Friday, November 24, 2006

Borrowing from the Internet Library

When I picked up the latest Killers CD, "Sam's Town", about 1/2 the people I mentioned it to asked why I paid for it when I could download it for free. Good question. It's come to the point now where people are actually wondering why you would fork over dough for copyrighted material.

So yeah, forget it. Why pay for something that I can get for free? Why shell out the cash for movies or music when more times than not it's usually disappointing and a complete rip-off? Time to stick it to the man.

I now have bittorent on my PC and I'm trying to download some World Series of Poker stuff that aired on ESPN. Even if I wanted to buy it, it's not available, and TSN does not have a regular schedule for me to tune into it. So there's my justification.

Anyway, it's going very SLOOOOOOW. Not sure if it's my connection (hi-speed lite), but even thought it's rated very highly according to the website in terms of its connections and speed, it's going to take about 6 1/2 hours for a 700mb file. Then sometimes it slows down and tells me it'll take 13 hours. Then it tells me 30 minutes then it goes to 20 hours. We'll see how this works out.

Comments:
Torrents download speeds are a factor of many things. Swarm size and number of seeders, portions of the files already shared in the swarm, your connection speed ("lite" will be slower of course and Rogers may even block some of the popular torrent ports) and your computer's configuration for your firewall and security apps. Torrent clients will also throttle your d/load speed based on the amount you are uploading.
 
Yeah, what he said. I'll come by to help out sometime, if you like.

You know, your argument doesn't really hold water. I mean, if I follow your thinking, then it's okay to watch DVD screener rips and pre-release CDs, because, as you state, I couldn't buy it if I wanted to.

And in Canada, it's not illegal unless you turn around and sell the material. So, then it's just a morality issue. And if that was really your stance, you'd wait until ESPN puts out the official DVD and buy that.

Hmmm, didn't you buy a DVD set of the WSOP last year? A set that was downloaded off the net, or at the very least, recorded off tv? You're actually doing more harm than just those who download stuff, as you were clearly prepared to pay for this item, but ESPN never saw a dime.

That's just my two cents, I clearly don't have a problem with the practice, and I'd bet that if you got better speeds, you might not either.

-Stan
 
Uh...I think my blog clearly stated "Time to stick it to THE MAN!". Where does it say don't download? BTW, I do have a problem with companies "holding back" on their releases or editing versions made available to the public. How about George Lucas taking almost a decade before releasing the Star Wars movies on DVD that didn't have the SE junk no one wanted? People wanted the original cuts, and he refused to provide them, so people decided to download & convert laserdic copies. And I know no one cares about WWE, but Vince McMahon, instead of paying off a few artists with money he can find under his mattress, decided to edit the Wrestlemania anthology by changing entrance music, blurring out logos and so on. F*** him. If you drop $299 on 20 DVDs, it's not unreasonable to expect a complete, unaltered set. Nowhere on the box does it state any different. But you don't get what you paid for, so this just gets consumers p*ssed off and they'll go to a torrent site to get what they want. I will say that DVD screeners are different, because it's a pre-cursor to a product that WILL be released. ESPN still hasn't released a 2005 WSOP DVD set.

Anyway, it took 18 hours to download my first 1 1/2 hour WSOP 2006 main event episode. Unfortunately, it was a recording from the live pay-per-view ESPN feed, which meant no hole-card camera views so you had no idea what the players were playing with unless it came to a showdown, which made it pretty boring. All in all, a bit of a bust for my first torrent, but I figure if I pick something before going to sleep, by the time my work day ends the next day I'll have something to watch so the time factor isn't that big a deal.
 
Ahoy matey! I thought that part of your post was written all sarcastic-like and you were proud of buying that CD, etc... etc...
 
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