hob said:
Amazingly, the new Doctor Who has surfaced in the Bittorrent community. I'm quite interested in the legal question of downloading TV show. Obviously, in the case of the currently unreleased Doctor Who, this is copyright infringement. But, surely it's similar if not the same as the whole VCR issue. I pay NTL to deliver me TV content. Some of that goes to... Channel 4, who pay Fox for the rights for The OC. If I then download The OC as it's released in America, instead of waiting 12 weeks (so that the Xmas episode is aired in mid-april...
) how is that a bad thing? They're not missing out on any money....!Discuss!
I downloaded it the day after it appeared on BitTorrent. I had no objections to it because there isn't a cable network in the States yet that has committed to airing it. SciFi Network supposedly passed on it, claiming it was "lacking." I did not find that to be the case, and I've spread my thoughts on Aint It Cool News rather passionately about why it should be picked up in the States. Downloading the show won't affect the ratings unless people who are "Nielsen Family" members download the show and fail to watch it when it is televised. The same goes for the Battlestar Galactica episodes that were available on BitTorrent a couple of months before SciFi aired them because SkyOne (of the U.K.) got first dibs to air them. I downloaded episodes 11, 12, and 13. I'm still watching them when SciFi airs them, that way SciFi at least gets my TiVo viewer statistics to counter anything that the bogus Nielsens report.
My rule of thumb is, if you are in (Great) Britain, Canada, or Australia, don't download the New Who, because you all have networks in your countries that have committed to broadcasting it. If you are in the States, download it, and tell your friends to watch it, and then write an email to SciFi at:
programming@www.scifi.com and tell them you want them to air the new Doctor Who.
What I found funny about the episode is the new Doctor battles the Autons. Think about it. The Third Doctor, in his very first episode, 1970's "Spearhead from Space", also battled the Autons. "Spearhead" was also the very first Doctor Who episode broadcast in color (err, colour). The first episode for the Ninth Doctor ("Rose"), marks the first episode of Doctor Who broadcast in widescreen format. To me, I find that very interesting.
Speculation is that the BBC itself leaked the episode to generate buzz and get the show picked up Stateside. Its a working copy of it, meaning that some things probably have changed, the theme is the very same one used during the Tom Baker (Fourth Doctor) era, and the titles need a bit of work on them. Other than that, its great, and the image quality is great. Don't run it in QuickTime on a Mac unless you have a G5...it choked up this eMac 1Ghz G4, and it has 768 megs of memory. Use VLC Media Center to watch the show; you can blow it up to full screen without image loss that way...or image jerks.
And to the poster who suggested that BBC America will air the new show. Not likely. The BBC charged far too much to air the "old" Doctor Who on BBC America so they dropped it. Plus the fact that BBC America is generally restricted to digital cable (not basic), unlike the SciFi Network, USA, TNT, or F/X, which are all generally part of basic (analog) cable packages.