Piracy Outstripping Legal Video Sales? 294
b.burl writes to tell us a recently released report by the NDP Group supports the horror stories being fed to us by studio execs, but not quite in the way those execs would have you believe. The study shows a continued rise in video piracy compared to legal video sales. The largest target continues to be adult oriented content and TV shows, with only an estimated 5 percent being mainstream movie content. From the article: "[A]mong U.S. households with members who regularly use the Internet, 8 percent (six million households) downloaded at least one digital video file (10MB or larger) from a P2P service for free in the third quarter of 2006. Nearly 60 percent of video files downloaded from P2P sites were adult-film content, while 20 percent was TV show content and 5 percent was mainstream movie content."
The Internet is for Porn! (Score:5, Funny)
Porn! Porn! Porn!
Re:The Internet is for Porn! (Score:5, Funny)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=543034384
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Arpanet was born for military and university communication. Internet, as we know it today, has about as much to do with Arpanet as your cells have to do with whatever pond scum first arose in primordial oceans (or where ever life began). Sure, they're technically related, but...
Maybe Internet was not born because of porn, but it sure acted as a midwife.
Adult oriented content (Score:5, Funny)
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They download pr0n for the articles?
Color me skeptical.
Re:Adult oriented content (Score:4, Insightful)
1) How to use a mouse.
2) How to launch and use a web browser.
3) What local files and folders are, and why it's a good idea to save your favorite videos locally in your own folder.
4) How to hide things stored locally so your parent, boss, girlfriend, etc. can't find it.
5) How to install and use P2P software (often followed by how to install anti-malware software).
6) How to locate and install video and audio codecs.
7) How to find and use anonymous proxies to circumvent those pesky web filtering devices.
8) How to set up their own proxies, write scripts or programs, and/or hack the filtering device to circumvent it.
Some kids end up becoming programmers, IT specialists, or even hackers just to be able to see a boob.
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A real-estate agent advertises a "porno 4-room apartment for sale" here: http://e24.no/oppogfrem/article1535337.ece [e24.no]
A shame... (Score:4, Interesting)
And this is a crying shame.
I download television show content myself. What I can get on iTunes, I get on iTunes and pay $2 per show, or buy a whole season at a time. What I can't, I seek elsewhere, including P2P networks. I don't download movies at all, because I can simply get them on DVD.
The fact is that I'm not going to pay $50 a month for cable or satellite for something that's, frankly, not worth that much to me. Television and movie studios can either get compensation for their stuff by making it available to me in a manner I want (iTunes/timely release of DVDs), or they can get bupkiss when I download it for free, an option that I'd really rather avoid, to be honest.
If, god forbid, the industry succeeds somehow in making television shows impossible to download, then I simply won't watch their stuff at all. Most of it has that little value to me.
It's all so stupid. I can't believe there's an industry out there that is so desperate to stop the pirates that they're willing to forego billions of dollars, yet here we are, living it.
If someone gave you the choice of making $1 billion for making a television show, but the show is pirated to an extent such that over half the people who watch it don't pay you, or making $500 million for making a television show with little or no piracy of it at all with a much, much smaller audience, which would you prefer?
Yeah, me too. Stupid, huh?
As for porn, I don't care. I've only seen a few porn movies myself, and I don't find them exciting. I honestly think that porn is one of those things that everyone thinks they're supposed to be really into, so they watch it and act like it's a big deal; but realistically, once you've seen one, you've pretty much seen them all. People get naked and do it, ho hum. Check out this other one where... Um... People get naked and do it, ho hum. But you know, whatever. I guess if there's anything I don't understand about that is why people still buy DVDs or the naughty channels on cable when they can pretty much get anything they want over the Internet.
MythTV your TV (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree, and this is why Free-to-Air satellite, and the dismal excuse for basic cable that Comcast gives me are okay options. I record those things of interest with my MythTV [mythtv.org] Knoppix distro [mysettupbox.tv]. While there aren't that many science fiction shows, I am quite satisfied to watch whatever comes across the airwaves, like ST:TNG, and the weekly episode of Farscape. I can't justify spen
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Why, I'd pick that one of course!
Yes indeed.
Re:A shame... (Score:5, Insightful)
$1 billion and no future customers vs. $0.5 billion and lots of currently unsatisfied future customers?
They're not exactly in it for the money, not for today anyway. You're thinking short term. The RIAA and their partners at Microsoft are willing to make the necessary investments now so that they can eventually do for arts, culture, and politics what DeBeers did for diamonds. They basically want a stranglehold on popular culture so that they can reduce the diversity of viewpoints you hear and limit the quality of audio/video signals that you see- quite a lucrative position to be in that also confers significant political power. With consolidated media you can selectively promote political candidates who will let your lobbyists write the bills that they pass in Congress, and you can easily suppress alternative viewpoints from being heard anywhere except on the Internet. Political suppression on the Internet will require political/legislative fixes, to solve problems like Net Neutrality that just let anyone say anything.
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Therefore, pay-to-download doesn't just substitute one form of income for another; it completely undermines this immense boondoggle they've been given in over-the-air broadcasting. And
you obviously know nothing about porn (Score:4, Funny)
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Actually, it's more like, "Wow! I've never seen the cat jump that high."
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Take Heroes for example. I'd much rather go to nbc.com and watch any episod
Re:A shame... (Score:5, Informative)
Here's some of what you're missing:
Straight hardcore, girl on girl, 3-somes, BJ-only, HJ-only, foursomes, orgies, orgies with vampires (my personal fave), black porn, white porn, asian porn (another fun one), watersports (need to take a leak?), bukakke (are you thirsty?), double stuffing (only if your buddy and you are REALLY secure), gay hardcore, gay orgies (not my cup of tea), amateur, amateur upskirts (that creepy guy in the clubs with a vidcam and a raincoat on), amateur db (downblouse viewing), latex fetish, puffy fetish (these are hilarious! almost as much fun as a ball-gag, a ball-pean hammer, and a fifth of Jack)..... and I haven't even touched on the various sub-genres of poop pr0n!
Hmmm.... off to the newsgroups.....
Re:A shame... (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone that says you are stealing a TV show that AIRED is so full of it they stink. the show was created, they got paid for it, the broadcaster got paid for airing it by the commercials that aired during it. THEY ALL GOT THEIR MONEY.
The exec's that are whining like little babies are the ones that want to wring another $1.00 per viewing out of it after it aired. I.E. the pigs that smell the cooking bacon out there and want a piece of that pie too.
It's drivin by 100% unadulterated greed, and they try to villify it to justify it in the minds of the public.... Their real definition is that you are a thief if you have a VCR, DVR, recording DVD player or PC that can watch it... They just dont say that in public as it will piss off the public.
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Honestly guy, you've never been butt-raped in the mud by a doberman while being tied up and whipped by your dungeon mistress? Everybody is doing it! You don't know what you're missing! Maybe you're the one who needs to see a sexologist. Loosen up, pal, it fun!
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Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Suddenly your sig made much more sense...
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Well, the OP didn't really say he had no interest in sex, just in porn. To be fair, I understand what he means. I've not seen much porn in my 20 years on this Earth, but go to a random porn site. Now another. Huh... You know... they look kinda... nearly... 100% identical.
Isn't that a bit like saying that once you've tried out the different positions a few times there's no reason to have sex again because you'd just be doing the same thing over and over again? Or that there's no rational reason for wanting a variety of partners because they're all identically equipped? A pussy's a pussy, after all.
In defense of porn, you can't really expect them to scale new heights of originality with their subject matter. There's only so many variations of suck/lick/fuck you can do.
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You need to get out more, bud...that is quite tame.
Metrics used are flawed (Score:5, Insightful)
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10MB is what, about 10 minutes of poor qual vid? (Score:2)
A real metric would be measuring how many people downloaded FULL PROGRAMS and BURNED THEM TO DISCS for permanent storage.
They might as well claim everybody who uses NetFlix and BlockBuster is a pirate, too, since they rent movies, as well.
Re:10MB is what, about 10 minutes of poor qual vid (Score:2)
OH NOES, THESE PEOPLE MIGHT DECIDE TO BUY THE
Ready, normal people? (Score:2)
The Internet is for porn! [youtube.com] (What NDP wrote!)
The Internet is for porn! (I shake my Wiimote!)
Wii up all night honking our horn
To porn, porn, porn!
Which is from (Score:2)
Just in case anyone didn't know. It's a pretty funny musical.
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2. I'm fairly sure that if they took all the porn off the Internet, there'd only be 1 website left, and it would be called Bring Back The Porn.
http://www3.youtube.com/watch?v=Ii2xOV6dqGc [youtube.com]
I'm shocked and surprised (Score:3, Insightful)
Only 60 percent? The fact that the amount of porn being downloaded is nowhere near the 90% mark surely spells doom for the mainstream tv & movie industry.
piracy rate for commercially available content (Score:2, Interesting)
Why is this surprising? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think TV series are in the position that VHS movies were 15 years ago. Back then, movies cost 80$ US, and nobody bought them. When the price came down to the 20$ range, they started to sell. I think many people feel the same about TV series. At 80$ a season, they're not going to sell. I mean, after all it's just a TV show. If the prices came down to the 30$ range, I bet more people would buy them because they're major fans, or to watch the two episodes they missed.
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uhhh you sure it's a blockbuster? (Score:2)
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Netflix carries all the TV I want to see - except Mythbusters, and the daily show on a nightly basis.
Hmm. I just got an iTunes card - that may take care of Daily Show! Mythbusters I've requested Netflix carry.
Cable failed to live up to it's early hype - TV without commercials (yeah, that was the idea). Now it is dead to me because of that failing.
Yeah, I'm still paying for the content, and that's fine with me.
The bottom line is: I won't be buyi
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http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blcab letelevision.htm [about.com]
Sure enough! No need to be impolite.
Thanks.
$2 per show is too high (Score:2, Interesting)
Now I was bored once and decided to try iTunes-Videos out, but I couldn't find anything I wanted to watch. And the more I searched the more the $2 per episode bugged me. A 1 hour show, $2. A 30 minute show $2. If I think $2 is too much for an hour show, why wou
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My problem with iTunes is that $2 per show (regardless of time) is just too damn much. That comes out to $40 per season for a 20 episode season.
Most (all?) seasons on iTunes are cheaper than $1.99 times the number of episodes. The ones I've looked at are $35.
Why buy on iTunes?
Of course, YMMV (and in fact, clearly does), bu
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Er, they charge $80 for a series because people pay it, and they're selling very well. I'm not buying, but I know plenty of people who do, and while that's just anecdotal, the numbers [zdnet.com] back me up.
Personally, I'd rather pay someone to kick me than watch something twice -- let alone multiple times -- but maybe that's just me. Between books, magazines, the net, programming, and gaming, there's enough to do that's new and fresh that I see little point in watching some
I'm a bad, bad pirate (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, as a result, my wife and I sit down and watch Heroes on NBC every week, including commercials (we don't watch enough TV to need a TiVo). If we hadn't been able to illegally download those videos, we'd likely not be watching the show OR the commercials.
So I ask: Did it benefit or hurt NBC that I illegally downloaded and watched the first three episodes of Heroes?
Re:I'm a bad, bad pirate (Score:5, Funny)
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As an aside, ever since I got my ReplayTV, I do
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Re:I'm a bad, bad pirate (Score:4, Interesting)
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Are you a Nielsen viewer (as in, are you one of the people that Nielsen Media Research surveys to see what people watch on TV)? If no, then whether you watch Heroes on the air or from piracy makes absolutly no difference to NBC. Maybe you'll buy something that was advertised during it, and maybe that company will spend more money advertising on NBC, but how do they know that's where their extr
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Actually, Nielsen has set-top boxes in a small fraction of homes all the time, but then does random polling of the general population to supplement and calibrate the data they get from "Nielsen families." So *any* of us might figure into Nielsen's statistics, if we happen to get tha
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You had to download? (Score:2)
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Same for:
Curb Your Enthusiasm (bought DVDs)
Dexter and Brotherhood (subscribed to Showtime)
Battlestar Galactica (started watching SciFi)
House (started watching new eps as they air)
The Shield (bought DVDs and follow it as it airs)
Lost (bought DVDs and follow it as it airs)
and a few others.
Im sure that Im in the list of people who downloaded TV material. Good thing for the studios that I did, theyve got a lot of my money as
Downloading TV shows is not piracy (Score:2, Insightful)
5 Percent? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Yes I would, yes I woul... oops?
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The best part in my opinion is that you don't even have to reburn it to a DVD if you don't want to. Plays quite well straight off the harddrive with no issues. Love it.
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Every time I've watched one of those commercials at a theater I've heard a few people say "How do you download movies?"
Outstrip? (Score:4, Funny)
I don't think this word means what you think it means. To outstrip legal downloads, piracy would have had to been behind first, which is a preposterous claim.
Obvious who the pirates are (Score:2)
You can tell it's geeks and nerds doing the downloading.
tv shows illegal? (Score:3, Insightful)
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I pretty much agree with you if they're broadcast over-the-air shows, but some of the most popular shows being downloaded are actually shows on HBO, SHO, etc, which are premium channels with no commercials to begin with.
That being said, I can also understand why people continue to do it: Premium cable is not at all cheap.
Movie Exec's Boardroom Conversation (Score:2, Funny)
Oligarch #2: Really, wow, what should we do about that? Leverage the new technology to our advantage?
Oligarch #1: Naaa, lets bury our head in the sand and pretend its not happening! That way we dont have to do any actual work and can continue to skim traditional channels for the bulk of the cash!
Oligarch #2: Cool, and lets sue the internet!
Oligarch #1: Yeah, that will work! Kinda like our "fart vs thunder" collegues in the RIAA!
It actually happened (Score:2, Interesting)
I was working at Interval Research at the time (a Paul Allen funded attempt to clone Xerox Parc, which failed due to various bits of stupidity). The manager of our group (we were working on a precuror to the Palm Pilot) managed to get
Pay content will increase (Score:4, Informative)
I believe once content providers use and improve on this model pay pay to download content will approach or surpass illegal downloads.
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Where can I buy videos for download without DRM? (Score:5, Insightful)
As soon as they put the videos online for sale and download without DRM and a standardized format (Divx or Xvid), I think you will see a dramatic change.
My method (Score:3, Interesting)
I've also recently discovered that this method also works with DVDs from the library.
* There's no such thing as "I've got to hav
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Six hours encoding time for a 100 minute movie (give or take depending on content), is that about right?
Disk space is cheaper than my time. I just rip the VIDEO_TS and watch with a DVD player a few minutes later.
Here we go again... (Score:2)
cut off nose to spite face (Score:4, Insightful)
I dont have an IPod and dont care for itunes, but if I could buy a download at a reasonable price that was at a resolution viewable on my tv I would have no problem doing so. A few networks have at least figured out part of that, my son for example watches Ben10 on cartoon networks website for free regularly. Since its free he doesnt mind watching it on the computer, they flash banner ads so they get their ad revenue and everyone is happy.
For some reason the networks have a hard time accepting that times have changed the days of the whole family sitting down at 8pm to watch Ed Sullivan are long over, people are busier and have more diversions and distractions. Giving the viewing audience flexability is the future, the old ways will die, it might take a while and will be fought tooth and nail but its no less inevitable.
I beg to differ, sir! (Score:3, Insightful)
8 percent (six million households) downloaded at least one digital video file (10MB or larger) from a P2P service for free in the third quarter of 2006.
Free? Nonsense! I have to pay my ISP every month!
Nyuk nyuk nyuk!
ZOMG! Fair Use? (Score:2)
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Downloading TV episodes you "missed" is not timeshifting as was ruled fair use under Betamax.
Receiving it through the regular broadcast means and recording it yourself is timeshifting. Getting a copy from someone else who recorded it, edited it from the format it was broadcast (say, by removing commercials) and made it available to you is something completely different.
Skeptical of all these "reports" (Score:2)
Makes sense to me (Score:2)
Most TV shows are broadcast to a particular region at whatever time and day, then the networks like to arbitrarily rearrange schedules, preempt, etc. It's no wonder that DVRs and downloading are so popular. The moral issue gets hazier to me too--is downloading a TV show really any worse than taping/DVRing it? Am I "stealing" from the advertisers that paid to put in c
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They scream about all the lost ad revenue.... and act like it's the fault of the consumer. Well, NBC/ABC/CBS, you may have contractually obligated yourself to show those ads, but I am under NO contractual obligation to view them, keep them on tape, or see them as anything than "broadcast-twice-as-loud" annoyances. I'm 70% deaf, and have to jack the TV up to hear the subtle dialogue usually NOT included in captioning. The commercials now get muted, since I'm NOT interested in window
Even if more video stores carried porn (Score:2)
Compare that number with the people that actually do watch such videos.
A) I'd suspect that people would find most fetishes are fairly common
B) People still wouldn't want to be seen renting it.
Well no Sh*t (Score:2)
Pirated TV shows, eh? Anyone surprised? It's the content provider's fault, and its their problem. No sympathy here. The reason it's pirated so much is that there's no viable alternative. VERY few shows, except a few tokens available on iTunes (The Office, etc), can't be bought legally until the season finishes and the DVD comes out. If it comes out. Months later.
So let's say the DVDs come out.
obvious (Score:2)
10MB = serious compression (Score:2)
Displacing sales? (Score:2)
My best guess is, the industry is facing decreasing sales as a result of declining quality and excessive
OMG - I admit I've done worse. (Score:2)
The amazing thing is that it's just so easy, and I even got a free* box to do it on! There's this website..I think it's okay to link it here [directv.com] that will give you the box that downloads literally tens of thousands of shows every month. It will store them so you can watch them over and over again. They'll even come to your house and set it up for you - in m
NPD group is biased (Score:5, Informative)
Report is from NPD Group, well who are their clients [npd.com] ... EMI Music (a large RIAA member).
This is not an unbiased research firm, they are a marketing company and will serve the interests of their clients.
Probably just another arm of the RIAA/MPAA. I don't see how it would possibly serve this for-profit company's interests to say anything other than downloading is theft
TV DVD's with borked soundtracks (Score:2)
The shows' impacts were significantly altered by this. In once case, songs had originally been well chosen to reflect the moods of scenes as well tying in current pop culture in a very relevant fashion. The DVD alternative soundtrack did neither -- just
I don't see the RIAA defending porn (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Pr0n? (Score:5, Funny)
Would you want to fuck Ron Jeremy for free?
LK
Re:Pr0n? (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually there are many things about the reality of the porn business that would amaze most people, mostly about how mundane and professional it is, and the large number of women who are porn producers - not performers. One day I really should write a book.
And yes, porn actors in my experience are a pretty happy lot. They are much easier to deal with than "real" actors; fewer tantrums, less drug abuse, punctual, professional, sober, reliable, etc...
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Back in the day they called you a leech...
Fixed that for you.
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Re:So this means.... (Score:4, Insightful)
No, it's a survey, remember? Only 4.8% of internet users ADMITTED to downloading 10MB of porn
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Yes because heaven forbid that someone who signed up for your service actually USES the bandwidth you have promised him. Or did you just make promises that you really can't/have no intention of keeping? Here, sign up, pay the monthly fee, but don't use the service. This is like a car insurance company that decides not to pay a claim because someone
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