torrentfreak.com — EZTV has been the leading TV-torrent distribution group for over a year now. They collect and distribute the TV-torrents, that find their way to millions of people every week. Time to have a chat with one of the EZTV crew members, to find out a little more about them.
Mar 8, 2007 View in Crawl 4
wigginzMar 9, 2007
Noooooooo! We're not supposed to be publicizing our sources... keep your secrets people or they'll get shut down. EZTV is too good to lose.
Closed AccountMar 9, 2007
Are you kidding? That isn't the point, the point is that the bigger EZTV gets the harder the MPAA will go after it. Didn't anybody learn their lesson when SuperNova shut down?
jtikMar 9, 2007
I certainly think we help , when someone misses a couple of episodes of a tv show they can catch up using EZTV, where as before some people may just stop watching the show after missing a few times. And we aren't just kids that torrent files and upload them seeding them on our computers... running the machine that is EZTV is a lot of work on many levels and the amount of bandwidth it takes is staggering.
mactardMar 9, 2007
I got a warning from my isp for violating dmca from a torrent on their tracker, be warned.Great tracker though, updated often, well organized.
vanchaserMar 10, 2007
What about someone that wants to DISCOVER a show. I mention a new showed called DEXTER. My friend went out and DLed all the episodes from season 1. Now they Dexter has a NEW fan, and once season 2 starts. They will watch it.
crazysahMar 10, 2007
One big thums-up to EZTV. Great site for torrent distibution netowrk.
ishmael2Mar 10, 2007
Agreed, I have no idea how much time I've saved watching the torrented shows with no commercials. At least 20 minutes of every hour of normal tv back in my life!
joeydooMar 10, 2007
I'm from the UK........I don't have a ratings monitor box in my house. I pay for BBC licence fee and SkyTV. There is zero way for me to pay any TV networks any more money than I currently am.Taking Heroes as an example... It's now on the scifi channel here. I could record it with my SkyTV "plus" PVR (which costs £10 extra per month) and watch them as they arrive a month or two late.... skipping adverts. Or I could download it when they air in the states .... I still have paid for the show. Not to mention the fact that the BBC have picked up the show for reruns later in the year so it will be free to air.The very fact that scifi channel picked up Heroes might be because everyone in the country who can download it from EZTV was telling everyone they know how great it is. Some channel over here might have picked it up eventually. But it might have taken longer, as is the way it used to be.and if you look, most seasons of a show fall of their trackers before it becomes available on DVD. They are doing a service for the TV networks, if something new shows up on there, I'll make sure to check it out to see if it's good. If it is I'll tell my friends about it.
aether22Mar 28, 2007
I'm going to break up the different issues by numbers as my post is too long...1: Legally, EZTV is dark grey.It's not stealing, it's a (weak) form of copyright infringement, copyright infringement is not legally considered to be stealing because indeed it isn't like physical theft, how bad would you feel if you found a lamp, rubbed it and a genie came out, you ask for a Ferrari and before you a Ferrari appears, is that stealing? Of course not, No one was deprived of a Ferrari.Is it piracy? No, if it was piracy we would take over their ship, rape the women, plunder their TV programs so they can't sell them and then sell them ourselves.It could maybe be considered piracy if the shows were only released on DVD or itunes and we then sold illegal copies.Moreover most TV is free, besides cable which is a minority and is generally broadcast free anyway in other places, even then eztv doesn't do payperview.How can you steal something that's free?It might be technically an infringement or grey but so is timeshifting. (depending on your location)2: Morally, EZTV is a creamy pearly white, very little harm (if any) is done and so much good. (if counting making people happy and entertained is good)It makes no money, is run by people who do it out of love for TV and helping others.The intention is good.3: Practically EZTV is a brilliant while light.It helps networks:People buy boxed sets, or demand shows locally because of internet buzz, or catch up on missed episodes. (it helps both late comers to a series too)But mainly TV is an ass, I don't want to tell you how many years late we got Star Trek Voyager!Things are canceled locally while still being made in the US or wherever.TV demands you be at the TV ready to watch every time, it's a control freak of a technology, so we need to take the control back.But seriously those of you sitting on your high horse (or high chair) what would you do if the free to air TV program you love from the US was canceled locally, but is still being shown in the US?You're only chance of seeing it is to wait a long time (years) for the DVD's or hope some other station picks it up (likely from the start again) in a few years?Would you choose not to download it because it is in a legally grey area (even though you would enjoy it so much and it wouldn't hurt anyone)? Or because then you won't see the ads when it might be played in a few years locally?Remember downloading TV while not hard is not easy either, and it takes quite an investment to get it playing on a TV.People generally have to have some pressing need, Few people just do it to bypass ads and people bypassed ads long before eztv. (a cup of tea anyone?)Lot's of people do it to watch things they have no other way of seeing. (either ever or for a few years)The point is most reasons are good, many a service to the broadcaster. (the exception likely being cable)Finally EZTV has both positive and negative effects on broadcast TV and the shows for many reasons, over all it's a positive impact I'd wager, the negative impacts to all except for cable/sat (and based on the scifi channel showing the very torrent popular Stargate months after it has aired in the UK indicates they aren't concerned much yet) are negligible and probably outweighed by the good parts.Overall piracy is a positive thing for the industry as has been shown with music.It is also widely accepted that piracy of windows is what lead to it's dominance.4: Cut the crap, it doesn't matter that it's legally grey, or morally imperfect, that's all just arguing over aesthetics.In the end though it's just the inevitable result of such a poorly distributed product.There is no point in arguing against it when people have the motivation, the means and no reason to not do it (unless they are legal and moral puritan sticklers, it is not morally wrong to watch something which we should be able to watch for free).EZTV is popular because there is a need and until 'they' fill it, we will fill it.We just happen to provide access to more people to TV eps online than other torrent sources combined and probably usenet too. (though no numbers exist on the latter)Some argue that EZTV doesn't deserve much credit as all we do is distribute it, well the cappers deserve credit too but how much credit do you want to give those who wish you didn't have access to it anyway?So too also cut the crap about what EZTV does, yes, EZTV only redistributes from the very closed scene to our extremely popular public torrents, a very real amount of work and expense goes into doing that (we seed it with super fast servers) but the effort is not important, what is important is the effect, eztv IS the only good free public source of unrestricted TV online and our numbers dwarf private trackers, in other word eztv IS the revolution at this time.Usenet is excellent btw, better due to the speeds but you must pay for the service and it is more work5: The answer:Will we kill TV? (We are huge fan's, we don't want it dead, we just want to have reasonable access, apparently that is too much to ask)Well actually TV is dying anyway but not because of EZTV and the likes. (the figures show people are turning off in droves but most of them don't know eztv exists)It's dying because the media are lying to us and we know it.It is because they cancel things, reschedule things, preempt schedules for sports etc...And because frankly it never made sense anyway (no pause, rewind, the scheduling, even with TiVo you must choose which ep to record) except that it was at the time the limit of technology.The technology has changed, the technology can right so many wrongs.The only problem is that there is no decent system out there yet besides the free one.A decent model is (obviously HiDef, 720P or better):High speed (high speed usenet is affordable) non drm downloaded (preferably from a server as with usenet, possibly boosted by p2p swarm) - actually if DRM worked flawlessly I wouldn't mind for tv, but it never works flawlessly and is always defeated if there is a desire to break it.Made available world wide at time of initial screening with the choice of either ads but free, or pay per episode a value that be about the same as the ad revenue and finally an all you can eat subscription.These can be better than scene released episodes as they won't have issues that need poppers and better slower encoding can be done, plus they are legal and helping the shows we love so they can compete with 'free' quite well, also it can be released before the scene release, most people will get whatever is first.As for if EZTV can be stopped, the way I designed it no, but as I am no longer a member (I founded it but left) I don't know how it is now being run but it would be impossible to close if being run carefully with the right structure.
aether22Mar 28, 2007
>>Every litigious act is met with equal and superior technological response, and more people interested in using that technology. Every. Time.Indeed, the same is true of the birth of EZTV in the ashes of #TVT, #BT and #TV-Swarm, all taken down by the MPAA.EZTV distributes many more programe than the others had and is far more secure.Very nice observation Zera!
holochikMay 31, 2007
I select TV sites from <a class="user" href="http://torrent-finder.com">http://torrent-finder.com</a> and search them all at once :)