Situation is even worse in Europa. We have no Hulu or anything comparable. If the movie industry doesn't learn that Europe is only ~10ms away from the States when you're in the net it will have even more trouble in that market. I'm chatting with friends in America, I'm occasionally working for companies in the US (from my home in Germany) and I'm certainly visiting imdb.com and similar websites to inform myself about movies. So why do I have to wait half a year until a (often badly synchronized) version of a series arrives here on legal channels? Most like even first on pay-TV (not that I even would have a TV anymore these days...I want to watch movies when I have time and not when some station thinks I should take the time). All while streaming-services are found in less than 5 minutes (who is still using risky torrent services anyway?)
Give me a no-hassle-fair-price download service and I'll be fine paying for good movies. But right now I have not yet found a legal way of watching movies on my computer except waiting for the DVD's - and even those I don't really watch in a legal way as I'm using DeCSS to watch them on Linux.
Then again, this is the internet we are talking about. There is not much stopping you from using technology to gain freedom.
Pandora blocks your IP address you say? Go look for a proxy in the US.
Hulu recognizes proxies you say? Use a VPN instead. That opens the door to every free offer in the US.
iTunes won't let you download from the US store you say? Go to Ebay and grab an American iTunes gift card.
Spotify requires a bank account in UK/Scandinavia you say? There are always virtual credit cards like Entropay (I call them credit card proxies). Well, Spotify won't take those. But Paypal does, and Spotify accepts Paypal.
You see, this is the internet. There are no countries or borders on the internet. The tools are all there. You just gotta use them.
Given that I'm from germany too I have to agree. If you want to watch movies and TV shows in their original language illegal sources are almost the only way to do that. I'd gladly pay for netflix or something similar, but i'm not allowed to.
And don't get me started on music streaming - when people talk about those lucky europeans with their Spotify accounts, we germans are still left out - thanks to the GEMA i guess.
Our german netflix clone is called Maxdome [0], but unfortunately Mono Moonlight lacks the DRM parts of Silverlight. So Linux users are locked out. It should work with Windows and Mac, though.
Fellow European here - I was going to say the same thing: I have practically no options of watching any current shows, a lot of FANTASTIC shows don't even make it over here and most of the German translations are abysmal in terms of being wrong and having horrible voices/voice acting, to say the least.
I don't feel bad for using tvtorrents - as far as I am concerned, I am just watching a TV show that has already been paid for by its target audience and stations in the States anyway and I got a copy; what's the big deal?
And movies: why are there still significantly different "launch dates" for the same movie all over the world? This is 2011.
And while we are at it with movies, my favorite pet peeve are the frakking movie theaters here... you pay outrageous prices just to get a seat, then you pay extra for 3d goggles, then they sit you through 20 minutes of commercials, then they switch on all of the frakking lights AGAIN and ask "Does anyone want to buy some ice cream???"... and of course there are always some assholes who want to buy a $1 popsicle with a $100 bill but first they take their sweet time deciding on what to get... then finally the light goes out... and there are more commercials. The whole experience is just begging to install a nice home theater and since one cannot (legally) watch current movies while they are in theaters.. pirating surely becomes an option.
Movie theaters and current movie distribution are a concept from the stone age when people could not afford to view them at home; they are a fossil in terms of modern technology and possibilities. Most people who go to see a movie could just as easily watch it at home without much less enjoyment or sound or visual quality.
The article ends with the author suggesting the studios get together and create a single source for digitial delivery to make it easy for the consumers. Well, it turns out the studios are doing that, it's called DECE and the first step is a suite of DRMs and a rights locker called Ultraviolet. Unfortunately, it's a huge consortium that will have tremendous trouble actually getting anything done. It's also primarily aimed at supporting digital purchases to supplement the ailing DVD market instead of just biting the bullet and recognizing that rental and subscription are what most consumers want. Still, it's a serious effort despite it's flaws, so it's not fair to say the industry isn't taking the changes of the market seriously.
A much more difficult problem is undoing the years and years of distribution rights deals and complex availability windows that plague any improvement in the market. These deals lock up content, creating exclusive windows for entrenched players and hamper true innovation. Unfortunately, solving the rights windows issue, which includes not only time but also geographic limits, is a much more difficult problem to solve with fewer incentives on incumbents to change. If they don't, the whole industry will suffer, but I don't see this issue being solved any time soon.
I've not heard of it before, but this DECE thing is not going to create a single source for digital delivery to make it easy for consumers if it also involves a suite of DRMs and a rights locker (whatever that is). The two concepts seem entirely antithetical given that DRM inevitably makes things difficult for consumers.
This is why it's called "disruption." Basically there's a lot of mid-to-late career people whose (comfortable-to-extremely wealthy) lifestyles depend on ensuring that the status quo is maintained until after they retire.
I'm sorry, but acting like torrenting is a superior user experience to Netflix is not credible. Sure pirating has its advantages, but it's no panacaea. For one thing, who wants to wait hours to download something before they can watch it? The disk space requirements are huge, and the quality and availability issues are problematic. Netflix may not have everything streaming, but they have a pretty good selection at your fingertips, and with DVD coverage you can fill in the gaps of most stuff that you really want to watch.
The problem is the "industry" is not monolithic, and if you think about Netflix cannibalizing $200/month cable subscriptions (for all premium channels) into $10/month streaming, you can see where some of the players are gonna drag their feet. It'd be great if big content could come together a create an amazing service for everyone, but they don't have the chops or the incentive.
> who wants to wait hours to download something before they can watch it
I don't know how fast your internet is, but I can get an hour-long TV show in 720p in <10 minutes from torrents, and I'm paying $45/month for internet (in America).
> The disk space requirements are huge
Are they? 2 TB hard drives are now $70 a pop, and who says you have to save everything like a pack rat anyway?
> quality and availability issues are problematic
They've never been for me. There have always been plenty of seeds, and there has always been a high quality version that has been easy to find (usually because it has the most seeds & snatches). If anything, the quality is MUCH higher when torrenting than it is when streaming (legally or illegally).
Torrenting is an entirely superior experience to Netflix for all of us that don't live in the US. All I see on netflix.com is "Sorry, Netflix is not available in your country... yet" and an invitation to provide my e-mail address so they can tell me when it is. Meanwhile, thepiratebay.org is entirely available in my country right now. I fully get that this is not Netflix's fault, and agree that they're a great company doing all they can about the matter, but the fact remains that Netflix simply doesn't work for me or the vast majority of people I know.
Also... disk space requirements? Really? Hard drive space costs nearly nothing these days, I can't imagine that's a big problem.
I disagree. First of all, all the torrents of recent shows are very, very fast. Much faster than any streaming service in fact. Getting well over a meg per second is a common case.
For old episodes you do hold a point, although waiting a few hours or even half a day is generally still more convenient than not getting the episodes at all or waiting through countless FBI warnings.
Now then again, there is Netflix. Its not too bad. Its only available in the US, too.
For example, if i want to follow game of thrones, i can wait a year or two until its available in my country. For some other shows, they'll just never be shown in my country.
Or I can pirate it and reduce the wait from a year to 10 minutes.
I'd gladly pay up to $100 a month for quality, ads free streaming to anything recent and I think i would be over paying it. But the offer just isnt even there, free, $1, $100, $1000, $10000 it doesn't matter, there is no true offer available.
What we have here are some streaming content provided by the cable/dsl operators or tv channels which comprises tv shows that are ~5 to 10 years old and movies that are 30 to 5 years old, and a slim catalog of them too, generally the crappiest.
So I pirate the stuff. I feel a little bad about it, but it's that or nothing, and I won't be ok with nothing.
I shall also mention that I would want to be able to stream the stuff on any device/system or optionally save it for offline view, although id settle with streaming only as well.
Disk space is incredibly cheap. Are you seriously discouting quality on downloading vs. streaming? Quality is the entire reason behind local media. ISP's simply don't provide consistent service for all customers. Streaming is not an option for vast media consuming throngs.
Torrenting isn't a superior user experience, it's a giant pain in the ass. Sharing files with friends, however, is the piracy experience for most people. Pretending torrent users end the file sharing line, is ridiculous.
I certainly identified with the spirit of the article and know that people are willing to pay money for legal access to digital content when it's easy and has the stuff people want. I'm one of them.
Since I signed up for Rhapsody about a year ago, my downloading of music illegally has plummeted. I trade the small amount of Downloader's Guilt for $10/mo and have access to (almost) everything I want to listen to. (And from wherever I want to listen to it: my computer, my phone, my home stereo.)
Before Rhapsody, I was downloading gigabytes of albums – I hadn't bought a CD in the new millenium (save those from smaller bands I wanted to personally supported). Now the music industry has me as a customer again, and monthly. Hollywood needs a Rhapsody to survive.
"Sorry, we are not able to offer Rhapsody Premier at this time.
We are not able to offer Rhapsody Premier in Netherlands (substitute for just about any non-US country) at this time. For the latest music and entertainment offers in your country, click Current Offers. Click Cancel to end this session.
If you believe you've received this message in error, check to make sure your country and language settings are accurate. "
Don't look at torrents. Go look at many of the download services rapidshare.com, megaupload.com, etc. They all have one thing in common: they charge money.
This means that there is a segment of people out there who are willing to pay, but whoes needs are for one reason or another are not met under the current system.
If you want to grow the market try to capture them.
Yeah, so downloading torrents is still the easiest way to obtain selected works despite its complexity. He's right in that we'll just probably have to wait for a decade or so for things to get better, given the track record of the MAFIAA.
However, there should still be an explicit law that allows people to legally make free copies of content that isn't available for sale in any standard format. There's never enough supply as there's demand; there's always a niche that just isn't reasonably satisfied by commerce itself. A number of various collections or redistribution of minor series can thrive on the proverbial pirate bay because there are non-commercial incentives only to support them in the first place.
Yeah, but no. If I want to make a home or specialty video and give it away to a few folks but not sell it, that doesn't give you any kind of moral right to take it and give it to the world. And it certainly shouldn't give you the legal right. In your version of reality everything produced by anyone should be available to all comers and if you don't charge for it then they'll give it away for free? What about bloody confidential documents or video of my groundbreaking experiments? I think you need to rethink that. If someone genuinely doesn't want to sell you their film anymore well, then, bugger off.
My new DVR holds so few shows [...] It holds now about 20 shows, and a few movies, and is basically useless in that it fills up every few days ...
I think the author needs to stop watching so much TV.
Does anyone identify with this piece? It seems largely exaggerated to me. I watched the first 4 episodes of The Inbetweeners, season 3, on demand last night. I have FiOS, and even with its clunky menu navigation, it was easy to find and watch the shows. The alternate is. what, download a 1GB torrent? I don't see how that's easier.
If Hollywood wants to improve box office receipts, they could stop making so many sequels, movies from comic books, movies from TV shows, and 3D for the sake of 3D.
You shouldn't confuse "should" and "could". I only watch a handful of shows but I have no business judging the author for spending his time however the hell he wants. I'll likely make millions of dollars before he will, and that's entirely his prerogative.
It was long winded and pedantic, but he's making a solid point metaphorically: this shit is painful, and no mortal can or would navigate the morass of technical, legal and financial woes without wondering the exact same things.
I feel sorry for people that don't know how to move comfortably around tech, because the one thing you and I share in common that they don't have is a choice in how this goes down on a personal level.
I can identify. I don't watch that much TV, but my SO does, and the hard drive on our DVR is so small that if I queue something it can delete something of hers.
I have a Playstation 3 which I used for Netflix, and went through the same hassles during the PSN outage. Then it seemed like every time I went to watch a movie there was a new software update I had to have. On top of that, the repeated software updates seem to have introduced a bug where it has to resync the resolution with the TV every time I power it on or boot Netflix. I'm never buying a Sony product ever again.
Netflix streaming is a great product, but has limited selection. Again, it's not that I consume that much media, but that what I want to watch usually isn't available.
At the end of the day, I have a cable TV + internet subscription, as well as Netflix, and I just torrent everything. I have a server that runs deluge, and I just drop a torrent in a folder and a couple of hours later it's ready to watch.
I though the piece was spot on.
edit: Just thought I'd add that since the legal music stores have popped up (iTunes, Beatport, Amazon) I hardly pirate music anymore. I spend hundreds of dollars a year on music. This is why the premise of the article jives with my experience.
>If Hollywood wants to improve box office receipts, they could stop making so many sequels, movies from comic books, movies from TV shows, and 3D for the sake of 3D.
If they want to improve receipts, why should they stop making the movies that make the most money? You might not like sequels and comic books, but apparently most people do.
Best line in the article: "If the studios were smart they'd go to the mat and create a massive one-stop shop for TV and movies, find a price point they can live with and then set programmers loose to make the thing as easy to use and ubiquitous as possible."
I think as similar as these two industries are, the big deciding factor in this particular war is the size of files being downloaded. Video files are mammoth in comparison to music files and the Cable and Internet companies know this--there are obvious infrastructural problems in play, but the recent move by a number of ISP's to cap the data transfer capacity of its clients is a huge factor in this war on pirating--I mean where I live in Canada 1/2 of the major players have adopted this, with the 2nd committed to it but unsure of when it will be fully in place--so when that does happen I'll be forced into a cap of 100gb a month for the price I previously afforded with stiff penalties for going over--in this day and age 100gb, especially in terms of TV and movies is hardly anything. Couple that with my desire to play online games, surf the internet, stream on youtube etc and my fun time options are severely limited. If anything I think Hollywood lucked out on the fact that ISP's have hit a roadblock in terms of bandwidth and what they can afford to provide.
How many terabytes would it take to store all the television shows and movies from the US in standard definition for the past 30 years? How about only the shows you and your family/friends want?
Storage prices will continue to drop. At some point in the near future it will be less expensive to have an entire collection of video stored locally, rather than try to create the infrastructure to stream across the country or globe.
Oh yes. The whole movie industry needs to change. When a new movie comes out I want to see it that day, on my laptop/TV/home theatre in HD. If I am constrained to a single viewing for a period, fine.
I do not want to see it in a smelly, sticky, noisy public theatre.
In the golden days of media distribution (the 90s?) X amount if money was made. They will do anything to make X again and then after that anything to make more than X.
[+] [-] coffeeaddicted|14 years ago|reply
Give me a no-hassle-fair-price download service and I'll be fine paying for good movies. But right now I have not yet found a legal way of watching movies on my computer except waiting for the DVD's - and even those I don't really watch in a legal way as I'm using DeCSS to watch them on Linux.
[+] [-] Derbasti|14 years ago|reply
Pandora blocks your IP address you say? Go look for a proxy in the US.
Hulu recognizes proxies you say? Use a VPN instead. That opens the door to every free offer in the US.
iTunes won't let you download from the US store you say? Go to Ebay and grab an American iTunes gift card.
Spotify requires a bank account in UK/Scandinavia you say? There are always virtual credit cards like Entropay (I call them credit card proxies). Well, Spotify won't take those. But Paypal does, and Spotify accepts Paypal.
You see, this is the internet. There are no countries or borders on the internet. The tools are all there. You just gotta use them.
[+] [-] thirdsun|14 years ago|reply
And don't get me started on music streaming - when people talk about those lucky europeans with their Spotify accounts, we germans are still left out - thanks to the GEMA i guess.
[+] [-] beza1e1|14 years ago|reply
[0] http://www.maxdome.de/
[+] [-] kahawe|14 years ago|reply
I don't feel bad for using tvtorrents - as far as I am concerned, I am just watching a TV show that has already been paid for by its target audience and stations in the States anyway and I got a copy; what's the big deal?
And movies: why are there still significantly different "launch dates" for the same movie all over the world? This is 2011.
And while we are at it with movies, my favorite pet peeve are the frakking movie theaters here... you pay outrageous prices just to get a seat, then you pay extra for 3d goggles, then they sit you through 20 minutes of commercials, then they switch on all of the frakking lights AGAIN and ask "Does anyone want to buy some ice cream???"... and of course there are always some assholes who want to buy a $1 popsicle with a $100 bill but first they take their sweet time deciding on what to get... then finally the light goes out... and there are more commercials. The whole experience is just begging to install a nice home theater and since one cannot (legally) watch current movies while they are in theaters.. pirating surely becomes an option.
Movie theaters and current movie distribution are a concept from the stone age when people could not afford to view them at home; they are a fossil in terms of modern technology and possibilities. Most people who go to see a movie could just as easily watch it at home without much less enjoyment or sound or visual quality.
[+] [-] jaaron|14 years ago|reply
A much more difficult problem is undoing the years and years of distribution rights deals and complex availability windows that plague any improvement in the market. These deals lock up content, creating exclusive windows for entrenched players and hamper true innovation. Unfortunately, solving the rights windows issue, which includes not only time but also geographic limits, is a much more difficult problem to solve with fewer incentives on incumbents to change. If they don't, the whole industry will suffer, but I don't see this issue being solved any time soon.
[+] [-] archangel_one|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GaryOlson|14 years ago|reply
...the music industry, when it began to feel the effects of the technological change coming, doubled down on stupid....
And the video industry is providing the sincerest form of flattery.
[+] [-] ojbyrne|14 years ago|reply
Après moi, le déluge.
[+] [-] mixmastamyk|14 years ago|reply
tl;dr:
[+] [-] fourspace|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dasil003|14 years ago|reply
The problem is the "industry" is not monolithic, and if you think about Netflix cannibalizing $200/month cable subscriptions (for all premium channels) into $10/month streaming, you can see where some of the players are gonna drag their feet. It'd be great if big content could come together a create an amazing service for everyone, but they don't have the chops or the incentive.
[+] [-] w1ntermute|14 years ago|reply
I don't know how fast your internet is, but I can get an hour-long TV show in 720p in <10 minutes from torrents, and I'm paying $45/month for internet (in America).
> The disk space requirements are huge
Are they? 2 TB hard drives are now $70 a pop, and who says you have to save everything like a pack rat anyway?
> quality and availability issues are problematic
They've never been for me. There have always been plenty of seeds, and there has always been a high quality version that has been easy to find (usually because it has the most seeds & snatches). If anything, the quality is MUCH higher when torrenting than it is when streaming (legally or illegally).
[+] [-] archangel_one|14 years ago|reply
Also... disk space requirements? Really? Hard drive space costs nearly nothing these days, I can't imagine that's a big problem.
[+] [-] zobzu|14 years ago|reply
For old episodes you do hold a point, although waiting a few hours or even half a day is generally still more convenient than not getting the episodes at all or waiting through countless FBI warnings.
Now then again, there is Netflix. Its not too bad. Its only available in the US, too.
For example, if i want to follow game of thrones, i can wait a year or two until its available in my country. For some other shows, they'll just never be shown in my country. Or I can pirate it and reduce the wait from a year to 10 minutes.
I'd gladly pay up to $100 a month for quality, ads free streaming to anything recent and I think i would be over paying it. But the offer just isnt even there, free, $1, $100, $1000, $10000 it doesn't matter, there is no true offer available.
What we have here are some streaming content provided by the cable/dsl operators or tv channels which comprises tv shows that are ~5 to 10 years old and movies that are 30 to 5 years old, and a slim catalog of them too, generally the crappiest.
So I pirate the stuff. I feel a little bad about it, but it's that or nothing, and I won't be ok with nothing.
I shall also mention that I would want to be able to stream the stuff on any device/system or optionally save it for offline view, although id settle with streaming only as well.
[+] [-] r0s|14 years ago|reply
Torrenting isn't a superior user experience, it's a giant pain in the ass. Sharing files with friends, however, is the piracy experience for most people. Pretending torrent users end the file sharing line, is ridiculous.
[+] [-] jmitcheson|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kierank|14 years ago|reply
There are clients that allow instant streaming. It makes little difference to a busy swarm.
the quality and availability issues are problematic.
Problematic to Hollywood because they are superior to what they produce?
[+] [-] orangechicken|14 years ago|reply
Since I signed up for Rhapsody about a year ago, my downloading of music illegally has plummeted. I trade the small amount of Downloader's Guilt for $10/mo and have access to (almost) everything I want to listen to. (And from wherever I want to listen to it: my computer, my phone, my home stereo.)
Before Rhapsody, I was downloading gigabytes of albums – I hadn't bought a CD in the new millenium (save those from smaller bands I wanted to personally supported). Now the music industry has me as a customer again, and monthly. Hollywood needs a Rhapsody to survive.
[+] [-] Huppie|14 years ago|reply
"Sorry, we are not able to offer Rhapsody Premier at this time. We are not able to offer Rhapsody Premier in Netherlands (substitute for just about any non-US country) at this time. For the latest music and entertainment offers in your country, click Current Offers. Click Cancel to end this session.
If you believe you've received this message in error, check to make sure your country and language settings are accurate. "
[+] [-] tomjen3|14 years ago|reply
Don't look at torrents. Go look at many of the download services rapidshare.com, megaupload.com, etc. They all have one thing in common: they charge money.
This means that there is a segment of people out there who are willing to pay, but whoes needs are for one reason or another are not met under the current system.
If you want to grow the market try to capture them.
[+] [-] yason|14 years ago|reply
However, there should still be an explicit law that allows people to legally make free copies of content that isn't available for sale in any standard format. There's never enough supply as there's demand; there's always a niche that just isn't reasonably satisfied by commerce itself. A number of various collections or redistribution of minor series can thrive on the proverbial pirate bay because there are non-commercial incentives only to support them in the first place.
[+] [-] trotsky|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nhebb|14 years ago|reply
I think the author needs to stop watching so much TV.
Does anyone identify with this piece? It seems largely exaggerated to me. I watched the first 4 episodes of The Inbetweeners, season 3, on demand last night. I have FiOS, and even with its clunky menu navigation, it was easy to find and watch the shows. The alternate is. what, download a 1GB torrent? I don't see how that's easier.
If Hollywood wants to improve box office receipts, they could stop making so many sequels, movies from comic books, movies from TV shows, and 3D for the sake of 3D.
[+] [-] peteforde|14 years ago|reply
It was long winded and pedantic, but he's making a solid point metaphorically: this shit is painful, and no mortal can or would navigate the morass of technical, legal and financial woes without wondering the exact same things.
I feel sorry for people that don't know how to move comfortably around tech, because the one thing you and I share in common that they don't have is a choice in how this goes down on a personal level.
[+] [-] foobard|14 years ago|reply
I have a Playstation 3 which I used for Netflix, and went through the same hassles during the PSN outage. Then it seemed like every time I went to watch a movie there was a new software update I had to have. On top of that, the repeated software updates seem to have introduced a bug where it has to resync the resolution with the TV every time I power it on or boot Netflix. I'm never buying a Sony product ever again.
Netflix streaming is a great product, but has limited selection. Again, it's not that I consume that much media, but that what I want to watch usually isn't available.
At the end of the day, I have a cable TV + internet subscription, as well as Netflix, and I just torrent everything. I have a server that runs deluge, and I just drop a torrent in a folder and a couple of hours later it's ready to watch.
I though the piece was spot on.
edit: Just thought I'd add that since the legal music stores have popped up (iTunes, Beatport, Amazon) I hardly pirate music anymore. I spend hundreds of dollars a year on music. This is why the premise of the article jives with my experience.
[+] [-] towelrod|14 years ago|reply
If they want to improve receipts, why should they stop making the movies that make the most money? You might not like sequels and comic books, but apparently most people do.
http://www.the-numbers.com/interactive/newsStory.php?newsID=...
[+] [-] joejohnson|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] int3rnaut|14 years ago|reply
I think as similar as these two industries are, the big deciding factor in this particular war is the size of files being downloaded. Video files are mammoth in comparison to music files and the Cable and Internet companies know this--there are obvious infrastructural problems in play, but the recent move by a number of ISP's to cap the data transfer capacity of its clients is a huge factor in this war on pirating--I mean where I live in Canada 1/2 of the major players have adopted this, with the 2nd committed to it but unsure of when it will be fully in place--so when that does happen I'll be forced into a cap of 100gb a month for the price I previously afforded with stiff penalties for going over--in this day and age 100gb, especially in terms of TV and movies is hardly anything. Couple that with my desire to play online games, surf the internet, stream on youtube etc and my fun time options are severely limited. If anything I think Hollywood lucked out on the fact that ISP's have hit a roadblock in terms of bandwidth and what they can afford to provide.
[+] [-] chopsueyar|14 years ago|reply
Storage prices will continue to drop. At some point in the near future it will be less expensive to have an entire collection of video stored locally, rather than try to create the infrastructure to stream across the country or globe.
[+] [-] benaston|14 years ago|reply
I do not want to see it in a smelly, sticky, noisy public theatre.
Will this ever happen? Unlikely.
[+] [-] bsiemon|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hootmon|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] idonthack|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cellurl|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]