I currently watch all my TV online as many young people do today. Lets face it there’s no or hardly any commercials and you have complete control over what you watch. I mainly used the most popular site that was surf the channel.
Surf the channel started getting threats and legal notices. They were about to be sued. So they ended up giving up the fight and making most of the links on their site Megavideo or iTunes links and are being paid well for this while dodging a legal battle. I decided even though I have never made a website before to make my own internet TV site.
It was during my lay off time this winter. I am just an ordinary Painter by day. I locked myself in my room for 3 weeks and learned to use Adobe Dreamweaver for about 15 hours a day only taking breaks to go to the bathroom and sleep. I ate while coding and learning. I finally did it. Me a simple painter from liberty Maine made my first two websites. The first was an Optimized search engine site. The second was an online TV link site, which is completely legal since the actual content is hosted on either the network site or a foreign site like the very popular Chinese Tudou or Youku.
I can see both sides of this argument myself. The economic effects it can have on lost revenues. The morality issue of hosting someone else’s hard work for profit. On the other hand we as a society have become stagnated. Big corporations like the Hollywood industry donate millions to both Republicans and Democrats each year to lobby for stricter copyright laws.
Instead of using the good old American inventory minds and evolving to capture the public’s hearts and wallet’s they stagnate the free market through lobbying. Lets face it its too expensive and there’s a million commercials and you cant watch what you want when you want to without first recording on a Tivo type machine but who wants to go through all that when you can click a button on your mouse and watch what you want when you want no restrictions.
Don’t get me started on product placement. I like to think of it much like the auto industry’s dilemma We all know that hydro cells have been available since the 80’s and you can even buy a hydro cell for about 30 dollars to hook to your car or truck on eBay. Do you think if gm came out with a hydro car that you filled with salt water tomorrow for a normal price not an 800% mark up like it is now. That they wouldn’t sell billions in the first quarter and leave behind their economic troubles in an instant? Of course they would and in all facets of the free market you see this trend.
You go along to get along or else you get knocked down or paid off. This is part of what’s killing America. I see the Internet as the last vestige of American freedom. I know it won’t be long before they try and make it into some sort of internet package tied to an account with one IP address so they can regulate what you do and say on the internet and wrap it up with a pretty bow and hand our rights over to the five major telecoms but until that day comes I will exercise my right to share whatever materials I want with who I want because America would be a lot better off free.
Have you ever been to Europe? If you have you know that the commercials run before the show and after the show not during and they are very short breaks. The networks still make an obscene amount of money but when I lived there for a few years I didn’t feel the need to watch TV online. They played all shows and movies uncensored and unedited. No restrictions of speech or nudity like this once great country was meant for.
For the people that say this leads to bad behavior and role model problems they have about 98% less people in the prison systems.
-Joseph A Pagano III