MPAA Targets TV Download Sites 810
KenDaMan writes "ZDNet.com is reporting that the MPAA is targeting websites that serve as traffic directors for BitTorrent swaps. From the article: 'Continuing its war on Internet file-swapping sites, the Motion Picture Association of America said Thursday that it has filed lawsuits against a half-dozen hubs for TV show trading.' Apparently it is OK to record TV as long as your aren't sharing it."
This Blows (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This Blows (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah right. (Score:5, Insightful)
They should be thanking us for taking their garbage out. How many quality TV shows are there? How many really? One in every hundred?
Most TV Shows these days are advertisements anyway. They don't want us to distribute ads?
Re:MPAA (Score:1, Insightful)
No , like TV programs, that's illegal too. Would you warezmonkeys please stop spreading lies to each other? You fools are the entire reason for this "educaton campaign" of suing people.
Re:This Blows (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:what? (Score:2, Insightful)
Fair Use (Score:5, Insightful)
uhmmm... Yeah. That is what the whole debate over fair use, and backup copies is about.
It's okay for me to use it for my own personal pleasure, but it isn't alright to rebroadcast it to the world.
And we wonder why every mass-market electronic media outlet is DRM'ed to the gills.
Re:what? (Score:2, Insightful)
It's only a matter of time before the big budget porn DVD companies start suing people too, mark this AC's words.
waaaaaaa (Score:0, Insightful)
Rampant Piracy == Business Opportunity (Score:5, Insightful)
1: Offer fast TV downloads for free, or offer legal torrents.
2: Include the advertisements in the shows, and track how many people download them.
3: Profit!!!
Re:idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
No, they want people to watch the adverts that come with the show, buy the associated lunchboxes, CD singles, T-shirts and beer holding hats.
TV shows are really becoming vehicles for product launches. Just take a look at MTV and the Xbox unveiling.
Hell, maybe it's always been that way and I'm only now old enough to appreciate it. When I think back to some of the cartoons I would watch as a small child, they were obviously just 30 minute advertisments for a toy line, same thing we're seeing these days with Pokemon and whatever card collecting cartoon series is big this week.
Really? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, that would be the whole "for private home exhibitation only" clause you saw scroll by when watching rented movies.
Really, would the fact you are distributing the program for free interfere with the studio's business of selling the series on DVD? I wonder...
Duh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Duh? Television shows are still copyrighted material. Distribution is not your right after recording it. Fair use only applies to personal use of the recorded show.
Re:Hello, Friends (Score:2, Insightful)
To be fair (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, to be fair, that is the law.
Silly TV companies (Score:1, Insightful)
Is their any reason to believe that these downloads are causing people to watch any less TV?
Being that TV show downloads predate DVD sales of TV series do the Companies have any proof that downloads affect their sales?
Seriously, the average person downloads a TV show because they either missed the episode (or liked the episode enough to want to see it again) and aren't willing to wait months for the season to be over to see their episode (or the years until a DVD is available for sale).
Re:This Blows (Score:2, Insightful)
So, the studios are selling the shows you want to watch for $100 a season, but you are downloading them from a website for free instead. You don't see the problem with that? DVD releases of television shows are a huge cash-cow for studios that have already made their money in their initial runs.. you're screwing them out of pure profit by "stealing" the shows from the Internet. A more legit way would be to get Netflix and get the shows from there instead to catch up.
mod parent up (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
If it wasnt for BT ... (Score:3, Insightful)
I was able to catch up on BT, and now I can follow it when it broadcasts. Otherwise I would have said to hell with it, and they would have lost a viewer (no pun intended).
If past episodes were made available for download at a reasonable price, I would have paid for a handful of previous shows. I wouldnt even care if it was full commercials and DRM'd up the wazoo. For $2-$3 per episode, I would consider it just like a rental or buying a movie ticket. ie. a disposable purchase.
Though I wonder how many people would download torrents instead of buying the inevitable DVD release. The quality of the episodes I saw was so poor that if I was really such a big fan of the show, a 300 MB divx would be no substitute for the proper DVD boxset. For many people though, if the downloaded episodes are 'good enough', then I could see how it could potentially impact DVD sales.
Let me try this game... (Score:4, Insightful)
DROP FUCKING DEAD GLICKMAN. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm tired of this shit. Really fucking tired of it. Just leave things as is. People watch it first-run when it airs, you sell your fucking commercials.
Holy shit I can't even formulate fucking words to express how goddamn angry I am right now.
You fucking short-sighted asshole. By that logic selling series sets of shows on DVD must 'hurt syndication sales'. Bullshit. A set of 20+ HDTV Divx rips of a show taking up precious space on my hard drive isn't going to beat having a neat box DVD set of my favorite show with commentary and extras.
And international sales? Bitch, if it wasn't for TV rips I wouldn't be watching getting into the seventh episode of the new Doctor Who. There's already a 2005 series DVD box set sale in me when it comes out, thanks to people making copies of the show for us to enjoy. I'm sure I'm not alone.
You don't have to control every fucking little inch of your property with an iron fist. Sometimes the fans (remember what fans are?) can help bring in the cash better than whatever half-baked bullshit excuses you try to serve up to the media.
ADAPT OR DIE.
Re:True story (Score:4, Insightful)
What the MPAA doesn't get is that there is a fundamental difference between MP3's and DVD quality AVI's. With the exception of a few hardcore swappers, most of us simply don't have the disk space to store dozens or hundreds of movies. Since even broadband users often have to wait many hours for a show to download, the idea that downloaded movies are going to replace the DVD in the same way that MP3's are replacing CD's is simply unfounded. Couple that with the fact that few people really want to watch TV on their computer and even fewer have any kind of connection between their PC's and home entertainment systems, and any reasonable person would conclude that movie swapping will never become mainstream. They are spending FAR more money on these legal actions than they'll ever lose to swappers.
If the MPAA really wants to improve their revenue streams, they should start offering these themselves. I'd have gladly paid a buck to watch those shows.
Re:This Blows (Score:3, Insightful)
They have one. I, for one, am happy to pay $29.95 to get a whole season's worth of, say The Simpsons, (yes, they start out at $45, but they go down after a while), or Futurama, without commercials, with deleted scenes, and often interesting directors commentary. In fact, you get a better deal than the torrents, because with shows like The Simpsons, Family Guy, and Futurama, when they're shown in syndication, they often cut 3-5 minutes of the episodes, and sometimes cut funny scenes. Most of the torrents still have the commercials in them, and are the syndication versions. Or, they have "ads" for all the warez kiddies who distribute them. I don't want to see that any more than I want to see ads for Pepsi when I pay $10 for a movie ticket.
The MPAA is definitely the lesser of two evils at the moment. They know how to sell a product at a reasonable price and provide added value. Example: Most DVDs cost anywhere from $4.99 (the B-movie rack at Target) to $19.99 for the latest releases, with the average being around $12-$15. I get the movie, the trailer, and often deleted scenes or other extra footage. Compare to, say, CDs, which go from $7.99 (the cheapest I've ever seen) to $24.99, and you only get 60 minutes of music (maybe 80), liner notes if you're lucky, and that's it. And you can't tell me producing the latest big-screen Hollywood blockbuster movie is *cheaper* than a recording studio session, even with digital special effects and all that.
This is not to say the MPAA is the way and the light, we all know about their crusade to kill the VCR, and Jack Valenti comparing it to the Boston Strangler, but at this particular point in time, I think they have just a little bit more clue than the RIAA.
Who remembers Stargate Atlantis Season Finale? (Score:4, Insightful)
Personally I consider it fair use if I already have a copy of the content I obtained legaly but I'm using the internet to get it in a different format instead of paying for utilities to do it I just basically leech off someone elses work.
Course back in the real napster days I had a lot of cd's of mine stolen so I used napster to restore my muisc collection. Subsequently the drive carrying all that music died a year later. Which lacking napster I just quit buying cd's.
And a warning to the MPAA and RIAA in the last few years I have severly cut back my cd/dvd purchases. You have put out nothing but crap lately. Hell last night I made the mistake of renting that damn steve zizou life aquatic movie. If there was any part of that that was interesting it must of been after the first 45 minutes I suffered and gave up on it being anything..
I guess if I want to be entertained I'll just pirate your movie trailers. All the good parts are usually in there anyways.
Re:Yeah, that's kinda the point (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Here we go again (Score:1, Insightful)
>>
Actually, no there isn't.
The problem isn't that you are letting a few friends borrow it, it is that now 10,000 new copies exist.
Re:TiVo Sucks... (Score:5, Insightful)
My PC full of shows off the TiVo seems to prove you wrong. Granted it sucks that playback of .TiVo files only works on Windows at the moment, but I have a gaming box so it's not a big deal. Next step is decoding them to normal mpeg2 and throwing them on a RAID array in my basement. That will allow me to share the storage and play back the shows on any of the machines on my network, including a box hooked up to the tv.
I'm actually using Firefox to download shows, since TiVoToGo doesn't support the TiVo and PC being on different subnets. The TiVos have a built-in web server that lets you access the now playing list.
You can also fast forward through commercials at up to triple speed (yes the same as on a VCR), or edit them out once the files are on the PC. Pausing live tv shows is also a bonus.
Also, a VCR won't automatically track when a show is on and record episodes you haven't already recorded. I'm currently collecting a number of series by recording them then archiving them on my PC. Because it's a subscription and it tracks what it's recorded in that subscription, it only tapes an episode once, even if I delete that episode off the TiVo.
I'll give one more example of why TiVo sucks. I was going to work late one friday night, and called a friend of mine to record a show. He said he only had a TiVo, but would record it. He was leaving saturday morning to go home for the weekend. If he had a tape, I could have stopped to pick it up. But TiVo requires I be in his house to see it.
You can burn archived shows from the PC to a DVD using Sonic MyDVD. So if your friend had a network and some software he could have given you a DVD to take home and watch.
Re:MPAA (Score:2, Insightful)
Just because you can't obtain something through legal means doesn't make it free!
Re:Fair Use (Score:2, Insightful)
Here's a question for you.
Your favorite new media (song, movie, etc...) is available for purchase. It is released in a completely non-DRM'ed format. Do you pay for it, or do you search for somebody else who has already paid for it and is sharing it?
The media corporations are not the only greedy SOBs.
Re:True story (Score:3, Insightful)
Who needs to store it? Watch it, delete it, good to go.
That said, I have 4 200GB drives that I've bought over the course of a year, which is enough to hold several seasons of a variety of TV shows, along with every decent (in my opinion) movie released in the same amount of time in xvid, and still not be hurting for space. I don't have a desire to re-watch most things, so I would just start deleting things if it came to that, but if I wanted to keep it I'd just burn it to DVD.
Hypothetically, of course.
Re:This Blows (Score:3, Insightful)
It's in their best interest to offer some sort of on-demand system for _all_ previous episodes of their own programming, if they want people to be interested and tune into their _current_ programming.
Re:Let the Migration to Anonymous P2P Begin. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Ah crap... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This Blows (Score:5, Insightful)
What? I've been downloading TV torrents for over a year now, and I have yet to see one with any of the commercials left in or any warez group ads added. I've never seen TV warez groups release a recorded-off-the-air version when a DVD version is available either (as would be the case with your syndicated-and-edited episodes).
Either you have an unnatural talent for finding the absolute crappiest warez sources, or you're just making shit up. I'm guessing the latter.
Internet distribution as backup to P/DVR... (Score:3, Insightful)
For example, the show Family Guy recently went back on the air. The local Fox affiliate had technical issues that blocked analog transmission. DirecTV was also out since they were forced into only keeping the local feed (they should carry local and national feeds to the networks). Through Internet distribution, I was able to watch the show (the local affiliate eventually re-broadcast with network approval).
The networks need to allow free or cheap downloads of aired shows. At least until a DVD set is released. Start offering free or cheap downloads and it will shut down some of these channels. The offerings will also bring greater validity to legal cases (because what is so wrong with distributing aired shows to others that may enjoy it?).
Re:This Blows (Score:2, Insightful)
FEAR NOT! (Score:4, Insightful)
You see my body has an EULA. In order to pass radio waves through it, you must agree to the EULA. This EULA states that you transfer the intellectual property rights to all your content (radio & teleivion are specified) to me for a perior of 347 years from the date of using my body as a transport medium.
The TV industry does not understand it's users (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:what? (Score:2, Insightful)
It is too bad that this attitude is all too common with recently college educated people.
You think that you are leaving high school economics behind with that statement? Or are you trying to say that you learned this in HS economics? The problem with your post is that it is 100% completely and utterly WRONG.
Businesses exist for several reasons. Most of the time it is to fill a gap in the market place. They exist to create jobs. They exist to provide a service that people need or want. They exist to provide a product which people need or want. They exist to further the social institution we as humans are always trying to improve on. They exist for several hundred reasons, and only one of them is to generate revenue. The revenue generation isn't that important if you take a step back and look at the big picture. This isn't about economics. It is about humanity. And even if it were you would still be wrong.
It must be a scary place looking through your economic worldview. No wonder you make such silly statements; you don't know any better.
Re:Share! (Score:5, Insightful)
And people against copying like to misuse the word 'steal' because it overstates the illegal impact of said activities.
Both sides play the same game here.
Re:Where you been, Ken? (Score:2, Insightful)
RIAA music may be nearly everywhere, but not all labels are aligned with them. You can still buy music from non-RIAA labels with a clean conscience. It's what I do.
The world according to the MPAA (Score:2, Insightful)
-I can't catch on TV, since no distributers are willing to sign it.
-I can't catch it on DVD, since there are no localized releases.
-I can't import it on DVD, since to do so would require me getting a multi-region DVD player, which is illegal according to the MPAA. (I could also buy a Region 1 DVD player, but it would also be illegal, since I'm viewing content not meant for my region).
-I can't download it, due to some wacky reasoning that a non-existent local distributer is going to lose out on profits.
So what's a man to do?
Re:mod parent up (Score:2, Insightful)
LK
Re:This Blows (Score:4, Insightful)
As a foreigner who happens to like some American TV shows, I'd like to add a point...
Aside from pricing, which you may or may not agree with, resorting to season DVDs has one huge disadvantage for me: inability to try before you buy.
Take Firefly. I read very good comments on Slashdot. I thought I'd like to give it a shot. What better way than the pilot episode? Whoops, no one (I'm aware of) sells only that.
The show does not, and most likely will not ever air in my country. Even if it did, that would be on pay satellite TV, and it would be dubbed: that, I couldn't stand.
I could buy the complete series on DVD but... What if I don't like it? At $35 plus around $15-20 for shipping and (in worst cases) 30% customs duty, it's quite an investment on a show I've never even seen an ad for... (Except for Slashvertisement, that is... :-)
DVDs are not an option in these cases, although I admit they represent only a small fraction of online piracy. However, there are many countries which might collectively represent a decent market for a show like Firefly, and where dubbing is not the routine (as opposed to subtitling.) These markets, IMO, are not fully exploitable until content is delivered in a more granular way than DVDs -- the "iTunes Video Store" way?
lets rephrase (Score:4, Insightful)
True, Businesses exist for several reasons.
But they survive for only 1 of 2 reasons. They are state operated or subsidized (either openly or quietly) or they consistantly rake in profit margins or growth of ohh... 20%.
Private businesses which dont generate huge profits/growth, dont survive. Unless you know of some examples.
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Ah, wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
First, the process you're trying to elucidate is called disintermediation.
Second, there will always be a place for "middle men" if they provide sufficient value.
Do I want to deal with every publisher on the planet... or buy from Amazon? Do I want to comb every newspaper for stories and deals... or check Yahoo and eBay? Do I want an acount with every movie studio or NetFlix?
Do I want to try browsing every site on the web for the information I need... or do I do a Google search.
They are all "middle men" and they all provide a useful service.
Re:what? (Score:3, Insightful)
- George Carlin
And it becomes legal again if you just film it. Something's seriously f'ed up right there.
-Ted
Re:Yeah, that's kinda the point (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not shedding any tears for the MPAA, but stop making ridiculous excuses to justify your infringement. If you think $100/month is too much, don't pay for it. Nobody's holding a gun to your head forcing you to get cable TV.
The MPAA is well within its rights to sue people that distribute unauthorized copies of their content. It's when they try and do things like get P2P outlawed that they cross the line. That's not happening in this case though.
Re:lets rephrase (Score:5, Insightful)
Your argument sounds awefully like the classic humans eat food argument. If you like it or you don't, it doesn't matter. Businesses don't have to generate huge profits or grow to survive. Most small businesses that are 5 years or older will never become a large profit generator. They will also probably never grow more than a few times their size. That is because they are small businesses.
It is surprising I have to remind you that small businesses exist. Typically someone with your claims would be trolling around bragging about how good small business is for our economy. How we need to give them tax breaks, and how we need to subsidize them with grants to get them on their feet.. etc etc...
But you already though of this and didn't bring it up because it is against your above argument.
But they survive for only 1 of 2 reasons. They are state operated or subsidized (either openly or quietly)
Well lets see, Microsoft is subsidized by government contracts. Boeing is subsidized by government contracts. IBM is subsidized by government contracts. Dell is subsidized by government contracts. But then what is a subsidary? The MPAA is subsidized by movie ticket buyers. The RIAA is subsidized by people who purchase albums and singles.
The money all comes from one place (the consumers) and all ends up in one place (the business or "providers"). The providers then divvy up the money back to the consumers how they see fit through payroll. The cycle continues.
The same exact cycle happens with government subsidary. The consumers get together, appoint leaders, and decide as a group which businesses a percentage of their money should go to. The difference is that (hopefully) it is for a cause that is for the greater good, rather than for the greed of the business executives.
Of course there is a lot unsaid here. But I hope you get the general idea. There isn't much difference either way except that government subsidary has a tendancy to be looked at negatively by the "conservative" economist and the coporate greed has a tendancy to be looked at negatively by the "liberal" economist. If you can call them that.
Actually, OVER-AIR retransmissions are 100% legal (Score:1, Insightful)
#1: you can now sell movies that have been 'christianized' and 'sanitized' legally.
#2: You are NOT DECRYPTING anything from an over-air transmission. It was broadcast in the clear. That means that ABC/NBC/CBS/UPN are pretty much without recourse, since their shows are over air broadcast, and they are not encrypted. HBO, etc may have recourse, since those channels are CABLE ONLY.
#3: So, if I capture an OVER-AIR broadcast, remove the commercials, and post it as a 'sanitized' version, am I breaking any laws? Absolutely not. I don't want my kids to see that crap on desperate housewives where you can see her nipples, so I choose to DOWNLOAD a sanitized copy. And that's LEGAL. Now, if it were HBO, I wouldn't have that recourse, since I can't prove I paid for HBO. But over-air are free game. We game them the damn spectrums for FREE, so now we get to benefit from the spectrums for FREE.
Everyone keeps saying 'it's copyright infringement'. I would say that as long as it's over air broadcast, WITH THE NEW LAW ALLOWING SANITATION OF SHOWS, you've effectively given me the LEGAL RIGHT to sanitize the show and resell it to my special clientelle.
Re:MPAA (Score:3, Insightful)
As far as I know, the only company that has taken offense to fansubs in the last few months is Media Works, who sent a cease and desist to pretty much anyone who ever translated or distributed any of their anime or manga. Otherwise, the Japanese companies still don't care.
Re:This Blows (Score:3, Insightful)
Mod Parent up!
He truly has it in that statement.
On the other hand what the actions of the MPAA did today was drive this whole thing into the undernet.
I have not seen so much irc activity as I did just a few minutes ago when I looked around.
I guess the ISP's are going to be looking at a sharp increase in newsgroup and irc traffic.
And of course a whole new generation of savvy users as well.
Re:This Blows (Score:5, Insightful)
All this "stealing" talk is bullshit. The logical end to it is that if you "pay" for TV cable channels, but don't "watch" the shows, are you "stealing" from the advertisers because you chose never to watch the show? NO. So how is it stealing if you down load a show YOU NEVER WATCHED IN THE FIRST PLACE??? Virtual Insanity.
Re:FYI: Smallville hasn't ended its season... (Score:2, Insightful)
Smallville is about the only series that I've seen try this, if they all did, my parents would have a much easier time in finding something to get me, apparently I'm difficult to shop for at xmas time.
I *buy* the series I download, or record when available... I don't feel guilty at all downloading in the meantime... my GF has paid $$$ for Inuyasha and other series, so f*ck the tv media... I can record on my MCE box and convert and cut the commercials myself if I want to... so stuff it *AA
Re:This Blows (Score:4, Insightful)
At least in my experience, downloaded TV shows are far, far superior to what you will find on a DVD, if not simply from the ease of use perspective. For example, if one of my friends wants to watch a show, I can grab two DVD-RWs, copy everything onto them, and give them to him. Can't do that as easily for 7 DVDs.
Re:This Blows (Score:5, Insightful)
Because they want to sell you that episode on DVD later.
Re:Ah, wrong. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not saying that's a 100% perfect analogy, just that there's a fundamental difference between middlemen and a cartel.
Re:This Blows (Score:3, Insightful)
Absolutely. Maybe the MPAA should be offering a second option when they sue a trading site
1. Close down now & pay us money....or...
2. Hand the site over to us, along with all technology, get everyone involved to agree to work for the network/content distributor for 6 months, here's masters of our programmes, get encoding, leave the adverts in, and keep the damn thing going, since it isn't depriving anyone of revenue. Quick $5 fee for users, and you suddenly have a revenue stream, without lifting a finger.
Let me see if I understand this... (Score:3, Insightful)
Huh? How is it hurting you that I'm spreading the popularity of your show at my expense for bandwidth, etc. I mean, if you broadcast a show to 2 million viewers, and then I p2p it to another million, isn't more viewers WHAT YOU WANTED?
Or are you still believing that we're actually sitting and WATCHING the adverts that you slip into the show about every 10 minutes now, rather than using that time to take a leak, talk on the phone, eat, whatever else we need to do?
At *some* point, someone's going to figure out that most advertising is complete bunkum, and we're going to have the biggest economic crash in history, as well-dressed but penniless marketing people beg for spare change to wash your windshield or do a market study.
Advertising! (Score:2, Insightful)
Television shows are not 'free' - they are to you and me in terms of real cost, but the producers of those shows sells advertising time which pays, in part, for the show. The better the show, the more viewers it attracts, and although the aggregate water pressure drops at every commercial break, the number of potential eyeballs that might stick around to view the ad is what drives the show into repeat seasons, ups available cash for better production values, etc.
In recent years, however, there's been a significant spike in the after-market for such shows. Used to be, they were doomed to be repeated on local UHF television stations or late-night affiliates. Now, there's video where you can buy the show on DVD for your very own! Now, if those shows are made available via the internet (agreeably at a lesser quality), then the incentive to purchase those after market products is reduced.
Well, yes, but what they want is more counted viewers. It would be cool if they could claim that they had a 6% share on the 'live' broadcast, and a 30% of internet interest? If the extra eyeballs could be quantified, they could turn those into advertising dollars which would leave them not only with nothing to complain about, but given them reason to seed the content themselves!
It sucks, but the producers do have a right to protect their markets. The challenge, for everyone involved, is to find a happy middle-ground. The p2p interest is an un-tapped market which the MPAA would rather ignore. Would you pay $1 for a show downloaded off the internet? Is there some way to guarantee that the advertising remain inserted? How can you give the producers their candy, and the downloaders their fix, and have a win-win?
Therein lies the challenge.
Re:This Blows (Score:3, Insightful)
I already pay for cable. I already pay for every fucking show aired during the entire month on every channel I have access to. But like most folks I end up missing shows, or discovering a decent show halfway through the season - and in this case owning a VCR doesn't help.
BitTorrent, however, allows me to catch up on a series, or to get a show that I forgot about and missed. I've already paid for the ability to watch these shows; how is this any different than the time-shifting you do with a VCR? If I had a monster VCR (or Tivo-like device) capable of recording every channel 24/7 then I could do exactly what I do with BitTorrent, only legally, but such a device doesn't exist. I fail to see the distinction, except that the possibility exists that someone who doesn't subscribe to cable will also get the show. And in this case I say so what? It's not like the distributor is losing sales to someone who wouldn't subscribe to cable in the first place. And there exists the possibility that someone who gets addicted to a show or three will decide to get cable when he or she otherwise wouldn't.
If the companies that distributed these shows made them available for download themselves then I'd go to their sites and grab them. Commercials or not, I'll happily take faster transfer rates and higher quality over a torrent any day of the week. In fact, I'd be willing to give up cable altogether and subscribe to such a service because then I'd never have to worry about recording a show I'd otherwise miss, or not being able to find old episodes of an ongoing series I just discovered, or trying to find old shows that I want to watch over again just for kicks. I'd pay MORE for such a service than I ever would for cable.
There's a huge, untapped market out there for just such a service. The first company that jumps into the waters and provides precisely this is going to make a killing. Sure, local TV companies will lose out but so the fuck what? Times change, technologies change, new companies are born, old ones die. That's capitalism and that's the way it's supposed to be. Hanging on to a dead or dying past is for losers.
Max