American Idol Wants Torrent Users Kicked Off the Internet
March 20, 2009 by Jeanne
This is all kinds of outrageous. According to reports, American Idol top 
executive, Tony Cohen, wants people who download the show via torrents to have their internet access cut off. WHAT? Cohen is the CEO of Idol’s production company, FremantleMedia, and he’s clearly crazy. I can understand that he has an opinion, and I can even understand his perspective, but the relationship between consumers and their internet service providers should not be policed by the producers of television shows.
Cohen made the comments when addressing the audience of the Changing Media Summit in London today. What he proposed was a “three strikes” rule that allows ISPs to disconnect repeat infringers from the Net. Last year, I attended NextMedia and the Banff World Television Awards and I heard similar comments from executives. What a lot of people, including Cohen, are suggesting is an online TV system that allows viewers to catch up on their favorite shows while paying a small fee.
I know that a lot of my readers here have noticed that I don’t have as many videos up as I have in past years and this is why. FremantleMedia has been SUPER strict with removing videos of Idol performances. Since I don’t want to be accused of copyright infringement, I have had to make do without performance videos sometimes. It’s not ideal but there isn’t much I can do at this point.
What do you think? Should people who download torrents be kicked off the internet? How do you feel about paying to see a show that you already pay your cable bill to watch? I know iTunes allows you to download performances for a fee. Do any of you actually do that?
image © 2009 FOX BROADCASTING CR: FOX
Pay for an Idol performance on iTunes? The first time I saw they were charging for the competition performances, my jaw dropped. I would never… and I don’t torrent either.
I have AI set to record in my DVR. So, even if I am not home, I can watch it back later. For music I subscribe to Rhapsody. I refuse to use itunes for music or shows, because I already pay for cable. Why in the world would I pay dollars at a time to have a song. Weird. Rhapsody is a cheap monthly payment to listen to pretty much anything in the world I could want to. I would imagine kids who download videos or songs, though, do it because they love the show. If I were a musician I would want as many people to hear me as possible. As for the producers, how are they losing money from people downloading the show to watch? They make the same amount of money. The same amount of people are paying for cable. Don’t they want as many people as possible to see the show?
AI.com now has the performance videos for free starting 2 days or so later. So it meets my need to rewatch w/o having to FF to the performances. I can’t blame them if they want the web hits instead of youtube and so on.
I watch AI from France so I have no choice but to download the show… And I’d be pretty sad to have to stop watching it because my internet gets cut off…
I`m from Germany, and i`m in the same situation like Baptiste.
I have no oter choice to watch it somewhere else.
I’m in Australia, and suffering the same situation. American Idol used to be on free-to-air television here, about a year or so after it aired in America. Now they’ve picked it up on cable, but cable’s not one of those things most people in Australia have. So basically I torrent or I don’t watch it at all. If I had a choice to just watch it like the Americans, I would. But I don’t. It sounds like the producers will alienate a whole global audience if they end up enforcing this.
I agree, Lauren, Minzbonbon and Baptists. I find this pretty unfortunate given the global popularity of the show they are even considering this. They don’t want to make it easy for you to watch Carrie Underwood rise to fame but they expect you to want to buy her album when she wins the show. Not cool (or smart).
The toothpaste is out of the tube and for Cohen to suddenly want to push it back in because audience and revenues are down is all kinds of garbage. This desperate attempt at reining in the “bad guys” that download the show worldwide will go nowhere. I’m sure Cohen wants a lot of things (like people in hell want ice water), but that doesn’t mean that he’s going to get them.
I’m from Bulgaria and i am a huge fan of American Idol. But my only way to watch this show is by downloading it from the internet. I know that this is not good but here i can’t watch programs from USA so i hope that in the future i still can watch it. This is the only one show in the hole world that everyone around the world have to watch.
I hope that many people will be agree with me.