dougv.com « Doug Vanderweide

My Glee-ful Piracy And The New Media Mistakes Of The Old Media

I’m a late-blooming gleek. But I’ve caught “Glee” fever something awful — thanks, in little to no part, to the Fox network.

For those not initiated, “Glee” is a musical comedy series that, in the words of the New York Daily News, “dresses like ‘High School Musical’ and has the heart of ‘Porky’s.’” I’d add that in addition to being “cynical, sweet and inestimably funny,” “Glee” may be the most perfectly cast television show ever, and about as well-written, directed, produced and inspired as is possible for broadcast television.

It’s not perfect, but of 20 episodes aired so far, I’d call one or two “OK,” one or two “pretty good,” one or two “masterpieces” and the rest “outstanding.”

I came to “Glee” late thanks in large part to the fact it ran opposite “NOVA” on PBS. That’s why I missed the pilot and second episode, anyway; I have a Series 1 Tivo and one TV, so I can only watch one thing at once, which is fine since I don’t watch much TV;.

I caught part of Episode 3, “Acafellas,” about a third of the way through its original broadcast and wasn’t particularly impressed (it’s one of the “OK” episodes). So I simply ignored “Glee” after that.

It’s how I came to appreciate the series, in the middle of Season 1.5, that spurs me to post: I had to come to it accidentally, thanks to Fox’s half-witted online strategy, and struggle against Fox mightily in order to become an addict.

The Happy Accident

Among my eclectic YouTube tastes are marching bands. I love them; they play into my prejudices so nicely. I like systems and orderly flow. I like precision. I like music, especially that performed on analog instruments. I like creativity. I like passion and performance. A marching band brings all those things together in one place.

Take, as example, one of my favorite marching band performances, from Nishihara High School in Japan:

Simply amazing.

Anyway, during one of my marching-band-viewing stints on YouTube, I ran across a video of the USC Marching Band and Radiohead performing “15 Step” on the 2009 Grammy awards. I also like Radiohead, and “15 Step” is one of their best songs.

Thanks, I am sure, to CBS looking upon YouTube as a thief and yanking any actual video of the performance, what I found was the original performance audio dubbed over some stills. Since marching band is a visual thing, stills weren’t gonna cut it. I wanted to see the actual performance.

The “related videos” section for the “15 Step” video included a “behind-the-scenes” video of that performance, made by the USC Marching Band itself; which, in turn, led me to the USCMB channel, which included a video of the band rehearsing “4 Minutes,” one of those rare pop songs that doesn’t completely suck, for a recent “Glee” episode.

Now, this was something I had to see, because as awful as the sound on that video was, it was obvious that performance completely kicked ass.

So I searched YouTube for it, with no luck. Then I decided to check the “Glee” Web site and see if it was on there. And it was on Fox On Demand: Season 1, Episode 15, “The Power Of Madonna.” (Which, I might add, as of this writing, has been removed.)

I clicked the timeline of that episode’s video a few times and found the performance, which was as awesome as I thought it would be. And then I caught the completely brilliant Sue Sylvester line, after it: “Future center square Kurt Hummel there and his brassy hag Mercedes just tore that Madonna song a new one.”

Which was all it took for me to decide to rewind to the start and see the whole thing. Which was all it took for me to decide to watch the other four episodes available on Fox On Demand. Which was all it took for me to decide I had to see every episode.

And that’s where the trouble began.

Bittorrent To The Rescue

Fox On Demand only shows the last five full episodes of “Glee.” Thus, if I wanted to see the other 14 episodes (at the time), I had four options:

1. Purchase the DVDs of Season 1, which contains the first 13 episodes of the show, and live without Episode 14 ($22.99);
2. Purchase the Amazon On Demand video of each of the 14 previous episodes, at $1.99 each ($27.86);
3. Find them streaming on the Web, at YouTube, Hulu or some site (free);
4. Steal them from bittorrent or a file-sharing service (free).

I exercised my options in that exact order.

Purchase the DVDs: Not now. I went to Amazon to see reviews of the DVDs and noticed that the top two helpful reviews were both one-stars. Both noted a complete love of the show, but that Fox was effectively screwing over DVDs purchasers.

In short, rather than launching into Season 2, Fox decided to extend Season 1 by nine episodes. This puts the boots to those who purchased the only DVD copies of the show now legally available to the public. As the Amazon reviews note, Fox is effectively double-dipping for the same episodes with its planned “full” Season 1 release, even if they actually provide their promised discount to those who bought this DVD release.

Why in the world would I join in that mess? I am definitely going to buy Season 1 in its entirety on DVD — but I’m not going to be bent over to pay for it twice, like these unfortunate souls.

Purchase the Amazon On Demand videos: No, thanks. I did notice that Amazon offers Video On Demand of these shows. However, I had a significantly negative experience with downloaded content from Amazon’s MP3 Store and swore an oath I’d never fall for that again, given their zero-refunds policy on digital content.

Even absent that promise, I’m not going to pay $1.99 per episode to have the show locked onto my computer or my old Tivo — not when I have a perfectly good DVD player, and not when I’m going to have a much easier time watching a DVD on my PC than I am converting this digital download to a DVD.

(Personal copies are fair use. I don’t care one whit what the MPAA or RIAA think about that. I bought my copy, I have the right to protect my investment and back that copy up. Period.)

It makes far more sense to purchase the DVDs and have the show on an external, durable medium, which if I was to do it via downloaded shows wouldn’t be anywhere near as valuable as a studio-made DVD, and would probably cost more. So, “Hell, no” to Amazon On Demand.

Find shows on the Web: No such luck. As I previously noted, Fox pulls its shows other than the last five episodes from Fox On Demand, and appears to do the same thing on Hulu. They also seem to have devoted sufficient resources to having previous episodes pulled from other video sites, YouTube among them.

Stealing them: Jackpot! Thankfully, the entire season of “Glee” can be found on bittorrent. So that’s where I got episodes 1-14: Off bittorrent. It took about two minutes to find the torrents and two hours to download all 14 episodes I had not seen, thanks to the fact that there are at least 1,000 other bittorrent users who have them. These were off-air rips of the shows, clearly recorded on a DVR of some sort and then pushed out into AVI files; about 5 GB worth of video.

So, in a marathon over three days, I have seen all 20 episodes of “Glee.” And I am completely in love with the show.

Why Did Fox Make This So Hard?

What mystifies me is the thinking behind Fox’s decisions. What purpose, exactly, do they think their strategy is promoting?

More specifically, let me review the options they could have taken:

Leave everything on Fox On Demand: I would have happily watched every episode on Fox On Demand, and watched whatever commercials they wanted to show me. It would have saved me significant effort and I would still be convinced I need to get the DVDs of this series.

There’s no marginal cost in keeping the episodes online; bandwidth and storage are dirt-cheap, especially on the scale of a broadcast network’s online video offerings. Again, we’re talking about 5 GB of video; probably less, since FLV is more efficient than AVI. You can serve that up on a $9 per month Web hosting plan.

It was nothing to find off-air rips of Glee on bittorrent. I suppose they could class-action sue me for participating in the theft, but why waste money on that? Why not keep the shows on Fox servers, and show me commercials? Wouldn’t that make money? Doesn’t running down people who just want to see some shows they missed ruin goodwill?

I mean, Fox can’t be completely ignorant of the fact that anything one puts on the Web or over the airwaves can be saved and redistributed, right? Especially the Flash videos they use to power Fox On Demand, or local broadcasts. Seriously, why make people steal what you are giving away for free, and lose the potential advertising revenue you could have captured had you kept those videos online?

Hold off on releasing the Season 1 DVDs until Season 1 is over: Or, at least, calling Season 1.5 what it really is, Season 2.

Probably, Fox believes keeping the videos online reduces the likelihood of people purchasing their DVDs. But that’s complete nonsense. FLV and AVI are lossy technologies. If I compress — yes, compress — videos to broadcast quality into those containers, I’m going to be unable to push them back up to DVD quality, nonetheless Blu-Ray quality.

The episodes I got off bittorrent are 624×352. A DVD is going to be at least 704×480, so what I have is about 75% as good as a DVD. As in, it’s noticeably not as good. There’s absolutely no way I can convert what I have into a better resolution; it’s going to look awful if I try.

Which means, if I want DVD-quality video, I have to get the DVDs. Which, again, I am going to do. But I’m not going to do that until Fox actually comes out with a full Season 1 box set and sets a price for it. Again, I’m not going to pay twice for the same thing.

If anything, Fox shot themselves in the foot by trying to milk a mid-season show out of “Glee.”

Hey, I know it’s hard to find shows that work; a lot of crap does well, a lot of great TV never catches on. If you find something that works, you wanna bang it like a tin pot. I’m completely OK with that.

But you can’t put a royal screwing to people when they buy your value-added, high-profit products — such as season box set DVDs — by changing the terms after they buy. That’s only going to create resentment, encourage people like me to stay out until the smoke clears, and otherwise create bottom feeding.

Had Fox called the current 9-episode run of “Glee” “Season 2,” I would have bought Season 1 and waited for this next set to come out on DVD, as well. As it is now, I’m planning to ask for whatever comes out as a Christmas present.

The Bankruptcy Of The Gatekeeper

Fox, and every other large traditional media company, is stuck on a model where the mere fact of owning a copyright should be enough. But it’s not.

Now, I am not one of those “the Web should be free, down with copyright” types. I believe in copyright and intellectual property. I should be able to distribute what I create under my terms.

But if I decide to be a jackass and work against market forces, I should expect my copyrights to be violated. I definitely shouldn’t be surprised that if there is demand for my product, and I refuse to provide it in a way that meets that demand, that a black market will crop up.

If anything, what I should do is directly work with those interested in what I am creating, and give them an ownership stake in what I am doing. Perhaps not an actual fiduciary stake, but at least an emotional stake, if not a practical stake.

It’s that kind of approach that brought “Family Guy” back from the dead twice; that keeps Joss Whedon in work; that made “Battlestar Galactica” such as success.

If Fox can be so intimate with the right way to market television in the Internet age — “Family Guy,” “Firefly” and “Dollhouse” are all Fox shows — then why is it screwing up so badly with “Glee,” which has a cult following to rival any of the previously mentioned shows?

All links in this post on delicious: http://delicious.com/dougvdotcom/my-glee-ful-piracy-and-the-new-media-mistakes-of-the-old-media