Buying The DVD: Unhelpful And Unethical
Written by J.J. King on February 21, 2008These last few years P2Pers have got used to TV entertainment ‘our way’: unfucked, de-loused, delivered efficiently in economical, good-looking codecs. Because we rarely turn it on, it’s been easy to forget just how cynical, unsatisfying and downright venal television, as a distribution medium, has become.
Whether it’s the stupor-inducing gambling channels dedicated to parting fools from their money, the late-night pseudo-porn selling premium-rate phone sex, or the corrupt ‘competition’ call-ins plaguing the UK’s prime-time (even that Holy of Holies, the BBC), there’s the unavoidable sense that TV is on the rocks. Anyone who’d have you believe filesharers are the only scourge afflicting an industry that would otherwise be healthy is smoking crack, in the business, or both.
This is why Tape It Off The Internet seemed like such a good idea until you actually started trying to use it. There are just not enough good shows being made to justify something as complicated and involved as TIOTI. Enter all your favorites and share them with strangers ‘just like you’ and discover… what? That there are only seven good shows in the world at any one time, you were already watching six of them, and they’re all in the Pirate Bay’s Top 100 anyway. When you strip away the hours of dross and advertising, the truth is that the world’s mighty entertainment infrastructure is only capable of producing half a dozen hours of passable content a week. Maybe it’s because they spend the rest of their time on lawsuits.
One of these rare hours is The Wire. If by some small chance you’re not mainlining it already, think yourself lucky. You have four back seasons to enjoy, of what is quite possibly the last great show television will produce before it’s entirely superseded by — well, by whatever is coming around the way.
I’m not sure anyone has ever attempted to make a show of this scope: The Wire’s by-all-accounts-not-very-nice creator David Simon (Homicide, The Corner) has said his theme over the series’ five years has been ‘the decline of the American empire’ — which means decay of its cities through poverty, of traditional jobs, of the education system, of the police force and of the media. For those getting restless at the back, the show’s also got the slickest, nastiest drug slingers you’ll see on screen and is so realistic that the Baltimore Police have apparently complained it reveals too much about how crimes are — or are not — solved; apparently real thugs love it as well.
Find it and download it — though probably David Simon doesn’t want you to and neither does HBO, which has been actively poisoning Torrents of its other shows. Tell everyone you know about it. Maybe those of them still rocking TVs will raise the show’s increasingly dismal viewing figures.
Or maybe that’s no longer the point. While I sympathise with the plight of the David Simons, David Milchs (Deadwood, John from Cincinnati) and Joss Whedons (Firefly) of this world, and would like to help them in future endeavors, I specifically do not sympathise with the plights of the craven, dim-witted, played-out producers that surround them on all sides. And by ‘playing fair’ and buying the DVD or the cable package, besides the fact that most of our money is not going to the creators and their families, aren’t we really saying we accept the meshwork of shit in order to get the two or three gems that occasionally sift through it? Aren’t we signalling the industry that there’s something we still find acceptable about their way of doing business?
Now I suppose this could seem a bit extreme to some. But again and again in blogs and comments about shows like The Wire you hear ‘I’d pay for this if…’ — if it wasn’t DRM’ed all to hell like HBO’s own online offering, if it was freely shareable, good to be watched whenever, wherever, on whatever, without constant interruption by adverts. The kicker is that we’re not only unable legally to liberate and re-distribute shows from the broken, corrupt mechanisms of television and DVD distribution: we also have no way of supporting creators like David Simon and crew outside of it.
This means that right now, people still stupid or unfortunate enough to sit in front of TVs watching months-old shows or paying massive cash-or-attention premiums for the new ones are heavily subsidising us P2Pers. This is genuinely immoral, because we’re really exploiting people less fortunate than ourselves. Instead, we should be helping them out of the wasteland, and thinking of new ways to get the creators we like creating outside the prison of mass distribution. It cannot be that we are able to figure out how to make GNU-Linux - a world-class operating system — together, but not to make a dozen decent shows a year.
The irony is that TV series really feel like they’re coming into their own, just as the media that spawned them is dying. From the ‘high art’ of Deadwood and John From Cincinnati to the epic modern-day myth of Lost to the (dare I call it) Beckettian dark comedy of Trailer Park Boys, the drawn out tales of our series (often consumed a ’season’ at a time: I know at least three people waiting for The Wire to finish before downloading it) are an undeniable core of our emerging P2P culture.
We are the most passionate viewers ever, talking and writing profusely about the media we love, analysing, promoting, hosting free screenings… And they need us as much as we need them — all of these shows, without exception, enjoy their primary life on the networks, through our blogs, comments, reviews, remixes and fan fiction. Lost in particular has learned that incorporating online feedback can make a great (if utterly Shaggy Dog) story.
Can we find a way to get the shows we want made without buying the goddamn DVD? I remember this guy talking really sensibly a couple years ago about how Joss Whedon could get to make another season of Firefly, and we got this project back up his musings. Why didn’t Whedon try it? Because someone else owned his ideas? Perhaps it could have worked otherwise, and maybe it could work for the future. If you’ve got ideas, throw them in the comments box below. And if you have time in between catching up on The Wire, read this by the venerable guru of Wired magazine, Kevin Kelly — I’m going to try to get him into the next installment of STEAL THIS FILM. See you around. I’ll be back in two weeks to pick up the pieces.
TorrentFreak welcomes Jamie King as our new bi-weekly columnist. Jamie is the Director of STEAL THIS FILM I & II and a member of the League of Noble Peers. He is currently working on a cinema release of STEAL THIS FILM and prototyping an experimental, post-P2P remuneration system for creators.
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99 Responses (Add yours or TrackBack)
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wasn’t there a similiar article a couple of months ago? “torrenting should be illegal yet i do it because there are no cheap legal alternatives”.. that’s kind of hypocritical. i’d gladly pay for the dvds if i think the show is any good yet i’d never pay for a fucking download.
Once upon a time in the USA there was a rerun season which ran in the Summer. Say 3 months max. Now shows typically have around 22 or so episodes to a year. That’s not even 6 months.
My favorite programs started in mid October and ran to the first few weeks of December. They started up again for several weeks in January and then disappeared again.
This has nothing to do with the writer’s strike since an entire season is filmed at once. This is just the greedy networks trying to string their ever declining customer base along week after week.
By the time the next block of new episodes start I am seriously thinking of not even wasting my time. The networks have pretty much lost me. I can just wait the year out and download everything at one time. No commercials, better resolution on my monitor, and I can decide when I want to run things. And if the shows simply disappear for good? So be it. I can always read a good book.
The rot that permeates this country is not only at the bottom with the mass of druggies, low lifes, genetic rejects, and the like. It is also at the top. Creativity has been lost to coercion as media companies show more interest in screwing people over with poor content and ever restrictive usage of their outdated technologies.
the author of this article also writes rap music
[quote comment="295162"]The BBC stopped making quality programing 20 years ago.[/quote]
Right. Planet Earth never happened.
Fuck off.
fuck off lol
How refreshing.
Some of your points are interesting but they are lost and disregarded in your claim that there is one golden standard for television. I personally don’t like shows like dancing with the stars, but apparently a lot of people do. They should be able to watch crap if they want to.
You seem to be forgetting that television is a passive medium, a lot f people what it to relax and stuff like The Wire doesn’t really fit that bill. Bad tv exists because the public want it. You want it, I want it and the rest of the world to. Does that mean that there should be great, interesting and awesome television as well. BUt for fucks sake don’t disregard one of the biggest fucking reasons why people watch tv.
Wow yeah another stupid article loaded with personal opinion that makes us all look bad.
“Stuff like Threes Company, Married w Children, Cheers, Happy Days, Munsters, L&S, Magnum PI, Fantasy Island, and so on is all good shit if you’ve never seen it, especially if you toke up or drop sum acid first.”
If you have to take acid to them, they probably aren’t that good.
i agree with this article 100% i dont watch tv much we just got bell satellite (more for my parents) and ive set up the pvr to record the shows i watch… they’re all cartoons i really only watch cartoons but the cartoons of this decade are horrible there are a few that are enjoyable but the cartoons from the 80s-99ish are way way better. i share my love of cartoons by distributing them in mp4 format so people with phones/ipods/psps/etc. can enjoy them. having things available for whomever whenever is great. i only get about 200 hits a month but every one of those people share my love of those classic cartoons. you cant say theres that level of connection with the tv networks.
In the U.S. most people drink water from the tap, which costs next to nothing. For discriminating tastes there is a huge bottled water market that is competitive and profitable, but that does not spell the end
nearly free tap water.
There is a place for broadcast crap. Particularly in the U.S. where broadcast TV is 100% free–no license fees–people who cannot afford premium material support all this low-grade material with the purchase of commodities, and it meets their needs. For many people, television is the crackling fireplace of the modern era, a place to park one’s butt after a hard workday and let one’s mind drift.
Quality programming will have to come at some sort of premium, whether through (in U.S.) public television subsidized by subscribers donations, cable/satellite, or internet. This is the market affected most by the p2p
revolution. Broadcast TV is crap BECAUSE it relies on so many eyeballs which support it through commodities purchase. The strength of the internet lies in the ability to appropriate premium programming in the most efficient way possible by allowing the premium-paying target audience to tune in rather than depending upon marketing research to determine everything from time slots to content.
There is a place for both broadcast media AND for internet-based/premium content to flourish.
What of bunch of nonsense. The reality is that no matter how easy the entertainment companies made it for us (no DRM, cross-compatibility, etc), as long as it isn’t free, most people will get it illegally from TPB etc. It’s because we’re thieves, and all this self-righteous rambling is just smoke and mirrors.
Apparently American TV is much better than UK TV, because (when all the writers aren’t on strike) I rather enjoy many of the shows on TV. Reality TV is shit, but a lot of the written shows are enjoyable.
Even if TV networks offered a DRM free HD download of their shows I wouldn’t download unless it was free. The fact is, I download because I don’t like scheduling my life around TV, and I will never pay money for the ability to watch at my convenience.
[quote comment="295468"]What of bunch of nonsense. The reality is that no matter how easy the entertainment companies made it for us (no DRM, cross-compatibility, etc), as long as it isn’t free, most people will get it illegally from TPB etc. It’s because we’re thieves, and all this self-righteous rambling is just smoke and mirrors.[/quote]
A few things
1)
You make nice words, give me numbers
2)
Read more around on TF and you will find out that people do share because they simply can
3)
People download because of the lack of legal alternatives in ways of donation. An good examaple are the Steal this Film projects.
4)
studies have proven that people who download movies are also the most interesting group for buying them too.
…
alas I am at an internet cafe on the wrong site of the world to get to my own bookmarks at home, but then I would give links to all obove.
happy sharing!
…
on topic:
will see how the collums will go, dont see the RSS here, but maybe its good to give a collum number or / and mark in the title or so, then we know its a collum.
Yeah, except John From Cincinatti sucked.
i agreed tv to many commericials crap advertisments late night i dont remember the last time i sat watching tv like i would back then. and u have to pay a bad price to get hbo when i could just go to p2p and get what i want movies shows etc
I’ll be back in two weeks to pick up the pieces.
http://experience8.com/
More self justifying opinionated crap. Take some time to look into the histories of the different media and why studio systems developed in the first place or where todays major labels came from and the problems faced by the smaller labels and studios. Lotsa luck getting a film distribution deal JJ, I suspect you are gonna need it.
[quote comment="295152"]The really need to bring back Firefly[/quote]
YESSS!!! yes they do.
I don’t even watch cable television anymore. It’s just such an inconvenience. All of the shows I like to watch either come on at a time that is not good for me, or simply don’t air anymore. For example Sliders, LEXX, Quantum Leap, etc. So I just download all of my favorite shows on BitTorrent. In some cases it’s the ONLY place I can get the shows/movies I want to watch. Also It’s really nice to know that my computer is automatically going to download the newest episodes of my favorite tv shows via rss feeds when they’re available, and then i can watch them anytime i want without commercials, and with better quality than cable tv in most cases. And I really would be willing to pay a reasonable monthly fee if it meant i could have the freedom to do this legally. but the media industry is too damn stupid to adapt to what their customers want. if they don’t wake up and do something, i’m convinced that the entertainment industry is going to become community based like the development of GNU-Linux. Just goto YouTube and look at how many people have already started making their own shows and distributing them freely
Just make it so people can download DRM-free TV shows at 50 cents per hour show. The studios would make money hand over fist.
A cheap show that’s downloadable forever means more people will watch it than when it’s just over broadcast or buyable for higher prices. That way a show with even a moderate following will see big download purchase numbers like 500,000 over several months or years. If 500,000 people pay 50 cents each, that means you rake in $250,000 of income from each and every single episode of a series that just has a moderate viewership. For a bigger show that gets 2 million views per broadcast show, the number of downloads over the course of a few months or years will be 3 million or more. If 3 million people pay 50 cents per episode, then you get 1.5 million dollars of income per episode. And for a huge show like seinfeld which had 80 million viewers for the finale episode, they would have even much higher number of download purchases. So if 150 million people bought that single episode over the course of a few months or years, that means the studio would 75 million dollars just off of that one episode alone!
And I believe these are conservative numbers.
Make it 50 cents per hour show, and make it a super easy and drm-free, and your bank account will swell to bursting.
Law #1 of capitalism: You get what you pay for. For entertainment, you can pay in cash or attention.
You sound like a guy who would complain about having to buy your date dinner in order to get a good night blowjob.
If you don’t want to pay for it or sit through a commercial then you don’t have to. You don’t have to watch a gambling channel if you don’t want to, no one is making you. Nothing is free unless you steal it. Stealing it benefits the thief and no one else. I can understand the motives of STEAL THIS FILM, unfortunately a show like FIREFLY would never have been made if it weren’t for the backing of the very industry you criticize. What is lacking is integrity and the proper distribution of wealth within the system. P2P pirating is not the answer, but a wake up call. Someone better be listening.
I’m sorry Sea King @ post 13. You condemn ALL team sports. Then you list some truly awful TV shows. (The only truly decent one on the list being “Cheers”.) Then, to cap it off, say you have to be high or stoned to enjoy them. The only way to put it is that you, sir, are a moron. Though since you’re clearly a junkie, that is to be expected I guess.
English isn’t the only language on the planet… TV shows and movies are produced in countries other than the USA, UK, etc.
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