The campaign against ‘piracy’ continues. In this article, The Pirates of Prime Time, the so-called napsterization of television programming is explored. As a proud off and on tv ‘capper’ it is neat to see a depiction of the capping subculture:
While the legal battles drag out in court, pirates are enjoying a virtual free-for-all. Necratog (who asked to be identified by his screen name only) is the first link in a chain that supplies digitized copies of Buffy the Vampire Slayer to an online chat room and a website that get as many as 1,500 downloads a week. Not to be confused with the many “leechers” (people who only download shows), he’s a “capper” (someone who captures a TV show, digitizes it and sends it out to others).
His PC is connected to a TV cable; an inexpensive video card allows him to watch TV on his monitor. Using a free application called VirtualDub, he digitizes any show he wants and saves it to his hard drive. He then spends about five minutes editing out the commercials and an hour compressing the file until it is small enough to swap online. Then he uploads it to a friend who makes it available for others to download.
Like many other TV freaks, Necratog, 21, also downloads favorite programs and burns them onto CDs. His archives include 400 CDs that hold more than a thousand Buffy, Babylon 5, South Park and Star Trek shows. But Buffy is his favorite. “I’ll watch the same episode three or four times in a row,” he says. “I’ve watched some over 20 times altogether.”