With the lack of any American broadcaster profiting in any way from the critically-acclaimed revival of 'Doctor Who', American video pirates are finding that there is simply no one around to sue them.
"It's awful," admits a bootleg video enthusiast known only as 'M3rd0c.' "Here we are, going to all the trouble of getting the latest rips, compressing it with the best algorithms, even authoring our own DVD images... and what do we get? No cease-and-desist orders, no threatening mail on company letterhead.. our Internet provider hasn't even been subpoenaed for our real names and addresses, for pity's sake! If only someone would sell the damn thing over here, then we'd have an entity to work against. To be honest, this hardly feels 'underground' enough to bother with."
"I've been consistently sharing Doctor Who," continued M3rd0c. "You know that illegally leaked first episode that some Canadian got fired over? I've had it shared over Kazaa, eDonkey, and Bittorrent since it came out. Thousands of people have downloaded it off me. After over a month without a single threat, I got desperate and posted several episodes to Usenet, from my own personal home and work accounts. And do I catch any hell for it? Not a bit! Everyone on IRC is laughing at me now. Some cyberpunk I turned out to be."
"With nobody taking down my torrent sites, and no court cases to prepare for, I'm at a loss for what to do with myself. I guess I could always watch the files, they might as well be good for something. Maybe I'll like it, I think I remember watching Doctor Who on PBS when I was little. I always loved it when that Rimmer guy called the other guy a smeg head."
Reported by Rob T Firefly
