Is it OK to steal “Downton Abbey”?
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B. The internet thrives precisely because it is transnational. This allows for quality programming to span the world.
C. There is an international market for current episodes of popular TV shows. There is such a large market that people are willing to commit copyright infringement.
D. Just because your business model doesn't adapt to the market, does not automatically mean that your business model deserves protection in the market.
E. Media content creators have long protected their international licensing agreements with anti-customer technology like DVD Regions.
F. At the end of the day, the customer doesn't care. They will find a better product in the market.
G. It's my experience that people who pirate out of this frustration, are happy to pay when it is available. The person who pirated the Christmas Special would have paid money to see it, it was just not available at any price.
I am sorry that some people are "frustrated" because they cannot see their favorite programs at the same time that people in other parts of the world can see them. But what a remarkably morally shaky ground upon which to break the law! My great-grandfather stole food once; his father died when he was eight, and his mother couldn't support the family. Today, people steal--sorry, copyright infringe--Downton Abbey because they can't wait to find out whether Lady Mary is going to marry Matthew.
Lots of people break laws every day. Why and when they do it is an internal calculus driven by many factors: my need, the damage inflicted of the person I'm harming, my convenience, the likelihood I'm getting caught, the punishment that will be meted out if I get caught.
If you want to curb piracy (eg: stop illegal activity), you need to affect all the parameters. Content creators have done a poor job on many of these fronts. So far, rights holders have almost exclusively tried to criminalize their customers. In my opinion, that's a really stupid way to go.
It does not follow from your ancestors hardships that downloading a TV show is inherently immoral, any more that is follows it is moral.
What I consider very interesting in the discussion of the morality of downloading TV series in particular is in the comparison with DVRs:
Legal: DVR'ing a free-to-air broadcast TV show and skipping the commercial breaks.
Illegal: Downloading the same TV show, with the commercial breaks edited out.
The only substantial difference in the two scenarios is timing - whether you will be watching a Christmas special at Christmas or in May, two years later (as is more often the case with US shows in Europe).
Further noting that the the fact these TV shows airs on such a long delay reflects the practicality of how the TV show market work, not some particular desire of the copyright holder, what is the moral principle being breached here?
It is also illegal to rip a copy of a CD you own to listen to on a computer or copy to a portable music player...
Illegal: Downloading the same TV show with the commercial breaks intact as broadcast by your local affiliate and watching it two hours later without skipping ads
Illegal: a friend recording a TV show to an .avi file and sending you a megaupload link.
I think also that the really widespread nature of this begins to look more like civil disobedience than opportunism. (The difference being that people who act opportunistically hope that no-one else does; people who act in civil disobedience hope that everyone does.) I hope you're not going to make the case that civil disobedience is a non-virtuous act simply because it's illegal?
As a historical note: without illegal copyright infringement in the 1700s, the works of Shakespeare, Milton, and Chaucer would still be under copyright. As a British taxpayer (and thus an involuntary investor in Downton Abbey), I'm fully in favour of people who would otherwise have difficulty seeing it downloading it, even if they have to break a law to do it.
Probably, for different reasons, but likely not anywhere as near as it is today. If you knew stuff would be on in the UK on Th night, and you could see it uncut and unreformatted 26 hours later, you'd be far less likely to have initially bothered to go search it out.
I submit that the awareness and convenience of online 'piracy' of TV shows has been driven, in large part, by the frustration people felt by knowing they'd have to wait months in the first place. Now that there's a whole generation of people who already know how to 'pirate', they're not going to turn back (certainly not without a fight - SOPA, etc) but the content industry has themselves to blame for this again.
We gave up on BBC America back around 2004/2005 because they insisted on showing repeats instead of decent shows, and not explaining themselves. There was one week where they showed a combined 96 hours of "ground force", "changing rooms" and one other insipid home reality show. 96 hours of repeats of just 3 shows. Meanwhile EastEnders was scaled back and they showed less of that, and kept falling further behind. Eventually, after about a year or so of EastEnders in 2004, in to 2005, they started showing repeats of EastEnders from 2004 in place of the then-current episodes. It was as if they thought people wouldn't notice (or care) about getting repeats of a year-old ongoing soap episode. We quit even trying to support BBC America at that point, and turned to full scale torrents of any UK shows we wanted.
In the absence of being able to simply pay a UK TV license fee directly to the appropriate office, we'll just pirate. I realize that $300 still wouldn't cover all the potential ads and such ITV gets, but it'd be a strong start.
Make the BBC channels, ITV, and a couple other UK channels available as a UK package on DirecTV or Dish, charge $49/month, and I'd happily pay, assuming they were uncut feeds.
From the other side of the pond, I'd like to repeat that sentiment in reverse.
Please don't forget, Americans, that we have just the same problem waiting for American shows, which there are many more of, and therefore also many more great shows.
American sport TV is generally already great from the leagues themselves, with MLB TV, NFL GamePass and whatever the names are for NBA/NHL... but general entertainment/drama/comedy/etc, it's pirate a few hours later or a long, long wait.
I want to pull up the shows I want, when I want, and watch them where I want.
To do this, I rely on the following services, in order:
1. Hulu (I'm happy to deal with ads)
2. Network streams (ditto ads)
3. The Pirate Bay (when not available through other means)
4. Another site dedicated to current/past British TV
Re #4 - there's no way, just no way I'm going to wait months to watch a show on PBS that aired on the BBC/ITV/Ch4 yesterday.
IMHO, the most lucrative path for the industry to follow would be a subscription model that's tied to usage.
* Users buy credit, and that credit is used as they download content.
* Current content is more valuable - so the current season of a series costs $X/GB, last season costs $Y/GB, etc.
* Every channel/network is in business for themselves (e.g. cut out Apple/Amazon/DirectTV altogether)
I'm not holding my breath for that scenario though.
* those other 996 channels
* your DVR to keep adding back stations once I remove them from the hunt list
* your crappy DVR software--TiVo was fine and you replaced it with shit
What I want is a way to pay a reasonable price for the few shows I watch. I can't do that. So, what I do instead is torrent the few shows I watch.
People will pirate until the experience you give them as paying customers is equal to or better than their pirating experience.
http://www.tnl.net/blog/2011/11/06/live-tv-streams-challenge...
So, over time they'll lose out to piracy and go bust. If they can't see the handwriting on the wall, then they deserve it. I'll just have to find other ways to get money to the people that produce the content (buying episodes of Community on Amazon, for example).
I would love to be able to watch the latest and greatest in entertainment within a day of it airing but that is not possible to do with legal means so 'everyone' turns to piracy.
I'm German so even if my favorite shows finally made it to Germany after years they are usually butchered by a sloppy at best dubbing. If I insisted on English audio I'd have to wait another year to buy the DVDs.
I would love to watch my favorite show with ads or even pay for some of them to be able to support them but unfortunately that's just not possible as of now.
And I'll never forget the debut of the Cosby Show in Germany and wanting to show my college friends this show I really liked - and realizing that without Bill Cosby's voice, it was utterly, hopelessly worthless. Not the first time Germans looked at me like I was crazy, but it was a formative experience.
Anecdotally, it worked.
People in the USA must have pirated it loads before it was shown on TV. And yet the TV numbers were still very impressive. This is evidence that piracy doesn't affect sales/viewing figures.
Result: everybody that wanted to see the show had already pirated it, and the viewing figures were miserable.
This has happened with several popular shows.
A 3 day window however is still too long for shows with real fans that want to participate in the global conversation. It may work for procedurals and sitcoms, but not for shows with big stories and cliffhangers like Lost, 24 and such.
Never mind the fact that you still get all the disadvantages of a commercial broadcast: fixed time, annoying station logo's, subtitles (or dubbing depending on the country) and most of all: incessant commercial breaks.
No thanks.
I pay for BBCA; moreover, when stuff is available on iTMS I buy, even when I buy the premium cable channel it runs on, even when it's available on VOD, even (for instance, with The Sopranos) when I own much of the physical DVD media for it! I've spent many many hundreds of dollars on iTMS for content that I already had legitimate paid-for access to.
This is of course rationalization; the BBC is entitled to monetize their content however they see fit. That's capitalism. I rely on congruent norms, contracts, &c to make my living, and so do you --- even if you don't sell your own software directly, your wages are effectively subsidized by the defensibility of IP; we are all of us in the business of selling content for (on the face of it) unjustifiable premiums.
But whatever, I'm human. This is perhaps a good reason for media companies to stop doing region encoding and staggered releases and such; it socializes people to piracy. If you've even got me torrenting stuff, you're probably doing something very wrong.
I never pirate and even I was sorely tempted. They've managed to produce a hit show that people are excited about, but then expect people to ignore that excitement and delay gratification for months. I feel like I'm one of those kids in the marshmallow experiment.
Every chance they've given me, I've paid. And I still end up 'stealing' content because geolocked business models don't work anymore. If they can't adapt to us, we'll have to adapt to them.
I pay for all the channels that shows like Lost will eventually appear on. So, as far as I am concerned, my habit is perfectly legit.
Lost specifically got to the point where it was aired with in 24 hrs of the US broadcast, and that was fine. In practice I would see the download with in that time span anyway. This is the way to go to stop people downloading.
Problem is, downloading turns out to be easier and more convenient that actually being told when to sit and watch, and how. Its easier than using the broadcasters on line offerings. So, I still download.
Give me a "legit" way that is a quick, easy and free as torrents, etc, I'll use it like a shot.
As for people in the US downloading Downtown, well fair enough. Its should be as available to them as I want it to be here.
He also tells me that he understands this model won't last much longer. But until then, for economic reasons, the BBC doesn't want to make it too easy for you to watch their content directly in your non-UK country without going through a local channel.
Your friend is correct in that the appeal of this cash cow is why the industry will fight tooth and nail before they have to put her out to pasture. The model is going to become irrelevant sooner or later, but for the time being, it's still paying off handsomely. It will go, but it won't go quietly.
Because that's the price point I would pay to watch a current episode.
In it he talks about how piracy has helped some shows, and alternate forms of publishing (physical media, online). Keep in mind that he's speaking from an Australian viewpoint and the economics are slightly different in this case mostly discussing content produced for another market... But it could be good stuff for you Kill Hollywood thinkers.
> You may not circumvent, remove, alter, deactivate, degrade or thwart any of the content protections in the Netflix service.
Using a VPN to access content from another region would be considered circumventing content protections.
However check the Netflix terms of use. They may specify that you can only access it if you are located in the USA. If you are using a VPN you are accessing a computer system without authorisation, which is illegal in the USA (and most other countries). You are unlikely to be convicted of it (though it did sorta happen once in the USA).
I was unable to access Hulu or Netflix streaming when they debuted, which made me sad.
However, I think this only works when there's very little competition (from broadcasters) for individual shows. The BBC is probably in the worst position possible for an attempt to move to this model due to interplay between company-wide policy and the negotiating power of its international counterparts. Previous agreements with cable companies can't help much either.
All our american (TV) content comes in 3-6 month delays. The fact HBO has decided to scrap their online distribution is just beyond me.
If I'm watching BBC America, it's because I want to watch the BBC. I don't want to watch some watered down, Americanized version. I truly don't whether they hired dumb Americans, or they're just snobby Brits who think Americans are too dumb for their shows. Either way, it's insulting and not very entertaining.
So, I can't speak for Downtown Abbey, but if it's treated anything like Top Gear, I can't imagine why they would think we'd want to watch their delayed, edited, watered down slop.
Incidentally, I have looked into legal channels for purchasing Top Gear and they're all edited. The only one that, I think, is legitimately original is the British-release of the DVD, but I'm pretty sure that I would be technically committing a crime by bypassing region limitations on those discs.
So, is it legal? No. Is it morally correct? No. Is it okay? Yes, in my book, because the value I place on the original, unmodified, timely content outweighs the legal and moral argument against pirating it.
Downloading is the only way I can watch it. Years ago, before I got rid of cable, it wasn't on BBC America. Now that it's available, in a horrible edited form, I don't have cable.
I've considered watching it on iPlayer via VPN but AFAIK the quality is much lower. Plus this would actually put the BBC in a worse position, having to pay for bandwidth I'm otherwise using from fellow enthusiast sharing the file.
I would pay if there was a way to legally watch it online, preferably in HD and close to the original release date.
An example is the series Monkey Dust. It had an amazing soundtrack and was a cult hit (until the guy behind it died). The distributors for the UK DVD release had to pay bands to perform cover versions for a lot of the tracks because it was too difficult to get the rights.
The alternative is to limit their choice and pick the music with the aim to sell it. I am not a fan of this. It's like when you see a BBC show that's been made for advert breaks, so every 15 mins we (people in the UK) get a recap and some padding that they obviously plan to cut later. Or the show is only 40 mins, instead of 60.
If your answer to any of the above is Yes, you probably will think that stealing "Downtown Abbey" is OK. Otherwise, think really hard and try to explain the difference.