Wired have a nice reportage about the Tvrip scene..
For years, a dwindling crowd of tech-savvy satellite TV subscribers has had the ability to tap freely into the satellite streams meant for affiliate TV stations, seeing shows such as "Star Trek: Voyager" or "The Simpsons" days before the rest of the country. The TV networks have done little to stop this because few people were affected. |
But now these "pre-air" shows have started appearing on the Internet and are being traded like songs were in the early days of MP3 music--a practice known as TVRip
The budding piracy scene is hardly likely to start a landslide on the scale of MP3 and file-swapping service Napster--the shows are hard to find without some knowledge of the underground trading scene and require a fast connection to download. But the issue marks another chink in the entertainment industry's armor as it tries to retain tight control of its content in the wilds of the Internet
In the Net's underground of software, music and video trading, it's difficult to tell with certainty where a given file originated. Files are distributed by loosely affiliated groups with names like "Exodus," "iMATiON," and "FE," which provide rudimentary information about a given piece of copied software or video but not enough details to expose themselves or their own sources.
Read the whole story Here
Source: Wired
