I watch about 6 or 7 TV shows regularly. Sometimes I’m too busy to
catch them when they air and I’ll miss them. So in order to stay caught
up with the season, I’ve been downloading the missed episodes using
BitTorrent. I’ll watch them and then delete them after I’m done with
them. Recently,
the MPAA started targeting (read: suing) TV download sites (BitTorrent
sites) in their war to control the visual digital medium.

This is absurd. I don’t download TV shows that are already on DVD,
although some do. I just want to watch the stuff that I have missed.
How is what I do differently from a friend recording a show and giving
it to me? Does it matter if my friend is one person or 10,000? This is
how people like me lose interest in TV shows and stop watching.
If I miss too many episodes of a TV show then I won’t bother to keep
watching the TV show. The MPAA is gonna have their asses handed to them
by their consumers if they can’t figure out how to get the content to
the techno-savvy masses out there. Here is a perfect example. I watch
the TV show Lost. It airs on ABC. If I miss an episode can I go
to ABC’s website and download it or stream it (with the commercials, I
really don’t care about that)? No, of course not. So what do I do?
Download it from BitTorrent. Until the season is over (and the DVDs go on
sale) viewers should be able to legally download this stuff. Until they
can, people will find a way to get it on their own, no matter how many
people the MPAA sues.

When I read stuff like this from the MPAA and the RIAA, I’m reminded of a quote from the first Star Wars movie. “The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.”