BitTorrent, Dr Who, Stargate:Universe, FlashForward and a golden coin

I’m in two minds about BitTorrent and its ilk. On one hand, I like the idea of being able to see stuff way before Australia gets to put it to air, but on the other, I am also a rabid opponent of copying, piracy, theft of artistic property, call it what you will.

There is another argument too. My brother is about to move to a little town deep in the south west of WA where they don’t get – like many others – Channels 7, 9 and 10, instead getting a hybrid mix on two channels, WIN and GWN, of these three. But not all programs shown in the metro area are also broadcast by these two, so he will no longer see some of his favourite shows. In this area, BitTorrent is of use here obviously.

I sort of give myself an out in special areas. If a program has been seen on free-to-air and I missed it AND it was on the ABC or SBS, then I’ll concede it is probably not doing too much damage to anyone if I watch it via BitTorrent (and yes I know there is iView now as well and of course some shows can be seen via Yahoo). Commercial shows such as FlashForward and Stargate:Universe are a different ballgame though. Real writers, producers, directors, cameramen and women and hundreds of other people have taken time, energy, artistic talent and more to create something they should rightly get a return on. If they don’t, then people will simply not fund these things, quality of programming and movies will plummet, there will be no return on an investment and the industry will either stagnate or die.

I don’t know of a way to stop this while there is recordable media available. Certainly before cassettes were available en masse and cheaply, it wasn’t an issue. Try copying a 33rpm LP physically. But now, it is worse than ever with literally everything ever made for the arts in terms of music, song, print, paint, film, photograph etc being available easily in the form of 0s and 1s.

The other day I had the temerity to watch the latest Dr Who “Waters of Mars”. It was in glorious hi-def and 5.1 surround and is simply brilliant. So I watched it again. And then it struck me. I would cheerfully pay 50c or even a $1 – oh stretch it to a golden coin – to have download access to this sort of thing that self destructs after a time.

I know you can do it with movies and TV shows via iTunes and the like, but these are rarely current-up-to-date-this-week episodes. And they badly affect download data levels unless you are tied to an ISP that has these facilities free of charges. In other words not Telstra. I wonder why the TV stations don’t offer it as a service, or will the likes of iView build into this sort of system I wonder?

I wonder how hard it could be?