morgan_dhu | In Which I Enter the Modern Age

Almost everyone I know online is doing it, but for some reason, I had never really even thought of doing it myself until a few weeks ago. And now, I wish I'd started doing it years ago. It gives me such a feeling of freedom and control. And it's so much more convenient, and, frankly, more enjoyable than what I'd always done instead. Although it is true that at first I thought I'd only do it every once in a while, when I really needed it, and now I'm doing it almost every day.

You've probably figured it out by now. I've started watching downloaded TV shows.

I started when I turned, in my usual state of heightened anticipation, to the channel that's been carrying Painkiller Jane, only to find that there was no Painkiller Jane, not that night, nor the next, nor, according to the schedules, the week after or even the week after that. Painkiller Jane had been dumped. Yet it was apparently still being aired in the US. So I did what any addict will do when there is no legitimate source for her drug of choice. I went blackmarket.

Not only did I get to see episodes of Painkiller Jane that no one in Canada was going to show me, but I rediscovered how much better a narrative works when there are no commercials. (I'd learned this about movies back when I got my first VCR, but hadn't applied it to other forms of commercial entertainment before now.)

And, like the proverbial gateway drug, the experience of watching a show I could not get in Canada made it so much easier to move to watching shows that had already aired in other countries, and were supposed to air sometime in Canada, but no one had gotten around to airing them yet, and I was dying to see them.

Yes, my next step was watching all the first half-season of Blood Ties, which had already aired in the US, and the full season of Torchwood, which had already aired in the UK.

Edit: I forgot! I also decided that it wasn't fair to have to wait over a year for the third season of ReGenesis, which has already aired on pay-TV but won't be on Showcase, the other cable channel that's a production partner, for goddess knows how long.

Ah, what a slippery slope this is. I next decided to watch all of The Dresden Files episodes, which had already aired in Canada but I'd missed them because I never watch Space (the Canadian sci-fi channel) unless I know there's something I want to watch, and they never do any publicity for their new shows anywhere else, so I didn't know it was on until after it was in media res, and I hate coming in on a series like that half-way.

Then I really hit the hard stuff. Yes, Doctor Who season three has finally started airing in Canada, but I know because I read spoilers that there are two three-part stories in the second half of the season, and I've always hated waiting for resolution, so... you guessed it, I've got the second half of the season now and I'm going to have a Doctor Who marathon.

And of course, there's all sorts of older series I'd never had the chance to see, or never get rerun and I'd love to see again. I've just discovered Sapphire & Steel, a 70s British SF series I'd heard a lot about but had never seen. And someone out there must have put VR.5 online (yes, I think David McCallum is a sex god, if you must know), although I haven't found it yet. And then there's all the still-existing early Doctor Who episodes that I haven't seen in 40-odd years (I still mourn over the fact that one of my favourite First Doctor series, Marco Polo, is among the missing). In fact, that's what's happening right now - An Unearthly Child is on its way as I type this.

Frankly, I'm tired of having to wait months, even years, for TV shows that are airing elsewhere first - especially series like Blood Ties, which is made in Canada, or Doctor Who and Torchwood, which are partly financed with Canadian money. And I'm tired of waiting forever for the quirky niche-market shows I like to get re-run or put out on DVD.

So I guess I've joined the Torrent revolution. Instant gratification R Us. I can has what I want. Naow.

And yes, I do feel uneasy about the fact that if everyone watches current or currently syndicated old TV shows this way, then stations and networks lose viewers and thus lose advertisers and then they don't buy the shows and it gets less likely that production companies will make shows that people who download shows will like, and the creative people who think up and write these shows won't work, and on it goes. I know some shows and some episodes are made available online after they've been aired by the networks that air them, but I certainly don't know the provenance of what I've been watching. I'm still working out the ethics of it for myself. But the old system isn't working any more, not for people who really want to see what's happening in to their favourite shows but can't because their shows aren't given priority by the networks where they live, and who would really like to be able to talk to their fellow fans in Australia or the US or the UK or wherever about shows that aren't airing on the same schedules.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

We have always had a problem in this country with shows being shown months or years later than in the rest of the world.

I was having a major problem with one of the networks here that was deliberately buying up programs and sporting events which it then refused to show, as a means of cornering the market. This kind of predatory practice completed destroyed any ethical qualms that I might have had.

We had similar problems with books and music. In the end, the government permitted "parallel imports", so that if they were not released after a reasonable time (28 days) then the exclusive distribution rights lapsed and anyone could legally import them from overseas. This had the desired effect, and incidentally made them cheaper.

This had a flow-on effect to TV shows and movies, as delays meant that people would watch them on DVD, and they are now shown more promptly. Doctor Who and Torchwood are being shown here somewhat after the UK, but before North America.

Yeah, it's a matter of how bad the delay is. Lucky you, for having a government that actually thought about the problem and developed a solution that works for everyone.

I must admit I'd been thinking about getting into this ever since I learned that, instead of showing S1 of Torchwood before S3 of Doctor Who, as continuity requires, they were going to air Who this summer and not air Torchwood until this fall.

For some years now, I've been OK with seeing US cable shows aired a few weeks later in Canada on some Canadian station. But when it starts to move from weeks to months, and when I just can't get shows I very much want to see, well - something inside me just flipped over and now we're doing the nasty with bittorrent in this household.

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I can certainly see myself buying Blood Ties on DVD. It's really, really good.

I don't buy a lot of DVDs, though. But I'll likely watch ReGenesis when it finally gets to Showcase, because I love that show. (I forgot to mention it in my original post, silly me, but it's another one of the series I watched in this orgy of TV viewing.

Besides, all this gives me something to watch instead of Canadian Idol. ;-)

What's really annoying is that, for continuity, you really should see all of S1 Torchwood before you see certain episodes of S3 Doctor Who. That's what really sucks. All of S1 Torchwood happens before the S3 Doctor Who episodes that have John Barrowman as a guest star, and the CBC is thus fucking with the continuity.

I am still on dial-up, so I remain in the dark ages.

Well, the dark ages had their good points, too. Unfortunately, plumbing, electronic communications and women's rights weren't some of them.

I know that not everyone downloads stuff, or wants to. It just sometimes seems that everyone does. Especially when I want to get involved in fannish conversations that sound interesting about, say, the intersections of racism and sexism racism in certain episodes of Torchwood, and it'll be months before I can see the damned things if I wait for the CBC.

I hope that didn't feel like raining on your parade with a "well, some of us don't have indoor plumbing yet!" kind of comment--was meant to let you know you're not the last kid to get there--some of us aren't there yet, so dont' worry. (-:

No, that wasn't the tone I read from you. Actually, I tend to be a late adopter of new tech myself, and I only upgrade stuff when it's absolutely necessary. Part of my low-consumerism mentality, I think. But I had to move to a high-speed connection when I started working from home a few years back, so that I could connect to the main servers at the office to access files and such, and well, I've gotten used to the various uses of high-speed access now.

But if I hadn't been forced to make the change, I still might be on dial-up myself. ;-)

I am similarly having my ethical dilemma about downloading television programmes. As a rule, I don't download things. In fact, I personally haven't downloaded anything. But last Xmas, my dear ex gave me the first ten episodes of Torchwood, downloaded and burned to DVD, as a way of trying to engage me in dialogue again. (He sent them through a mutual friend, but I still refuse to speak to him). A couple of my friends downloaded and burned the remaining three episodes, and we watched them all together. Because the CBC has taken so bloody long with it (and I did write to the CBC to complain about the way that they have treated Doctor Who and Torchwood fans), I feel less guilt about it.

Likewise, I got hooked on Green Wing when BBC Canada aired it. But they aired edited and truncated versions to make sixty minutes of UK transmission fit into forty-eight minutes of Canadian transmission (and you can bet that they would have chopped it to forty-two minutes in the States). So these friends downloaded and burned the complete episodes for me (though I haven't watched them yet). With both of these series, the DVDs aren't available in Canada yet, and with Torchwood, there are continuity issues that I would otherwise have missed out on.

Normally, I'm quite intolerant of piracy and downloading of an illegal sort. But with television, when we are forced to wait six months-plus for series, or when the broadcasts we do get are of an inferior quality (I'm having issues with Spooks (aka "MI-5") right now with chopped episodes again and a full season behind), is it fair to the consumers to ask them to sit and politely wait? Not really--especially when the shows have taken either Canadian funds or talent (Who/Torchwood, almost anything on SciFi in the States) and we are still treated like second-class citizens as viewers. And somehow I doubt that the CRTC will be willing to do anything about it.

I still haven't downloaded any kind of Torrent programme on my machine yet. But I may be tempted sooner than later.

I resisted for a very long time, precisely because as a (former) member of the artistic/creative community - actor/director - I'm concerned about artists' rights and financial support for the artistic community - and while piracy is more likely to immediately hurt big corporations, in the long run, it is the artists who suffer, because they have so much more to lose.

But damn, if no one wants to air something like Painkiller Jane in Canada, and who knows when or if DVDs will be released for something that's not at all well-known, then what the hell is one to do? And then you suddenly realise how fucked up the whole international distribution system is for television and film.

In Which I Enter the Modern Age

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