FACT? They’re just a trade organization, aren’t they? (although I remember from old gaming memories that they like to appear as if they’re a wing of the police and/or government)
Actually, I’m currently trying to watch Dr Who, purely because Capaldi, and am on the verge of giving up. Does BBC America always have this many adverts? It’s almost unwatchable. The ratio must be 50:50 between content and ads.
Be patient. BBC America is doing their best to adjust to a foreign market. The culture of ads is different in Britain. They’ll soon learn to cut down on the quantity and subtlety, and pump up the volume, literally and figuratively with obnoxiousness.
well if BBC worldwide wants to be dicks to superfans then I will point out this from the Article.
And now, all eyes turn to the season premiere tonight. As of yesterday, all but the final episode of the brand new season had leaked to file-sharing sites, although it’s worth pointing out that Doctor Who Media refused to carry any of that content.
“It’s only a job” much in the same way that vultures eat roadkill…it’s what they do.
christ-what-ass-holes
Storm trooper = “It’s only a job after all.”
Well, I for one think this was a timely intervention. I mean, who knows what would have happened had they not decided to act? There could have been fan-generated publicity, people who hadn’t previously been exposed to the show becoming fans, and even (I shudder at the thought) extra DVD sales! Thank God they nipped it in the bud when they did!
I mean, what the actual fuck? What do they think is going to happen as a result of super fans having a forum to discuss their show? How can that possibly damage their IP? Or are all these cases just the result of small-minded people snatching back their toys because they see a short-term revenue opportunity without considering the larger picture?
The painful irony of all this is that piracy is what helped make Doctor Who available in the US.
Back in the old days you had two options for Doctor Who. You could either watch it on a PBS station if you were lucky enough to live near one or you got camera copies from someone in the UK. (Or you did both.) Many times you had to get camera copies because local PBS stations were known for screwing over the Doctor Who fans when it suited them. (They liked them during pledge drives and looked down on them the rest of the time.)
Then there is the current run. The Science Fiction channel was not going to run Doctor Who because it was “too British”. What changed their minds was the amazing level of piracy. Episodes would be available within hours of airing in the UK. Copies would then be passed on from person to person. Some of the people who got copies had enough media influence to inform those who did not know where to find bootleg copies of British TV. Later on they still had to bootleg copies because BBC America had a habit of chopping out important bits from episodes.
Pirates built the audience that these shows now have. The same thing happened with Anime. The same thing will happen with the next good show that the networks have no clue about.
Fans are used to being kicked in the teeth by the people who own the programs they enjoy. Look at Doctor Who in the 80s and how they were treated by John Nathan Turner. People who have stuck with Apple products should know how that feels as well.
You have to remember that the people who command the lawyers are rarely fans and they seem to resent the fact that you are.
In other news, I hit one of these yesterday while trying to view something on the BBC America site:-
“We’re sorry but this site is not accessible from the UK as it is part of our international service and is not funded by the licence fee.”
Oh, FFS! You wouldn’t even exist if it wasn’t for the license fee. Seriously, Beeb, do banner ads or something, don’t just lock me out for being in the UK.
you’re actually being very flattering to FACT. vultures and other scavengers are an intrinsically valuable part of the ecosystem which keep the environment from being overrun by rotting corpses and reduce the spread of disease. i think a better comparison would be with the collection department of a payday lender.
I always wondered what the acronym FACT stood for.
Hey, vultures provide a very useful function in nature (you insensitive clod). FACT is more like “we throw animals into the road so they will become roadkill”
Comments on the Facebook announcement
are largely people lamenting that that the can no longer use the site to watch episodes of Dr Who for free and some even whining that the BBC dares to sell the show on DVD and expect people to pay for it.
The BoingBoing article makes out it’s big nasty BBC and FACT cruelly stomping on people who just want to talk about Dr Who on the Interwebs. There is clearly more to it than that.
One of the oldest and most respected. Really? I supposed it is one of the oldest and most respected in the sense that any site is, one of… but did it really have any significant standing aside from people who used it to watch episodes? It has existed since 2010. http://www.drwho-online.co.uk/about/ has existed since 1996.
Back in the 90s I worked in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s tape library. One day we got a call to ask us to send our copies of all the old 60s episodes to Spain because the BBC had lost/destroyed their copies, and ours were the only ones in existence. The ABC management of the time had ordered that Doctor Who will never be shown on the ABC again and all copies were to be destroyed. Luckily we had not got around to carrying out that order. Shows how much the BBC cared for their intellectual property.
Having never seen the site before, I used archive.org to find old copies. It did used to contain some hosted episodes and a forum.
Yes, there were legally justified in having him desist. Is taking the site an appropriate thing to do to someone who loves your product?
see -Broadcast_and_reception
I gave up with watching from BBC America and just pirated the episodes due to them being either unwatchable or edited to death.
When I read it was around since 2010 I did think to myself “Well, that’s not that old for Doctor Who Fandom.”
You know what the trusty Beebs had done with their old tapes? Deliberately recorded over them because the physical tapes were more valuable than what was recorded on them. These guys cannot be left in charge of anything.
While I personally would endorse the destruction of and future ban on discussing anything to do with Doctor Who, the OCD completist and data archivist in me screams with agony at the idea of originals being treated in this manner.
PS you gonna go after bittorrent next, BBC? America’s rightsholders have been trying to fuck TPB for years now, only to fail miserably. Then there’s always the plausible deniability of sites that merely host links to offending media:
http://watchseries.lt/serie/Doctor_Who_(1963)
http://watchseries.lt/serie/doctor_who
“Enjoy”!
