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Dear Rupert Murdoch: Let’s Talk Piracy & “The Simpsons”

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Re: Dear Rupert Murdoch: Let’s Talk Piracy & “The Simpsons”

#21

Post by thebooktocome »

smoody wrote: post #18

"Blocking TV Devices Promotes The Piracy You Hate" That's like saying the high price of Porsches promotes car jacking. People are pro-theft or anti-theft. I'll never download copyrighted content without permission. It doesn't matter what anyone does. Having the Simpsons is a privilege, not a right. It wasn't that long ago that shows would air once and never be seen again (as far as audiences knew at the time) and I d…

Ah, the "You wouldn't download a car" argument.

The analogy is horrifically broken, because while it takes a non-trivial amount of effort to copy a Porsche (not 'steal' it, because piracy doesn't destroy the original -- but you knew that, right?) it takes a trivial amount of effort to copy digital media.

Re: Dear Rupert Murdoch: Let’s Talk Piracy & “The Simpsons”

#22

Post by sullivandanny »

hncommenter13 wrote: post #19
sullivandanny wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$125 per month for DirecTV. $7 per month for Hulu Plus. $7 per month for Netflix. Where do you see me saying I wanted it for free? The fact is, I can have it on demand and for free if I want to watch it through my computer. Or hook my computer up to my TV. Fox provides it this way. But if I want to watch it through a Roku or Google TV, from the same exact web site, from the same exact data stream, then I can't. And I…

Forgive me. Your complaint is that you can't watch it on the device you want at exactly the time you want for free. (Though if it's on Neflix streaming, one would think you could watch it via Roku.) Anyway, I think we agree that Fox is making a business decision, just like you make a business decision to provide some of your content for free on the web and some for pay at your conferences. So your quibble is with the…

I'm not saying Fox is being greedy. I didn't argue that they shouldn't charge me anything. I didn't argue that I should get anything for free.

I argued that I'm already paying them at least once with cold hard cash for that content, twice if you want to count Hulu Plus, where until last year, they also distributed the content. Three times, if you want to count my Netflix subscription.

Despite all of this, I cannot get last week's episode from them through any device I use where I actually have paid them cash.

But if I want to open my laptop, they'll give me or anyone who has paid nothing the episode for free -- and if I want to hook my laptop up to my TV, then it's on my TV.

That's the argument: despite paying them, I'm getting less than if I paid them nothing at all. That's a broken business model, to me.

They "gain" only two things by doing this. One, it's less convenient to stream from my laptop to my TV, so potentially I will prefer to buy some type of cable or satellite TV subscription. But I already have that.

Two, they potentially prevent me from abandoning cable or satellite TV -- cutting the cord -- and going with all web streaming. But that's a false assumption. If anything, they're encouraging me to cut the cord more. That's because with Netflix and their own web site, I'm getting better service than if I didn't have DirecTV at all.

Re: Dear Rupert Murdoch: Let’s Talk Piracy & “The Simpsons”

#23

Post by DanBC »

tnuc wrote: post #10

Shouldn't a content provider have choice as to how you get to watch something? By making it so you can only watch it on demand through your cable TV channel Fox gets money from you in a number of different ways; The ads that screen before and during the show. The money the cable provider has to pay Fox to have the channel. The money the provider has to give Fox for the on demand service. Plus it stops the majority of…

> Shouldn't a content provider have choice as to how you get to watch something?

Yes. But when they make bad choices good people (who want to pay for the content) will mention those bad choices. And bad people (who don't want to pay for the content) will just pirate, sometimes using the bad choice as a justification.

> Fox gets money from you in a number of different ways

I don't know how it works so maybe I get this next part wrong, but limiting the ways that people can pay you is not a way to maximise income.

> Plus it stops the majority of armchair hackers from putting it up on youtube etc

I don't understand what you're saying; plenty of on-demand cable only content is available on torrents. Technical restrictions cause inconvenience to paying customers but have little to no affect on pirates.

Re: Dear Rupert Murdoch: Let’s Talk Piracy & “The Simpsons”

#24

Post by DanBC »

hncommenter13 wrote: post #19
sullivandanny wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$125 per month for DirecTV. $7 per month for Hulu Plus. $7 per month for Netflix. Where do you see me saying I wanted it for free? The fact is, I can have it on demand and for free if I want to watch it through my computer. Or hook my computer up to my TV. Fox provides it this way. But if I want to watch it through a Roku or Google TV, from the same exact web site, from the same exact data stream, then I can't. And I…

Forgive me. Your complaint is that you can't watch it on the device you want at exactly the time you want for free. (Though if it's on Neflix streaming, one would think you could watch it via Roku.) Anyway, I think we agree that Fox is making a business decision, just like you make a business decision to provide some of your content for free on the web and some for pay at your conferences. So your quibble is with the…

You appear to have missed the point.

OP wants to pay. OP is, in fact, paying. OP could easily get the content for free, because that's how it's delivered by Fox. Except Fox, for some reason, won't provide the free content in a form usable to the OP on the device where OP is already paying for the content.

Re: Dear Rupert Murdoch: Let’s Talk Piracy & “The Simpsons”

#26

Post by prof_hobart »

smoody wrote: post #18

"Blocking TV Devices Promotes The Piracy You Hate" That's like saying the high price of Porsches promotes car jacking. People are pro-theft or anti-theft. I'll never download copyrighted content without permission. It doesn't matter what anyone does. Having the Simpsons is a privilege, not a right. It wasn't that long ago that shows would air once and never be seen again (as far as audiences knew at the time) and I d…

>It wasn't that long ago that shows would air once and never be seen again

And it wasn't that long ago that no-one paid £120/month+ for their TV.

>I don't remember people rioting or breaking into studios to steal the original tapes because shows only aired a single time.

Firstly, can you not tell the difference between taking physical objects from someone thus depriving them of that object, and making a digital copy of an object that doesn't deprive anyone of anything? How is Rupert Murdoch worse off by someone downloading last week's episode from a torrent site than he would have been if they'd gone onto the official website and watched it there?

Secondly, I'm pretty sure there was a fairly large amount of video lending/copying back in the day - obviously far less than today's copying, but it was a hell of a lot less convenient to do it back then than it is now.

Re: Dear Rupert Murdoch: Let’s Talk Piracy & “The Simpsons”

#27

Post by randomdata »

tnuc wrote: post #10

Shouldn't a content provider have choice as to how you get to watch something? By making it so you can only watch it on demand through your cable TV channel Fox gets money from you in a number of different ways; The ads that screen before and during the show. The money the cable provider has to pay Fox to have the channel. The money the provider has to give Fox for the on demand service. Plus it stops the majority of…

Shouldn't a content provider have choice as to how you get to watch something?

I'm not sure. Copyright exists for the sole purpose of providing incentive for people to create works for the rest of the population to enjoy. If the population cannot reasonably access that work, the intent of copyright protection is lost.

Re: Dear Rupert Murdoch: Let’s Talk Piracy & “The Simpsons”

#28

Post by tomflack »

DanBC wrote: post #24
hncommenter13 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forgive me. Your complaint is that you can't watch it on the device you want at exactly the time you want for free. (Though if it's on Neflix streaming, one would think you could watch it via Roku.) Anyway, I think we agree that Fox is making a business decision, just like you make a business decision to provide some of your content for free on the web and some for pay at your conferences. So your quibble is with the…

You appear to have missed the point. OP wants to pay. OP is, in fact, paying. OP could easily get the content for free, because that's how it's delivered by Fox. Except Fox, for some reason, won't provide the free content in a form usable to the OP on the device where OP is already paying for the content.

"Except Fox, for some reason, won't provide the free content in a form usable to the OP on the device"

I'd like to emphasize that Fox actively have done work to make it unusable on his device. If they'd done nothing it'd work fine.

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