South Park and Internet Piracy

manveruppd

manveruppd

manveruppd

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I don't know how many of you watched episode 4 of the current South Park season, but I'm sure it would be a huge hit in GD as it references all the most successful Youtube videos of the last 5 years! :p

Anyway, for those who have, do you think Kyle's final monologue about the unviability of internet distribution as a revenue stream for artists is a sign that the two South Park creators have changed their opinion about it, or is it intended to be tongue-in-cheek? They've been notorious advocates of online distro so far, speaking out in favour of piracy (as it said it was free advertising for them) and rumoured to have been leaking their own episodes to torrent sites, but some of those sites have recently been linking to paid-for downloads of episodes from online distribution sites instead. Is this a sign that they think digital distro is ready for the next step, and is Kyle's slightly formulaic, buzzword-heavy debate a sarcastic poke at their detractors? If not, then will the withdrawal of support from two such prominent supporters of digital distro damage its cause?

In the words of your secondary school teachers, discuss with appropriate use of example :p
 
manveruppd said:
I don't know how many of you watched episode 4 of the current South Park season, but I'm sure it would be a huge hit in GD as it references all the most successful Youtube videos of the last 5 years! :p

Anyway, for those who have, do you think Kyle's final monologue about the unviability of internet distribution as a revenue stream for artists is a sign that the two South Park creators have changed their opinion about it, or is it intended to be tongue-in-cheek? They've been notorious advocates of online distro so far, speaking out in favour of piracy (as it said it was free advertising for them) and rumoured to have been leaking their own episodes to torrent sites, but some of those sites have recently been linking to paid-for downloads of episodes from online distribution sites instead. Is this a sign that they think digital distro is ready for the next step, and is Kyle's slightly formulaic, buzzword-heavy debate a sarcastic poke at their detractors? If not, then will the withdrawal of support from two such prominent supporters of digital distro damage its cause?

In the words of your secondary school teachers, discuss with appropriate use of example :p
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I think that taking the utterances of SP characters to be indicative of the opinions of its creators is very dubious indeed. More often than not they seem to take a devils advocate role, rather than espousing a particular POV.
 
hard to say really. But I think they dont care to much as they are minted anyway. I remember seeing a small clip of the south park creators sitting in a hot tub laughing about privacy. I think the way they think is that they make enough money anyway and are happy but if they start selling downloads of there eps and can make more money why not. I mean I buy all the south park box sets when they come on to dvd so there getting money from me. I support there views as they stand wish more people would be like this :-D
 
Duggan said:
hard to say really. But I think they dont care to much as they are minted anyway. I remember seeing a small clip of the south park creators sitting in a hot tub laughing about privacy. I think the way they think is that they make enough money anyway and are happy but if they start selling downloads of there eps and can make more money why not. I mean I buy all the south park box sets when they come on to dvd so there getting money from me. I support there views as they stand wish more people would be like this :-D
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Matt and Trey even said that they don't care if people download or watch there episodes online... As long as people are watching them they don't care !
 
Visage said:
I think that taking the utterances of SP characters to be indicative of the opinions of its creators is very dubious indeed. More often than not they seem to take a devils advocate role, rather than espousing a particular POV.
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i think you've hit the nail on the head. (though i've not seen the episode in question)
 
electric ant said:
The creators already have an official site with all the episodes available for streaming
here http://www.southparkstudios.com/
its all legit, and you can watch any episode, albeit it has ads, but is better quality then allsp for example.
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Unfortunately we can't watch it here yet, which means technically we're still not allowed to talk about the latest episodes on this site :(.

edit: you edited :p
 
That episode i believe was intended as a parody of the recent American TV writers strike, where one of the main sticking points in the negotiations was the writers income from episodes shown online. As i understand it Matt and Trey were not part of the strike because animation is handled differently but i think the speech by Kyle at then end -

"Kyle: Yeah, but you know, I learned something today. We thought we could make money on the Internet. But, while the Internet is new and exciting for creative people, it hasn't matured as a distribution mechanism to the extent that one should trade real and immediate opportunities for income for the promise of future online revenue. It will be a few years before digital distribution of media on the Internet can be monetized to the extent that necessitates content producers to forego their fair value in more traditional media."

is in this case likely a representation of how they feel about the strike as a whole.
 
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