Is Kevin Rose Guilty of Theft for Pirating iPhone v3.0?

Kevin Rose posted the following tweet:

So, here’s the question: Did Kevin Rose just admit to a legally punishable crime?  We all know how easy it is to go to a bittorrent site and download anything from the latest U2 album to Sims3 and many take it for granted that, while it is technically illegal it just isn’t that big a deal. Everyone does it.  It’s like smoking pot.

However, the fact remains that smoking pot is illegal and one would be foolish to puff a blunt in front of a police station.  In fact, if one did that and was arrested there would be little public sympathy.

Now, here comes Kevin Rose bragging about what is, unless the laws have changed, the illegal posession of software that he could not have acquired with violating copyright laws at the very least.  Technically, this could be seen as simple larceny.  And if Kevin has shared his ilegal copy of the sotware with friends he is now an illegal distributor – a far more grave crime.

My point is not that Kevin Rose should be arrested.  Instead, I think this is a clear sign that, much like the growing support for marjuana legalization, it is time for a major overhaul of the law as it relates to the posession and distribution of digital content.

That, or the jails will soon be full of kids who just couldn’t wait to hear the latest Jonas Brothers album.

Free Anti-Piracy Advice to NBC, CBS, ABC, FOX et. al.

According to a post on NewTeeVee:

Regardless of how many ads were shown, 90 percent of ABC.com viewers continued to say they’d rather get the show for free than pay to get it without ads.

Why aren’t the TV networks releasing copies of their shows to pirate sites complete with the ads built in?  While I do love my ad-free TV torrents, I tend to watch on Boxee even with the ads since there is simply no wait.  However, I miss being able to download and watch the show on other devices or outside of a wifi hotspot.

I think most people would be perfectly ok with downloading a show with the ads built in.  Sure, one could fast-forward past them but most people don’t bother, especially if the ads are short and varied.

Not only would the networks actually get to show advertisers an ever larger pool of eyeballs but they would be putting the pirates right out of business.

Just thinking aloud…

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Pirates of the Bay

There is a great 3-part interview over on TorrentFreak of the guys who created and run one of the most successful and well-known torrent sites, PirateBay.org.

“Peter Sunde and Fredrik Neij from The Pirate Bay recently did a video interview which resulted in some great quotes. One such quote comes from Fredrik, he suggests that the movie and music industry should set up their own torrent site, and monetize it through advertisements. “We would be out of business.” he added.”

If you don’t know much about bittorrent and the PirateBay this is a great start.  For those already in the know there is a ton of cool stuff in the interviews.

BitTorrent – The Other Web Video

There is a very interesting post over on TorrentFreak about the incredibly high number of TV shows illegally (though I have yet to hear of any prosecution for this in the vein of what RIAA has been doing in the music industry) being downloaded and viewed via BitTorrent.

“It is safe to say that BitTorrent is slowly replacing Tivo. Some episodes of popular TV-shows such as “Lost”, “Prison Break” and “Heroes” get up to 10 million downloads per episode, spread over hundreds of sites. This number is getting awfully close to the average number of viewers on TV in the US. However, the major difference is that the BitTorrent “viewers” come from all over the world.”

While Neilsen’s numbers I posted yesterday are interesting, they simply don’t account for the massive amount of TV that is being watched in this manner.  Aside from confirming that far more people are watching extensive amounts of content from the web than is being generally reported, it is also serving as a wake-up call to some of the more established players:

“Anne Sweeney -the president of the Disney-ABC television group- admitted that she was “inspired” after seeing a pirated copy of the hit-show “Desperate Housewives”. The pirated copy of this popular TV show was the main reason (besides the money) for Disney to sell their shows online. “Coming ‘face to face’ with the high-quality, commercial-free pirated version (of Desperate Housewives) told Disney that it was not just competing with other broadcasters, but with digital pirates and as such was an experience that prompted us to do the iTunes deal with Apple.” Sweeney said at the time.”

This is something Mason talks about in The Pirate’s Dilemma – the fact that legitimate players MUST find a way to compete with Pirates if they want to remain in business.  The only way to do that is to change their practices to better serve the consumer.  All the Pirates are doing is giving people what they want – a completely open copy of the show they can watch on any device.