The More You Know

For those of you not familiar with Stage6 (Possibly a dead link now), it was a website that used the high quality DivX format to provide streaming video content. It was, simply put, amazing. When I say that I don’t mean it lightly either. The player integrated easily into FireFox and Internet Explorer. It even supported Linux users with player, distribution and application information. On top of that the website was simple, intuitive, fast and provided high quality videos that could be watched full screen and made YouTube look like a joke.

“Then why is it going offline?” I hear you ask and “Why should(n’t) I cry about it?”. Well we should take a look at what really caused Stage6 to take a hit from the “ban-hammer.”

The official Stage6 blog stated stated (here) that:

…So why are we shutting the service down? Well, the short answer is that the continued operation of Stage6 is a very expensive enterprise that requires an enormous amount of attention and resources that we are not in a position to continue to provide. There are a lot of other details involved, but at the end of the day it’s really as simple as that…

That leaves quite a bit of room for interpretation. There are tons of types of expenses that would affect a site like this, like hiring lawyers, and there are tons of types of attention that are required to keep a site like this running, like having lawyers look into content piracy litigation.

I think the information was best said here by SeekingAlpha.com that

Six weeks after DivX [Stage6's creators]filed for declaratory relief, UMG [Universal Music Group] finally made good on their threat and filed a lawsuit against DivX accusing them of piracy [of music videos]. By bringing DivX up on charges, they were able to successfully argue that their trial was a more appropriate venue for this question to be answered. While this does represent a setback for DivX, I doubt that the result was entirely unexpected.

Now who is really to blame? The real content providers, yes us. Since its impossible to point a finger into the masses and single any one person out, it was us who made Stage6 popular for pirating and we can not help but expect this kind of action to be taken. I know that a lot of people may say that “The Man” (read as the government) is coming down on us/Stage6. That “The Man” (read as big business) is keeping popular content from the people.

However, what it really comes down to is that watching content for free is illegal and it’s stealing. Companies make products to make money not to give them away for free and when they move to protect that content no one can really blame them. I love free things just as much as the next person. However when free means stealing, who really gets hurt? In this case Stage6 did.

The point is, if a service offers or provides a way for private content to be freely obtained against the will of the content owner it will always be taken down. One way or another, fairly or unfairly and we should expect it every time. Anyone who didn’t expect this to happen is probably just learning that services like Stage6 will spring up and die out when the prirates come. As cool as pirates are in movies, games, etc I really don’t like it when they destroy something I used to use to legally enjoy indie-content.

For those who enjoyed Stage6 by watching indie-content provided freely by the creators, I apologize for the rest of the Internet who didn’t see Stage6 the way you did. You saw it as a platform to provide brilliantly clear video to entertain people with your own ideas and abilities. The hungry piracy mob saw it as a way to distribute/obtain free protected content and destroyed it.

To all the people who enjoy pirated material, the zeal of the free meal. Take your pirating and keep it underground. Keep it out of the mainstream or it whatever service you are using will be taken down. Keep it away from awesome sites like Stage6. Piracy made easy will always be the death of content providers. Even good ones and no amount of user donations will keep it up.