http://www.the11thhour.com/archives/032000/features/bootleg1.html

Bootleg the Puppy
The TV you want, when you want it, all on your computer screen...
      by Rachel Hyland

So, you live in a country that doesn't broadcast the latest episodes of your favourite genre show? Or perhaps you desperately want to check out the newest cult hit, yet your parents won't fork out for cable? Maybe your video recorder willfully disobeyed your instructions, and refused to tape that very special episode of Profiler, even though you know you set it correctly? (That's what they call smart technology.)

Well, before you do anything drastic, be assured that life is still worth living. For while the network airing may have come and gone -- and, hopefully in Profiler's case, gone for good -- there is an alternative. No longer must you wait around for the eventual video release, or attend crowded conventions, or even pay a hopeful visit to eBay. Now you can get all the joy of an as yet unseen episode of Buffy, or Now and Again -- or even Seven Days, God help you -- all in the comfort of your very own desk-chair.

It's illegal, though. But that shouldn't be a problem.

It is a sad truth of this licentious age that no one has any respect for the law anymore. And almost nowhere is the evidence of this increasing tendency towards anarchy more apparent than on that marvel of modern life, the Internet. In a realm of instant information, where the truth is often obscured and yet very rarely hidden, one can find just about anything. Whatever the interest, whatever the obsession, there is bound to be at least one website, a newsgroup, a few discussion boards and even a mailing list dedicated to it.

And when it comes to something like a popular television show, then there are probably some less-legitimate types of "information" available, as well. We're talking episodes. Full-length episodes, in a variety of file-sizes and qualities, yours for the downloading. All the very best in genre TV is lurking out there on the Net, and all it takes to find it is a little luck, a lot of dedication, and the esteem of some very powerful gods.

It shouldn't be so hard to gain access to these episodes. We can record them. We have the technology -- and it is only getting better. Websites would clamour to host them, even if only to reap the benefits that a substantial hit rate and a grateful target audience would produce. However, it is not to be. Production companies everywhere have started coming down hard on any site that hosts material considered to infringe their copyright -- some have even gone so far as to insist that these sites be shut down. And an argument can be made for their case. They "own" the intellectual property of these shows, and they see the free-to-all access the Internet can provide as a threat to their profits. And, after all, without such profits, they can't go ahead and make more shows that we fall in love with and then want to watch so desperately that we feel the need to download them from the Internet...

The result of this policy is that where once an avid international fan could easily, and openly, keep up with the doings in their favourite TV universes via the World Wide Web, that same fan must now frequent the seamier, peril-ridden underbelly of the Net. And, often, that means Chatrooms.

IRC, or Internet Relay Chat, is a system of on-line communication whereby Internet users can send messages to each other instantaneously -- like a phone, but with typing. These messages are transferred within certain designated locations, called "channels," and, boy there are some scary, scary ones around. General chatting areas can be found on major websites like Yahoo! and Excite; for others, a more specialised program is often needed. mIRC, perhaps the world's most popular IRC client program -- probably due to their very hip "you can pay us if you want, we don't care" attitude -- can be easily downloaded and installed, and allows access to a myriad of meeting places, where just about anything can be -- and is -- discussed. (You haven't lived till you've checked out the happening activity in the EtruscanArt chatroom.) And it is here, somewhere, on unnamed servers and in unlisted channels, that the Holy Grails, offering episodes of some of the coolest -- and dumbest -- genre shows for download, can be discovered....

A source so secretive that she prefers to be known only as "A," from the upper-echelons of one of these ultimate download sites, speaks:

"It all started with a guy named Flagg," she says of the well-hidden Buffy IRC channel that she helps operate. "He did AVI (Audio Video Interleave) clips; then Reptile007 and Turbovex were the first ones to do full episode encodes. They had them on the web [but] the sites all got too busy and were shut down -- the servers could not handle the traffic." This led to the channel's inception. A. reflects back on these halcyon times. "Oh man, there were like five people in here," she recalls. "I would come and go -- it was dead. This was when people could still get the episodes off public web sites. Then: the 'letters.'"

The "letters" are the sheaf of "Cease and Desist" orders 20th Century Fox lawyers sent out to Buffy website hosts and owners in mid-1999. The orders were designed to put an end to the shameless theft of fun that some Buffy websites had dared perpetrate by offering Buffy video clips for download. But while the company may have been successful in putting a stop to such lawless shenanigans out in the public arena, they did not stop -- could not stop -- those same shenanigans from taking to the underground.

"When 'L' Day came," A. explains, "and all the sites were shut down, people started trickling in. The word started spreading [about the secret IRC chatroom]... and then came our big moment -- 'Earshot.'

"Oh man, I will never forget that week," A. reflects in wonder. "'Earshot' was aired once in Canada, then the WB pulled it. One of the people on the right side of Canada taped it and sent it to one of our encoders; we were the only people that had it. It was crazy! We were throwing that encode everywhere: Usenet, the Web, anything that would relieve traffic..." As for how many people actually saw that bootleg encode of the suppressed episode, "I couldn't begin to guess," says A. "Once we got it on Usenet and the web, it was public access. We even made the official posting board! Thousands downloaded it. Then," she adds, "they pulled 'Graduation Day Part 2'," referring to the cliffhanger Season 3 finale of Buffy. "Same thing. And after that we became the source."

The source, perhaps, but certainly not the only one. Web-available episodes of TV shows are everywhere, if only one knows where to look. And if one knows how to find out where one should discover where to look. Which is not nearly as simple as it sounds.

These hidden sites are usually known only to serious fans, and are jealously guarded Official Secrets. Like Bond, James Bond, or... some other spy guy, one must put in the hard work to make it into the Forbidden City. This is not information that can be gained through a simple perusal of search engine results or a query to AskJeeves. Prohibition-era Speak-easies were less security-conscious -- and all they required was a password.

Just as the surest path to Heaven is living clean and knowing your prayers, the surest path to TV fan Heaven is... posting clean and knowing your quotes. The method most people seem to use to find their way to a download site is to become known on a Message Board. Every TV show has them, and they are all hotbeds of intrigue and drama. Perhaps someone posts a message reviling Maria's vacant cow-eyes. Then another someone whips back a witty retort, with passing reference to Isabel's impossibly immaculate coiffure. Then a third person jumps in to ask what the hell is going on with Michael's hair, anyway... and before any of them know it, they're regulars on The Board and have even come to consider themselves friends. One of them then inevitably hears about whichever Roswell download channel that particular Posting Board or website is affiliated with; and soon they're all downloading the latest episodes from the web -- because the two or three days they'd have to wait for the next installment would be far too much for them to bear -- while further discussing the vagaries of the Roswell inhabitants' personal appearance. (These people actually exist, by the way, in every fandom. No one you know, though.)

But Posting Boards are not the only way to discover the magic key that will open the door to the wondrous world of downloadage. Some find the sites through friends, or the ICQ message service, or even through loitering in random IRC channels until finally asking the right questions. But it can be a long and painful process just to get to the sites and channels -- and then there is the tricky matter of being allowed to remain there. "I was lucky that when I first got there," says Australian Autumn, now a download site regular. "I met some nice people. Some of the newbies are unlucky and meet snooty, cliquey, rude people -- an unfortunate trait of many net users. People who use the Internet a lot take a lot of procedures and knowledge for granted; it's harder for them to go back to what it was like being new."

Indeed, the instructions are often unclear at some of these sites -- and the penalties severe. "I've seen people kicked for speaking French," says Autumn of her particular, English-only site. "Some of the rules are a little bit annoying sometimes." But in A.'s Buffy channel, the quality of mercy is quite poor -- perhaps industrial grade. "What we have here is a privilege," she says sternly. "You don't follow the rules, we don't let you in."

But what about if one does follow the rules. If, say, a WB-deprived Charmed fan were to somehow get to a Charmed download site, to follow all of the directions and to obey all the local, state and federal statutes of that fair community -- what then?

Here's where it gets really complicated.

First a decision must be made as to how the files are going to be transferred. Second, and more importantly, comes the "format" issue. Should one choose RM or MPG? What about ASF? And what do all of those numbers next to the files mean, anyway? What other software is needed, and how much disk space? Most importantly, how long will it take -- places to go, people to see, you know! The last question is best answered by Autumn, who grinned (when asked if she communicated with any of her chatroom friends outside the channel): "I don't tend to have to. We all seem to be plugged in all the time -- the downloads take so long."

Channel frequenter Shannon concurs. "It can take me about two hours to download the RM90," says Shannon. "And if I really like the episode -- which is usually all the time -- I will get the MPEG. Which usually takes about seven hours to download." Autumn prefers ASF format, and her dial-up connection means that her download time, just for one episode, can sometimes be "...perhaps 4 days -- in blocks of a couple of hours at a time."

RM format is Real Media, and is the most compressed -- and poorest quality -- encode available. With a full episode typically coming in at the bargain size of a mere thirty megabytes, the RM90 format is the cheap and nasty way to do it -- downloads on a budget; RM's, of course, use Realplayer. ASF is Advanced Streaming Format, and a full episode can run to over a hundred megabytes in that encode -- ASF uses Windows Media Player, which, basically, sucks. The highest quality encode -- bearing in mind that you do, sometimes, actually get what you pay for -- are the MPEG (Moving Pictures Expert Group) files, in which format a full episode is always over one hundred megabytes of download -- sometimes closer to two hundred. Oh, and weren't they fun facts and figures, kids? But that's enough for now.

Once all of these megabytes have been downloaded, most would be justified in wondering, what exactly is the pay off like? Well, in some cases the picture may be hazy, the synchronisation all wrong, and often the size of the image is even smaller than the three and a half inch floppy disk some imagine an entire episode can be saved on. And while there are rarely, if ever, commercials on these encodes, neither are there any commercials. So, there may be a curse disguised in that particular blessing. Of course, for the truly obsessed, and hard-disk blessed, none of this will matter one iota. And there seem to be a lot of people who fit that profile.

"We serve 800-1000 people in here each week with episodes," A. announces proudly of her Buffy channel. "Most of our clientele are foreign to the US -- or, a lot are at least Canadian. English. French. South American. All of Europe, and tons of Aussies," she elaborates. "They can't get Buffy, or are a season or more behind. They are why we do this. We in the States get to see it every week -- this place is for everyone who isn't so lucky. We are giving something to people that they couldn't get without us," she says. "People have to understand the level of devotion that Buffy fans have. It is very unique -- we are family. And you would not let your family go without if you could do something about it. And you know, people may look at me and think 'she has no life,' but, I feel I am doing something important -- and I have made many, many friends here.

"We make no profit," A. hastens to add. "We spend our own money to run this place."

Which is to be applauded, from a humanitarian point of view, but makes no real difference in the blind eyes of Madame Justice. Without going into the specifics of esoteric law -- 'cause that's only fun when someone like Dylan McDermott's around -- copyright infringement is a big deal, and can be enforced in almost every country in the world. And though the law of the internet is largely untested and somewhat hazy, the fact is that copyright proclaims the owner's exclusive right to control the copies made of a particular creation -- whether that be a television show, a piece of art, or a particularly uninspired piece of e-mail advertising. Yes, even spammers are protected by this law! Does that seem right?

Even despite this evidence that the whole copyright thing is really just evil anyway, with the lure of new episodes and old -- not to mention new television shows and old -- who's going to care? The courts have better things to do that prosecute a few teenagers in Outer Mongolia for downloading the unaired pilot of Buffy (the one with the more substantial Willow and no Angel), or the transcript of the latest episode of LEXX -- though the latter should be a hanging offense. As history has proved time and again, if you make people want something, they'll find a way to get it. And a black market never hurt anyone and should be left alone... well, sure, if it was guns. Black market guns would be bad. But it's not guns. It's, like, it's TV!

Now, don't tell anyone about any of this, okay?

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