For unparalleled movie reviews such as those you've described, I highly recommend The Filthy Critic. He has unique, generally exceptional reviews, and they are often hilarious to boot.
Movie theaters and HDTV may be their only saviors, in that it takes enormous (by current measure) amounts of bandwidth and storage to copy a quality movie. Music is quite compressible, and too many tin-eared fans are willing to settle for crappy-but-tiny MP3 recordings. But as long as people want to share the experience of a movie on the big screen, and as long as HDTV requires a relative firehose of a network connection for high quality, AND as long as they can convince people that quality matters, they'll be able to keep making money on TV and movies.
You couldn't be more wrong on this. HDTV piracy happens all the time, and it is becoming more and more mainstream.
An average length movie, ripped from HD-DVD, BluRay or cable, takes up about 4 gigabytes for 720p and 8 gigabytes for 1080p using H.264 compression. With a 1-megabit connection (far less than most people have, especially in countries outside the US), that would take someone roughly half a day to download (My 8-megabit standard cable internet connection can usually get a movie in less than the time it takes to watch it). A 500-gigabyte hard drive costs around $150 (the cost of five HD-DVD or BluRay discs), which would store about 60 1080p movies, so storage is not an issue. Add to this the falling costs of HDTVs and I think we'll find that more and more people will prefer watching high definition movies that they downloaded for free the night before on their cheap, huge high-resolution widescreen television rather than spend $10 for a ticket, $10 for snacks, and have to sit through commercials and previews.
The MPAA isn't in as much trouble as the RIAA yet, but they're close. If they aren't able to learn from the RIAAs demise they are doomed to the same fate.
It may suggest it, and you may have inferred it from what you have read, but it does not suggest it. I wish you people would look up these words whose meaning you clearly don't understand before using them. The contradiction of that first sentence aside, I never used the word "suggest", and I don't particularly appreciate being criticized for the misuse of a word that I never in fact used. If you're going to quibble over semantics, especially if you're going to be condescending about it, please make sure the word in question was actually part of the conversation.
As for the rest, I wasn't aware that screeners existed for television shows, especially mid-season. Your point about shows having to be rated is an interesting one, but in my experience it is exceedingly rare (especially when compared to the frequency that it happens with films) for television shows to become available online before they are aired. I think a good analogy would be if a film were released online before it was even shown in theaters.
My main point was only that this case of copyright infringement is rather different from the usual cases during which the "it's not theft it's copyright infringement, you insensitive clod!" line is inevitably brought out, and subsequently may warrant some additional thought.
In this one very specific (and very rare) instance, theft may actually be the correct term for what happened. The fact that the episode was released on YouTube a week prior to it's airing may indicate that something WAS stolen (read: more than copyright infringement). I'm no industry insider, but I would expect unaired television shows to be under pretty strict lock and key. I'm actually very curious to find out how it was obtained. How this story unfolds should be pretty interesting.
It might be kinda cool, actually, if some movies were more videogame-like and you could press a button saying "no more of this kind of scene please" and it would dynamically tone things down for either just you or for the whole of an audience if everyone voted likewise
(in moviefone-guy voice)
If you want Calculon to race to the laser gun battle in his hover-Ferarri, press 1.
If you want Calculon to double-check his paperwork, press 2. Enter now.
Those books were so stupid. They didn't make any sense! First you would be walking through the woods, then you would be on a space ship, then you would be back on earth... They jumped around so much, I never had any idea WHAT the hell was going on! Not to mention all the interspersed "turn to page x" whatever, what the hell did that even mean, anyway?
I remember finding out about the US West problem back when I was 17. After being blown off when I raised the issue to the company, I wrote a script that scanned through their IP's and logged usernames and passwords. After I had a pretty long list, I sent it to them and explained their problem (they weren't very happy...). I also contacted my local newspaper (Minneapolis Star Tribune) and you can read the article here. It would've been so simple to modify the script to change the password on the router and then change settings so that it wouldn't access the internet - would've shut down practically their whole DSL network. I wonder what I did with that list...
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My God! He never took middle school hygiene. He never saw the propaganda film.
DON'T DATE ROBOTS!
For unparalleled movie reviews such as those you've described, I highly recommend The Filthy Critic. He has unique, generally exceptional reviews, and they are often hilarious to boot.
You couldn't be more wrong on this. HDTV piracy happens all the time, and it is becoming more and more mainstream.
An average length movie, ripped from HD-DVD, BluRay or cable, takes up about 4 gigabytes for 720p and 8 gigabytes for 1080p using H.264 compression. With a 1-megabit connection (far less than most people have, especially in countries outside the US), that would take someone roughly half a day to download (My 8-megabit standard cable internet connection can usually get a movie in less than the time it takes to watch it). A 500-gigabyte hard drive costs around $150 (the cost of five HD-DVD or BluRay discs), which would store about 60 1080p movies, so storage is not an issue. Add to this the falling costs of HDTVs and I think we'll find that more and more people will prefer watching high definition movies that they downloaded for free the night before on their cheap, huge high-resolution widescreen television rather than spend $10 for a ticket, $10 for snacks, and have to sit through commercials and previews.
The MPAA isn't in as much trouble as the RIAA yet, but they're close. If they aren't able to learn from the RIAAs demise they are doomed to the same fate.
As for the rest, I wasn't aware that screeners existed for television shows, especially mid-season. Your point about shows having to be rated is an interesting one, but in my experience it is exceedingly rare (especially when compared to the frequency that it happens with films) for television shows to become available online before they are aired. I think a good analogy would be if a film were released online before it was even shown in theaters.
My main point was only that this case of copyright infringement is rather different from the usual cases during which the "it's not theft it's copyright infringement, you insensitive clod!" line is inevitably brought out, and subsequently may warrant some additional thought.
In this one very specific (and very rare) instance, theft may actually be the correct term for what happened. The fact that the episode was released on YouTube a week prior to it's airing may indicate that something WAS stolen (read: more than copyright infringement). I'm no industry insider, but I would expect unaired television shows to be under pretty strict lock and key. I'm actually very curious to find out how it was obtained. How this story unfolds should be pretty interesting.
Holy crap! Have a few minutes to kill? Sit there and keep refreshing a ps3 auction... I just watched one spiral to over $7000 ...
It might be kinda cool, actually, if some movies were more videogame-like and you could press a button saying "no more of this kind of scene please" and it would dynamically tone things down for either just you or for the whole of an audience if everyone voted likewise
(in moviefone-guy voice)
If you want Calculon to race to the laser gun battle in his hover-Ferarri, press 1.
If you want Calculon to double-check his paperwork, press 2.
Enter now.
And folks like you and me
And a buck 'o five... if you don't throw in your buck 'o five. Who will?
Oooh buck 'o five
Freedom costs a buck 'o five
Those books were so stupid. They didn't make any sense! First you would be walking through the woods, then you would be on a space ship, then you would be back on earth... They jumped around so much, I never had any idea WHAT the hell was going on! Not to mention all the interspersed "turn to page x" whatever, what the hell did that even mean, anyway?
Oh wait...
In fact, forget the series and the blackjack!
... the astronauts who conducted the experiment were found emitting an inhuman scream and pointing at others...
Zed: Bring out the Gimp.
Maynard: But the Gimp's sleeping.
Zed: Well, I guess you're gonna have to go wake him up now, won't you?
What would they call it? New New Orleans?
Futurama, here we come!
Only on slashdot could a post that is in it's entirety a binary number be modified +5 funny...
I remember finding out about the US West problem back when I was 17. After being blown off when I raised the issue to the company, I wrote a script that scanned through their IP's and logged usernames and passwords. After I had a pretty long list, I sent it to them and explained their problem (they weren't very happy...). I also contacted my local newspaper (Minneapolis Star Tribune) and you can read the article here. It would've been so simple to modify the script to change the password on the router and then change settings so that it wouldn't access the internet - would've shut down practically their whole DSL network. I wonder what I did with that list...