ABC’s The Slap, the TV mini-series based on Christos Tsiolkas’s novel of the same name, has garnered itself a small international audience. Just not small enough to fly under the radar of the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT); AFACT has gone after a number of websites offering the show for download and forced them to shut down.
According to TV Tonight, download links from fans on the show’s Facebook page prompted producers to give AFACT the heads-up. One site in particular, “ViewTheSlapOnline” was targeted and brought down, though the report states a larger torrent site, diwana.org, also faced AFACT’s wrath.
In semi-related news, BBC Four has acquired the rights to the series, so it will be screened in the UK at some point in the future.
While these sites may have been the more significant offenders in AFACT’s eyes, it will do little to stem the flow of the show via other channels, such as, well, every other torrent site on the internet. Is this how AFACT should be spending its time, or do you believe there are other, more urgent areas, it should be addressing?
Image: ABC TV
Cameron
Sunday, November 13, 2011 at 1:57 PMThe fact that there is no “legal” way for people to watch this should mean they have no right to stop people from distributing it. There needs to be a “use it or loose it” clause in copyright, if someone own a copyright then they have to offer it for sale to people otherwise they can’t complain about it when people start consuming it anyway.
smurfydog
Sunday, November 13, 2011 at 6:11 PMRIP Diwana.
Having got that out of the way – It would be very costly and totally impractical for content producers to provide a legitimate purchasing option in all markets as soon as content is released in the first market.
Studios need time to convince other markets that their product will sell (often based on success in the home market),
It’s a shame that you made such an eloquent arguement that holds no water. A “use it or lose it” clause would be disasterous.
Nobody would create any content worth watching because they’d know that all rights would be lost in markets they failed to sell to before airing in their initial market.
There are many other more reasoned arguments for torrenting that I won’t go into here.
Max
Sunday, November 13, 2011 at 6:15 PMThis is the Internet age, you don’t need to worry about other markets any more — just sell the shows directly online (e.g. Amazon downloads, iTunes etc), or let international customers pay for access to a streaming service… hell, the streaming service (iview) already exists, just allow international users access on a subscription basis.
Toby
Sunday, November 13, 2011 at 8:26 PM@Max: That simply does not hold up. To get funding to produce shows in the first place, a producer often needs to sign on for exclusive distribution to a tv station/network and assign rights to sell that product.
It is simply not a case of “selling it on the internet” bypassing all other avenues – besides wich, people would probably torrent it for free if they could anyway.
You need to understand how things are funded before putting forward an oversimplified analysis of how things *should* work. Absolutely the producers of The Slap were right to ask to have the site removed.
As to the point on how AFACT should be spending its time – they have been criticised for suing an ISP asking they take action as stipulated under law (under appeal) – now criticising for going for a BT Tracker. I don’t think most people would ever be happy with what AFACT do because AFACTs job is to try and prevent most commentators in here from doing what they believe is their right.
Cameron
Monday, November 14, 2011 at 8:26 AM“It would be very costly and totally impractical for content producers to provide a legitimate purchasing option in all markets as soon as content is released in the first market.”
Nonsense. It could work one of 2 ways.
First way, the current “traditional” way, would be to get a local distributor, who is then responsible for handling the sales to TV networks, iTunes, DVD releases ect. This local distributor would then be responsible for the “use it” part of the “use it or loose it” clause. It would then be up to that local distributor to determine the way to release the content.
The second way, is if you cannot find a local distributor, you simply release it online yourself. if you feel necessary you can work with other online distribution organisations.
At the end of the day, unless a product is for sale that should be no claim to copyright infringement. There’s simply no excuse in this day and age not to have these things available day in date worldwide.
Toby
Monday, November 14, 2011 at 8:45 PM@Cameron: What tripe.
Besides the fact your spelling belies your understanding of the issue, a “use it or LOSE it clause” 1. Is unsustainable and 2. wouldn’t make one piece of difference.
1. With respect to 1, tv costs money. Whether you like it or not – a heap of effort goes into production. To say if you don’t distribute unless you immediately use it in a separate territory is crazy. It means that I then have 0 chance/opportunity of selling this good even if I’m 1 week/1 month later to a market whom is yet to assess the product before a network buys it.
The simplicity of this solutions shows that you don’t understand how the media industries MUST operate when funding comes through commercial deals and network funds. Sure you could raise money like “The Tunnel” did – however, I see they have so far managed to sell less than 50,000 of the 135,000 frames they were selling to raise funds. That’s a equivalent of a total of 5% of people who downloaded and presumably watched it from a torrent source felt obliged to pay $1. $1 for a feature length movie.
Well actually, 4.8c for each downloaded. that’ll pay the bills for all those who poured days/weeks/months of blood sweat and tears.
One cannot expect to sell a show immediately and run it simultaneously in every country. That’s not the way the world works.
Most of the uses (most of the 40,000) of diwana were Aus or NZ who had access to the content in their local territory yet downloaded it from diwana without ads. (If the shows indeed contained them).
Lets face it – if you can access it for free – and without ads – most people would choose to do that before paying for it – or watching ads. All the other garbage thrown about are excuses and nothing else.
Christian
Sunday, November 13, 2011 at 2:23 PMOh not diwana.org!!
Max
Sunday, November 13, 2011 at 5:37 PMYeah, I’m really bummed about diwana being shut down. Diwana was great for those (common) occurrences where the scene overlooked Australian shows.
Neilo
Sunday, November 13, 2011 at 5:08 PMIn related news, the first three episodes are already available on the BBC iPlayer. The episode one has been up since 27th Oct. which when I last checked was in the past not the future.
Michael
Sunday, November 13, 2011 at 11:03 PMMeanwhile, word of mouth dies slowly in the gutter.
“Have you seen that new show?”
“No, what is it like?”
“Wouldn’t know, can’t find it anywhere to watch to see if I like it. It probably is balls anyway so I will skip it when it finally comes on tv.”
“huh huh huh you said “comes”.”
Greg
Monday, November 14, 2011 at 7:19 AMThe fact that it’s still freely available online right now means this was completely ineffective.
Greg
Monday, November 14, 2011 at 7:19 AMThe fact that it’s still freely available online right now means this was completely ineffective.
klaw81
Monday, November 14, 2011 at 10:27 AMThe point that everyone is missing, is that there is clearly an overseas market for this content. It seems likely that having had access denied, overseas viewers would embrace alternative availability via subscription streaming or pay per view.
But of course, the rights holders will faff about with the series for 6 months or more, until everyone loses interest. Meanwhile, everyone who did want to watch it will have found an unofficial means of doing so. The content is usually pretty much worthless by the time they manage to make a deal.
One of these days, the studios will figure out that their model is broken beyond repair and come up with a way of getting content to people when they actually want it.