P2P distribution of TV shows is an increasing concern in Hollywood. While it’s not as pervasive as music sharing, TV sharing is rapidly increasing and riding the surge in global broadband. Unlike music and movies which people have to buy to enjoy, TV is free. Most consumers don’t associate it with illegal downloading and file sharing.

It’s another case of an entertainment sector demanding full control of its content. TV producers complain that P2P downloads decrease direct revenues from DVD compilations, international revenues, and even iTunes. They warn that edited shows that strip commercials undermine the advertising model that makes TV free today.
Via www.p2p-weblog.com

The Big Four record labels are fighting tooth and nail to kill the French decision to make it legal to share music and movies online.
MPs, who’ve already voted once on the matter, will debate it again next week and if they confirm the earlier decision, turning it into law, France will become the first country to make it legal to share copyrighted music online.

“The surprise vote caused outrage among record companies and film producers, who say illegal peer-to-peer (P2P) copying costs their industries millions of euros every year,” says the BBC. “It was an embarrassing defeat for the government, which had planned to introduce large fines and possible jail terms of up to three years for internet pirates.

“Seventeen year old Aziz Ridouan became so angry at the number of people already being taken to court that he started up his own pressure group.

“Today, the Audiosurfers Association has 6,000 members. It campaigns for a change in the law and helps defend those being prosecuted.”
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The original Napster was killed by the corporate music industry Mafia whose ignorant and inept capos thought that was all they needed to do to simultaneously kill p2p and file sharing.

They were wrong and they’ve been wrong about everything else ever since, including believing that suing a few thousand of the hundreds of millions of p2p file sharers would be enough to turn errant customers back into good little mindless consumers.

And when Roxio did a Frankenstein on Napster, digging up the corpse, it thought the name would be enough to have significant numbers of eager punters lining up, willing to pay $1 and more for the low-fidelity, lossy, tracks being touted by the Big Four record labels.

It didn’t happen and it’ll never happen, and now the sorely troubled Napster, nee Roxio, is trying to blame Microsoft and music player makers for its woes.

The Big Four claim more than 300 ‘legal’ music sites are selling all kinds of downloads. This is, however, sheer, unadulterated equine excreta.

There are no successful corporate sites. Not one. And the “booming” online music market so far exists only in the imaginations of the PR hacks who dream up the puff pieces released by EMI, Vivendi, Sony BMG and Warner as ‘news’ and which are faithfully regurgitated by the mainstream media, which are in turn owned by the entertainment cartels.

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