More 'evidence' that free P2P is evil and illegal, according to the BBC's Click.

Studies conducted independently and for movie studios and TV networks unanimously show free P2P has no negative effect on ticket and DVD sales, yet producers inside and outside Hollywood still claim it's illegal and killing their business.

They continue their false, misleading rhetoric that filesharing of legally purchased or recorded TV shows and movies is illegal. No court or government on earth has ever declared that to be so, but the major studios and mainscream media would like the public to believe they've "successfully prosecuted" thousands of "illegal filesharers" of music and video.

Children, single moms, senior citizens and corpses blackmailed by the studios and record producers have been forced to settle out of court, causing untold financial hardships and in some cases even bankruptcy and dissolution of the family.

A recent ruling in an Italian court quashed the convictions of two former students who in 1994 set up a P2P network, saying downloading computer files containing films, music or software isn't a crime if not done for profit.

In the recent edition of the Beeb's Click, a TV magazine concerned with all things electronic and internet, presenter Spencer Kelly and journalist Marc Cieslak report on the popularity of downloading US tv shows for free hours, weeks, months or years before they air in certain time zones or countries - if ever.

"With the advent of broadband, viewers are increasingly turning to the web and peer-to-peer downloading software to get their fix of the latest TV shows," says the BBC. "There is just one small problem with this P2P trend - a large proportion of this downloading is illegal."

While spouting the same tired Hollywood lies and falsehoods, the reporters fail to back up their claims with any type of proof that it is indeed illegal, instead concentrating their efforts on demonizing file sharers, who don't sell anything and who therefore don't make money of file sharing.

Intimidating and threatening internet service providers for customer details is one strong-arm tactic employed. The Federation Against Copyright Theft (Fact) says it tracks down pirates and brings them before the courts. "We look to sites that we hear about, that we've got intelligence on, and we examine what's happening on those sites, and we continue to investigate and eventually we will be taking enforcement action," said Fact's director general Kieron Sharp.

p2pnet has suggested FACT is short for Farcical Approaches to Copyright Transgressions.

An anonymous filesharer interviewed by Click told of the ease of finding and downloading any program he wanted. "It's very, very easy to find the shows you're after. There are several websites that my friends have told me about. I do a Google search within that website and can find anything I want."

The most popular and easiest-to-use P2P software is BitTorrent, a free, open source protocol. Invented by Bram Cohen several years ago, Cohen claims he'd only been interested in finding a way to transfer large files over the internet using a minimum amount of personal bandwidth, and had never intended it to be used for 'illegal purposes'. Indeed, he claims he himself has never used BitTorrent to download or share copyrighted materials.

'Click' makes a point of highlighting the availability of such US shows as 24 and Lost by doing a quick search on Torrentspy, a popular torrent listing website which Hollywood has unsuccessfully tried to close down time and again. "If I perform a quick search for Kiefer Sutherland's action show '24', pages and pages of files appear. Some entries are individual episodes, but lots of them are entire seasons of the show."

The program completely ignores the fact that most of the BBC's new shows are just as desired and available as any US offering, with new episodes of the hugely popular Dr Who and Torchwood appearing online within hours of broadcast, allowing people in the US and elsewhere to download and watch them at their leisure instead of having to wait months or years for them to air.

Click also fails to acknowledge that it, too, is widely available over free P2P.

A 16-minute audio discussion on the Click website reveals the presenters and reporters haven't a clue as to how influential free P2P is to the consumers' purchasing choices, as well as their ignorance of the quality of digital videos available.

They believe that the majority of Hollywood movies on P2P are poor-quality cams at odd angles and resolutions, with audience members walking past the screen.

That might have been true in the last century when broadband filesharing was in its infancy, but the days are long gone when cams and telecines dominated. A cursory glance through any BitTorrent tracker or website shows that the majority of new films are DVD screeners (given to promoters and Academy members), or legally purchased retail DVD rips.

As the sharing of legally purchased or recorded TV shows, movies and music is not illegal and P2P is gaining more and more users every day, besides trying to sue their customers into buying 'product', networks are countering with reduced quality online streaming of some popular series.

"You can go to the ABC website and watch Lost, you can go to the NBC website and watch Heroes, says David Price, Head of Piracy Intelligence at Envisional. "In the US networks are selling episodes of Lost and episodes of other shows on iTunes for about $1.99 a go."

Another expected avenue of mainstream, 'legal' distribution is Hollywood's desire to enter the world of P2P. It's widely known and not disputed that several major Hollywood studios and broadcasters are planning to launch their own filesharing services using BitTorrent within the next year or two.

Last year, BT's Cohen contracted with several Hollywood studios and music producers to distribute 'legal' DRM-infested files using the BitTorrent protocol and listing them on his own BitTorrent web site. Recently BitTorrent acquired µTorrent, possibly the most popular and user-friendly P2P program available because of its simplicity and low use of memory resources.

A quick glance of BitTorrent.com reveals their official releases are comprised mostly of home-made or independent films and music videos, as well as trailers for Hollywood movies, although it's been reported that their search engine will find and list torrents for 'illegal' shows such as 24 and Lost.

A year or two ago the BBC decided to make its entire archive of audio and video available on the internet for free, and developed a proprietary Beta software for UK tv license holders to access and download anything they wanted. As this endeavor would undoubtedly require an unlimited amount of storage space and bandwidth, Auntie is now in talks with Google to put some content on YouTube, mostly in the form of clips and trailers "to raise the profile of its content".

The BBC's efforts to make its library available for free are honorable and should be used as a template for US networks. Although it's fair enough that tv license holders in the UK should have unlimited and unrestricted access for the content they paid for, this shuts out the many people in foreign countries who receive BBC broadcasts legally through their cable or satellite subscriptions. Indeed, many streamed clips and episodes now online on the BBC are only accessible to IP addresses in the UK. Likewise, some online episodes of US TV shows (and in some cases the entire website) can only be viewed by IP addresses in the US.

"TV battles peer-to-peer pirates" is the headline of the Click report, but they're fighting a losing battle.

Dissatisfied consumers drew the line in the sand years ago and Hollywood has never been able to cross it, though they've repeatedly tried and failed. The more they threaten and blackmail people into buying 'product,' the more they use illegal and immoral strong-arm tactics to get their way; the more they use Washington for their own needs; the more they try to intimidate foreign countries into kowtowing to their demands, the longer and wider that line in the sand will become.

As studies have repeatedly shown, free filesharing promotes artists and films for free, jump-starts careers, and increases sales of CDs, DVDs and cinema tickets. The market dictates what works, not the marketers.

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