Well, at least in Australia.

The Technology offered by some content distributors is
making File Sharing look like the poor relative.

Re-broadcasting video content is legal in the USA.

Viewing rebroadcast sites in the USA
is legal from Australia.

The re-broadcasters are getting content faster than the
file-sharing seeders.

 

---

HOUSE M.D.

House is Back, and was posted within hours of its debut.

 

Posted: Tue
Sep 22, 2009 5:57 am 

 

Season 6 (HDTV)
House.S06E01.E02.Broken.HDTV.XviD-NoTV.avi  [699.87
Mb]
Season 6 (720p)
House.S06E01.E02.Broken.720p.HDTV.x264-CTU.mkv  [2.19
Gb]

 

---

Of course Australian Broadband users will be limited to the
lower quality, however, the bonus is that it comes advert free, so that’s
always nice.

 

For those in countries whose Governments are not run by
Telstra, you can click on episode 1, 2 or 3 below and view the content legally
via streaming video. (But yes it uses an awful lot of Bandwidth.)

 

---

House – Season 6

1. Episode
   1 – Broken
2. Episode
   2 – Epic Fail
3. Episode
   3 – The Tyrant (And
   there it is – Episode three….. before the P2P community have it.)

---

So let’s discuss the merits of downloading House, series six
episode one and episode two.

 

Yep, the return is a two hour House lovers extravaganza.

 

When will House be back on Channel 10?  Probably during ratings period, about February
2010.

 

Why will it take them that long to get it on there?

 

Because that’s the way the content industry works. Local
content to local channels first with International distribution waaaaay down
the list.

 

Are we second class citizens that deserve less attention
than those people born in the USA?

 

Ask Rupert Murdoch, he negotiated the content deals that we
are currently operating under.

 

But we love house. We want to see those episodes now. Why
can’t we?

 

Because the previous (Liberal) Government passed two sets of
laws.

 

One allowing Telstra to monopolise our telecommunications
infrastructure regardless of the economic damage it caused to the rest of the
country.

 

Why did they do that? Because the few billion dollars raised
from the ASX sell-off, when plonked on the balance sheet made Australia
look financially stronger.

 

Geez, Koltai – you said you always told the truth.

 

OK – ok, you got me. It was so the politicians could be
re-elected.

 

What was the other law?

 

Well that was a ratification in 2006 of amendments to the
outdated 1969 copyright legislation which essentially took all of our copyright
provisions and threw them out the window replacing them with a set of laws so
medieval, that Frankenstein would have died of fright if he had been forced to read them.

 

And why was that Koltai?

 

Basically so that President Bush would shake Johnnies hand
(which as we all know he didn’t).

 

So Koltai we threw away our copyright citizens rights for a
handshake that never happened?

 

Um, yep. Just goes to show how truly irrelevant Australia
is as far as the Yanks are concerned.

 

So Koltai, what are you going to do, download the
file-sharing version, watch the free online streaming version or wait until
February so that you can watch the version with 20 minutes of advertising in
it?

 

zzz…  Does not
Compute! Programming error! Warning, Dumb Consumer Alert! Danger Danger Will
Robinson, Australia’s
IQ just dropped 25%.

 

Sorry Tom, that was one of those stupid questions wasn’t it.

 

Duh huh.

 

But the fact that that the streaming version is available
online now, and the fact that in Australia
time-shifting is legal. I would hazard a guess that even though the law is
lagging behind the reality of the available technology, it probably isn’t
actually morally wrong to download the P2P version any longer.

 

Besides, for the 32% of Australian that do not have a
broadband connection or a computer, channel ten will still have to buy the
series; they will still air the series, and they will still receive advertising
revenue from the series. So actually, even if 68% of Australians watch house
via the free online streaming website or download it via P2P, House MD, series
six will return exactly the same amount of revenue to the creators as it
would have if file sharing didn’t exist.

 

So Koltai you’re advocating wholesale illegal file sharing?

 

I didn’t say that. I’m advocating that our legislators look
at the basis of the current legislation and understanding that it was the media lobbyists to the last
Government that created the current FUBAR legislation,  consider holding a senate committee hearing
into copyright issues in Australia.

 

Especially where the content that is being used to
criminalize Australians is available from alternative legal sources.

 

 

The Indelicate Imbalancing of Copyright Policy 3 v.2007.11.16

illustrates the growth of the general U.S.
copyright term over time, including the retroactive effects of various
statutory extensions.

(Note the dog-leg retroactive portion of each ensuing copyright
legislative amendment.)

 

 

I’ve used the US
legislation because quite frankly, I am not sure how to pictorially represent
the Australian legislative copyright terms.

But I assure you dear reader, once I have devised an
understandable graphic, you will be the second to know about it.

 

 

References:

 

Escape
from Copyright: Market

Success
vs. Statutory Failure in the Protection of Expressive Works,
69 U. CIN. L. REV.
741, 780-87 (2001). Portions also came from Copyright
as Intellectual Property Privilege,
58 SYRACUSE
L. REV. __ (2007) (invited)
(forthcoming), and Indelicate
Imbalancing in Copyright and Patent Law, in COPY
FIGHTS: THE
FUTURE OF INTELLECTUAL
PROPERTY IN THE INFORMATION
AGE at 1 (Adam Thierer
& Wayne Crews, eds 2002).

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