Comments on: NBC’s piracy takedowns skyrocket: Wait, wasn’t file sharing supposed to be dead?

By: Lisa M

Lisa M — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 10:10:18 +0000

I agree that piracy needs to be stopped but NBC and Universal need to refine their methods of targeting pirates.

I am a digital designer (MamaLlamaLisaDesigns) who used snowflakes to create a corner page overlay of frosted snowflakes for digital scrapbook pages. My use of the word “frosty overlay” tripped NBC/Universal’s web crawling program and shut down my file. Nothing in my file(s) is remotely infringing – I created the snowflakes and clustered them in a corner to create a frosty overlay such as you find on old windows in the winter. The word frosty is not copyrighted nor was it used as a noun – it was an adjective describing the overlay itself. The image bears no resemblance to any character or copyrighted image. I find it very disturbing that large corporations have the power to shut down others with out looking at the files.

By: Eric

Eric — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 09:13:56 +0000

Why studios dont pull their heads out of their asses and provide more streaming with commercials, I dont know. Many of the people I know don’t pay for cable and many don’t really use a tv. Watching movies on computer screens without cable leaves those of us that say want to watch a cable channel tv show (which is where a lot of the better programming is these days) out to dry. If a streaming service offered instant viewing like some shows do, tv piracy would be lower. Right now lots of copyright holders prioritize stream watchers last. I want to see the new Walking Dead episode immediately not delayed. Im pretty sure the first half of the final season of Breaking Bad isnt available half a year later on Netflix. Then you have Netflix which was the only game in town at first. Then everyone jumped in; Amazon, Hulu and Google all competing for viewership and content exclusivity. Add in the studios which have stupid arbitrary rules as to when and what should be available and consumers get screwed. I have a Netflix account but most of the movies I want to stream aren’t available because the studio says so or because Amazon has it. What good is my monthly subscription then if lots of stuff isn’t available and I have to go purchase it from Amazon or not have access at all? Every time I can’t consume something is a missed monetary gain for content owners and yet they continue expecting us to bow to their wishes. If I can’t legally get a show without having to pay Comcast obscene amounts for cable then I’ll watch it elsewhere without commercials at my own leisure instead of a dictated time (within dozens of minutes of it airing live.) That’s without touching the shitty overpriced monopolistic ISP system we have.

By: Eric

Eric — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 09:01:30 +0000

While I agree with the sentiment, networks need to make money off commercials and to quantify viewership to charge more for the commercials. Now why they don’t provide less shitty and limited streaming capability legally, I dont know.

By: Hail Corporate!

Hail Corporate! — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 04:55:34 +0000

Yup tons of internet shills out there, funny to see them get busted / called out.

By: Frank

Frank — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 16:18:06 +0000

You’re ignoring a more basic question. Why does NBC give a fuck? Isn’t their programming coursing through our bodies as we speak?

In the air, on the internet, It’s the same god damn thing!

I swear the geriatric people who run these networks are fucking brain dead.

By: Wunderbarb

Wunderbarb — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 12:44:04 +0000

@PopeyeLePoteaux
You should be more precise. From the point of view of economics, a good can have (or not) two properties:
- non rivalry, if its consumption by one person does not limit its consumption by other persons
- non excludability, if it is possible to prevent someone from consuming it
By construction, digital goods are non rival and non excludable. By the way, one of the roles of DRM is to attempt to make digital goods excludable and rival.

Your seem to claim that only digital goods are non rival. This is not true. Many physicals goods are also non rival. For instance, a book is non-rival. Once read it is still available for others.
Therefore, the notion of property or ownership is not related to rivalry, else you could not steal a book. Property is related to other economic concepts but mainly legislative notions.

@mrdoggle
Sharing is commonly used in the domain, even in the anti piracy field. This has the advantage to be a neutral technical term. It is always good to use the common language.

By: A.Lizard

A.Lizard — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 12:20:53 +0000

An astroturfer has no realistic expectation of privacy. Nor does one deserve any.

By: Wunderbarb

Wunderbarb — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 11:45:26 +0000

Surprising post.
Using only P2P activity as a measure of content piracy is highly inaccurate. Piracy is an ecosystem that quickly evolves. During the last years, cyber lockers such as feu MegaUpload are driving a lot of users to illegal copyrighted content. There is no reliable (to the best of my knowledge) study of the share between the different channels. The best example I know is “The six business models for copyright infringement” but it is focusing on UK.
Take down notices are also an insufficient indicator. It just show the activity of a given studio. By the way, you would be surprised by who are the most active. It is a public data published by Google http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/copyright/
Content piracy is an extremely complex technical topic (and do not even speak about the legal aspects of it)

By: Jarmo Puskala

Jarmo Puskala — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 08:39:10 +0000

“…piracy is a particularly big problem overseas. For example, he said that revenue for its Spanish home-entertainment unit declined 62% between 2009 and 2011, mainly because of piracy, and NBC shut it down.”

There’s also the small thing that the Spanish economy tanked. More than 50% of youth are unemployed – the same age group who are the heavy users of entertainment. Could this possibly have more to do with the loss of revenue than piracy?

It’s like complaining grocery stores are suffering because people went on a diet, when the whole nation is starving from famine.

By: Jo

Jo — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 02:18:23 +0000

One word: China. BAN all traffic from China and you’re server will be free. China AND Russia, oh yea – that too. So two words…..