break up programmes and play them in whatever order works for them. They repeat episodes from five years ago and trickle in a new episode now and again. So of course people will just go online and download what they want to watch now. Its easier to do that than to record off the TV just to time shift it. Its easier to download than to record from the TV to watch on a laptop in bed. lets face it: The internet is closer to us than television these days.
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Even if they did I can't just imagine sit at TV on a specific date/time. This is not how it works now, I will watch it when/if I have time not when they think I should watch it.
I also like to watch multiple episodes at a time, and the legal way of me doing this (can't use hulu or netflix where I live) is ordering box set via amazon which costs 45 pounds for seasons 1-4.
No thanks, make it 10 pounds and you got a deal since it's just piece of plastic with printed out papers.
The only advantage I see in a dvd box set is that audio levels and quality is consistent across all the seasons/episodes but even this can be a non issue if you take your time searching right torrents.
Plus it will take 1 week for the DVDs to get here and would require me to go to the post office, wait in line, get back home to finally view it.
Now lets compare the other alternative that I have:
Open up the bay, type in breaking bad season, get the one with most seeds/ok quality and press magic download button. 1 hour later I have what I needed without all the annoyances.
So guess which route will I or anyone sane would choose?
Yes. Yes you should.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
TFA gives a lot of numbers about how many were downloaded this episode ... but doesn't compare it to anything.
Of course people pirated it. People will always pirate it. They could be handing it out for free on every street corner, and some people would still download it illegally. The question is whether or not the global release decreased piracy
How about this, for science... continue the worldwide simultaneous release via netflix or whatever, all season long. Then take it offline for the very last episode, or just delay that episode by a day. See how much piracy increases. (yes, I'm joking ... mostly)
This signature is false.
'Albuquerque'? Did somebody say 'Albuquerque'? And 'Breaking Bad'? Here you go. You're welcome.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWdTi57e4GU
I usually don't respond to the threads on /. about piracy; I don't see any point in debating it. I'm pretty much going to do it regardless until they hand over full control of me being able to do what I want with something after I have purchased it. I believe many others out there have the same reasons, so I decided I would post them.
1. It's easy. I turn on the computer, surf over to The Pirate Bay, search for what I want, click on the magnet link and a few minutes later I have it.
2. Freedom. I can then do whatever I want with the file. Put it on my laptop and take it with me, watch it on my 27" monitor, stream it to a TV or run it from a computer connected to TV via HDMI. I can give it to a friend on a USB stick. Save it on my hard drive for later. Pause it in the middle to do something else and resume later.
3. Cost. Buying a new television every few years is expensive. I don't know about you, but I want to retire early. I move around a lot because of work and having a television with me is not an option. Also, in my country of Norway, we have to pay a TV licence fee of around 500 dollars a year if we have one. I hate Norwegian television, it's boring and ethnocentric. The rest of the world seems to be in a television series renaissance, but here it's the same boring shit that no one outside of this small and insignificant country cares about. Mostly about "Big Brother" type of programming and gatherings of celebrities.
4. Advertising and commercials. I don't have to fucking watch them when I download something. Period.
5. The Man. I'm just trying to make my way in this world and I'm sick of people better off than me trying to get their hands in my pockets. I don't want theirs, I just want mine. And to keep it. Knowing that they didn't get it this time gives me pleasure and satisfaction. I will ultimately buy the stuff I really like because I support the artists/authors. I have over 1000 music CDs in storage I've bought since my first CD player in 1993. Now, I try to buy FLAC or 320 kbps MP3s directly from the bands. I have over 400 games on Steam, many from Indy publishers, most I haven't even played. Especially since I gave up computer games as my new year's resolution 2013. But I still buy them because I support what they do, and I like that I will always have them on Steam. Movies? They release them on DVD, then Blue Ray, then a special edition, then an uncut with added scenes, then 20 years later with lost fucking footage. This doesn't make me feel like they give a shit about me getting what I am paying for. Sure, I could forgo films and television series completely, but there's that social aspect of being a part of conversations at work and at gatherings that I would miss out on. I already don't give a damn for sports, might as well drop out of society completely.
If they were to figure out a delivery system like Steam for music, films and books, where I would actually own what I've paid for, I would give up downloading. Imagine buying a film in 1080p and when they decide to upscale it to 4K with new footage and features, it would automatically get updated without you having to dish out more cash. I think that's something we all want. I also want an itunes alternative, a real one, I don't support companies who bully and sue everyone.
Could this spell the doom to future global releases, since the evidence is people just pirate them anyways?
Probably, but I'd like to solve the puzzle, Pat: "The demise of broadcast TV and push-media in general." Now tell me what I've won!
I had no idea it was airing where I live, but why would I care when the "pirated" version is waiting for me to queue it up at my earliest convenience on myriad devices. (So is the Netflix version, but I use a region-unblocker for Netflix--is that still "piracy?")
Actually, I wrote my thesis on life experience.
You can't say global release is a flawed model just by the piracy numbers. The key is the financials. If AMC can get more money from international rebroadcasters by offering it to them on a shorter timeframe, then global release has some merit.
And it is possible that the content is considered to be more valuable on the shorter timeframe, because the airers prefer their content be more "fresh".
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
So, you go to the mechanic to get some work done, you agree on a price (which includes a bit of profit), they do the work and get paid once; You don't pay each time you start up your car.
The same can be true with infinitely reproducible bits, that's how your Free & Open Source coders can make money, they get paid to do work once, and don't charge for the work again for each copy.
Note: With code or music, film, games, etc. forms of art, it doesn't benefit one individual, it benefits culture as a whole (if you're lucky). So, there isn't this One to One : Work to Benefit ratio (like with mechanics, home builders, fast food, etc). Artwork is a one to many production. That means that everyone who benefits can chip in to get the work done. So, set a price for the next episode (plus a bit of profit), let folks donate to get the show made, it gets made and everyone gets to watch it because everyone already paid for the work to get done. Fans have deeper pockets than you think; You're actually limiting yourselves by not doing this.
Watch as publishers go extinct as they become publicists instead -- In fact, you want everyone to watch everything so they'll pay more for the next show to get made (redundancy solves your archival problem), and no one wastes money on shows no one wants to watch. It's as simple as not doing the work until the payment is agreed upon -- like all other labor markets in the world. Why gamble your stability away via the copyright futures market? You could reject the idea of "starving artist" and respect it like all other forms of work. More job security, less money wasted on garbage shows, more money available to put into better shows, no commercials required... and all piracy is eliminated.
Is it a "miracle" that the information which benefits many is also infinitely reproducible? No, that's the nature of information; Most of you just fundamentally misunderstand it. You humans are so... no, I dare not say; There is no concept in your culture to describe the effect anyway -- Like a Frustratron with a fused Overkill setting, to say the very least.
In Australia, season 4 finished airing on ABC only a few weeks ago. I don't even know when season 5 will be shown, let alone the latest season. Showing on Foxtel really doesn't count - free to air TV is still dominant here.
It's a drama about a HS chemistry teacher turned meth cook/dealer who discovers his true calling as a cunning and ambitious criminal. It's ok. It's presently a big fad among people that watch a lot of TV.
I've watched it and it's ok. It won't redefine Hollywood or anything but it's entertaining. Sometimes I think I'm watching Laurel & Hardy Make Meth. There are a number of gaping plot holes and implausibilities, but it's good enough to warrant the necessary suspension of disbelief.
Should you be ashamed? Only if you're spending the time equivalent watching porn or something.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
If all shows would always be available in a convenient way, they people wouldn't pirate. But it's too little, too late. Only a few shows are available globally (and judging by the comments here, even in this case that is not entirely sure). But it is certainly too late. There are so many alternative ways to obtain a series or movie that people don't go back.
5-10 years ago, many people couldn't be bothered to figure out how this whole downloading thing worked. But the commerce of TV made them figure it out. Now, everybody can do it. There are loads of streaming websites, and torrents. By now, viewers do not only demand it becomes available globally, but also that it is available 24/7, so they can watch it at their own convenience. That is the luxury that downloading provides.
I'm so happy that streaming and downloading (but not uploading) is still legal in the Netherlands. :-)
http://torrentfreak.com/downloading-movies-and-music-stays-legal-in-the-netherlands-121221/
We don't need "a-la-carte" programming so much as the ability to opt out of one or both of the two most expensive blocks of channels that somehow ended up being regarded by the cable industry as non-negotiable prerequisites to getting everything else... the ESPN family of sports channels, and the Disney family of kids channels. There are lots of other channels few people really care about passionately, but THOSE channels come out to literally a few cents per month. It's ESPN and Disney that *really* drive up the base price of reasonable cable in the US... and drive it up a LOT. As in, the cable company actually pays MORE to ESPN and Disney than they pay to HBO and Showtime. (the figure I saw was that cable companies pay something like $12/month for ESPN, and $8/month for Disney, vs roughly $6/month for HBO or Showtime).
Instead of mandating a-la-carte pricing (which would really end up being a rate hike for 90% of customers, and would leave the remainder saving maybe $5-10/month and getting way less for their m oney), Congress should prohibit cable channels from forcing their channel bundles on a cable company's entire subscriber base. If it cost the same amount for Comcast to give you ESPN, Disney, HBO, or Showtime, there's no reason why they wouldn't change from making everyone get ESPN and Disney, and instead made their middle tier a Chinese menu where you picked 2 out of 4 (ESPN, Disney, Showtime, HBO). They'd make the same amount of profit (or more), and customers who hate ESPN and Disney would be happier with HBO and/or Showtime.
No airing whatsoever in Ireland as far as I could see, including on Sky, which I would assume was probably the same situation in the UK.
I am to old and to set in my ways to change anymore. The content industry treated me like a leaper and thief for to long for me to now start dancing to their tune again. The old practices of charging high prices for 2 episodes on a single VHS tapes, charging 1 dollar for a single song only accepting credit cards, the endless unskippable ads and warnings on BOUGHT content, lame copy protection that only bothers paying customers have just completely turned me of paying for content. I get better, faster service for free then when I payed for it for over 20 years. Fine, I take the hint. I keep my money and spend it on other stuff.
People like me are lazy, it took a LOT for me to start blocking ads for instance, it was just to much hazzle in the beginning. But now installing ad-blocker is part of my routine after installing a new browser. And I won't change that routine anytime soon. Push me over the edge and I won't climb back up, I will stay there and nurture my grievances long after you claimed they are gone.
Oh and TV shows are STILL over priced, DVD's still have unskippable warnings and adds and songs are STILL a dollar a song AND it is still a nightmare to pay with iDeal (dutch cross bank payment system) on most services.
Oh and since breaking bad aired on a dutch public channel, may taxes payed for it whether I want to watch it or not, so why shouldn't I be able to download (it airs without commercial breaks) it? Downloading is legal in Holland anyway.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I expect to watch movie releases and TV shows at my discretion, without commercials. I expect it to always be possible because of the "analog hole", the question is only whether it will always be more convenient. I'm ready to pay for it if tre price is right. Only spotify have so far been able to reach the cost/convenience treshold by offering all the music I need at a fixed cost. The only way to stop pirating of TV/movies would be the same thing: A stupidly simple interface, available on everyone's TV (i.e. has to be on all TV's, consoles, devices) and with everything you want to watch within a few clicks. Dealing with cable companies and TV channel packages is analogous to signing up on a 12 month listening deal with a record company. A record company that only has half the artists you like. Its a business model that is dead in the water.
I'm not much of a tv watcher myself, but the show I do tend to watch, Dr. Who, is free to air where I live. Without commercials too. I don't think I've ever watched it on live tv, I always pirate it purely for convenience. As long as the most convenient thing is pirating, I will continue doing so. For music on the other hand, the most convenient thing is generally spotify, so I pay the reasonable price for a subscription. The things not on spotify I pirate. Afaik Netflix is not yet available here in the Netherlands (it wasn't the last time I checked, about a year back), but if it were and there was a subscription that fit my consumer pattern, I wouldn't mind paying something for it either. Digital on demand media is getting there. Its just a matter of time. The traditional media will either adapt to the demands of a new generation of consumers, or die out and be replaced by those who do understand how to deliver what I want.
In the spirt of the show, everyone watching shoud be pirating it. Come on, haven't you learn anything from the show? Do we have to get out a barrel of piranha solution for your sorry ass?
You can't just do this once or twice and expect everyone to stop downloading :)
I assume this "airs" thing they speak of has to do with those "television" things old people stare at. I have not had one of those in years and I see no reason to get one. It's about 10 years too late to try "airing" things within a reasonable time-frame from when the show is released in my case. I know some people under 30 who own a TV which is hooked up to their computer or XBox, but I know very few who actually watch TV-channels anymore. I know old people (50-60+) like their propaganda box, but it's a bit late to try to attract younger people who are used to getting all media from the Internet.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
The deal:
I'll pay you that £25 a month that you want me to pay to watch TV when:
- I can just watch EVERYTHING. No exclusives, specials or "just pay extra to see this".
- I can watch what I want. Old stuff, new stuff, nobody decides for me. You just put your whole archives online and I can watch them.
- I can not watch anything I don't want to watch. This includes adverts.
- I can watch it when I want. Sorry, but the days of me staying in of an evening to catch particular show X died with the video recorder and are just laughable nowadays. The kind of people / entertainment that such scheduling works for are those things that are just "on" when people slouch down in the sofa for the evening not intending to move, and the program is entertaining enough that people don't switch over - this has bred the entire Big Brother / X-Factor crap for the last 10 years.
- I can watch it how I want - online, on a TV, on a tablet, from abroad, etc. You NEED me to say things like "Oh, you have to see this program, look, watch this for a minute, it's great" and/or "we have this program in England, it's fabulous, here I'll load up an episode for you". Honestly. If I can't, then you will not get new people watching programs.
- I can watch it when it comes out. No preview, exclusives, region differences, etc. I can just watch it from the release time onwards, forever.
- You have to stop giving a shit about piracy. Honestly, every measure ever implemented has been next-to-useless. All it's done is stop genuine people watching things as much as delaying pirates. I still refuse to buy Disney DVD's because they JUST DON'T WORK in my daughter's laptop. Simple as that. End of. If you can't make your money from TV channels WANTING to show your stuff and the associated licensing / merchandising rights then you should just stop making it.
Honestly, I'm infinitely more likely to pay £50 direct to "thebigbangtheory.com" for a lifetime membership that lets me view any and all episodes than I am to pay £25 a month to a channel that occasionally bothers to screen random episodes of it years after they come out and that you get literally PENCE of licensing revenue from per viewing.
The fact that you STILL haven't picked up on this as a possibility - alongside the traditional methods - means that you just don't care about actually making money as much as we'd like to think. You just care about nothing more than holding the rights and having the power to decide what's "big" and what's not, which is what the whole anti-piracy game is. I don't blame the actors or the writers so much as all the middle-men involved in the process. And it's about time we just cut them out.
If you haven't noticed, this is how people buy video games nowadays. It would take about a month to work out how to use Steam to distribute video content in the same way. The day Steam lets me "buy" a season of my favourite program, and I can just double-click to download and view it offline on as many computers as I like and not have to worry about if it will play or not, TV is dead. And not because of piracy.
"Breaking Bad's final season was aired globally"
Yeah, right. Just went on their page, there's only ep9 from s5, when clicking I got: "The video you are trying to watch cannot be viewed from your current country or location". Global release my a**.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
In New Zealand it was aired on a premium channel available only on a premium service only available via satellite.
I'd have to buy a dish, or sign up for a 12/24 month contract + install fee, then buy the base package full of 50 channels I don't want for $50 a month, then buy the soho channel for another $10 a month, then stay up late because it started at 11:15PM. It's another $15 a month to get a PVR decoder to watch it when I want.
That's $75/month just to watch a TV show.
I didn't even know that the show had started up again, before I noticed a new episode automatically downloaded from a RSS feed.
I have access to the show through my cable subscription, but I rarely use my tv for watching stuff. Afterall my computer has a 30" screen, surround speakers and a darker room. I sometimes use my PVR to record stuff from tv, but I rarely turn it on to watch whatever I've recorded.
When you have practically unlimited storage space at home, you sort of like to keep whatever you download as well, just in the rare chance you'll ever want to see it again (or share it with someone).
Torrents are much better than streaming, and the selection of things to watch is MUCH greater than any online service I've found. It's not about the money for me, much more so about the convenience.
but they AREN'T global releases, they are releases to select channels of pay TV providers. In Australia I still download as I want to watch it in HD and I don't have a HD Foxtel Box (only SD). So while yes the release is global, it is still only a select few that have the desired Access. I would happily pay for Breaking Bad in HD, but not at the abortion of price gouge that Foxtel want.
wikipedia indicates that there were 5.9 million viewers in the U.S. alone, vs 2.93 million for the season opening episode. I think one can easily call this a massive success. The piracy issues seems minor in comparison.
Second episode? "Australia we the top"? C'mon guys...f**king ridiculous.
while [ 1 ]; do echo -n -e "\xe2\x95\xb$((($RANDOM&1)+1))"; done
look, I checked it up and in germany it is on AXN which is a cable TV channel, and not even in the basic package, for entertain cable TV it is on the big TV *upgrade* package. So please next time you pretend it is a global release, check that it is not or pay TV. On public TV it is a global release. On cable TV ? not so much.
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I don't count pay TV channel (not even the default cable TV) as being global either personally.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Breaking Bad is one of the top 5 TV shows of the past decade. Here's a quick summary that makes it sound boring without spoiling anything: High school chemistry teacher Walter White gets diagnosed with cancer and turns to crime to pay for his cancer treatment.
Do yourself a favor and try to watch it cold, or you'll ruin the magic. One thing you should know: The pacing is slow, but it's worth it. Seasons 1-2 are the best television you'll ever watch (later seasons not so much).
Personally, I felt the complete opposite. I watched Season 1, and a bit of Season 2, but I just couldn't get into it. I was intrigued by the concept, but it was slow and boring. Not to mention I was going through the whole cancer thing myself at the time, so the last thing I needed was to watch someone else go through it. I decided I didn't like the show, and then ignored it for several years.
Eventually, when Season 5 first aired, my friends kept talking about the show, and eventually they convinced me to pick it up again. I'm glad I listened to them, because after the 2nd season, things pick up pace dramatically. It moves from focusing on a melodramatic cancer patient fumbling his way through the criminal underworld to vast criminal empires, intrigue, death, and a man's descent into darkness. Not to mention Gus made the show what it is.
So it was on Netflix in the UK? Not much use to me as I have LoveFilm. And no, I'm not signing up for a duplicate service just for one programme.
It's almost like industry practices have made people so used to doing it this way that watching it on TV even when you can is way more effort.
If Sickbeard is set up to snag it and record it, it means that it will be waiting for me, on my schedule, properly sorted and tagged in my media center for when I'm available to watch. Of the four shows I track, don't know when any of them are on. Of the four, one is broadcast and two are basic cable that are posted by the content owner, to the web, and without commercials within 12 hours of airing.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Don't hurt your back lugging those goal post around when you change tack and claim the yet to be fucking released complete series on disc sales have been hurt.
Fucking Hollywood, mutter, mutter
Same-day in the UK; meanwhile, us USian Netflix folk who choose to watch BB in the purest form (heh) sans commercials, will have to wait, dancing in a year-long mine field of spoilers (Twitter, et al) while AMC milks their rerun and DVD cows.
Seems fair.
Why pay the "Gold Price" when you can pay the "Iron Price" ? :-)
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
...how come we don't get that in the states?
In my case, the pirating happened because netflix dropped the ball and the content wasn't viewable hours after (atleast 12+) it had been broadcasted. We've all been told, and I've even said it myself; provide me a service which updates quickly with good enough quality, and you'll have a deal.
Are you being serious? Being available 12 hours after the original broadcast is pretty quick, especially considering that it's the middle of the night in Finland when the show airs in the US. Don't you have to work on Mondays? You get home and the episode is available on Netflix right away.
Seriously, stop moving the goalposts.
At least you're an honest pirate. Usually there's lots of hemming and hawing about "oh I wish there was some way I could pay for this content, but it's not available in my country/available right this instant/etc. so reluctantly I must pirate it."
Oh, I know this one... is it the blue pill?
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
Braking Bad? Is that the show about a driving instructor who decides to turn his hand to fitting custom ECUs to illegally supercharge vehicles?
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
Why would I buy more than one device if my laptop can do everything?
You can't seriously be expecting me to wait for someone else to decide when I'm going to watch something. That's not normal. You don't pull a book from the shelf at a certain specific time. At a theater, you can also choose where and when to watch whatever you want, within a reasonable time frame.
My great-uncle was a computer pioneer, punch-card programmer etc... born in the 30s, my mom was also in IT, born in 1958, spent her whole life playing computer games as far as I can remember. You do realize that the old Magnavox Odyssey was released when she was in her teens? I'm 33, I was born into a family who already owned a console. It's not my fault if technologically illiterate media moguls are 1 or 2 generations behind the times, but the people who should be leading us should be at the LEADING edge, not way behind the times.
The last time I needed a television was back in the NES days.
We really need to re-evaluate the definition of pirated.
Select from tblFriends where interesting >= 4;
Am I missing something?
Seastead this.
I'm confused. You list all these ways you can't get Netflix, then strongly imply that you have a streaming-capable Internet connection.
Are you not, in fact, aware that the main way you get Netflix is through a streaming Internet connection? Or is your connection just not good enough to receive any random stream out there (but your ISP optimizes it for specific streams that pay them)?
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
I truly believe the future of distributed, paid content is for us consumers to be in control, with minimal distribution channels in the middle. As it stands right now, I need to pay Foxtel (Australia) $105 a month, for what they call "IQ2" and a bunch of packages (Standard + Entertainment/Sport). The only channel I actually watch is ABC News 24, which ironically is free to air and only comes with "HD" (another $30) which means I need to switch away to my TV Tuner to actually watch it. The only reason we have Foxtel in the first place is for the wife to watch Channel E and even worse than this, the only reason we have Channel E is because she watches the Kardashians (don't ask) and a few other trash shows.
Here's my point - I have $105 per month where I want to pay TV content creators direction. That is, the Kardashians (*sigh*), Breaking Bad, Suits, and a few others. "In the future", I'm looking forward to media regulation being relaxed (Anyone know why NetFlix isn't in Australia yet?) to using my Android Media Player, and selecting the shows directly I want to watch over the internet. Nothing more, nothing less. Sure, feel free to give me free shows and "recommend" shows to me, but do not (!) force me to buy a "Entertainment/Sport" package just for one TV show.
Have you watched US cable TV? The original concept of cable TV was since you were already paying a monthly fee for it there were no commercials. That lasted about six months before the greed mongers put them back in. US TV (including cable) is like 40% commercials now. While you can't avoid the in show "product placement", if you pirate a show you don't lose 20 minutes of your life for every hour watching commercials for stuff you'll never buy. I am never going to buy prescription drugs that my doctor does not prescribe. I am never going to buy into some shady stock brokerage firm because its being pushed on TV by actors saying how wonderful the company is.
Which is why the second episode of Breaking Bad's final season was aired globally within a few hours of each other yesterday evening.
Posted by Unknown Lamer on Tuesday August 13, 2013 @03:11AM
ME: Having heart attack, frantically searches for second episode of final season to torrent since I must have missed it only to realize this is Slashdot, where editors can't be bothered with facts, such as the second episode won't air until Sunday, August 18th .
A lot of people bought a season pass of breaking bad during the first half of season 5. It was already announced that the season would be halved and completed this year. Everyone was thinking "Oh good I'll get the whole season"
Well no.
On iTunes it's called season 6 so you have to pay again.
Nice money grab there.
I'm sure that contributed to piracy as well. After all, steal from people and many won't feel any moral problem with taking what they already paid for.
Very smart, turn your remaining paying customers into pirates.
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Yes. You remember seeing your grandparents watching golf, Matlock, Murder She Wrote and The Price is Right? That was on a TV, not a computer. I know you don't believe me, but it was in 480i at best!!! And they'd have to sit through commericials and wait until the show started! At least it was free! Hahaha! It's true!
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It must be tough having so many TV services and so many viewing options. And, to top it all, you have to have two DVRs as well! It's more than any one person should have to bear!
Time-shifting Breaking Bad episodes is a basic human right that should available to all, on one box, without too many confusing cables plugged into the back of your TV. In the name of humanity, people!
Long ago, before the VCR, people scheduled their lives around the TV schedule for their favorite shows. If you missed it, you missed it and couldn't get the opportunity back again until it was playing again during off-season re-runs.
The VCR enabled more freedom for the people and some people became extremely serious about them. (My mother, before she died, had four VCRs all set for her favorite shows and had more tapes than she could watch... well, she went a little overboard but I completely understand her mentality.) These days, we all have a similar mentality. We want to do what we want to do when we want to do it. Scheduling our lives around a TV broadcast is a thing of the past. It's good and fun to be among the first to see a premier of whatever, but lots of people, perhaps even most people, simply do not see this as a priority in their lives. I think the last true holdout of having the "now" experience is live broadcast events such as concerts, sporting events and political rallys. After all, there's money to be made in sports and live performances and the desire of people to gamble on sports will probably maintain the old model. However, with just about everything else? Not so much.
People are downloading their TV because they know they have it and can watch it any time they are ready. It's still about scheduling life on one's own terms.
I'd guess that people pirated it because that's the easiest and most convenient way of watching it.
I know my friends have been going on and on about this series for months but so far as I know it wasn't generally released here in the UK ( maybe just on Sky or something ? )
If the entertainment companies want us to get content from them directly then they need to make it a lot more easy and convenient than it is now.
The lesson the content producers NEED to learn (but are unlikely to pick up on anytime soon) is that if the only legal way to watch a particular show is to buy expensive cable/satellite TV and then buy an expensive channel package on top of that (which is the only way to legally watch this new season of Breaking Bad here in Australia) people will continue to pirate.
The trick to stopping piracy is to make it available in a form that does NOT require purchasing expensive cable/satellite TV and paying for vast amounts of content that you dont want just to get the few shows worth watching. But as long as Rupert Murdoch and his Foxtel empire (and the Foxtel-owned Showcase channel in particular) continue to throw vast sums of money at HBO, AMC and other overseas producers of premium high-quality drama, that's never going to happen.
What if the Breaking Bad global release was wildly profitable? Is it still a failure because it was widely pirated? If it's profitable then who cares how much it was pirated, chances are the vast majority of those people wouldn't have paid to see it anyway. Piracy certainly doesn't eat into the amount of money you've received.
BTW, this was probably pirated by people without cable subscriptions or people who wanted it in a convenient time-shifting/multi-device format.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
For eBooks (if you like fantasy/SF) I've found Webscription (Baen books) to be a very very good service.
http://www.baenebooks.com/
Start there. They have a fairly large library, with quite a few books for free download. No DRM, fairly inexpensive (think $4-$7 per book) and downloadable in just about any format you'd want.
Once you've created an account, those books will stay available on your account page for download on whatever device you want it on.
I've put this same thing in several threads over the last few years, but I think they're still worth mentioning :)
Coz eternity my friend, is a long *ing time.
I've heard a little bit about the show ... isn't the protagonist an anti-hero methamphetamine drug lord?
And the creators are in a twist about its fans duplicating bits? Literary thematic victory, I'd have thought.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
1) Make it available for legal, affordable download from day one, and keep it available for as long as there is demand
2) Make sure it's REALLY available in a meaningful way. This means customers aren't impeded by poor network performance, political bickering between the ISP and the legal download site, country-specific barriers, the unwillingness to share unnecessary information with the content provider, etc. etc.
3) Make sure people who would otherwise seek the content through "other channels" know that #1 and #2 exist
4) For those who prefer physical media such as DVD, make that option available on a pre-order basis with shipping as soon as the TV show or movie premiers. For those who want BOTH online and physical media, the price should be the same or only slightly higher than* the physical media price.
*Delivering a 2-hour movie online is not a zero-cost operation for the content provider. Charging $X for a DVD and $X+the incremental cost to the provider for making the download available is not unreasonable. This incremental cost would probably be on the order $1 or less, probably much less. This is analogous in principle to charging a dime or two more for a "DVD+BD combo pack" vs. just the BluRay disk.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I'd pay $1 or $2 to watch it as soon as it comes out, as a high-quality DRM-free stream or download, without ads. Otherwise, screw it, I don't want to get cable and have to set up recording it and only be able to watch it on one device and it has ads that I have to fast-forward through etc.
Are you joking? A) People don't like commercials. B) People don't like it to be dictated to when they can watch what they want to watch. That's kind of why Amazon, Crackle, Netflix, and Hulu, and Apple TV, and the new Amazon system, and Roxio, and DVR, exist. C) People don't want to wait until 2 years from now when Netflix gets the 5th season all the way uploaded
The problem is, you can't make it difficult to watch a series, suddenly change your mind near the end, and then be surprised that people haven't abandoned the pirating they had gotten used to by then. A better test would have been to make the show (or some popular show) available globally from the very beginning.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Maybe because people want to choose when they watch something? Instead of sitting in front of the TV at a time prescribed by someone else? Get with the 21st century, guys.
I pirate TV shows that air on public airwaves. I receive the channel in glorious HD, but I rather download the show (even in SD) than to watch it on the TV, because of the horribly obnoxious advertising.
I would pay $50 for a service that offered all my favorite televised distractions without the obnoxious advertising. Unfortunately there is no such service. I ha-----
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-- I hate to have completely irrelevant junk interrupt an otherwise mediocre TV show or movie. They manage to stuff in 20 minutes of advertising into a 60 minute TV show, that's just insane, and obnoxious.
I hate being tied to a schedule, and I hate advertising. Why am I going to spend an hour watching a 40 minute show just so a bunch of irrelevant CRAP can be screamed at me?
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I HAVE cable and I DID watch it on cable on Sunday - except I missed half of it because I had no idea it was on. Even so, my living room is uncomfortable and the cable box in my own room is broken. Ergo, I torrent it. I ALWAYS torrent shows, especially after watching them on TV. Let's see - store them for my media server, or pay 60 dollars for the bluray box set in 6 months? I'll buy the bluray when it's not overpriced, thank you.
Of course, many people pirated "the final season" of Breaking Bad after they purchased the full Season 5 then the retailers (Amazon, iTunes,.. ) turned the second half of the 5th season in "the final season" and charged users a second time... Source: http://consumerist.com/2013/08/12/apple-demands-another-23-because-5th-season-of-breaking-bad-was-split-in-half/
that's what these TV execs are operating under. The idea that I'm going to watch what they want me to watch, when they want me to watch it, is laughable. What is this...1950? With 3 channels to watch and no remote control and everyone huddled around the TV for the 6 o'clock news?
Newsflash Mr. TV fat cat....I'm gonna watch stuff when I want to, not when you schedule it. And you can forget about those overpriced, locked down DVR boxes you're trying to peddle. Nope...I'm just going to fire up Netflix and watch stuff that's interesting to me, on my schedule.
I am through paying for 250 channels only to find out that there are only 5-10 that I ever really watch. I am sick and tired of the ever increasing number of commercials that seem to occupy about 1/4 of the TV experience. I am thrilled to have a service that lets me watch every episode of Hawaii 5-0 ever made, in whatever order I choose, whenever I like, in high-def no less.
Simply put - your service costs too much and delivers too little. I would venture to guess that people gravitate to other services like Netflix and Hulu and, yes, even torrents because they feel the same way I do. Now some of these services are coming up with their own original content like House of Cards and you know what? It's every bit as good as anything produced by fat cat TV. Even YouTube is starting to do this.
Slowly but surely the big TV studios are turning into the modern day horse and buggy. Good riddance.
Wrong. Pirates were good guys, giving candy to children.
It is all in the 'Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster'.
To each their own. I do watch documentaries, but sometimes an escape into fiction is pleasant, and Breaking Bad is some very well-written fiction.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Seasons 1 and 2 were instrumental in Showing who Walt is. It wouldn't be the show without showing him at his starting point. Gus was great, but it is Walt that makes the show.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
Yeah, I understand the need for the first two seasons to develop the character, and I applaud the creators for staying the course for the sake of the story, and not caving in to the whims of the public, which is what ruins a lot of shows. At the same time, though, it cost them a viewer for a while.
While the focus of the story is on Walt's transformation, Gus was the catalyst of that change. While (later) Walt may have made the show, Gus made Walt who he is (due to a number of things I'm not going to spoil here.)
Most likely never, because both are legitimate definitions of the word "pirate". Language evolves, and I revel in it. Shame on *you* for being such a prescriptivist.
But I think the one reason I haven't seen here, the one single primary reason...
Because we can.
"By that logic it has never aired in the US either. It was only shown on paid cable."
Yes indeed it was not released on public TV int he US. So even the US cannot count as a global release. Law and order *is* a global public release because it is on public TV. Look you cannot pretend soemthing is released globally and EXPECT bit torrent to go down, when in reality it is only available to a few private channel.
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