NBC Still Down On P2P But Plans To Use It Themselves

Cotton Eye Joe writes "Ars Technica has an interview with Rick Cotton, the general counsel for NBC Universal who is best known for saying that piracy is a more serious offence than robbery. Cotton still has some strong opinions on P2P, even though the network will be using it for distribution. 'He's convinced that the pirate problem is costing NBC Universal real revenue and that the scale of the problem is so vast as to discourage investment in the carrots, positive solutions like Hulu. "With all that pirated material available, it creates tremendous disincentives to content owners who need to invest in new content," Cotton says, "and that just hurts consumers over time."'"

The summary...

[Jax Omen]

It says they're using P2P. What for? All I know of is them releasing clips on Youtube...

Re:BSG anyone

[SanityInAnarchy]

I remember hearing that the new Battlestar Galactica would've never happened, had the pilot not been leaked onto P2P.

The Real Robbery/Piracy...

[blcamp]

Happens when the network's "content", which turns out to be nothing other than more disappointing dreck, wastes my time, energy and other resources. That's piracy against me.

Trust me, NBC/Universal, none of your nonsense flows through any of the copper in my house.

Same goes for the other traditional "TV networks" in these United States.

Piracy also hurts corn growers

[Jason Levine]

Rick Cotton is also the one who claimed that Piracy hurts Corn growers [techdirt.com] because -- without piracy -- theaters would sell more tickets and thus more popcorn. Don't you see what you're doing all you P2P users?!! You're hurting the poor popcorn farmer. And his family. Won't someone think of the popcorn farmer's children?

Re:NBC's real problem

[cashman73]

Well, I watched the last three episodes of Heroes on NBC's own site online, and watched Knight Rider via bittorrent from TPB; both are legally available on NBC's website online via streaming. While I'm all for NBC being able to put advertisements in their videos so that they can make a buck and the writers and actors can get paid, the issues I have with the NBC "legal" streams are (a) not really "full screen" (it's close, but it's still 'boxed-in' enough that it shrinks the size of the show enough to be annoying) and (b) the advertisements show, while still shorter than what you get over the air, is the SAME FREAKIN' AD OVER AND OVER AGAIN! Let's have a little variety at least,... So if NBC can fix these two issues, that would be excellent! And these are definitely totally "fixable" issues within their control! I actually WANT to give them the advertising dollars that they deserve, especially since I can't get NBC over-the-air due to the location of the building I live in combined with Pittsburgh's ridiculously variable terrain. Not to mention I don't want to give those thieves at Comcrap any money, either.

On another note, I've noticed that they've put the original Battlestar Galactica series on NBC.com in the past month or two. Let's hope they put the new shows online when they come out in another month, too,... ;-)

If NBC uses P2P... aren't THEY the pirates ?

[Dave21212]

I'm seen a ton of the usually P2P and "Piracy" comments... let's look at the other part of what they want to do...
Use a P2P network that they didn't build, didn't buy or contribute to, didn't ask permission to be on, all in order to promote their content and make money.

Who are the real "pirates" here ? NBC it seems. Why doesn't someone just build a filter that prevents NBC from placing content on the network ? Shouldn't NBC put money into BitTorrent, or be accused of stealing themselves ?

Re:NBC's real problem

[spun]

I think you exaggerate. I use a DVR to skip commercials. I notice how long half hour network shows actually run. It's about 22 minutes of show and 8 minutes of ads, same as always. What the networks seem to be doing is making more frequent, shorter ad breaks, and putting them in odd places. There may be six minutes of show, one minute of ads, then four minutes of show and three minutes of ads. I think they are trying to confound and confuse DVR users into giving up on using the 'thirty second skip' feature and just fast forwarding through the ads, so at least they see something.

One thing I have noticed, though, is that shows do not seem to stop and start on time at all anymore, and certain shows seem to go over time while others are under. I think they may be sticking extra commercials into popular shows, and reducing the number of commercials in less popular shows, so The Simpsons might run thirty-five minutes including an extra five minutes of commercials, while the next show runs twenty-five minutes with five fewer minutes of commercials. This has the added advantage of screwing over people who record on schedules.

Re:Commercial P2P should be banned by consumers.

[laird]

"Why should customers of a commercial P2P distribution service not only pay for content, but also provide extra bandwidth to help other customers download content?"

So far the answer is that if you're willing to contribute resources to the p2p network you can get access to content that you can't otherwise get, or to get it at a higher quality than you can get without p2p. For an example of the latter, if a video publisher can afford to spend $X per delivery, that revenue number limits what they can afford to spend on delivering the programming. They can allow users to "opt out" and get a low quality download by straight HTTP, where the file is small enough that the cost is acceptable, or "opt in" to p2p and get much higher quality video (which has lower cost due to p2p). So in return for being willing to contribute unused uplink bandwidth, the customer gets access to better content.