Does anyone here watch BSG? **SPOILER ALERT**

[Friday]

Aw, phuck it. Screw Hulu and SciFi channel and their damned commercials. I'm going old school on their asses! I'm DLing the damned torrent. If they want me to watch it with their commercials, they can quit being so damned stingy.

Must.... resist.... must.... fuck.

Dale, some of your blog posts are very thoughtful and eloquent.  You're obviously a smart guy who has spent a lot of time thinking about your sociopolitical beliefs.  Maybe you were just joking above, but in case you weren't... please take a moment to think about the fact that because a producer has not given you a HIGHLY sought after product for free, on a timetable that pleases you, does not make them "stingy" and justify stealing their product via illegal download (I will *not* be dragged into a debate of intellectual property rights, but I think we can agree that, from the Sci Fi Channel/BSG producers' point of view, accessing via a torrent would be "stealing").  Calling them names and rationalizing taking their product without compensation because they didn't just *give* you what you want, when you want it, is full-on looter/ghetto mentality.

[dalebert]

Aw, phuck it.

Sorry, I mis-spelled that. I meant to say "Aw, phrack it."

I'm watching it now.

[dalebert]

No. I'm afraid we just have differing views on intellectual property.

[FTL_Ian]

Just because some men and women called file sharing illegal doesn't make it stealing.   

[Jim Bob]

Man, how come that Kara lady disuhpeered all sudden like?

[dalebert]

I used to do a fair amount of file sharing for a select few TV shows and had no pangs of guilt at all about it. Modern times are going to call for modern marketing methods for massively reproducible content. I quit file sharing when it became more convenient to just watch the streaming provided by the content producers. I see file sharing and similar tactics as gray market checks on pricing and other quality factors. When the content producers started making the content more readily available and kept advertising reasonable, as Hulu does, I found I really didn't mind just tolerating a few reasonable commercial breaks. It was preferable to the mild tedium of bit torrent. I don't want to see it badly enough to pay for it. I'd just do without if I had to pay even a buck for a BSG show and if I couldn't bit torrent it. Barring ridiculous state fabricated notions of "pay whatever price we want to set for massively reproducible electronic bits or we'll get violent", a.k.a. copyright laws, the way to market such material is to simply keep the price reasonable. I still buy DVDs and have for some time because they're often available at very reasonable prices, Amazon sales, used, etc. and I'm glad to pay it when it's reasonable rather than go try to DL the movie and burn it to disc for a less than optimal copy as many people do. I still pay to see new releases on the big screen and have the whole movie-going experience. In this case, it's the same idea, but just make it more convenient to get the content from the producer and keep commercial time reasonable. BSG wants to hold off on making their shows available in hopes people will get desperate and pay for it. Fine. Lots of people just said phrack it and file-shared it. Bad call IMO but maybe they made more money because some people have been convinced by all the statist perverted notions of property propaganda that file sharing is stealing. The gray market of file sharing has had some positive impact on the massively artificially inflated entertainment market and hopefully that will continue.

[Pat McCotter]

Obama Sides With RIAA, Supports $150,000 Fine per Music Track
By David Kravets
March 23, 2009 | 1:12:29 PM

Commiepics_2_2_2 The Obama administration for the first time is weighing in on a Recording Industry Association of America file sharing lawsuit and is supporting hefty awards of as much as $150,000 per purloined music track.

The government said the damages range of $750 to $150,000 per violation of the Copyright Act was warranted.

"The remedy of statutory damages for copyright infringement has been the cornerstone of our federal copyright law since 1790, and Congress acted reasonably in crafting the current incarnation of the statutory damages provision," Michelle Bennett, a Department of Justice trial attorney wrote (.pdf) Sunday to a Massachusetts federal judge weighing challenge to the Copyright Act.

The position -- that the Copyright Act's monetary damages are not unconstitutionally excessive -- mirrors the one taken by the Bush administration and should come as no surprise.

Two top lawyers in President Barack Obama's Justice Department are former RIAA lawyers: Donald Verrilli Jr. is the associate deputy attorney general who brought down Grokster and fought to prevent a retrial in the Jammie Thomas case. Then there's the No. 2 in the DOJ, Tom Perrilli. As Verrilli's former boss, Perrilli argued in 2002 that internet service providers should release customer information to the RIAA even without a court subpoena.

Presidential administrations often intervene in lawsuits in which the constitutionality of a federal law is in question. This case concerns a former Boston University student challenging a peer-to-peer file sharing case.

Still, parts of the government's brief sounded as if it was taken from the RIAA's public relations playbook.

"Congress sought to account for both the difficulty of quantifying damages in the context of copyright infringement and the need to deter millions of users of new technology from infringing copyrighted work in an environment where many violators believe that their activities will go unnoticed,"  Bennett wrote.

The RIAA has sued more than 30,000 individuals for file sharing the last five years. It is winding down the campaign and is lobbying internet service providers to discontinue service to copyright scofflaws.

[Puke]

I think the ending went pretty well.
I didn't expect the "ancestors" part. Who knew humans are related to cylons?

[leetninja]

it will all happen again ...

[Friday]

They're coming out with a new show that's a prequel to BSG called Caprica.  The premiere is available on Netflix, and it is FRAKKIN' AWESOME!!!!!