Daniel Roe
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Poster: Daniel Roe @ Fri Nov 07, 2008 7:58 pm
 For those who don't know, Bittorrent is a peer to peer to peer to peer file transfer program which has been adopted by the "pirate" community (read: Everybody) to illegally exchange files, including but not limited to television shows.
Now, I'm a big fan of paying for media. I'm not one of those idiots who thinks that just because everyone pirates, it means it's morally okay. Piracy is stealing, and stealing is wrong. This does not actually affect my actions at all, but I just wanted to opine that I'm not encouraging theft.
First off, yes I know you can stream most shows off the parent company website, but who has time or patience for commercials? I would honestly prefer to spend the other 20 minutes of a "one hour" show at an AA meeting or a book club than watching commercials.
With piracy, I get no commercials, just like iTunes. If you watch 6 hours of TV a day, that means you spend 2 hours a day watching commercials. Imagine how awesome you'd be at guitar/keyboard/drums/kazoo if you practiced for 2 hours a day.
Secondly, the iTunes store costs too much. $2 for one TV show? So what if I get to keep it forever, 95% of the time it's only worth watching once or twice.
Piracy, obviously, is free. As such I don't feel bad about deleting it.
 Thirdly, say you do want to watch them again (years from now). Can't do it. I don't know what the computers of the future will look like, but I know iTunes DRM will probably be so wacky it may not work, if iTunes even exists in its present form. Great, now that $2 is an even bigger waste.
If I want to keep pirated files, I can rest assured that programs like VLC will support their format on whatever future computing device happens to come out.
Fourth, the quality sucks major balls. I have a modest 32" LCD TV and I can see the digital artifacts from a mile away. Not to mention the sound quality, which is tinny and craptastic.
Amazingly, pirated television shows are routinely better than iTunes. Some are even HDTV quality, which beats most broadcasts!
Fifth, it takes too long after the initial broadcast for the shows to show up legally online. iTunes takes about 12 hours from broadcast to available. Thursday night and Friday morning are two totally different times. If I get it Thursday night, I can watch it. If I get it Friday morning, I have to fit it in between drinking, studying, chores, errands, murder, and every other damn thing. If I'm watching TV, it means I had shit-else to do, weekends are not one of those times.
Pirated shows usually turn up a few minutes after or even before the current broadcast, depending on your time zone. A person on the east coast will rip the broadcast, edit out the commercials, wrap it up, and post it online within a few minutes after it airs. iTunes has the shows submitted to them beforehand by the studios and yet they still can't keep up!
Unfortunately, piracy is wrong. The alternatives, however, make it so many people with better things to do/spend money on are basically better off throwing away their televisions. Maybe not such a bad idea, come to think of it...
Update I've just been informed that Apple has secretly integrated HDCP into their new files. I'll do a whole separate "I told you so" on it.
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