'Bred Crumbs

11:57 AM Compared to most Webbers, I've historically lent little support to the various global networks that have let people download entertainment that the producers and sellers of said entertainment didn't intend to be downloaded. (Napster, we hardly knew ye.) Seemed fairly clear that, no matter how evil the conglomerate purveyors of the merchandise, finding it for free was likely to cut into the purchasing of it, and thus hurt the actual artists. But I'm beginning to see how the media companies' beancounting behavior and lack of interest in actually satisfying fans/customers can make digital bootlegging not merely appealing but, well, justified.

For example, say that no new installments of one's favorite TV series had been broadcast since last August, four episodes short of the season's conclusion, even though the show is its network's biggest hit and has already been renewed for two more years. Let's say the climactic final episodes of the season are not only in the can but have just been broadcast in other parts of the world. But the U.S. broadcaster of the series, for no better reason than to micromanage its resource-poor prime-time schedule, is sitting on the new eps until April, and has shut off even a supply of reruns* of the series since December, filling its programming with dreck in the meantime. In such a case, it might begin to make sense to say "frell the damn network" and turn to the Internet to find the completed programs, even though locating and acquiring them is a time-consuming hassle, and even though the resulting gratification of seeing an embargoed episode two months early is dimmed a little by having to watch it with distracting Hebrew subtitles.

I mean, I can see how such a thing could happen. I'm just sayin'.

* Compounding the shortsighted, piracy-encouraging corporate villainy, the distribution of the North American DVDs of the series is lagging more than a full season behind the pace of the European DVD release.

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