This is a long post. Be warned. 
For the past year and a half or so, I’ve been downloading TV shows off of the internet and watching them in HDTV. The side effect of this has been that I am no longer bound by the network schedules, and if I want to watch two shows that are broadcast at the same time then it works out well. Also, I found it very nice to put a show on my laptop every day and watch it while I was at the union eating lunch.
But the MPAA wants to make my life much more difficult. One of the biggest things that gets me going besides the whole evolution debate is this one. First the MPAA sued the site that I used to find the shows, btefnet, which caused them to stop releasing them. Actually, this site didn’t contain the shows. It contained links that opened up Bittorrent, which is a program used to transfer files. It is fundamentally different from programs like Napster, in two ways. First, unlike Napster, there are no “central servers” for Bittorrent. Bittorrent is completely uncentralized, so there is no company that you can shut down that will stop bittorrent from working. Second, Bittorrent can be used to transfer any type of file, not just MP3s. In fact, just yesterday, I used bittorrent to download Fedora, which is a linux distribution. I could have downloaded it in the traditional manner, from an FTP site, but bittorrent is much faster when multiple people are downloading the same file because it splits the file up into multiple parts and downloads each part simultaneously from different people. Thus the bandwidth is shared. I was able to max out my Road Runner downstream bandwidth of 5 megabits/second using it yesterday- it was downloading at 583 KB/s (really fast)! In the first four minutes it had already downloaded 100MB. Anyway, my point is that unlike Napster, Bittorrent is just a tool that lets you download anything, not just copywrited content like Napster.
Given that, people (like me) are using Bittorrent to download copywrited content. If you’re the MPAA, what are you going to do about it? You can’t shut down a company and stop it like the RIAA did with Napster. So, do the next best thing. Blame the distribution method for all of your problems. Despite the fact that it was an inside job- someone in the industry that the MPAA is trying to “protect” ripped the film and put it on the internet, despite the fact that episode three posted the BIGGEST OPENING DAY SALES IN THE HISTORY OF FILMMAKING, the MPAA would have you believe that the film’s distribution hurt its sales, and that it was Bittorrent’s fault. Right, and we shouldn’t put murders in prison, it was their weapons that did the killing. We should blame everything that can be used to kill someone. I guess that means water should be illegal. Well what about FTP? It can be used to transfer files! Or HTTP? It’s the basis for the world wide web, and it transfers files too! Or what about TCP/IP? That is the protocol on which the internet is based. Shouldn’t it be to blame as well?
For those of you old enough, and even for those of you that aren’t, this may seem remarkably familiar. Remember, if you will, back to the world of 1975 when Sony introduced the Betamax recording system. This was the first viable VCR. The MPAA was upset then, too. Betamax would bring about the end of the movie theater, they said. It would destroy sales, and piracy would run rampent. This is what they are now saying about Bittorrent and the internet. In the end, it took a supreme court ruling to put an end to this nonsense. And once the MPAA was forced to reexamine its 75-year old buisness model, what did they find? They found that there was a secondary market- Home video. Video sales, Video rentals, direct-to-video content. In the case of Family Guy, the show was canceled, put to pasture on DVD, but due to such strong DVD sales FOX brought it back and new episodes are airing! If the MPAA can’t see the future in an internet-based distribution model, I don’t know why not. Apple saw it, and they created a little program called iTunes. You may have heard of it.
I would certainly pay a monthly fee to watch commercial-less HDTV programming at any time that I wanted to, and be able to transfer it to my laptop to watch it elsewhere. Here’s what I propose: A set-top box, much like a Tivo, that connects via a coaxial cable in order to give it broadband access, or it could hook up to broadband you already have. The monthly fee would be around $30 if you had broadband access, or $60 if you didn’t, similar to what HDTV cable television is now. On the box, you would select which TV shows you want it to download each week. Also, there are movie choices (availiable for an additional cost of $10- about what a theater ticket cost- on a pay-per-view basis) availiable as soon as the movie is released in theaters. I think a large market is missed in people that don’t go to the theater but forget about a movie after it comes out on DVD. The company that produces these boxes buys the rights to the content from the companies themseleves. The content is distributed on a Bittorrent-like network between the boxes and content provider, so the content provider doesn’t have toput up cash for all of that bandwidth. There would be no delay to download television shows, because the box would pre-download the content in encrypted form, and then unencrypt it when said content airs. So the content becomes availiable to people with these boxes at the same time as broadcast viewers (but they can still watch it later), only in HDTV in 5.1 surround sound without commercials. As a secondary bonus, ship the box with, say a 30GB hard drive. With Xvid compression, that should be enough for most people. But, have the hard drive in a detachable module on the side of the box. That way you could sell larger hard drives, in multiple sizes at multiple price points up to 400GB at any store, and they would be user-installable. If I were out of college and had money, I think that I could make this idea into a viable buisness plan. The only problem is that this plan eliminates the middle men- Hollywood’s 100-year old distribution network. People don’t like it when their jobs are made obsolete, and I’m sure a plan like this would face a lot of opposition within the industry.
So that would be the smart thing for them to do. But what about now; wasn’t the downloading of TV shows that I did illegal? After all, they are copywrited and the copies that I downloaded had no commercials. The MPAA says it is, and I would like to take them to court over it, but I simply don’t have the time or the money. I say that, in the majority of cases, downloading shows is not illegal.
- First, let’s examine broadcast shows. About 80% of the shows (and the ones that I care about the most) that I download fall into this category, like Alias, 24, The West Wing, ER, the CSIs, the Law and Orders, etc. The supreme court has already ruled that you are allowed to tape these shows and watch them at your convenience. But, you say, it is copywrited material and thus you cannot distribute your tape. My problem with this is two-fold. One, the shows I downloaded were downloaded for free, so nobody was making a profit off of someone else’s copywrited work. Two, because these shows were broadcast FOR FREE to everyone with a pair of rabbit ears and a television, I already had access to the content and could have taped it myself then.
- Second, we look at cable TV. I will grant that the downloading of shows shown on cable TV affects the income of the show’s producers. You have to pay for cable, and that’s where the companies like Comedy Central get their money from. But wait, I have cable, and I pay my cable bill. So this argument is void as well since again, I already had access to the content. The problem comes when people that don’t have cable start downloading shows, and with that, I see their point.
- Third, we look at premium channels. Here, the MPAA has a valid point. I downloaded one show that was on a premium channel- Penn and Teller’s Bullshit on Showtime. I don’t pay for showtime, and I apologize for any lost profits I may have caused. Kudos on a good show, though.
- Also, I just want to point out that when I thought a show was good enough I bought the DVDs whether I downloaded it or not.
The MPAA also has a point when it talks about movies being downloaded. I can see them losing money over that. But my point here is this: Don’t blame the distribution network (Bittorrent) for your own problems, and don’t use all of the money that you have as a corporate entity to shut sue and down sites run by the little guys that provide me with content that I had access to anyway. The only reason you’re doing it is because lawmakers are too technically illiterate to realize what you’re trying to pull. And the scary thing is, it’ll work. I hope that I never become stubborn and stupid enough to stop learning.
Anyway, this post has been way too serious, and way too long, but I really wanted to write it. I’m about to go out to dinner with my family now to celebrate my birthday. Huzzah!
