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Online Media Piracy: Convergence, Culture, and the Problem of Media

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Online Media Piracy: Convergence, Culture, and the Problem of Media Online Media Piracy: Convergence, Culture, and the Problem of Media Change Sean Fuller Department of Gender and Cultural Studies The University of Sydney A thesis submitted to fulfil requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Sydney i DECLARATION I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, it contains no material previously published or written by another person nor material which to a substantial extent has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma of the university or any other institute of higher learning, except where due acknowledgement has been made in the text. Sean Fuller April 7, 2018 ii Abstract This thesis proposes that there is a symbiotic relationship between the emergence of online media piracy and the industrial, economic and legal changes that have shaped contemporary popular media in the early 21st century. The Internet is at the heart of most recent transformations of the popular media environment, such as the emergence of video- on-demand formats for film and television consumption and the impact this has had on the nature of those media forms. This thesis discusses the powerful role played by online media piracy in shaping these developments, both through changing the expectations of consumers, and the options that are available for distributors of media content. As well as exploring the diverse forms and practices of online media piracy today, this thesis also explores theories of media change, considering how we might understand such piracy as a force underpinning media change, and how the changes it has helped shape might be placed in a broader historical context. To that end, the history and impact of online media piracy are considered alongside other examples, such as the arrival of video recording devices and the expansion of cable television in the 1980s and 90s, and the significance of international trade deals impacting access to media via “geoblocking” and other techniques of access management. Finally, this thesis also examines debates around copyright, and the potential political significance of piracy as a tool for accessing media and culture, viewing online media piracy as a crucial practice appearing at a nexus of industrial and popular interests, tied to technological, economic and legal developments, and to changing consumer behavior and expectations. iii Table of Contents Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………….……………………………….v Abbreviations………………………………………………………………………………………………………vii Introduction……………………………………………………………………….………………………………..1 Chapter 1: Online Media Piracy and Content Acquisition….…………………………………28 Chapter 2: Convergence: Television and the Internet…….……………….……………….....78 Chapter 3: Copyright Wars………………………….………………….……………………….….………130 Chapter 4: Piracy Cultures………………………….……………………………………………………….182 Chapter 5: The Problem of Media Change…………………………………………..................242 References……………………………………………….…………………………………………………………300 Appendix: Piracy Trials 1984-2014…………………………………………………..………………….317 iv Acknowledgements I would first like to express my gratitude to my supervisor, Professor Meaghan Morris. Meaghan has provided expertise and crucial guidance throughout the experience of completing this PhD thesis, beginning with some important reality checks in the early stages about the scope and complexity of the task at hand. Meaghan has been perennially available during these difficult final weeks to read through my drafts of varying quality, continually providing sharp and insightful feedback, directing me to ways of thinking about my topic that I wouldn’t have found on my own. My associate supervisor, Professor Elspeth Probyn, has been an encouraging presence throughout my candidature, made some important suggestions in the final weeks of the thesis, and it was a key meeting with Elspeth during the second year that really helped the overall structure and focus of the thesis to take shape for me. I’d also like to thank Elspeth and Associate Professor Tess Lea, who provided me with my first paid academic work as editors for their books Eating the Ocean and Darwin. These projects helped me develop some key skills as well as a general understanding of what academic writing involves, which have also been invaluable in the process of writing a thesis. I’d like to thank my mother, Catherine, for a tremendous amount of support, before, during, and especially at the end of this thesis, and my father, Peter, for his continuing belief in what I’m doing. I’d like to thank Dawn, for both support and tolerance as I finished this project, and Judith, for generous help. I’d also like to thank my cohort of postgraduate students in the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies for making the experience of v completing a PhD thesis an enjoyable and connected one, and particularly Grace, for being a good friend. vi List of Abbreviations AFACT: Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft AFL: Australian Football League ASA: Australian Screen Association BBC: British Broadcasting Corporation CAB: Australian Copyright Amendment Bill (2015) CD: Compact Disc CNN: Cable News Network DBC: Dallas Buyers Club DMCA: U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act DNS: Domain Name System DRM: Digital Rights Management DVD: Digital Video Disc DVR: Digital Video Recording EPL: English Premier League IP: Intellectual Property ISP: Internet Service Provider MPAA: Motion Picture Association of America NBC: National Broadcasting Company NET: U.S. No Electronic Theft (NET) Act 1997 OTT: Over the Top PIPA: U.S. Protect IP Act RIAA: Recording Industry Association of America SOPA: U.S. Stop Online Piracy Act TPB: The Pirate Bay TRIPS: The Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights URL: Uniform Resource Locator VCR: Video Cassette Recorder VOD: Video on Demand VPN: Virtual Private Network vii WIPO: World Intellectual Property Organization WTO: World Trade Organization viii Introduction Figure 1: Telstra TV campaign 2018 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yLgOItJdBw) In 2018, Australian telecommunications company Telstra launched a new promotional campaign for “Telstra TV”. The first of two thirty second television advertisements opens on a dark suburban roofscape before quickly cutting through two domestic living room scenes.1 In one, a late middle-aged couple is struggling to launch a television application, and in the next a family is negotiating over what children want to watch on television. The voiceover accompanying these scenes says “What happened to TV? Where’s my favorite show? Where did it go?” A snippet from Stranger Things (2016--) intervenes, in which Mike yells at the camera, “I don’t know!” The voiceover continues – “TV’s escaped. On screens and apps and free-to-air. Season one is here… Season two is… I don’t know where” – as bright lights connoting television programs fly off into the urban night sky (Figure 1). Cut to a young woman (Figure 2), watching with some trepidation as these lights, revealed to be ghostly 1 At the time of writing these two advertisements can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yLgOItJdBw and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejQdyiMREgQ. 1 still images from television series, swoop away from her tablet and out into the night to join the others. Figure 2: Telstra TV campaign 2018 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yLgOItJdBw) Having offered these images of anxiety over media change, the advertisement promises an immediate resolution. The lights representing various television series funnel down into a black device emblazoned with the Telstra logo as the voiceover asks “But what if there were one thing… that gave you all these things, in one place, with one simple search?” The advertisement closes with “New Telstra TV. It’s a beautiful thing.” This quick series of scenarios represents something well-known but important about the contemporary media environment. The roles that television networks were thought to play in Australians’ everyday lives are consigned to the past and, with a measure of concern and regret, it is broadly acknowledged that a new kind of effort is required to decide how, and when, to view the television one wants to view. 2 The companion advertisement to the one just described begins with the young woman from Figure 2, still watching the same show captured in that image, Outlander (2014, 2016--), but now on a television set. The advertisement cuts to a young man cooking in the kitchen behind her. He asks if they can watch American Horror Story (2011--) tonight, and she finds that series using her Telstra TV remote as a voiceover suggests: “one simple search, for all the best TV”. But she then declares “I can’t find it”. The man looks up, first puzzled, then with a wry smile, and she happily settles in with Outlander again. If the first advertisement was a story about anxiety, this is a story about control. The media change referenced here may require new kinds of effort from television consumers, but new tools are available to help with this task, and when properly selected, they offer an unprecedented degree of personalization. When I first began work on this PhD dissertation I imagined that it would be focused on television. I had written an undergraduate honors thesis on the recent prominence, influence, and defining features of, “quality” or “prestige” television. The changes I discussed are evident in the ways that both American Horror Story (a horror anthology series) and Outlander (a period romantic fantasy drama) utilize their
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