Again, look at the internet. What have exclusive deals and limited access done? The answer is a whole hell of a lot…for the smart people who run pirate
sites. The pirates know what they’re doing. Here’s an unrestricted decent looking and sounding version of whatever it was you wanted to see. Yes, all of
it. Not just what this or that network thinks you should see because of where you live or who your provider is. Run it however you’d like, wherever you’d
like, whenever you want. All we ask for is a donation, and you don’t even have to give us that if it’s not your thing.

The article goes on to explain–not for the first time–that content itself will make a crap ton of money–if it’s done right, regardless what media you view it on and in what format. Really, with all the excellent points brought up in this post, you’d think they’d read these before. Still, it’s nice to see more and more people actually catching on to all this. Now if we can just get a few of those into positions where it actually matters. Any volunteers?

Share this:

Shooting begins in July on InSecurity, a 13-part “action comedy” about bumbling Canadian spies, producers said in Regina.

The series stars include relative newcomer Natalie Lisinska as a rookie agent; William deVry, from the soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful, as her boss; and well-known Quebec actor Remy Girard as a jaded veteran.

I accidentally saw a trailer for the show on Sunday night, and almost immediately wanted to change the channel. That’s after the preview–I’m scared to watch the show. Folks, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. If we didn’t have Canadian content laws in place, people up here would actually be inclined to create a show on par with a CSI, or hell, even a Simpsons. Here’s the problem, though. Most Canadian shows, well, suck. Yes, I’m looking at you, Little Mosque On The Prairie. But even if they suck, the CRTC says they have to be played. So Corner Gas, Little Mosque, and now this sad attempt at something vaguely resembling a TV show get air time. And hey look, they all get plenty of airtime on CBC–no wonder I only watch that channel for Hockey Night in Canada.

We lose the Can Con laws, we get decent TV shows, kids. Keep the laws, we get crap–and it still gets airtime. Seems like a simple enough choice to me. So why have no Canadian governments dared bring up such sacreligiousness? Good question. Any political types care to weigh in with an explanation? Inquiring minds kind of wouldn’t mind knowing.

Share this:

They have apparently decided, because God forbid anyone actually want to use their internet connection for more than just the basics, no one actually needs 95 GB/month of bandwidth (it used to be unlimited). So they’re lowering it to about 80 GB/month instead. For the same price. This isn’t an out of character response from Rogers by any means–when they launched their own online video on demand service at the end of last year, they did the same thing with a twist. Rather than lower the bandwidth cap when they launched that service, Rogers decided that, even though it was a service administrated and maintained by them, it would not be exempt from the bandwidth limitations the company imposed on its internet customers–thus making fairly sure people like me kept doing what they were originally doing to get a hold of TV content online, since there wasn’t a whole lot of benefit to doing it any other way.

Hey, Rogers? I kind of suspected I’d be doing the right thing when I told your telemarketting rep earlier to take your internet service and shove it right up your ass. Thanks for proving me right. Now, if you’re done completely screwing your customers, I’m still waiting to have that conversation with you. Not holding my breath, just waiting.

Share this:

I ended up finding another show of interest a couple years back–a recommendation by then a fairly good friend of mine. After the second season, cancel city. Yeah, definitely an unwritten rule. I’m just going to stop discovering new things to watch now. I’ll watch them after they’ve already been cancelled from now on. Hey, at least then I’ll know to expect it. That’ll show ‘em.

Share this:

Defendants shall be permanently enjoined from knowingly engaging in any of the following activities in connection with the Isohunt System or any Comparable System:

(a) hosting, indexing, linking to, or otherwise providing access to any Dot-torrent or similar files that correspond, point or lead to any of the Copyrighted Works;

(b) assisting with end-user reproductions or transmissions of any of the Copyrighted Works through a tracker server, or any other server or software that assists users in locating, identifying or obtaining files from other users offering any of the Copyrighted Works for transmission; or

(c) hosting or providing access to any of the Copyrighted Works.

So, escentially, a service not based in the US has been ordered by a US court to instinctively know whether or not something it’s hosting is protected by copyright and not supposed to be up there–ignoring the fact the service is used by people who hold the copyright for various types of media and actually want them to be up there. Brilliant. Because, you know, it just makes me want to go out and get back to doing things the legal way. Except, um, not really. Good job, folks.

If you’re curious to see what else was found wrong with the ruling, not that you probably need to, clicky. Moronic people are moronic. And now, back to whatever it was you were reading before me.

Share this:

How badly do you want to see new movies in your home close to the date they’re released in theaters? Badly enough to let the movie industry reach through your front door and break your TV? Well, good news for you.

The Federal Communications Commission decided on Friday that the movie industry can remotely disable analog video outputs on your home theater equipment to prevent you from recording certain programs–namely, first-run movies available on demand before DVDs are released or while they’re still in theaters.

So, legally record that episode of CSI, or that new movie they’re showing while you’re being called into work, and get branded. Illegally download a torrent of same, and get branded. I’d rant, but it’s been done before. Once again, the MPAA and government regulators are providing a worse atmosphere than the pirates. One wonders how long before the CRTC, infamous in its own right for some pretty screwed up rulings, jumps on the bandwagon. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got about 4 or 5 torrents to queue up. Screw you, MPAA.

Share this:

The easiest way for me to watch TV shows on my computer is to illegally download them. You are competing with pirates, and the pirates are winning. Why? Because they provide me a better service than you do.

I genuinely don’t want to illegally download shows. For starters, downloading torrents is slow and annoying. Secondly, I strongly believe in financially supporting creative output that I enjoy – music, movies, television shows, books, comic books, etc.

Why do the commercial TV options fail me?

Each of the various TV companies insist on having complete control of their shows. This means that they only stream their shows on their own websites. So I find myself needing to keep track of many different websites. (Which network shows CSI again? I can never remember.) This gets doubly tricky for me, because most American websites don’t stream in Canada, where I live.

Indeed, that’s pretty much the crux of the issue right there. Whether or not you subscribe to cable/satelite/what have you, you’re restricted to watching the newest releases of TV shows when, how, where and for however long the TV networks–not the cable companies–choose. Let’s say CTV has the rights to a show Fox is originating. Fox has sold those rights to CTV. If CTV decides to air a show at midnight and I can’t stay up to watch it–occasionally, I do actually go to bed before midnight, I’m escentially screwed. Particularly if I’m not aware CTV has the rights to that particular show, and therefore might, possibly, be streaming it on their website–at least for a few days.

And, since the originating networks in the US don’t actually allow streaming in Canada, I’m left–like the author of the original article–with trying to remember where it is a show is being originated in Canada, and hoping that doesn’t change–I’m reminded of a short-lived show brought to light by Fox during the TV strike of a couple years ago, which in its first season was shown on CTV, I believe, and for its second and final season was shown on a network that escapes me, also on a different day and time.

The original post was apparently prompted by a cease and desist notice handed to him by his ISP, which was handed to them by CBS. They were slapping him on the wrist because he had the nerve to download a show otherwise not available in Canada lest he pay extra to subscribe to the Movie Network. In the letter, he’s advised he can watch the show on demand from CBS’s website. Except, being in Canada, he can’t. He could watch it on the Movie Network’s website, except they’re only streaming one episode of this show on their website, and apparently you have to be a subscriber to that channel in order to gain access to watch that one episode.

Let’s take it a step further, however. At the end of February, I was bouncing around somewhere between my apartment and my parents’ place on one end or another of a month of oh my busy. As a result, I missed the gold metal hockey game between Canada and the US. Yes, I know who won, but I’d planned to actually watch it. Think I could find a means of streaming it online, legally, when I finally had a minute to sit down and actually do that? If you said yes, give your head a shake. CTV, who carried the olympics, didn’t offer it. Nor did I find a listing for it in my search, admittedly online, of Shaw Direct’s on demand options. Which meant exactly what? You guessed it–torrents. Within 5 minutes of looking, I’d found exactly the feed of the game I was looking for, completely free and without needing to go digging any deeper than the official sources for such things. Now, imagine if that’d been the official legal source of what I was looking for? I’d of been much happier. And so would the network doing the broadcasting. I’d offer an opinion on that, but once again, the original article says it better than I could.

As a Canadian consumer, wanting to do the right thing, now what am I supposed to do? You tell me.

Are you starting to understand why piracy is more convenient?

I have money in my hand, and I’m looking around the Internet for the product I want, and it’s just not for sale. This is a situation I find myself in regularly. I want to download a digital copy of an album, but the musician is only selling CDs. I want to pay to download a videogame, and the company insists on sending it to me in a box. I want to watch a streaming TV show, legally, and no one is streaming the show.

In all of these cases, the pirates are standing right next to me, whispering, “You want that video game? You want that music? You want that TV show? Here you go. No charge.”

Fast, convenient, easy to find. They do it better than you.

Indeed, as a Canadian consumer who can’t aford to subscribe to every network that might possibly be offering a show I may or may not want to watch, “What am I supposed to do?” is pretty accurate. I’m still waiting on an official answer for that that doesn’t equate to “subscribe anyway”.

H/T: Kill Everything

Share this:

A newlywed with the ability to communicate with the earthbound spirits of the recently deceased overcomes skepticism and doubt to help send their important messages to the living and allow the dead to pass on to the other side.

That’s the basic rundown of how it proceeds. Episodes tend to touch on all kinds of situations–I’m pretty sure the main character’s helped in solving a murder or two. She was watching one yesterday wherein a victim of a kidnapper, now dead of course, pretty much helped the main character to stop that same guy from potentially killing his next victim. All of this while trying to help both dead and living come to terms with the fact they’re no longer among the living. Plots are fairly interesting, and at the very least it’ll be a distraction from my multiple episodes of CSI, SVU, Star Trek, and whatever else.

I think I’ll attempt a conversion of Jessica to watching this show while I’m at it. It’d probably be right up her alley anyway, what with the spiritual crap that gets tossed in there and all that wonderful goodness. And, hey, there’s the added bonus of the snark factor. No show can go wrong with that. So, yes. It’s officially made the pirated list. torrents are free, and free is good. Besides, I have the room. Why not?

Share this:

Movie companies have gotten incredibly sneaky with what they stick in that first track of current DVD’s. The one track you can’t actually skip/fast forward past–usually it just contains the FBI warning that says you can’t copy them. They’ve gotten good at cramming previews and other advertisements onto that first track. I’ve heard it said that some DVD’s actually have enough un-ignoreable advertising on there that you could theoretically run into the kitchen, whip up a quick snack, and come back in time to hit play. Download the movie instead, and snap. Problem solved.

TV shows have a similar problem. Only they actually make that problem slightly worse on TV. A typical hour-long show, minus advertisements, only actually lasts about 45 minutes. But they interrupt the show every 5-10 minutes for at least that long filled with commercials. It gets worse during live events, such as the olympics. I swear the advertising doubles at that point. And, as usual, they go to commercial during a semi-important portion of the said live event. Well, at least they didn’t cut off during most of the Canadian portions of the events.

My solution to both problems, except for the whole live events thing, is the almighty torrent. About 95% of everything I watch can easily be found, and downloaded, via that means–anything from CSI to Deep Space 9, and a few of the less popular shows that got me through highschool. Yeah, the MPAA may have a thing or three to say about it, but well, I have a thing or three to say about unwanted ads, too. I’d say we’re even. The only difference is, I won’t spend money to take down the MPAA. Yeah, I’m a pirate when it comes to TV shows. I also have a difficult time caring. You can blame the MPAA, and ads. I do. And I sleep just fine.

Share this:

Their Ottawa newsroom caught fire overnight last night, resulting in the temporary loss of use of that building and the possibly permanent loss of 30+ years of news and video archives. Definitely, it resulted in the permanent loss of at least 2.5 million dollars worth of computer and video technology. They get to provide their news updates during tonight’s football game–which starts in 4 minutes for anyone curious enough to watch-from the parking lot of their former headquarters. Tonight’s local update at 11:30, however, will ironically enough come from the A Channel building–the first newscast from that building since March of last year.

If you get any of your news from CTV in the Ottawa or Pembroke area, or even if you just want to help out, keep an eye pealed–there will probably be ways and means for you to do so. If you’re a Max Keeping fan and happen to have something from his time with CTV, you’re encouraged to help replace everything he’s lost in the fire this close to his retirement–info for doing so is in the article’s comments section. CTV, and the news I’ve gotten semi-used to watching from there, will probably never be the same. CTV Ottawa is dead, long live CTV Ottawa.

Share this:

Why do I bother to tolerate a show like American Idol, when I’d much rather be doing just about anything else? Because at least once in a season, usually only once, you get that one particular fool who figures him or herself to be god’s gift to anything musically inclined, and there’s just nothing you can say or do short of tranking them that’ll make them shut up about it. My major complaint with American Idol? It only happens maybe once in a season. So after I see it, I no longer have any real interest in watching. So I usually skip out.

Take tonight’s show, for example. I watched it only because it was on, my mother had the remote, and I’m mommy sitting. And, admittedly, because if the show completely sucks at everything else, I can at least snicker at some of the things that come out of Simon Cowell. It didn’t disappoint on either front tonight, but now that I have no real interest in watching next week, I can make do with what I saw.

Near the end of tonight’s show, we were treated to a very stoned-sounding dood who thought, though I have no idea why–other than the fact he very well might have been stoned, that he could actually carry a tune without a half ton truck. And he chose to demonstrate his unquestionable singing ability with Amazing Grace–not exactly world’s most popular, or best really, song to begin with. That was mistake number 1. Mistake number 2, though? Actually having the nerve to be surprised when all 3 judges pretty much simultaneously decided he redefined suckitude. Mistake number 3? Insisting they were wrong and offering to give them an encore. Whether they wanted to hear it or not. The gentleman’s reward? A personal escort outside. In handcuffs. Whether he wanted to or not.

Now, why in the hell doesn’t American Idol show more stuff like that? That’d make the show about 5 times more interesting to watch. Hell, I might even manage to last through to the finals if they happened to have someone up there who, upon receiving the impression they’re god’s gift to anyone with ears, got told to go pack. Maybe I’m just abnormal, but seeing a person get all uppity like that about a few million people who all think he should be flipping burgers instead of singing would be worth sitting through the rest of the crap. My problem with American Idol really is that simple. They pretty it up too much. That’s probably why you only see maybe 3 or 4 of the people who end up going home–the others, they figure, are probably too strung out at someone having the nerve to prick their ego. And thus, there goes any entertainment value for me. Don’t get me wrong, Idol’s an okay show, if there’s nothing else on and I’m desperate. But it could be so much better. And I might walk away from a show not feeling like taking a nap.

Dear Idol producers. If you happen to be seeing something similar to this here entry, take it under advisement. I have a problem with your show. It bores me to tears. Thank you.

Also, randomly tacked on side point: I still maintain Simon Cowell should consider a career in politics. We’d then at least know what we’re getting, even if we don’t all agree with or like the guy. More than we can say now.

Share this:

On the American Music Awards, also known as the same show that allows such brilliantly talented artists as Eminem to spend 5 minutes rapping about raping women and interlacing at least half a dozen not rated for TV phrases in along with it, Adam Lambert had the unmitigated gaul to actually kiss his keyboard player–yes, also male–during a performance. Yes, I curse. I curse a lot. I’ll probably do a fair bit of cursing on this here blog–I’ve done it before. I have no problem with that. Much like I have no problem with the openly gay guy who wants to kiss some dood on TV–yes, in spite of the fact I actually do have a girlfriend and am not, will not be, and have not been, gay myself. What I have a problem with, and this is a huge problem, is people who will presume to complain enough about that that it makes headlines for days after the awards, and yet leave Eminem’s talented performance alone, and not offer a comment except in passing when certain other performers break beer bottles over pianos. Okay, I get it. We’re not ready for an openly gay performer like that. But we’re ready for women to show their stuff on stage and guys to talk about raping them.

The guy’s gay. Big deal. He kissed another guy on stage. Also, big deal. And he’s not appologising for it. I may not like the music, but just for this, I sincerely hope he brings his boyfriend, life partner, whatever it is he wants to call the guy he’s with, with him to his next interview and kisses him right on camera. If we’re going to complain about things that may or may not be offensive, let’s at least try and introduce some consistency to the mix here, shall we?

Share this:

Flash forward 6 years or so. Now, with the growing popularity of torrenting technology, plus increasingly faster connections, downloading entire seasons of series becomes a whole lot easier–I’m downloading the first 7 seasons of CSI Miami as I write this. Add to that, you can pretty much pay I think it’s like $5 or so, if that, to somewhere like iTunes and have access to download entire seasons that way. And there’s still the old fashion method of downloading one episode at a time over your more traditional filesharing clients–Bear Share comes to mind–although many of the same issues of old usually pop their heads up when that’s tried. And, if that isn’t good enough and you want to keep things on the still semi-legal, many of the more popular shows are usually available online, streamed directly from the originating station/network’s website–for exactly free. Of course, if desperation sets in there’s always Youtube if nothing else.

So what’s the point? Lately, I’ve been keeping track of exactly how much actual TV I watch on TV, and the amount is really quite surprising. Consider it like this. At the moment, my TV’s turned off. It may stay turned off until 7:30 tonight, when the hockey game comes on. It may get turned on maybe an hour and a half earlier for local news, assuming I decide I can’t get just as much information online throughout the day. And it will probably be turned off again after tonight’s hockey game–unless my Leafs display their usual amount of suckitude, at which point it may be turned off halfway through said game. That routine will likely continue, until approximately April 5th or so, at which point the baseball season will start, and my TV will be on long enough to watch that. I don’t usually watch Star Trek, CSI, or any of my other shows on TV anymore, unless they happen to be on at someone else’s place while I’m over. I don’t watch American Idol, or So You Think You Can Dance, so I’m not missing a whole lot by not catching up on who got kicked/voted/bought off or whatever on those series. So really, my TV watching peaks at perhaps, at most, maybe 5 hours a week–all of it sports broadcasts you can’t download, or stream without usually paying for it anyway.

I was reading earlier this morning about the so-called TV tax hearings being held in Ottawa between the broadcasters and the cable companies. During yesterday’s hearings, CTV, one of Canada’s major broadcasting companies, escentially told the Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) that if cable companies don’t start paying for the privelege of transmitting their signals–which, roughly translated, means if we don’t start paying up for the privelege of receiving their signals, they will either start blocking US programming or pull their signals off any carriers who don’t want to pay for it. Which, to me, means I’ll lose my local news. Which I get online anyway. Hockey Night in Canada is streamed online, so if I have to, I can watch it there for far less than I’m paying for the privelege to watch it on a CBC channel as it is. Rogers and Bell Canada own two of the major broadcasting channels my sports programs show up on outside of HNIC–Sportsnet and TSN, respectively, so I doubt they’ll be pulling their own channels off the various networks. And, since I get my US programming fix via Torrents, directly from the originating US networks’ websites, or when I’m over at someone else’s place, I don’t miss much by having it blocked by CTV.

So what are we missing again? Broadcasters want compensation from the cable companies, who will take said compensation from us, for… exactly what? So we have the option to watch our local news on TV as opposed to getting it from any number of newspapers, either online or in paper copy? So we can watch the same shows on TV, occasionally interupted by commercials, that we can either buy from iTunes or download from Mininova without, or that we can watch with different commercials by tuning in the originating US network? If the choice is between that and paying more for the privelege of being able to watch the same, limited number of programs I actually still watch on TV, I see a cancelation in my not too distant future.

Share this: