Leading ‘Ethical’ TV Show BitTorrent Tracker Shut Down By FACT | Hacker News Reader

Leading ‘Ethical’ TV Show BitTorrent Tracker Shut Down By FACT

torrentfreak.com

22 pointshappyman21 comments

I can't state for sure what is the legal status of UKNova. However, they have worked with copyright holders to ensure that they are not infringing. Most of the content is free to air British TV shows, that in many cases can be downloaded for free from within the UK. UKNova helps make this content available outside the country.

Their policy is to take down any content that is available commercially. IE: once the box set comes out, you can no longer share it. Other specific content cannot be shared even if there is no non-commercial source. It is easy to get banned from the service, so users are very compliant.

There are a lot of expatriate Brits who will miss the service, not to mention fans of British TV everywhere.

However, they have worked with copyright holders to ensure that they are not infringing.

Um, your own statement contradicts itself.

Most of the content is free to air British TV shows, that in many cases can be downloaded for free from within the UK. UKNova helps make this content available outside the country.

This is infringement.

BTW if you're an expatriate Brit who wants to access this content you can pony up about $5 a month for a VPN service with an endpoint out of the UK and still access all this content.

BTW if you're an expatriate Brit who wants to access this content you can pony up about $5 a month for a VPN service with an endpoint out of the UK and still access all this content.

Isn't that just as illegal as downloading it? Or is it more legal because it's more technically savvy?

Title misleading in two ways:

1. I read "Ethical" as "Legal" myself, but that's a minor point

2. FACT didn't shut them down, they shut themselves down because they are scared of FACT

> 1. I read "Ethical" as "Legal"

They are wildly different things tough. One is about what is right (and is as such subjective) and the other is about what is authorized (and as such, should be objective).

I believe it's better to be ethical than to be legal. As you might have guessed, ianal.

I realise that, I just misunderstood the title's meaning.

Just because the thing you want to consume isn't available in your market in the format that you want at the price you want to pay, it doesn't make it right or ethical to go and pirate it.

these torrent sites seem to have a business model that makes them money, even a profit. what prevents larger media companies from adopting this proven(?) business model?

Two reasons:

* The torrent sites don't have to spend money producing content. If they had to actually make the content they were promoting, would they be making a profit?

* Even if it were possible to make money under this model, it would be much less than the big media companies are making now. Why would they switch?

> Even if it were possible to make money under this model, it would be much less than the big media companies are making now. Why would they switch?

Well, they're not making money from these people anyway, why not find a way to monetize them? You don't cease your current distribution practices, you are merely creating an alternate way to monetize those people who you viewed as "stealing" in the first place.

There's some obscure home improvement shows from overseas that I really enjoy watching. I'm surprised a local-to-me cable channel doesn't pick it up as cheap content, because it's well produced and pulls in big audiences in it's home market.

I'd happily pay $20 or so to be able to download/stream a season of it. But I suspect there's not enough people like me in the foreign-to-them markets who would pay the money to make it worth their while to get it on to iTunes (or similar), write some press releases, update their website to say it's available, etc.

Because trying to bring in $0.05/week from all these new people will completely destroy their existing market.

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckie...

You're confusing revenue with profits. There is certainly one revenue stream current media could be exploiting but are ignoring. If they could turn profit from it, after subtracting their costs, is another question. But they're not even trying.

You cannot make sure it would be much less money. What we can be sure is that A) megaupload and others are/were making tons of money that old media wish they were doing instead. And that B) the old media's current business model is decaying, flawed and doomed from existence. They would switch because or else they'll disappear.

If your neighbor can make money siphoning gas out of your tank and selling it to strangers, why can't you?

Oh look, another flawed comparison that doesn't take into account the realities of digital distribution.

"Digital distribution" aren't magic words that make the production costs go away. In fact, they make production costs the most expensive part of the whole proposition.

Business 1 produces content and sells it in one venue. Business 2 takes all of business 1's content and sells it in another venue. And people are wondering why business 1 cannot just use business 2's model instead.

I don't believe that people here are really so dense as to not understand the problems with that scenario.

I don't believe that people here are really so dense as to not understand the problems with that scenario

Nor do I believe that you are so dense as to conflate copying with theft, so can we dispense with the comparisons that wouldn't look out of place in *AA propaganda?

As with most forms of media, the distribution costs are a small fraction of the production costs.

Film crews, especially good ones, cost money. Post-production crews, especially good ones, cost money. Actors, even bad ones, cost money. The equipment, sets, prop, makeup, computers, and all other physical items that go into making/producing a show cost money.

Because they can't adopt this model without losing another one. The majority of the content we're talking about here is BBC TV shows, which are paid for by the UK TV license. At one point the BBC mentioned opening up their online iPlayer to international audiences- but if they did so, the US cable networks would immediately remove their (profit-generating) BBC America channel from the air.

So they'd lose money, overall.

Since I only have experience working with American broadcaster, my answer will come from that POV.

Realistically, neither of the two biggest reasons involves the protection of the dwindling home video market. Broadcasters make a lot of money off of their local affiliates (who pay them for the privilege of running their programming) and cable providers (who pay a subscriber fee for the ability to carry that network.) Each of these existing revenue pipelines brings in a lot of money - orders of magnitude more than any torrent site would. Now you may say "why would a torrent site disrupt their existing streams?" and the answer is that while it wouldn't, those existing streams are very protective of their domain, and would likely consider it an immediate breach of their exclusivity, and in the long term would use the existence of a "competing" product to lower their fees on renegotiation. So it's a lose/lose for any network or cable providers at the moment at least in the US.

That being said, it's their job to have their business model compete in the modern world - it's not the job of the modern world to adapt to their business model. Either they'll figure out a method to do so, or they'll die in 6-8 years and we'll build something better.

Because they won't do anything that disrupts their own current cash cow models. Even if you explain that this is the future, that it's what their customers want, and that they will make money from it, the argument will fall on deaf ears. Currently entrenched media companies are not playing to win, they are playing to not lose, which means they inevitably will.

The most readily available example to analogize is Blockbuster/Netflix. BB had to declare bankruptcy and completely reorganize their entire company because they stubbornly refused to adapt to a changing market.

Other media companies will follow similar fates. They will have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the future, and many (jobs) will be hurt in the process.

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