There has been a multitude of discussions across the media in recent months pertaining to the ‘scourge’ of downloading, particularly in light of the recent Pirate Bay court ruling, which may actually still have life in it and may not mean the death knell of the popular file sharing site. The mooted capping of download levels in the US has also been derided by customers. Here in the UK, a proposed '3 strikes and your out' policy for serial 'offenders has also met severe resistance, not least from the major IPSs that would see their broadband business model threatened by any restrictions placed on their customers.
As I wrote in my earlier post, I believed that the court was wrong in targeting those that merely provided an indexing search engine despite the fact that it was used by the general public for file-sharing activities. The same could be said for Google – torrents are as easily found through the ‘big G’ as at the Bay – yet we don’t see the RIAA or MPAA going after them?
What the Ninja finds interesting is the moral debate about downloading and the paying for content. Hollywood in particular bangs on about the impact of downloading and people not paying for content and the billions of dollars they are supposedly losing by people choosing to acquire media from free and supposedly illicit outlets. The impact of this revenue loss is trumpeted as having a dramatic impact on all facets of the entertainment industry and killing future innovation. There are numerous ways to pay for content, some are optional (such as going out and buying a dvd or going to the cinema) and, uniquely here in the UK, one is almost mandatory (the TV licence) but irrespective of where you live in the world, there are a multitude of ways to acquire and consume media content.
I have an opinion on the legalities of media purchasing and consumption which I will attempt to spell out here. It is a British slant but I believe it could be applied elsewhere around the globe.
To illustrate my thoughts, here is a lengthy example.
As a British citizen who owns a number of televisions and display devices within my home, I am obligated to pay for a television licence and because they are all colour, I have to pay the full amount. This equates to an annual fee of £139.50 (which I pay monthly). This provides me with the necessary permissions to own these devices but is also, in essence, a subscription to the raft of services provided by the BBC via television and radio (some of which is pretty darn good – BBCHD, Radio FiveLive in particular) and access to the commercial broadcasters such as ITV, Channel 4 etc. I also choose to subscribe to Virgin Media’s cable services and have both Freeview and Freesat HD in the house. I therefore have a plethora of media content providers feeding my home on a daily basis.
My thought is this:
Say the BBC shows Mission Impossible 2 at 11.00pm at night on BBC1, but I choose not to watch it, instead preferring the news on The Situation Room on CNN. I rise the next morning and think ‘damn, I should have watched M:I2 last night’ – and elect to jump on a bit torrent site and download a dvd rip of the film, maybe as an mp4 file, via the web and watch it later that night via my media centre extender on my HDTV as a stream off my server.
According to Hollywood, I am a movie pirate to be despised, criminalised, hunted down and possibly shot. Suddenly, I am the lowest of the low...
My argument is this: have I not already paid for this content through my various media subscriptions and therefore fully entitled to acquire and possess this digital copy?
In fact have I not paid for it four times due to my t.v. licence, cable subscription and Freeview and Freesat hardware purchases – any one of which would have allowed me to watch the film had I elected to do so.
Irrespective of the fact that I elected not to watch M:I2 when it aired on television, I have still paid for it and am I therefore not entitled to watch it? Say I am right and that the content is fair game in this instance, it would render every piece of media as fair game to download once it has been broadcast on a service which you subscribe to. Am I wrong in feeling that this is okay? Surely there is no legal comeback because the content has been paid for? In some instances it has been paid for on a number of occasions!
In fact, I seem to recall having M:I2 on a shop bought video tape back in 2001 as well so am I not even more entitled to possess the download? I would love to hear the legalities of this argument but perhaps the issue is the possession of the material rather than access. I want to possess the film, not the vehicle for delivering it. Despite having bought and paid for the movie when it was released on VHS, Hollywood’s business model calls for a payment every time you consume the content be it physical media such as dvd, blu-ray or ethereal such as over-the-air broadcast, cable feed, satellite broadcast, Netflix streaming download via the Xbox360 (sadly not in the UK yet) etc.
With many more devices coming on to the market that help propagate consumption of media (Roku Media Player, Moxi box, Popcorn Hour, TiVo etc.) and with the distribution of media throughout the house becoming an increasingly killer app, this argument is not going to go away any time soon!
As I wrote in my earlier post, I believed that the court was wrong in targeting those that merely provided an indexing search engine despite the fact that it was used by the general public for file-sharing activities. The same could be said for Google – torrents are as easily found through the ‘big G’ as at the Bay – yet we don’t see the RIAA or MPAA going after them?
What the Ninja finds interesting is the moral debate about downloading and the paying for content. Hollywood in particular bangs on about the impact of downloading and people not paying for content and the billions of dollars they are supposedly losing by people choosing to acquire media from free and supposedly illicit outlets. The impact of this revenue loss is trumpeted as having a dramatic impact on all facets of the entertainment industry and killing future innovation. There are numerous ways to pay for content, some are optional (such as going out and buying a dvd or going to the cinema) and, uniquely here in the UK, one is almost mandatory (the TV licence) but irrespective of where you live in the world, there are a multitude of ways to acquire and consume media content.
I have an opinion on the legalities of media purchasing and consumption which I will attempt to spell out here. It is a British slant but I believe it could be applied elsewhere around the globe.
To illustrate my thoughts, here is a lengthy example.
As a British citizen who owns a number of televisions and display devices within my home, I am obligated to pay for a television licence and because they are all colour, I have to pay the full amount. This equates to an annual fee of £139.50 (which I pay monthly). This provides me with the necessary permissions to own these devices but is also, in essence, a subscription to the raft of services provided by the BBC via television and radio (some of which is pretty darn good – BBCHD, Radio FiveLive in particular) and access to the commercial broadcasters such as ITV, Channel 4 etc. I also choose to subscribe to Virgin Media’s cable services and have both Freeview and Freesat HD in the house. I therefore have a plethora of media content providers feeding my home on a daily basis.
My thought is this:
Say the BBC shows Mission Impossible 2 at 11.00pm at night on BBC1, but I choose not to watch it, instead preferring the news on The Situation Room on CNN. I rise the next morning and think ‘damn, I should have watched M:I2 last night’ – and elect to jump on a bit torrent site and download a dvd rip of the film, maybe as an mp4 file, via the web and watch it later that night via my media centre extender on my HDTV as a stream off my server.
According to Hollywood, I am a movie pirate to be despised, criminalised, hunted down and possibly shot. Suddenly, I am the lowest of the low...
My argument is this: have I not already paid for this content through my various media subscriptions and therefore fully entitled to acquire and possess this digital copy?
In fact have I not paid for it four times due to my t.v. licence, cable subscription and Freeview and Freesat hardware purchases – any one of which would have allowed me to watch the film had I elected to do so.
Irrespective of the fact that I elected not to watch M:I2 when it aired on television, I have still paid for it and am I therefore not entitled to watch it? Say I am right and that the content is fair game in this instance, it would render every piece of media as fair game to download once it has been broadcast on a service which you subscribe to. Am I wrong in feeling that this is okay? Surely there is no legal comeback because the content has been paid for? In some instances it has been paid for on a number of occasions!
In fact, I seem to recall having M:I2 on a shop bought video tape back in 2001 as well so am I not even more entitled to possess the download? I would love to hear the legalities of this argument but perhaps the issue is the possession of the material rather than access. I want to possess the film, not the vehicle for delivering it. Despite having bought and paid for the movie when it was released on VHS, Hollywood’s business model calls for a payment every time you consume the content be it physical media such as dvd, blu-ray or ethereal such as over-the-air broadcast, cable feed, satellite broadcast, Netflix streaming download via the Xbox360 (sadly not in the UK yet) etc.
With many more devices coming on to the market that help propagate consumption of media (Roku Media Player, Moxi box, Popcorn Hour, TiVo etc.) and with the distribution of media throughout the house becoming an increasingly killer app, this argument is not going to go away any time soon!
I believe that Hollywood does not have a leg to stand on as, even now, in this the digital age they still have not delivered a viable alternative to downloads. The rampant success of Netflix in the USA is evidence of the demand for some form of effective movie delivery service and their move in to online streaming via devices such as the 360 has been an even bigger boost (and probably one for another post).
Either way, The Ninja feels that this continual cycle of handing over of cash for already legally purchased content has to come to an end and sites like The Pirate Bay are merely at the vanguard of this growing sentiment.
