Video reveal: BBC super-sizing “the first truly digital Olympics”

NBC may have been criticised for not streaming enough Olympics Games – but, in the U.K., the BBC plans to stream all 2,500 hours of this summer’s London 2012 events (up from 1,500 in 2008), in what it’s calling “the first proper digital Olympics.”

“It’s the first time our audience gets total control,” BBC News & Knowledge GM Phil Fearnley said during a Tuesday briefing, in which executives showed products demonstrating already-announced plans to offer 24 alternate live HD streams (up from six in 2008).

“We’ve tested it every day for months,” Fearnley said. “The biggest single event we’ve ever seen was in the World Cup when England played Slovenia. Take that and double it – that’s what we’ve been planning for the Olympics.”

  • A new video player built for the recently-upgraded BBC Sport website will offer rewindable live action, alerts to key alternate live moments and participant information.
  • Web pages will include data-driven profiles and Twitter feeds of competing athletes and viewers’ Twitter sentiment.
  • The BBC is also working on iOS and Android apps plus a mobile website.
  • A standardised connected TV application will offer live and catch-up video to Sony Smart TV, PlayStation 3, Video TiVo and other platforms yet to be announced.

Much of the BBC’s digital Olympics offering is merely the result of the continuous iterative product development that the corporation undergoes. The platforms that have been built are also expected to be redeployed for upcoming live events including Euro 2012 and Wimbledon.

“You don’t need to be a genius to work out that Glastonbury [the huge annual U.K. music festival] would be a good example,” added the BBC’s product head for Sport and London 2012, Cait O’Riordan.

Aside from live, events will be available to watch via the BBC for more than the standard iPlayer catch-up window of seven days. “The IOC sets the rights window – it’s longer than seven days,” O’Riordan said.

Deltatre, Massive, Magnetic North, Adobe and Atos have been amongst the private-sector recipients of outsourcing contracts in the project.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/emp/external/player.swf

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from GigaOM http://paidcontent.org/2012/05/15/bbcolympics/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medi...

Interview: BBC’s Olympics will deliver an ‘online legacy’

http://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F46454344&auto_play=false&show_artwork=true&color=ff3500

Phil Fearnley isn’t sure which will be the most used of the “four screens” identified for delivering Olympics coverage this summer – Web, mobile, tablet or connected TV.

But the BBC News & Knowledge general manager is promising a buzzphrase right on-message with London games organisers themselves – “legacy”.

“We don’t know how people are going to consume it, but we’re going to make sure they get the best possible experience they can,” Fearnley told paidContent, after showing off BBC Sport’s Olympics web video player, data feeds, connected TV services and mobile apps.

“We believe that connected TVs will be a really big part of the future. We have delivered on Red Button services for years, sporting events have been a big part of that – we get 10 to 13 million unique users a week on Red Button services.”

Fearnley refused, when asked, to elaborate on digital Olympics costs incurred by the BBC, which has faced funding cuts after years of budget envy from commercial rivals.

Instead, he promised developments would have “legacy” – a term plucked right from the playbook of London’s own Olympic organisers, who have been building costly sporting stadia, during public spending cutbacks, to last.

“We never share cost figures,” Fearnley said. “We have value-for-money in mind for our license payers. We are making sure the things that we do can be used way beyond the Olympic Games.

“We delivered the Sport (website) refresh six months before. We delivered our streaming services so we can do Wimbledon, F1 and the Diamond Jubilee post-Olympics, making sure that legacy gets to our audience as soon as we possibly can.”

On Tuesday, he told a briefing: ”Much like the velodrome and the aquatics centre, that were built with lasting legacy at their core, we have built our online experience to leave a lasting digital legacy for our audiences.”

A mixture of earlier incremental product innovation and Olympics-specific new builds, the corporation’s online games platforms will later be re-deployed on other sporting events and music concerts like the Glastonbury festival.

For the new products which are being brought to the table, the 2012 Olympic Games is a dry run for far smaller use cases to come.

Coupled with this year’s Jubilee coverage, Auntie believes it must fulfil its remit to galvanise the nation. All in all, 2012 is a very big year for the BBC, as well as for Britain.

“Do I feel pressured?,” Fearnley asked paidContent. “I feel comforted by the team we’ve got here. This is the most comprehensive testing we’ve ever done at Online, we’ve very confident.”

“It’s the first time our audience gets total control,” Fearnley said during Tuesday’s briefing.

“We’ve tested it every day for months. The biggest single event we’ve ever seen was in the World Cup when England played Slovenia. Take that and double it – that’s what we’ve been planning for the Olympics.”

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from GigaOM http://paidcontent.org/2012/05/15/philfearnley/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_med...

How to keep MobileMe mail working after iCloud turns it off

Here at TUAW on the tipline, we have heard no end of complaints about MobileMe. Some days, it seems like every other tip is about how much of a mess MobileMe email is. Which is probably why Apple is finally shutting the service down in a month or so, transitioning over to the new iCloud instead. But as TidBITS notes, MobileMe users will still be able to use their email addresses even after the service is gone: All you'll have to do is follow the instructions on the transitions page to set an option on the main site, and then you'll be able to keep accessing your MobileMe email even after the transition.

My advice? Unless you're thrilled with MobileMe, it's time to move on to one of the many great free email services, of which Gmail is my first recommendation. Yes, changing your email address is a pain, and there are probably some of you out there on so many lists and services that you'll stick with MobileMe as long as you can. But if you want my advice, use this opportunity to get out while you can. Good luck!

How to keep MobileMe mail working after iCloud turns it off originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 14 May 2012 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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from TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog http://www.tuaw.com/2012/05/14/how-to-keep-mobileme-mail-working-after-icloud...

"Brainput" Boosts Your Brain Power By Offloading Multitasking To a Computer

MrSeb writes "A group of American researchers from MIT, Indiana University, and Tufts University, led by Erin Treacy Solovey, have developed Brainput — a system that can detect when your brain is trying to multitask, and offload some of that workload to a computer. Using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), which is basically a portable, poor man's version of fMRI, Brainput measures the activity of your brain. This data is analyzed, and if Brainput detects that you're multitasking, the software kicks in and helps you out. In the case of the Brainput research paper (PDF), Solovey and her team set up a maze with two remotely controlled robots. The operator, equipped with fNIRS headgear, has to navigate both robots through the maze simultaneously, constantly switching back and forth between them. When Brainput detects that the driver is multitasking, it tells the robots to use their own sensors to help with navigation. Overall, with Brainput turned on, operator performance improved — and yet they didn't generally notice that the robots were partially autonomous. Moving forward, Solovey wants to investigate other cognitive states that can be reliably detected using fNIRS. Imagine a computer that increases the size of buttons and text when you're tired, or a video game that slows down when you're stressed. Your Xbox might detect that you're in the mood for fighting games, and change its splash screen accordingly. Eventually, computer interfaces might completely remold themselves to your mental state."

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from Slashdot http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/05/14/1458256/brainput-boosts-your-brai...

Member Claims Anonymous "Might Well Be the Most Powerful Organization On Earth"

wasimkadak writes in with an interview with Anonymous member "Commander X" in which he talks about how the hacktivists are the most powerful group on the planet. "Christopher Doyon, a.k.a. Commander X, sits atop a hillside in an undisclosed location in Canada, watching a reporter and photographer make their way along a narrow path to join him, away from the prying eyes of law enforcement. It's been a few weeks of encrypted emails back and forth, working out the security protocol to follow for interviewing Doyon, one of the brains behind Anonymous, now a fugitive from the FBI. Doyon, who readily admits taking part in some of the highest-profile hacktivist attacks on websites last year — from Tunisia to Orlando, Sony to PayPal — was arrested in September for a comparatively minor assault on the county website of Santa Cruz, Calif., where he was living, in retaliation for the town forcibly removing a homeless encampment on the courthouse steps. The 'virtual sit-in' lasted half an hour. For that, Doyon is facing 15 years in jail."

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Time Warner Cable's CEO doesn't know what AirPlay is, hates set-top boxes

Time Warner Cable's CEO doesn't know what AirPlay is, hates set-top boxesWhile he might not be the first human to admit unfamiliarity with Apple's AirPlay, he's likely to be one of the most recognizable figures amongst the bunch. In a recent interview, Time Warner Cable's CEO, Glenn Britt, said one of the main challenges faced by digital video was the lack of simple ways to stream internet-based content to television sets. Naturally, that brought up the imminent question about Cupertino's streaming goods, to which he responded by saying "I'm not sure what AirPlay is," also adding that "the current Apple TV, the little thing, the hockey puck, really doesn't do anything to help enable you to get internet material on your TV." Furthermore, he went on to say, "I hate set-top boxes," as he believes smart TVs are a better streaming solution compared to other bits that require additional hardware. Perhaps this explains why the TWC iOS apps are still missing out on some much-needed AirPlay action.

Time Warner Cable's CEO doesn't know what AirPlay is, hates set-top boxes originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 14 May 2012 15:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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from Engadget http://www.engadget.com/2012/05/14/time-warner-cable-ceo-glenn-britt-airplay/

The Singularity hits Venture Capital (Wilson/Kauffman Redux)

Image via mobihealthnews.com

I mean, really, who still wants to be a venture capitalist ?  It’s from a fast moving job to have for new HBS grads with flat abs and trophy girlfriends (or vice versa) to labour of love for guys or gals who are willing to commit 15-20 years of their lives and preferably a big percentage of their current and future wealth without knowing whether they will ever make money.  Shocker!  For all we know VC’s might start to feel and act more like entrepreneurs by the time we are done with all of this.  Now that would be something.

Let’s recap an exciting week (and build on the real time rant I wrote post the Kauffman report).

Last week, we first got a new “bombshell” Kauffman report calling LP’s out as being co-dependents for the terrible performance of VC, fundamentally complicit of the mess we are in (read Felix Salmon or watch Deirdre Bolton with Harold Bradley, Kauffman’s CIO).   And then we have Fred Wilson telling us that should venture capital die, there’s always be blogging.  I mean, come on, even Freddie ?  The man on top of the networked world, the oracle of Silicon Alley, the Meme of Union Square ?  That’s like Obi One’s light sabre turning to red.  Whatever is happening to the Force?  I an now expecting Chris Dixon to say he is turning to Venture Capital, and then I will be officially confused.

In any event, the Jedis have finally come home to roost: it’s hard to see, barring irrational behavior (a big if, admittedly), how our world is not going to go through accelerated shrink and turmoil in the coming years.

I am seeing both a threat and an opportunity.
The schizophreny of the venture capitalist

If you think about it in simple terms, VC’s are trying to reconcile two seemingly contradictory objectives.

  • Find the “Glimmer of Greatness”:  VC’s want to fund risky, extremely high upside opportunities that can turn into fund returners.
  • Control Capital Intensity: VC’s want (or should want) to limit the amount of capital they put at risk before risk is reduced or a company is in scaling mode.

They want to back great “world changing” entrepreneurs who will build “awesome” companies. They also (rationally) want to cut their losses in companies that are not working out and focus all of their energy on the ones that have the potential to deliver big. They want to love entrepreneurs, but they may have to fire them one day. Each partner needs to overcome his or her own aversion to loss and have the courage to let go of companies that are not on the right track, support their partners whose startups are taking off, and redirect the precious investment reserves that they had allocated to their own babies in doing so. Venture partnerships need to collectively find winners and drive as much cash at reasonable valuations as they can into these stars.

It takes a special balance of passion, determination, respect, empathy, suspension of disbelief and pragmatism to do this well and consistently. It also takes partnerships that work together as one and have the intellectual honesty to recognize what’s working and not working to pull this off. It’s hard.  It’s much harder to do it well and for a long time.
The Mexican debt problem and the great LP awakening

Limited Partner allocations into venture capital are driven by classic portfolio diversification theory, driving fixed allocations into the venture asset class regardless of whether this money could be put to work in the best funds. As far as I can see, there was limited collective thinking amongst LP’s in terms of making sure that the startup market did not end up flooded with money. In the process, so many competing VC groups got funded that no one ended up making much money (smart people destroying each other’s returns). Fear of missing out leads to over-allocation. I heard this called the Mexican Debt Problem : if you hire Mexican debt specialists, you will end up with Mexican debt on your books, no matter the quality of that asset class.

What the Kauffman report does is fire a deafening shot across the bows of LP’s telling them : you are complicit in perpetuating this cycle of underperformance. You have also allowed perverse conditions to flourish, under which management fees ensure that VC’s accrue significant wealth regardless of the outcome. This is a meaningful message, and I am sure LP’s are sitting up and taking note.
Mantra: Venture (generally) does not scale

I am taking a few data points from a whitepaper written by Sante Ventures which I found very interesting.

  • Large funds rarely perform: “No venture fund larger than $750M has ever returned more than 2.0x to its limited partner investors. Fewer than a dozen funds larger than $300M have. On the other hand, over 250 funds smaller than $300M have cleared that same bar”
  • Yet capital concentration is the norm: “Venture capital has become increasingly concentrated in large funds since 1998, with 50-60% of all new capital raised in the asset class committed to funds larger than $300M. Before 1998, fewer than 40 venture funds over $300M had ever been raised. Since then, more than 600 funds have.”
  • Exit averages suggest optimal fund sizes of $150-200M: Of 534 reported exits of a venture-backed U.S. healthcare or life science company in the decade between 2000-2009. Of 534 exits during that period, the average amount of equity invested was $56M and the average exit value was $156M6. By number of total companies, 45% exited at $100M or less, 68% at $200M or less, 83% at $300M or less and 90% at $400M or less7.

That is not to say that these “classic” maths are the be-all and end-all of venture analysis.  I do see “post-stochastic” scenarios for massive value creation, you just need to be one of the 5 or 10 funds who can reliably harness these.

Disruptive forces at work

VC’s love to talk about disruption, and now it is their turn to be disrupted. The primary driver of changes are:

  • Rise of the founder-led companies. Savvy founders know how to fundraise, play the VC game. We’ve moved to a world where deal mechanics were opaque and VC’s had control to one where founders call the shot. Trace it back (symbolically) to Babak Nivi’s VentureHacks, started in 2007, or the work of Paul Graham.
  • Rise of the marketplaces. As deal terms have become simpler, funding is becoming “a product”. Series Seed standard terms are a perfect example. When documents become standard, price is the only variable of competition (if you exclude for a second alignment, relationship and social contract).   Standard contracts make startup funding fluid.  That in turn makes it possible to start markets in everything, such as Angellist, SecondMarkets or Kickstarter) together with associated information products (Klout for clout, TheFunded for reputation, Twitter followed counts for reach — all early and imperfect proxies).  See Semil Shah’s writeup on the topic.
  • Rise of alternative sources of finance:  we’re talking both the good (Kickstarter, Angellist, great new angels), the scary (too many new angels) and the downright ugly (I remember VERY vividly what happened to startups last time they decided to take hedge fund money, and now every one of these fairweather friends wants an Instagram).  Just read Angel No More by Michael Copeland on Wired.  The big risk here is correctly identified by Wilson in the Forbes article: a massive influx of capital, perpetuating a stage of market overfunding through a different route.

Radical transparency ultimately applies to all actors in the marketplace, but marketplace disruptions like these do not make the opportunity go away: it modifies how the game is played. Part of what Kauffman tells us is “mother and apple pie” when it comes to running a venture firm. But combined with all the other elements discussed you have something that looks like a serious discontinuity in the venture model.
So where’s the opportunity exactly ?

The world is awash with too much money chasing too few great opportunities.  The LP’s are shutting their wallets.  The markets are getting transparent and disintermediated.  And you tell me you see opportunity in this?  As they say in Texas, hell yeah!

Entrepreneurs in my world still want:

  • Lead investors who can pull rounds together with them
  • Good advice to help them continuously iterate and execute
  • Someone to help them recruit talent
  • Someone to help them dream and think big thoughts

If the classic shape of a seed has been thrown out of the window, so be it. If entrepreneurs come in seeking cash on the explicit understanding that they are putting together a diverse syndicate to help them run a series of experiments called “a company” with no notion of probability of success, that’s cool by me.  If crowd-funding platforms help them access top flight investors at speed, all the better.

Where am I going with this ?  I don’t know the outcome of the “great seed experiment” any better than the next man.  But frankly it’s hard for me to see how all of this does not afford opportunities to fund better entrepreneurs faster.  Because that, fundamentally, is all that we do: enable the best entrepreneurs that we can find to build the best companies that they can build.

As with any solid disruption, all we have to do is find a way to harness it.  More on that later :-)

from BostInno http://bostinno.com/channels/the-singularity-hits-venture-capital-wilsonkauff...

Want to reinvent TV? Don’t forget the TV

Smart TVs, dumb TVs, Google TVs, Ikea TVs and even everything we know about the rumored Apple TV set all have something in common: In the end, they’re just TVs. That’s whether they’re 42, 50 or 60 inches in size, with a bezel that frames your viewing experience. And whether it’s Netflix, YouTube or just plain old cable TV, the way we watch video on them is fairly similar as well. Sure, the bits may come from different places, and you might even have funky widgets on your iPad or on-screen while you watch TV. But take a step back and today’s TV still looks very much like the TV of yesteryear. Turn it on, watch something, turn it off, and be done with it.

That’s not what the future of the TV will look like at all, if we can believe the folks at NDS. The Israel-based TV services provider, which Cisco acquired for $5 billion in March, has been exploring what the actual TV set will look like five years from now. Company executives came to San Francisco this week to showcase some of their research, and the results are pretty intriguing.

To sum it up briefly, NDS was showcasing a big matrix of six bezel-less flat screen TVs that were combined to form a huge, almost overwhelming TV wall. NDS CTO Nick Thexton then went on to demonstrate big displays like these can be broken up, showing a video of varying sizes somewhere in the middle, with personalized and content-relevant widgets off to the side. And once you get some cinematic 4k content, you might even want to use the whole screen. Check out Christina Bonnington’s story over at Wired.com for more details about the demo, which was neat.

But what I found fascinating was the points that Thexton and NDS Chief Marketing Officer Nigel Smith raised about the future of TV. The real question, Smith told me, is, If you have a TV the size of a wall, how are you going to interact with it?

The future of TV will be modular

NDS uses a PC with multiple video outputs to power its six-display TV wall. Soon, this could be done by small mesh networking-capable modules.

We have all gotten used to the fact that TVs are getting bigger and bigger every year, and the NDS demo of a TV screen that would fill your entire living room wall seems to fit quite well into that narrative. However, Thexton was very vocal about this not being a question of size. “We are not advocating just big TVs,” he told me while standing in front of the giant NDS demo screen.

Instead, Thexton thinks that TVs may become modular and actually consist of much smaller displays that can be combined to fit the room. Think of 6-inch to 8-inch bezel-less squares that you can buy individually and then mount to the wall next to one another, gradually growing the size of your display to fit your needs. These displays would automatically work together, making sure your Saturday night movie runs on all of them at once.

NDS is currently using a PC with multiple video outputs to run its six-screen demo, but Thexton told me the company is developing a small module to connect to each screen separately and then mesh network these to coordinate the complete video output. Mesh networking devices like these could also come in handy if you wanted to include another TV on a second wall, for example to run a news feed or an in-home video stream while you’re interacting with other media on the main screen.

The future of TV will be ambient

One of the main points of the NDS demo was that huge displays don’t always equal huge videos. Instead of watching your morning news in theater mode, you’re going to watch clips with a much smaller size and use the rest of the screen for other information. In fact, sometimes you might not be watching TV at all but will still find it useful to leave the large screen wall on. For example, it could display cover art for the music you are listening to while giving you access to your calendar reminders, a wall-sized clock and your Twitter feed. Home automation and security-camera footage are also applications that could be useful to run all day, or fade in and out as needed.

A huge screen doesn’t necessarily mean that you watch everything blown up to the max.

But with that big ambient screen also comes a unique new challenge: You really don’t want to turn it off. Anyone with a big TV screen is already aware that the device can look like a big, black annoying hole in the middle of your living room when not in use. Now multiply this by three, four or even six and you end up with a whole lot of ugly dark screen estate.

Leaving your big TV wall running all day, though, will cost you a fortune in electricity. The solution will be e-ink-like display technologies that allow you to keep a visual wallpaper or even some widgets up and running without burning a hole in your wallet.

The future of TV will need new interaction models

NDS ran its demo off an iPad, allowing me to change the immersion level — and display size — of a video with simple sliders. That was good enough for a demonstration, but it still seemed somewhat complex for everyday use. Thexton told me that the company had evaluated Kinect-like gesture control as well as Siri-like voice control but eventually abandoned both because they seemed to require too much effort and were too prone to errors. In the end, he said, people didn’t want to control their TV in a Minority Report-like fashion but with something that felt more natural. “We don’t want people to feel weird in their living room,” he said.

But is the tablet the be-all and end-all? Thexton didn’t think so, and he reminded me that controlling a TV traditionally can be boiled down to just a few core indicators. Give someone a remote control with a D-Pad, and they can pretty much navigate through any cable guide or online video app. So if only four to six buttons are needed, how about replacing these with interactions that can be accomplished without any remote control at all? The key might just be to treat the TV like a pet, said Thexton, and develop a kind of interactive language both you and your TV understand. In other words: Don’t be trained to use a remote; train it to do the things you want.

Define TV’s future without its constraints

A TV that consists of many little displays working together, a TV that’s always on, a TV the size of your living room wall and a TV that obeys you like a well-trained dog: That’s a lot to swallow, especially if you’ve thought of the next wave of apps as innovation in the TV space.

However, it may be time to think bigger, and leave some of the assumptions of what TV is — and what TV sets are — behind. “TV has to start defining a future for itself,” Thexton told me. And that future may not fit into a 60- or 70-inch bezel.

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from GigaOM http://gigaom.com/video/modular-ambient-tv-future/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_...

Game of Thrones is the Most-Pirated Television Show of 2012


According to Forbes, HBO’s Game of Thrones Season 2 is going to be the most pirated show this year. Not exactly a title any show wants.

“With its popularity swelling and no easy way for viewers without cable to watch, HBO’s hit series Game of Thrones is inspiring massive levels of piracy, according to numbers from the BitTorrent-tracking and analysis firm Big Champagne,” writes Forbes. “By the firm’s rough estimate, the second season of the show has been downloaded more than 25 million times from public torrent trackers since it began in early April, and its piracy hit a new peak following April 30th’s episode, with more than 2.5 million downloads in a day.”

John Robinson, a senior media analyst for Big Champagne, says it’s too early to tell, but the popularity rankings on the download site Pirate Bay mean Game Of Thrones is a favorite. “The fact that it’s consistently at the top of the Pirate Bay’s top one hundred TV show chart seems like an in-your-face leading indicator of the huge volume at which this is being shared,” he said.

Last year, piracy of Game of Thrones came in second only to Showtime’s Dexter, but this year they consistently have the lead. Forbes makes sure to note the sites it looked at aren’t the only illegal download spots, and many are tougher to track.

“While Game of Thrones filesharing rates are probably driven in part by its appeal to the young, geeky male demographic that’s most prone to using torrent sites, HBO hasn’t helped the problem by making the show tough to watch online for the young and cable-less,” writes Forbes. “The show isn’t available through Hulu or Netflix, iTunes offers only Season 1, and using HBO’s own streaming site HBO Go requires a cable subscription.”

“This is absolutely a reaction to the show’s not being available elsewhere online,” said Robinson. “It’s a very tricky game trying to create this kind of scarcity.”

Would it be nice if HBO came up with a legal online viewing option for its network’s properties? Something you didn’t actually have to have cable for but could pay to watch elsewhere? Yes. Should we be blaming HBO for people stealing its content? No. People pirating is just that. People making the decision not to wait for the show to come to DVD or pay for the privilege to have it in their home. We’ve heard a lot of people have been dropping cable in favor of services such as Hulu, but just because you choose not to access what’s available to you doesn’t make stealing ok.

It’s interesting to hear the types of reasoning people have for this type of behavior too. Forbes pointed to a Game of Thrones reddit thread where users who have pirated the show, discussed why they did it. A good number of people said they never would have gotten into the show if they hadn’t pirated it first, but actually wound up purchasing the DVD after the fact. There’s also some who just want the episode available digitally on their computers but still pay for HBO and buy the discs, and international users who have different issues altogether.

I think one of the biggest issues with piracy of this kind is people want the content immediately. Yes, they could simply wait for the DVD to be released, but they don’t because they want it while everyone else is watching it. If they can’t get it instantly by legal means, they’ll get it instantly by illegal means. It honestly makes me concerned for a show like Game of Thrones, because its survival depends on HBO subscriptions.

What are your thoughts?

[via Blastr]

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from Mashable! http://mashable.com/2012/05/12/game-of-thrones-pirated/?utm_source=feedburner...

Dish Network Announces Prime Time TV With No Ads

Hugh Pickens writes "Forbes reports that Dish Network has announced a new feature called called Auto Hop for its satellite TV subscribers that will let you automatically skip all commercials for prime time television from the four major broadcast networks — when you watch programs the day after they are first aired. 'Viewers love to skip commercials,' says Vivek Khemka, vice president of DISH Product Management. 'With the Auto Hop capability of the Hopper, watching your favorite shows commercial-free is easier than ever before.' Craig Moffett says it's going to be hard for Dish to maintain good relationships with its programming affiliates when they start offering a feature intended to cut out the bulk of the affiliates' revenues. Whether the auto-skip feature can withstand legal challenge remains to be seen. 'Given the already long list of industry-unfriendly features promoted by Dish, one wonders if Auto Hop will be the final straw that provokes legal action from the broadcast networks,' says Moffett. 'We suspect Auto Hop probably uses some sort of bookmarking insertion based on automated recognition of commercial inserts (called "fingerprinting'"), which if true could certainly be argued to be a manipulation of the content stream by the distributor.'"

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