Winamp : A New Method To Piracy ?
Published April 15, 2005
Some background first. I am from one of the Commonwealth countries (in the intrest of protecting my privacy, i'll refrain from naming the country). I watch and enjoy Cricket (which is a sport). Cricket however is not even close to being popular in the US. And it's only available on pay-per-view on the Dish Network. Needless to say I can't afford it. Hell, I don't even have a TV . Anyway, I did want to watch a couple of the games and my research led me to the .nsv stream which are playable in Winam (I presume .nsv stands for NullSoft Video).
Internet TV is not new. The Winamp version (.nsv) itself has been around for a while. I had not looked at it till now. A lot of the games that I want to watch are available on the Winamp streams. In real time. For Free. Yeah, the quality isn't something to write home about, but it works. And it's free. A lot of people, out of the goodness of their hearts, point their webcams at their TVs and put the webcam stream on Winamp. Well, I record the stream using Streamripper (to watch the game(s) later since most of the games are on late). Yes, Streamripper rips video too. I could then hypothetically convert the ripped stream to a torrent on put it on the BitTorrent network. Voila! We have a new method to piracy.
Now, this is probably not legal. Actually I'm pretty damned sure it's not legal. But, then again what are my options. Pay-per-view? No thanks. Besides cable is expensive as it is.
This post is also available on my blog at http://trenchier2.blogspot.com/2005/04/winamp-internet-tv-new-method-to.html
- Winamp : A New Method To Piracy ?
- Published: April 15, 2005
- Type:
- Section: Sci/Tech
- Filed Under: Sci/Tech: Internet, Culture: Media, Sci/Tech: Software
- Writer: trenchier
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Comments on this articleComments
I usually use WPC or Foobar2K, but Winamp is the only way to get the Winamp TV listings.
As for the cost of PPV being too much, I entirely agree. I am not at all condoning piracy. It's not right in any way or form. But the only way the cable companies etc. can do anything at all about it is to reduce prices...like Apple did with iTunes.
Add your comment, speak your mind
(Or ping: http://blogcritics.org/mt/tb/28173)
No worries, man. Pay-Per-View rates for sporting events are insanely silly at best. $50 to see a 3-4 hour wrestling event is just insane! The same to see a boxing match that could easily wind up to be a first round KO is even worse.
As I see it, such high prices on events are going to cause the same sort of backlash that comes from high CD, movie ticket, and DVD prices (well, not so much for MOST DVD prices, but some of them).
Since at least 1997, I've known people who find some way to 'cheat' PPV companies by getting events illegally. But what options are they left with? I can't condone piracy, but companies need to think that not everyone has the money to pay $50 for 'Wrestlemainia' and the like. $20 for a 'big show' like that is understandable, but $50 is just silly.
I dunno. Maybe I'm just bitter 'cause I don't have the money to throw around on such things.
But you still use Winamp? Man, I used to love it then v3 came out and they stopped working on v2* so I moved on.
-=The Prynce