Thanks to certain Resnetsters, TV-on-demand is a reality for many UB students.
Shows like "Invader Zim" and "Buffy: The Vampire Slayer," not to mention all the incarnations of "Star Trek" and various anime shows, can be found with a few taps on the keyboard and a mouse click or two.
But a recent subpoena served by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to Verizon requesting the identity of an Internet user who downloaded copyrighted music was upheld in court, raising the question, how safe is downloading these files?
This case threatens the privacy of Internet users in favor of an accusation (for which, as far as I was able to discover, no suit has been filed) made by a copyright holder.
Is the practice of digitizing television shows and making them available, sans advertising, a legal one? And is the issue as murky as it appears at first?
After all, the studios that produce these programs sell advertising space to finance them, and because hard drive space is often at a premium, the ads are almost never included in the product offered up for consumption by a majority of the UB audience.
However, anyone with a VCR can tape these television shows, or have parents at home do so, and then pass the media on. Tape-trades (both video and musical) have existed for just that purpose ever since the technology made them practical.
That technology was once just as in danger as peer-to-peer file-sharing programs are today, but the VCR was saved from an untimely demise in 1984. In what is known as the "Sony Betamax" case, the Supreme Court ruled that since VCRs had applications that were legal, Hollywood couldn't block the advance of consumer-level videotaping.
Unfortunately, the ruling did not transfer to a digital medium, partly because digital files can be copied without degradation over many generations.
Before it is condemned for making video piracy commonplace, what about other uses for the technology that allows a casual "Buffy" fan to catch the latest episodes despite UB's cable network not carrying the channel responsible for the show's broadcast?
Downloading Eminem's latest dreck-filled album or the newest Ben Affleck flick is not, after all, the only thing KaZaA and Napster is used for - and not everyone who doesn't buy an album or pay for a movie ticket would purchase these "pirated" items if the financial means were available to them.
Variations in television, film, and music have lessened considerably in recent years, with every successive generation of marketers and public relations people narrowing the scope of what major labels have made available to consumers. Corporate buyouts have done what the market refused to do - narrowed these choices even further, making it so that when you read the news on http://www.aol.com you're actually reading information put together by TIME reporters, marketing products Warner Brothers has produced.
In the process, commercially non-viable voices have been silenced. The mainstreaming of alternative subcultures has had effects across the boards, not just in the media. What used to be a method of rebelling against material marketed as thought provoking when it was really mind-numbing has been co-opted.
The free exchange of information, via file-sharing networks that allow these co-opted materials to re-enter the hands of a disenfranchised consumer body, is, therefore, the only means left to those of us who not only refuse to play ball with companies that are merely interested in making their bottom line.
When the media starts caring about the quality of the media they are creating, instead of simply the quantity of money it's bringing in, then it will be time to reconsider the justification of "loss of profit" when it comes to prosecuting those who have insisted on having a voice in what is and isn't worthy of being paid for.
When the Supreme Court defended Sony's videotaping technology against Hollywood studios, they allowed a door to remain open that has resulted in new prospectives, initiatives and artistic creations over the years.
File sharing has the potential to be the VCR of the 21st century, and in many ways, it has already achieved this. While VCRs can be used to copy videotapes, distribute television shows without "proper" advertising and dub movies both from other tapes and from network broadcasts, videotapes and their associated technologies have also expanded the number of artists and thinkers who have been able to get their messages out to the public.
Information wants to be free. Industry, however, wants it to be as expensive as possible.
Be careful when you download your favorite television shows off any network, because the only reason the RIAA/Verizon subpoena was issued in the first place was because an RIAA analyst was watching the data that particular day - and while Verizon holds up the privacy of its users as its reason for fighting the subpoena, it is hard to believe that they are not, in some ways, concerned with the bad press that would result when thousands of porn downloaders realized their privacy was suddenly less than assured.
So look out the next time you're enjoying the most recent episode of "Oz." Somebody could be watching you.
