I quit watching BSG after the second season.

To be honest, http://www.mindjack.com/feature/piracy051305.html that guy has a great idea! Piracy IS good.

Lost for example: first heard of it from my friends who downloaded the episodes as soon as they were out in the US. Took a year before they landed on the TV sets here (and probably thanks to torrenting the show got quite a bit of buzz here even before it started airing). This year, season finale was aired one week after the US premiere – unheard of just a couple of years back! (apparently someone realized they’d just lose out on all the ad money targeting the very lucrative young adult audience otherwise)

As a novelty experiment, you can also pay to watch newest episodes of a bunch of shows online by a few local networks, but the price is ouchy at 3€ or so for DRM:ed streaming – but as a usually law-abiding citizen, if the price was right I’d prefer to take this option to hunting down the torrents.

Now, if only the TV bosses would understand kids today are far more globalized and spoiled to demand anything but instant gratification for their cultural needs and that their old world distribution models need to adapt or die fighting…

I think any new show on TV should be sold with three seasons in text format and one show in the can. If you want to sell it use your own money make the first show with your own dime.

Thats how I see it.

Sure, it’s free to watch over-the-air because of commercials. Most (all?) bittorrent downloads don’t have commercials. The companies feel like they’re not making any revenue off bittorrent downloads and, thus, you are doing something wrong.

Here’s where I get confused: You can watch it off-the-air for free. You can record it on a DVD recorder. That’s legal. You can take out the commercials and give it to a friend. That’s legal. You could transfer it from your Tivo, cut out the commercials, burn it to a DVD (or your portable device of choice) and THAT’S legal. But if you download it over bittorent, that’s NOT legal.