on BitTorrent
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I'm not ashamed to admit it: my wife and kids and I are big
fans of "The Amazing Race," the CBS reality show in which
eleven two-person teams (mother-daughter, married couple,
brothers, etc.) race around the world for a $1 million prize.
This ninth season has by far the most interesting cast--oops,
I mean competitors--and the opening episode was filled with
humor and drama.
The fact that I can comment on the opening episode at all is
something of a miracle. I wasn't even aware that a new season
had begun, so I missed the 90-minute premiere when it was
broadcast. And "Amazing Race" is not, alas, one of the shows
available for purchase online anywhere--like the iTunes Music
Store or Google Video.
What a ridiculous situation! Here's CBS, sitting on an
episode that lots of people would pay good money to watch.
But this popular show has no Internet outlet, and it won't be
on DVD for months. Both CBS and its fans are losing out.
Once I realized my mistake, of course I set the TiVo, and now
it's filled with all the subsequent episodes. But you can't
miss the opening episode! That's the one where you meet the
cast, find out their relationships, learn what they expect to
gain from enduring the sleepless, exhausting race, and so on.
So I turned to a last-ditch outlet, the one place I knew
might be able to supply a copy of the missing episode:
BitTorrent.
BitTorrent is a clever Internet-based technology for
circulating huge files among thousands of people. When you
attempt to download one of these big files, you're not
receiving it from any one hard drive or server; you're
actually fed pieces of it from dozens or hundreds of
computers around the Internet, and it's reassembled on your
end with surprising speed. Torrent fans love that it's free,
open-source (no single person controls it), ad-free, and--
unlike Kazaa and other previous file-sharing technologies--
adware/spyware-free.
BitTorrent's fans maintain that the software has plenty of
legitimate uses. Well, sure. But that's just a
rationalization. Everyone knows that BitTorrent's most
popular use by far is distributing TV shows, movies and
software illegally. That, and my TiVo, is pretty much why I'd
never gotten into Torrenting until now.
But missing the opening of "The Amazing Race?" Come on. These
were clearly special circumstances.
Guided by an experienced online friend, I assembled the two
things you need to download BitTorrent torrents: a
downloading program (in my case, a Mac OS X program called
Bits On Wheels) and a Web-based directory of what shows are
available.
BitTorrenting is still a little bit hackerish and not what
you'd call self-explanatory, so I spent a bit of time
Googling and reading tutorials. But within a couple of hours,
I had the 700-megabyte .AVI file of the desired episode on my
hard drive. We watched it that night on the computer screen--
not as comfortable as we might have been on the regular TV
couch, but beggars can't be choosers. Video and audio quality
were very good.
Then the very next day, by coincidence, ABC announced that
beginning May 1, it will make four of its hit shows
(including "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives") available for
free viewing on its Web site.
ABC's move is brilliant on so many counts. First of all, of
course, it solves the "I missed it" problem for what could
amount to hundreds of thousands of fans.
Second, it solves the silly "broadcast it once, then stick it
on a shelf" business model of network TV. These ABC shows
will be free to watch, but will contain ads that you can't
skip over. (These aren't the same ads shown during the
original broadcast; they're sold anew for the Web.) So the
network will be able to help out both the TV viewers and, by
generating further income, itself.
Third, ABC's plan neatly nips the TiVo problem in the bud.
The TiVo problem, of course, is that anyone with a digital
video recorder soon gets into the habit of skipping or
zipping through ads, which throws the entire 60-year-old TV
business model into chaos. If you're an advertiser, you pay
higher rates for prime time, for the major network channels,
and so on--but the TiVo relegates all of that to
insignificance. The Internet lets ABC bring that model back.
In effect, ABC has designed its own "recorder" this time
around, and there's no ad-skipping button.
The only question now is, why only ABC, and why so few shows?
The rise of BitTorrent should be ample evidence that there's
a huge aftermarket for already-broadcast TV. The networks and
cable companies should see it as money they're leaving the
table. And lots of it; ABC, who was also the first network to
offer shows on the iTunes Music Store ($2 each, no ads),
pocketed about $4.2 million in just a few months.
Dear TV companies: The time for you to strike is right now,
while BitTorrent is still a dark art run by the technically
proficient. You can't easily shut down BitTorrent, but you
can beat it to the mainstream if you move fast. Make your
shows available for free with ads, or make them available for
$2 without ads--just make them available. If you don't, the
people will.
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Reprinted without permission
See, a mainstream news media realizes something these network guys should make money at.
So, will somebody tell these big network dumb dumbs to stop whining about P2P and be smarter than a few hackers and crackers. It can't be that hard to get the boardroom fatties off their bums and actually use those expensive college degrees for something other than wall decorations
