NBC Still Down On P2P But Plans To Use It Themselves

Cotton Eye Joe writes "Ars Technica has an interview with Rick Cotton, the general counsel for NBC Universal who is best known for saying that piracy is a more serious offence than robbery. Cotton still has some strong opinions on P2P, even though the network will be using it for distribution. 'He's convinced that the pirate problem is costing NBC Universal real revenue and that the scale of the problem is so vast as to discourage investment in the carrots, positive solutions like Hulu. "With all that pirated material available, it creates tremendous disincentives to content owners who need to invest in new content," Cotton says, "and that just hurts consumers over time."'"

Huh?

piracy is a more serious offense than robbery.

Huh? And this guy makes how much money every year?

Re:

Its more serious to them. They believe that a single stolen dvd set of Seinfeld will cost them less than one guy putting it up on bittorent.

Sort of like the old addage " Steal a fish from a man, he won't eat for a day. Tell the whole village how to stea

Re:Huh?

Not replying to you so much as replying to the NBC exec....

Of course piracy is worse than robbery. Holding someone up at gunpoint or with a sword while in the middle of an ocean and threatening to kill them if they don't hand over all of their valuables is about as bad as you can get. I mean, what's to stop them from killing their victims just out of spite? There's certainly no possibility of law enforcement ever being able to catch them, practically speaking, as they're out in the absolute middle of nowhere, so it is basically a low-risk, high rewards way of leaching off of society.

Oh, wait... you are talking about copyright infringement? Worse than robbery?

*blinks*

*spews soda everywhere, then laughs hysterically*

That's a good one. You really had me going there. I thought you were serious for a minute. You're kidding me, right? Right? ... Right? ........... *blinks*

Re:Huh?

I usually end up realizing that it wasn't worth pirating as well.

BSG anyone

Isn't Battlestar Galactica one of the biggest traded shows on P2P? In that case he is probably getting the subject and Mediasentry-like buddies up and going for the new series premiere next month.

Just my first thought and £0.02

Re:BSG anyone

I remember hearing that the new Battlestar Galactica would've never happened, had the pilot not been leaked onto P2P.

Re:

And I hear that Global Frequency got axed and buried [wikipedia.org] precisely because the pilot got leaked and was incredibly popular on P2P networks.

The minds of movie execs move in mysterious ways.

Simple economics

I love it when spin doctors change the reality of the situation. From an economics standpoint, if there is no supply (e.g. meeting market demands with new product and services - how long have we been asking for newer methods to access and enjoy our entertainment ) then how on earth do you expect demand to come into play?

I have always wanted to buy cool things... I reward convenience with my cash. I reward innovation with my cash. I reward customer service with more cash than if I find a cheaper competing product or service.

If a company didn't respond to market changes in the past, it was called incompetence and the management was fired. These days it seems like the short term desire for quarterly profits blinds people to that.

As I said, you can spin the results any way you want. What makes the money is selling what people want.

Re:

I love it when spin doctors change the reality of the situation.

If you want spin doctoring, his comment about disincentives is hilarious.

Piracy is just another variable in the "will this be profitable" equation. The equation for DVDs and movies is stupid simple, but is a bit more complex for TV.

TV: Possible advertisin

NBC's real problem

is the lack of quality programming and the massive amounts of commercial breaks per 30 minute episode.

The last things on NBC I watched was Hero's and the Knight Rider Movie. Both of them felt very funny like i was watching 4 minutes of show and 4 minutes of commercials. by the time i got through 2 hours of the Knight Rider movie I was pissed off.

Watching NBC is like listening to Wil liam Shat ner speeeeaak. Ev ery thing is drawn out.

sorry I couldn't keep it up my brain kept fixing the errors.

Cut the ads down to less than 15 minutes per 30 minute episode and people might start watching again.

Re:NBC's real problem

All the networks, indeed all of cable, suffers from a lack of quality programming. Even "newcomers" such as the Discovery Network, the Sci-Fi Channel, and the Science channel started off great but sled down the slippery slopes to mediocrity.

Why should I spend $100 a month for lack of quality programming despite the vast array of "choices" of hundreds of channels

There was a time I had both Satellite and Cable TV; now I have neither. It is simply easier to BitTorrent the few things I like, and sans the rest. Then I can watch what I want at my leisure, on my schedule, free of commercials that rarely, if ever, promote anything I am interested in anyway.

If the network providers like NBC, CBS, etc. can't understand that, the to balls with them. I am more than happy to pay for quality, and that also means not being inundated with bazillions of commercials that take me out of the story anyway.

NBC is its own problem. They now have to compete with YouTube and MySpace and MMORPGs and everything else we can do online. That's the real thing that is killing them. They just can't compete, and they use P2P as a scapegoat to whine about their "losses".

Even the news outlets like MSNBC and CNN leave a lot to be desired, which is obviously more interested in the corporate bottom line and political correctness than reporting real news. I always find it amusing to read on the BBC website interesting news happening in my "backyard" here in the US without seeing any reference of the same on our own news outlets. Funny that.

Give Me Quality Content, and I will be more than happy to give you my eyes, and maybe a few bills as well.

Re:

The last things on NBC I watched was Hero's and the Knight Rider Movie. Both of them felt very funny like i was watching 4 minutes of show and 4 minutes of commercials.

Wow, you got more out of it than I did. The whole time I was watching that Knight Rider "movie" I kept thinking that the entire thing was just one big car commercial.

Re:NBC's real problem

Well, I watched the last three episodes of Heroes on NBC's own site online, and watched Knight Rider via bittorrent from TPB; both are legally available on NBC's website online via streaming. While I'm all for NBC being able to put advertisements in their videos so that they can make a buck and the writers and actors can get paid, the issues I have with the NBC "legal" streams are (a) not really "full screen" (it's close, but it's still 'boxed-in' enough that it shrinks the size of the show enough to be annoying) and (b) the advertisements show, while still shorter than what you get over the air, is the SAME FREAKIN' AD OVER AND OVER AGAIN! Let's have a little variety at least,... So if NBC can fix these two issues, that would be excellent! And these are definitely totally "fixable" issues within their control! I actually WANT to give them the advertising dollars that they deserve, especially since I can't get NBC over-the-air due to the location of the building I live in combined with Pittsburgh's ridiculously variable terrain. Not to mention I don't want to give those thieves at Comcrap any money, either.

On another note, I've noticed that they've put the original Battlestar Galactica series on NBC.com in the past month or two. Let's hope they put the new shows online when they come out in another month, too,... ;-)

Re:

I think you exaggerate. I use a DVR to skip commercials. I notice how long half hour network shows actually run. It's about 22 minutes of show and 8 minutes of ads, same as always. What the networks seem to be doing is making more frequent, shorter ad brea

Nothing to see here... move along

You can (IMO) ignore this guy as uninformed, or more dangerously, misinforming the legislative processes.

"You have to start with the first proposition," Cotton says, "which is: should we collectively be concerned about the fact that 50 to 75 percent of the total bandwidth of broadband ISPs is today taken up by P2P traffic which is in fact overwhelmingly pirated? I have to tell you, I think the answer to that is yes."

Lets see some facts and resources here? Prove it was pirated! I dare you.

He goes further; P2P protocols themselves disrupt the Internet by passing bandwidth costs from content owners onto ISPs. Cotton told the FCC in a recent filing, "P2P applications shift the costs of centralized storage and distribution to end users and their broadband network providers."

Obviously, he thinks that we, the end users, have not paid for the use of the bandwidth? WTF? Perhaps he believes that Google should pay for ALL OF THE INTERNET since they index it? Or maybe Facebook should pay for their 15% of the Internet in North America? This is just double speak so they can end up double-dipping. If they are able to establish clear end to end connections for content distribution then it will clearly be easier to determine who they want to litigate against for illegal content and bandwidth usage. They WANT the Internet to be a series of trucks running through tubes they build and control all the way to your eyesockets.

The Real Robbery/Piracy...

Happens when the network's "content", which turns out to be nothing other than more disappointing dreck, wastes my time, energy and other resources. That's piracy against me.

Trust me, NBC/Universal, none of your nonsense flows through any of the copper in my house.

Same goes for the other traditional "TV networks" in these United States.

Piracy also hurts corn growers

Rick Cotton is also the one who claimed that Piracy hurts Corn growers [techdirt.com] because -- without piracy -- theaters would sell more tickets and thus more popcorn. Don't you see what you're doing all you P2P users?!! You're hurting the poor popcorn farmer. And his family. Won't someone think of the popcorn farmer's children?

Re:Piracy also hurts corn growers

I don't think that any corn growers are wondering what to do with their product these days, what with ethanol production ramping up everywhere and driving the price up.

Re:Piracy also hurts corn growers

You're hurting the poor popcorn farmer.

Almost right.

Let's try again. Monsanto owns the copyright on popcorn seeds. Only Monsanto can grow popcorn. Some farmers in China managed to copy a couple of seeds and are growing their own popcorn.

Someone else drives a harvester through Monsanto's field and steals their popcorn crop.

Which is theft and which is a copyright violation? Get it right. In one case Monsanto still has a field of popcorn. In another, it has been stolen.

It boils down to protecting a single popcorn growers monopoly on the popcorn market. This isn't about theft. It's about copies of a product.

If you can only buy popcorn at Regal Cinemas at $8.00 a tub, that is a monopoly. Fortunately I can legally buy popcorn seed to grow my own, or buy bulk seed and pop my own.

http://www.popcornpopperdirect.com/popcornsupplies.html [popcornpopperdirect.com]
50 lbs of seed (4 ea 12.5 lb sacks) for under $40.

You can plant it if you wish. This is enough for about 4 acres of land.
http://www.wildlifetrends.com/deer.cfm [wildlifetrends.com]

I used the Monsanto company as an example as they are into genetic engineering and are suing the neighborhood farmers who happen to be the unlucky recipients of cross pollination from the designer varieties. They are trying to litigate the competition out of business. The above "We own the copyright on popcorn is becoming reality.

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/MonsantovsFarmers.php [i-sis.org.uk]
    Monsanto VS Farmers

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts

"and that just hurts consumers over time."

I see no mention of consumers in there. I didn't realize that patents and copyrights were to protect consumers. Please, explain this to me.

P2P is the solution to NBC

and that just hurts consumers over time.

No, you dumbass... I think you don't understand that P2P was the answer to all the things you did to piss off consumers.

Forcing TiVo to eliminate the commercial skip pissed off consumers.
Using outdated ratings and canceling popular shows pissed off consumers.
Eliminating popular distribution methods (like ITMS) pissed off consumers.

When you alienate enough of them - they fix the problem themselves. P2P is the solution to the problems you created.

TV itself was a gamble when it first came to the public. NBC invested in it. Now they say they won't invest in new mediums because of pirates... give me a damn break. Quit your bitching and listen to your viewers - yes, even the pirates.

If NBC uses P2P... aren't THEY the pirates ?

I'm seen a ton of the usually P2P and "Piracy" comments... let's look at the other part of what they want to do...
Use a P2P network that they didn't build, didn't buy or contribute to, didn't ask permission to be on, all in order to promote their content and make money.

Who are the real "pirates" here ? NBC it seems. Why doesn't someone just build a filter that prevents NBC from placing content on the network ? Shouldn't NBC put money into BitTorrent, or be accused of stealing themselves ?

Well, who's fault is that?

"[The] problem is so vast as to discourage investment in the carrots, positive solutions like Hulu."

And who's fault is that, exactly? Who sat on their heels, clinging desperately to their sinking and outdated business model while new distribution systems were built? Who refused to license content to the new distribution systems? Who, after years of being thrashed by modern technology, finally tried to counter the problem by building DRM encumbered systems that gave the customer far less value than the "pirate" option, while charging much more?

Content owners have, in effect, "trained" the public to be pirates. If a DRM-free system for downloading TV shows and music had existed 10 years ago, most people would probably never have bothered with Napster, and this whole problem would have never existed. If 6 years ago, the content owners had responded to Napster and other P2P technologies with innovation instead of lawsuits, likely software like Napster would have remained a niche product, used by the technically competent (as opposed to, say, my mother). All this senseless talk of "ISP level filtering" only tells us that the content owners have not yet learned the lesson. They are doomed to failure.

Re:Because it's only a bad thing...

well you should be 100% behind them using p2p for legal means the right? as they are making the slashdot point, that p2p has legal uses. You can't be defensive about legal P2p, and against companies using it at the same time...

I see no problem with them being anti-piracy, pro-copyright, and pro-using p2p for legal means.

Re:The summary...

It also uses the word "carrots". I don't get it.