OT: TV delivery alternatives

[Paul Lussier]

"Ben Scott" <dragonhawk at gmail.com> writes:

>>   But how can they allow you do watch it whenever you want, and
>> disallow someone to distribute it for free without paying ANYTHING for
>> it?
>
>   I don't necessarily have the answers to their quandaries.  I just
> know that I'm not going to pay to not be able to watch something.
>
>   One option for them is to just not worry about the copiers.  Offer
> people a reasonable product at a reasonable price, and ask them not to
> screw you.  Assume honest people will be honest, and assume thieves
> will continue to be thieves.  Putting restrictions on the content just
> discourages honest people (like me) from giving them my money for
> their product.  At the same time, the thieves haven't really been
> effected much.  So it's a net loss for the content authors  Or so the
> theory goes.

One lesson I've learned in my years of supporting users is that, if
you want the user to perform a certain activity which you deem to be
"The correct behavior", then you have a statistically greater chance
of success if you make it easier to "do the right thing".

If circumvention was more difficult than legally obtaining the
content, then there wouldn't be a piracy problem.

Why not make the show downloadable for free but sell advertising and
put the commercials in the show.  Sure, they can be ellided, but
seriously, who's going to bother?  And if you can go right to the same
source for every episode and download an mpeg with commercials
vs. searching bit-torrent for someone who has competantly elided them
without removing any of the show, why not go with the commercials?

They *could* make the commercials non-skippable like they do with that
stupid FBI warning thing, but why bother?  Then your just pissing
people off again.  Let people skip the commercials if they want to.  A
better tactic would be for advertisers to make commercials that people
*want* to see.  Think of Budweiser commercials during the Super Bowl,
or the Honda Rube Goldberg commercial
(http://youtube.com/watch?v=UScbWzhieNc).

The big problem with most tv commercials is that they just plain suck.
But yet, every year, a large percentage of people tune into the Super
Bowl to *specifically* watch the commercials. That seems to indicate
that there is, in fact, a market for *good* commercials.

> One problem with the above scenario is that a significant part of
> the media cartel are themselves in the business of screwing people.
> They typify the worst sorts of greed.  For them to turn around and
> ask people be honest is a hard sell.  As the saying goes, there is
> no honor among thieves...

That is a huge problem.  And something we as consumers need to figure
out how to fix.  Though, other than Ben's idea of voting with your
wallet, I'm not sure how to approach the problem.  Currently I'm
getting a reduced rate from Comcast on my cable bill (I just called up
and asked for a cheaper rate, and they gave me a 50% discount for 6
months :) But when that ends, I'm very seriously considering dropping
down to the absolute most minimum basic service (which costs
$13/month) and increasing my NetFlix membership.  I've never owned a
TiVo, but I love the idea of time shifting.  Unfortunately, I have
neither the time, nor money to build the MythTV setup of my dreams :(

--
Seeya,
Paul