Piracy Vs TV

[RevRaptor]

So I was pondering something as I lay awake in bed last night.
Say there is this really awesome show you like lets call it super happy fun time and the new episode is coming is coming out and you totally can't wait to see it. Unfortunately however it won't be making it to a TV channel in your country any time soon and the producers have provided no way to purchase it online.

So you find a torrent, It's the only way and you totally can't wait after all.
Now at this stage you have pretty clearly broken the law. However when it finally makes it to TV in your country you watch it again ads an all, its at this point you record it to your hard drive discarding the torrent copy for the much clearer TV copy in full wonderful 1080 P none the less.

Now at this point you still haven't paid anything for the show but you still have a free copy and a legal one at that.

Now obviously grabbing the torrent is an illegal action but in this scenario the eventual outcome is the same regardless of the download, you have a copy and you did not pay for it. All the torrent has done is allow you to view and procure the episode earlier than you otherwise would have.

Now what happens if you want to lend or make a copy of your now legally owned episode for your gran. Are you now pirating, what about when you used to give her video copy?s of TV shows was that piracy?

Thoughts anyone?

 

[Esotera]

Making a copy of a legally obtained episode that isn't for personal use is illegal in the UK. If it's entirely for personal use then it's legal (unless you break copy-protection technology whilst doing this).

Copyright law is weird and varies a lot depending on what country you live in (and whether the United States is arrogant enough to think that its laws apply there). For example I could watch a video on youtube and this would create a cached copy on my hard drive - if I went to download this video from youtube onto my hard drive to make a copy, this would be illegal. Which is completely crazy as it's exactly the same thing, but that's what happens when people who don't use computers are making the laws...

 

[Eleuthera]

Taping/copying from TV is actually equally as illegal as torrenting. IIRC you're allowed to tape (I'm old, we still call it taping...) a show/programme, and then watch it once, after that you're supposed to delete the recording. Lending your tv-copy to a friend is also technically pirating.

On the other hand depending on what country you're in the laws may differ, I know they do for the Netherlands at least.

 

[madwarper]

IIRC you're allowed to tape (I'm old, we still call it taping...)

OT: IIRC, when you watch something on TV, there's usually commercials which gets the station paid, which pays for the syndication rights, which pays the show's staff and crew. So, when you tape something for viewing, that later viewing doesn't affect ratings, which would drive up the demand for and cost of advertising during that program's airtime.

Of course, some stations have web sites that stream TV episodes after the episode has aired. Though, that increases their site's traffic and web based advertising.

 

[DoPo]

IIRC you're allowed to tape

Spoiler: Wait, this needs to be specifically legalised?

Wait, this needs to be specifically legalised?

Sorry, couldn't hold myself.

a show/programme, and then watch it once, after that you're supposed to delete the recording. Lending your tv-copy to a friend is also technically pirating.

On the other hand depending on what country you're in the laws may differ, I know they do for the Netherlands at least.

Now, I recall there was something about in in the US. It's been a while since I read about it, so I can't remember exact details (and I can't seem to be able to google effectively for it), so take it with a grain of salt and, if possible, somebody correct me. Anyway, recording stuff from the TV was not considered illegal per se but wasn't actually defined by law, so the TV people went to court with the manufacturers (or distributors - somebody, at least) of TV recording equipment. It was decided that recording TV programmes/whatever for later viewing is legal and does not infringe on the copyrights of the TV copyright holders. And I believe, the recordings thus made were protected under the fair use policy - you can watch them as many times you want and you can give the copy to another person but you cannot make further copies and/or distribute it on a larger scale (also, no public showings and stuff). If memory serves correctly, that was also used to clear out and legalise TV recording software later on.

But that's just the USA. My point actually was that different countries do handle things differently, so OP's question is quite hard to answer in a simple way.

Also need to note - if downloading the torrent was illegal initially, then deleting the data and getting a legal copy doesn't make the whole thing legal. The initial episode you had would still be illegal - if you drive past a red light and then on the next traffic lights you wait for a green, then you still made a traffic violation.

 

[lechat]

Now what happens if you want to lend or make a copy of your now legally owned episode for your gran. Are you now pirating, what about when you used to give her video copy?s of TV shows was that piracy?

AFAIK in australia it is illegal to record any tv program without permission from the tv station first. obviously that is rarely (never) enforced.
as for your question. you could argue that you watching it once via download then again on TV could sour the show for you and stop you from potentially buying the DVD or watching it again on tv when it reairs.

me personally i have a hard time caring about TV piracy, mostly because australian TV has a habit of delaying episodes of my favorite shows by 5 or 6 hours every time a footballer farts and it is deemed newsworthy, thus fucking my recordings or tending to move shows to 2 am or cancel them the second paris trump comes out with a new season of here comes honey kardashinan but also because i record every thing i watch and am now so good at fast forwarding that i havent seen a commercial in the last 10 years

 

[Queen Michael]

Copyright law varies so much from country to country, and is so unadjusted to how technology works nowadays, that this is an area where "legal" and "right" lose any connection to each other.

(With that said: keep it legal, kids!)

 

[tangoprime]

(and whether the United States is arrogant enough to think that its laws apply there)

I believe you mean "and whether or not our country signed one of several multilateral international copyright treaties." Blame for having another nation's laws affecting you in your nation lays squarely on your nation's government for agreeing to it. Spoiler alert: your nation can do the same thing if they wanted to, I'm sure there are plenty of US citizens violating UK copyrights with a HD full of Dr. Who. Maybe your government should start protecting it's people's intellectual property a bit better internationally.

 

[CommanderL]

My friends do it And I think its ok we buy the dvd's of stuff we like and if we dont like it we dont watch it plus in australia most of the good shows never make it here its free advertsing same as leading some one a dvd

 

[Jenvas1306]

German TV sucks. Its pretty much made for idiots and the dubbing is sometimes extremly painful. So I prefer to watch series in english, but I dont download them.

 

[Total LOLige]

It probably is piracy but what's the difference between that and inviting your gran around to watch it at your house? What I want to know is why do DVDs have commercials? If we're paying upwards of £10 for a film and £30+ for TV box sets why should we have to watch ads, sure you can skip them but that's not the point, the same goes for XBL Gold members having to put up with ads on XBL. Surely if you pay a premium you shouldn't have to put up with adverts.

Back on topic: Who gives a shit? No one because if your gran wanted she could watch it on any number of streaming sites. Companies should work on educating the general public about copyright laws, instead of plastering an big black message on dvds telling you that sharing this with your gran will have you prosecuted to the full extent of the law. I can't see why the UK has to wait for US tv shows, it's not like it will time clash with the shit that is shown on TV these days. Stations should just have a site where foreign customers can pay to watch the shows, it would probably cut TV piracy in half.

Oh my, that was little ranty, sorry.

 

[Longstreet]

Piracy is a word used WAY to eager by developers.

So you find a torrent, It's the only way and you totally can't wait after all.
Now at this stage you have pretty clearly broken the law.

If you can't buy it, they can't claim they lost a sale. Also, you haven't always broken the law. Where i live, downloading is legal for personal use. (at least last time i checked)

However when it finally makes it to TV in your country you watch it again ads an all, its at this point you record it to your hard drive discarding the torrent copy for the much clearer TV copy in full wonderful 1080 P none the less.Now at this point you still haven't paid anything for the show but you still have a free copy and a legal one at that.

You pay for your tv cable don't you? So you pay to watch the show. Then you tape it for personal use.

Now what happens if you want to lend or make a copy of your now legally owned episode for your gran. Are you now pirating, what about when you used to give her video copy?s of TV shows was that piracy?

Thoughts anyone?

All lights green on that last one as well. You don't make money off it, the companies don't lose anything. Besides, how are they gonna find that out.


To me piracy is real simple, download it for personal use? Go ahead
Download it, burn it 10.000 times and sell it out of the boot of your trunk? that aint cool.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

IIRC you're allowed to tape

Spoiler: Wait, this needs to be specifically legalised?

Wait, this needs to be specifically legalised?

Sorry, couldn't hold myself.

a show/programme, and then watch it once, after that you're supposed to delete the recording. Lending your tv-copy to a friend is also technically pirating.

On the other hand depending on what country you're in the laws may differ, I know they do for the Netherlands at least.

Now, I recall there was something about in in the US. It's been a while since I read about it, so I can't remember exact details (and I can't seem to be able to google effectively for it), so take it with a grain of salt and, if possible, somebody correct me. Anyway, recording stuff from the TV was not considered illegal per se but wasn't actually defined by law, so the TV people went to court with the manufacturers (or distributors - somebody, at least) of TV recording equipment. It was decided that recording TV programmes/whatever for later viewing is legal and does not infringe on the copyrights of the TV copyright holders. And I believe, the recordings thus made were protected under the fair use policy - you can watch them as many times you want and you can give the copy to another person but you cannot make further copies and/or distribute it on a larger scale (also, no public showings and stuff). If memory serves correctly, that was also used to clear out and legalise TV recording software later on.

But that's just the USA. My point actually was that different countries do handle things differently, so OP's question is quite hard to answer in a simple way.

Also need to note - if downloading the torrent was illegal initially, then deleting the data and getting a legal copy doesn't make the whole thing legal. The initial episode you had would still be illegal - if you drive past a red light and then on the next traffic lights you wait for a green, then you still made a traffic violation.

The case you're talking about is Universal V. Sony, if I remember correctly. It's better known as the Betamax case, and it happened because Hollywood wanted to make home recording equipment illegal out the gate, fearing that it would cut into their ticket sales. Fortunately they lost, and it paved the way for pretty much everything we know and love about home video equipment. Ironically, legalizing home recording (and the studios releasing tapes for rental, and later sale) actually boosted ticket sales by quite a bit, at a time when they were flagging. The ruling explicitly made time shifting (recording a live program in order to watch it at a later time) legal. There is no "watch once and then erase it" provision, to the best of my knowledge. Which makes sense, because consumer level tape decks pretty much never had a way to erase the tapes aside from recording over them. Some pro and pro-sumer level decks had an option to record a black signal to the tape, which could then be used to edit video without getting that nasty static you get from a completely blank tape, but that's getting way off topic.

The point of this wall of text is, any time a technology comes out that is disruptive to an established method of business, the old industry will do everything in its power to either make that new technology illegal or place ridiculous restrictions on its use, rather than trying to adapt with the times. For some inexplicable reason, they've been highly successful with computer software, basically creating the whole licensing thing out of thin air[footnote]The only reason software licenses are legal is a lawyer managed to convince a tech illiterate judge that running a copy of a program on a computer creates a new copy, either in system ram or on the hard drive, and therefore a license that gives a limited (and boy howdy is it limited) copyright to the person using the software was necessary for software installation to be legal at all. Classifying it as a license to make new copies rather than ownership of a single copy had horrendous implications, which we're all living with now. This all happened back in the 70's, by the way, so that judge probably had absolutely no clue what he was dealing with, even worse than your average old fart on the bench today.


Edit: To put it into terms that a doddering old judge would understand, this is like arguing that by reading a book, you create a copy in your mind, and therefore copyright law isn't sufficient to govern the sale of copies, you need a license to make copies inside your head in order to legally use this newfangled "book" technology.[/footnote]. Most of the other attempts have either failed out the gate, or eventually been struck down. Time will tell how long the current BS will last.

 

[Bara_no_Hime]

Now at this point you still haven't paid anything for the show but you still have a free copy and a legal one at that.
Thoughts anyone?

No, but you DID have to sit through the advertisements.

Technically, those ads paid for your viewing of the material. So, unlike the torrent where no one got paid, the ads paid for the copy you made from TV.

So there's that.

 

[T3hSource]

Download it, burn it 10.000 times and sell it out of the boot of your trunk? that aint cool.

But what about non-profit sharing? Ever heard of the motive "Sharing is caring.".

On-topic: Anime isn't bought or translated here, barely shown on TV, how else would I know about it otherwise? The best I got were glimpses of Sailor Moon, Digimon, Pokemon and DBZ on RLT 2(a German channel, I was little I didn't know German). Then it was Naruto on Jetix, that's about it, which was in English, not Bulgarian (there still isn't a dub 'till this day). I guess it's just too expensive for our networks

How would you know if game is good back in the day? From a friend who lent you their copy? - Whoops! THAT'S ILLEGAL KIDS!
Seriously, fuck copyright laws, they're basically subtle corporate censorship. If someone appreciates the art, they will share it with others. With the universal digital access we have today, anyone can get it from a non-profit source. (torrets DON'T make money)

Here's an offer for companies: BE GOG.com! Seriously, just copy their model: we pay, you give as download access the the END product, no in-between clients(looking at you iTunes), no required registrations! Just a transaction for a single semi-unique download link , simple as that, you can even throw an ad on the bottom of the page, most people won't even notice.

Speaking of ads:

Spoiler

 

[SpAc3man]

I have no problem with downloading TV shows. Even if just waited for them to be on TV in New Zealand I would be recording them on the TiVo and therefore skipping the adverts.

Games are different though. I may occasionally try before I buy but if I like a game I will buy it. Normally LPs and other gameplay footage is enough for me however.

 

[RevRaptor]

Some very good points, As I Live in NZ I really don't actually watch TV much our TV channels suck big time. I am actually very interested in how this issue is perceived in different country?s as well as my own

Gotta agree with the anime thing too , when I first started watching there was no coverage I had to rely on magazines for reviews and mail ordered Video Tapes to watch them. It was really no surprise that when Fan subs hit the net we were all over that like white on rice.
As there was no other way to get it in english let alone into the country we didn't even think of it as piracy back then, it was just what you had to do to get your anime fix.

 

[Evil Smurf]

I just buy the box sets on ebay, $100 for 8 seasons? Sold!

Now at this point you still haven't paid anything for the show but you still have a free copy and a legal one at that.
Thoughts anyone?

No, but you DID have to sit through the advertisements.

Technically, those ads paid for your viewing of the material. So, unlike the torrent where no one got paid, the ads paid for the copy you made from TV.

So there's that.

What if you download a torrent with ads?

 

[Evil Smurf]

Speaking of ads:

You ar'n't advocating Adblocking software are you? that's against the code of conduct man
https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcR-PvN2zIj56ZHNvJlNR9GOtideVsa-OCKz1r-JsnFqLIn8MXP_mg

 

[Evil Smurf]

Not that I ever torrent or anything, but have you ever seen a torrent with the ads still in it?

Speaking as an ex pirate, no. Still, hypothetically it could happen.