Monday, April 2, 2007
Baltar's Trial and P2P Downloads: Ethical Conundrums
Posted by Damion Chaplin in "THOUGHT" @ 12:00 PM
In case you’re one of the two people on this site who doesn’t follow Battlestar Galactica, two Sundays ago marked the season finale. In it, Baltar, the man accused to betraying all of humankind to the genocidal Cylons, was put on trial for his crime of signing execution orders at gunpoint.
Regulars of this site know that I am a fanatic about Battlestar Galactica. My wife and I watch it every week and never miss an episode. So imagine our dismay when we queued up last week’s episode only to find out it was the second part of a two-part finale! Crud! Somehow our DVR, in its supreme wisdom, decided not to record BSG the week before. Lorri and I were mystified, but we just figured they had skipped a week, not that we had missed an episode. I guess we should have looked online to make sure. In any case, we now had part two recorded on our DVR with no access to part one.
Now, if Sci-Fi posted all their episodes online like NBC and others do, we would have just logged on and watched it streaming from their site, even if it was a two-inch window. We were willing to do anything to watch part one - even if it entailed obtaining it illegally.
For the record, I don’t normally do this sort of thing, but in this circumstance I was willing to sidestep the law and download the missing episode via a P2P sharing site. With a fast broadband connection, I was able to download the episode in about 10 minutes. In another 30 minutes I had encoded it as a .WMV to watch on my TV via my Xbox. And shortly after than, my wife and I sat down to watch the missing part one of the two-part Battlestar Galactica season finale.
This, however, presented an interesting ethical dilemma. In the trial of Baltar, the dilemma came down to Is a man guilty of a crime when he was forced to do it at gunpoint? This weekend, my dilemma was Should I break the law to watch an episode of BSG? With both, the answer may seem obvious at first, but becomes more and more fuzzy the more you look at it. I won’t get into the debate over whether Baltar is or is not a traitor, but I’d love to hear what people think about my downloading an episode of my favorite TV show.
To be clear: I don’t go around downloading episodes all the time. I don’t go on and download entire seasons of TV shows instead of renting the DVDs. Once we’d finished watching the episode, I deleted it. Moreover, I will be buying the DVD once it comes out. So, was it really wrong for me to download an episode of Battlestar Galactica? Let me put it this way: In what way did it hurt the studio, TV channel or Battlestar Galactica for me to download the show? My answer is in no way. I won’t be keeping the file or distributing it. Now in what way did it help them? Well, I was able to watch the season finale of my favorite show, which I’m sure they wanted me to do. It prompted me to write this article, which just happened to mention their show multiple times (you can’t pay for advertising like that). And Lorri and I can breath a sigh of relief that we don’t have to curse the studio until they release the season 3 DVD. :wink:
So what do you think? Was it wrong for me to download this piece of copy written work? Would you have done so (if BSG doesn’t work for you, imagine your favorite show in its place), or would you have waited patiently for the DVD?
And is anyone else ticked off that Battlestar Galactica won’t be back until 2008? :?
Damion Chaplin is a graphic artist and digital media connoisseur living in the San Francisco Bay Area with his lovely wife Lorri and the ship's cat Grimalkin (The Kitty). He tries to be a law-abiding citizen unless it gets in between him and his favorite shows.
Regulars of this site know that I am a fanatic about Battlestar Galactica. My wife and I watch it every week and never miss an episode. So imagine our dismay when we queued up last week’s episode only to find out it was the second part of a two-part finale! Crud! Somehow our DVR, in its supreme wisdom, decided not to record BSG the week before. Lorri and I were mystified, but we just figured they had skipped a week, not that we had missed an episode. I guess we should have looked online to make sure. In any case, we now had part two recorded on our DVR with no access to part one.
Now, if Sci-Fi posted all their episodes online like NBC and others do, we would have just logged on and watched it streaming from their site, even if it was a two-inch window. We were willing to do anything to watch part one - even if it entailed obtaining it illegally.
For the record, I don’t normally do this sort of thing, but in this circumstance I was willing to sidestep the law and download the missing episode via a P2P sharing site. With a fast broadband connection, I was able to download the episode in about 10 minutes. In another 30 minutes I had encoded it as a .WMV to watch on my TV via my Xbox. And shortly after than, my wife and I sat down to watch the missing part one of the two-part Battlestar Galactica season finale.
This, however, presented an interesting ethical dilemma. In the trial of Baltar, the dilemma came down to Is a man guilty of a crime when he was forced to do it at gunpoint? This weekend, my dilemma was Should I break the law to watch an episode of BSG? With both, the answer may seem obvious at first, but becomes more and more fuzzy the more you look at it. I won’t get into the debate over whether Baltar is or is not a traitor, but I’d love to hear what people think about my downloading an episode of my favorite TV show.
To be clear: I don’t go around downloading episodes all the time. I don’t go on and download entire seasons of TV shows instead of renting the DVDs. Once we’d finished watching the episode, I deleted it. Moreover, I will be buying the DVD once it comes out. So, was it really wrong for me to download an episode of Battlestar Galactica? Let me put it this way: In what way did it hurt the studio, TV channel or Battlestar Galactica for me to download the show? My answer is in no way. I won’t be keeping the file or distributing it. Now in what way did it help them? Well, I was able to watch the season finale of my favorite show, which I’m sure they wanted me to do. It prompted me to write this article, which just happened to mention their show multiple times (you can’t pay for advertising like that). And Lorri and I can breath a sigh of relief that we don’t have to curse the studio until they release the season 3 DVD. :wink:
So what do you think? Was it wrong for me to download this piece of copy written work? Would you have done so (if BSG doesn’t work for you, imagine your favorite show in its place), or would you have waited patiently for the DVD?
And is anyone else ticked off that Battlestar Galactica won’t be back until 2008? :?
Damion Chaplin is a graphic artist and digital media connoisseur living in the San Francisco Bay Area with his lovely wife Lorri and the ship's cat Grimalkin (The Kitty). He tries to be a law-abiding citizen unless it gets in between him and his favorite shows.
