I was worried when I received an e-mail recently about the new lawsuit filed on behalf of the four major television networksCBS, NBC, and Disney (which includes ABC and 20th Century Fox) targeting people who are sharing television programs or providing bit torrent downloads of TV shows.
Why do I worry? Im afraid to admit anything! They mentioned four shows, although I guess there are others: CSI, Judging Amy, Las Vegas and Boston Legal. I run a Boston Legal (ABC) Web site (http://www.Boston-Legal.org) and provide a significant amount of streaming of each episode, but no downloads.
There is a lot of television and movie downloading going on, to the tune of 400,000 downloads per day. This is very similar to the Napster music download phenomenon of the late 90s.
Here we go again.
Can the TV industry avoid the music industries P2P mistakes? Edgewood resident Peter Yorke, Co-Founder of DownloadRadio.org, DownloadMedia.org and Yorke Systems, took a few moments to look at the Napsterization of TV.
DANA GREENLEE: I thought television would be immune since its something of a free product.
PETER YORKE: People really do think that, since its broadcast over the air, its essentially free. The more tech savvy will know that the whole Sony Betamax case was about thisyour ability to record television shows. When it wound through the U.S. courts, it finally said yes, you do have the right to time shift television shows.
GREENLEE: Now we have huge hard drives, high-speed Internet access its so much easier now to download it from a bit torrent site.
YORKE: About three to four months ago there was a major bit torrent site that got busted for distributing movies and copyrighted music. There were also TV files on there. What is interesting about this, and I think this lawsuit is a sort of trial balloon, is the U.S. Department of Justice did not go after the television shows also on the site. So I thought maybe the U.S. government didnt want to wander into that topic because someone might challenge it because people would say they have a right to personal use copying of television programs. Even the TIVO and Replay TV lawsuits have won some of the motions that people do want to be able to send a copy of a particular television show that they TIVOd or Replayed. I understand where this is coming from and, clearly, this is round one.
GREENLEE: Another problem is theres a lot of content for television being produced that people around the world cant get.
YORKE: A good example is the new Battlestar Galactica. It only started playing in the U.S. on the Sci-Fi Channel in January 2005, but the season had actually wrapped up in November of last year and Sky TV, Rupert Murdochs company, was actually airing all of the episodes in Europe before it even aired in the US. So somebody captured it off the satellite feed and put it online with bit torrent and, oh, by the way, every one of the last ten episodes of the new Battlestar Galactica series were available online before the first episode even aired on the Sci-Fi Channel in the US. Im sure they were not happy about this,but it goes to a bunch of different issues.
Clearly, there are fans who believe it shouldnt be withheldthe fans were going to watch it. But, more importantly, it begins to take control back for the consumer: “You cant tell us what to do with this content. You cant tell us when to watch it. You cant tell me how to interpret it. You cant tell me when to consume it or what channel to watch it on or in what country to live in to see it.” It really becomes “me” TV. The J3 term really applies here: “Just in time, just enough and just for me”.
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You can listen to the full hour discussion on this topic at http://www.WebTalkRadio.com.
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Dana Greenlee is co-host/producer of the WebTalkGuys Radio Show, a Tacoma-based nationally syndicated radio and webcast show featuring technology news and interviews.
