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United Kingdom Leads the World in TV Downloads
SumDog writes "The UK is known for many things, great food, a wonderful climate and beautiful women. However, according to a story on the Guardian, a new study puts the UK ahead in one more category: it leads the world in TV piracy, accounting for 38.4% of the world's TV downloads, with Australia coming in second at 15.6% and the US in third at a pitiful 7.3%"
According to TFA, the UK accounts for 38.4% of _EU_ downloads, but only 18.5% worldwide. For comparison, the worldwide number makes a bit more sense ;)
EagerEyes.org: Visualization and Visual Communication
If you had read the article, you'd know it's 24, Enterprise, and Six Feet Under ...
EagerEyes.org: Visualization and Visual Communication
Considering that the UK has roughly 1/5th or so of the population of the U.S. (60 million UK, compared to probably 300 million US), the number of downloads per capita is much larger over there.
My other first post is car post.
"So I say, I paid for it already, give it to me. I think it is legal for me to download the prisoner DVD rips (I have never seen this show, I want to) because I pay the license fees already."
You're a bit off the mark there - The Prisoner was not a BBC show. It was an ITC show, produced for Channel 3 (or whatever it was called then). It was nothing, repeat nothing, to do with the licence fee. If you actually bothered to look at the DVD box, you'd have noticed it was published by Carlton, not the BBC. So do you still think it's legal?
Increasingly, the BBC isn't publishing the DVDs - another company is. Take the Spooks (or MI-6, as it's called in the US) DVDs - they're published not by the BBC, but by the production company (Kudos), who get all the money.
And to be honest, I think some of the BBC dvds are very well priced - take the Red Dwarf DVDs, which retail for about £11 on Amazon for an entire season. I debate you pay "over the odds" for BBC DVDs - I think you pay the same as DVDs produced by any other company or studio.
You do raise some valid points though:
"So I say, I paid for it already, give it to me."
If you read the news, you'd see that's what the BBC want to do. It's even been posted on Slashdot before, for God's sake. The BBC actually WANTS you to be able to download TV shows and radio shows they produce for free. They're investing in P2P technology to try and make it possible. The thing stopping them is actually the issue of repeat fees for writers / producers etc.
"BBC make enough money to either a) scrap tv license or b) give us cheaper DVD's."
The TV license doesn't just pay for TV though...it pays for commercial free radio, one of the most popular internet sites in the world, educational programs and resources, transmission infrastructure, high tech R&D, etc. The DVDs the BBC produce are typically cheaper than other DVDs anyway, or at least around the same price.
"Most people spend more on BBC DVD's than they do on licenses nowwadays (only takes one or two Christmas prezzies of the office to do that)."
Erm. Let me see. Seasons 1 and 2 of The Office cost £15 on Amazon. £15. For 2 seasons. The licence fee is around £115. 15 x 2 doesn't = 115.
Perhaps you'd be interested in what the BBC actually spends the money on - they are accountable for it after all. See the website below:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/licencefee/
So what's your problem?
As a Brtitsh ex pat I must be contributing to that statistic somewhat. I'm really missing BBC, and Channel 4, Phoenix Nights, Father Ted, and a load of good documentories and stuff. Thanks to BitTorrent, and a DIVX campatible DVD player (i recommend one of those), I am getting my fix again. (Check out "The Power Of Nightmares, The Rise Of The Politics Of Fear" fro example, I don't think this will be aired in the US in a hurry...)
I'd be more than happy to pay the BBC licence fee, and watch UK-TV legally here in Sweden, but it's not possible. I can't get it through my cable provider, or over the net.
Channel 4 have a broadband service you can subscribe to, unfortunatly it's not available outside the UK.
The only way to get access to most Brittish TV is via BitTorrent, and the networks can't be loosing too much revenue as they are not provising a service to compete with the illegal downloads. I hope they get their act together soon, I'd much prefer to pay and see the stuff when it's aired.
As for UK leading the world for downloads, what do you expect US TV is crap! We produced this and this, you guys produced this and this.
I WANT MY, I WANT MY, I WANT MY BBC
Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated up.
meaning I would have to be at a specific location, namely in front of my television, at that time each week in order to follow the series
Did video recorders somehow pass you by?
We only pay for the BBC via taxes, which provides two channels on terrestrial analogue TV, about 7 on terrestrial digital and the same on satellite/cable. ;)
The rest of the broadcasters in this country are paid for by commercials, spread through the programs at ~15 minute intervals. They are far less intrusive than US ads and we never do things like run the credits, go to a break, come back to the show, break five minutes later, bit more show, ads, then roll the end credits
Chris "Ng" Jones
cmsj@tenshu.net
www.tenshu.net
That's one of the reasons why the BBC rocks. Personally I think it's worth the price of the licence fee for just the BBC news.
"Physics is to math as sex is to masturbation." -R. Feynman
Seriously though, how many N. Americans who are here knocking the climate have actually spent sufficient time in the UK to judge? I think you'll find the stereotype is a little far fetched.
I'm a Briton who now lives in Canada. I miss the climate. Vancouver sounds pretty appealing on this frosty morning in Toronto. It was below -20 here before Christmas. I was in the UK over Christmas and out running in T-shirt and sun glasses - no worries about frost bite there. The second year in a row for me. Yeah, it did get below 5C some days, but after what we put up with here that's nothing. No gloves, no hat, just pull on your coat. No shoes melting in to huge filthy puddles by the front door. No shovelling the driveway. In the summer when it's revoltingly hot and humid here, England will be a pleasant 20-25C. The thing is with that place is that the weather is so variable: sun, cloud, wind, rain, everyday! Of course, we're not going see any life here until May, when we get our short month of spring. The UK will start seeing signs of spring very soon (well, at least in the SE where I grew up).
The BBC is planning to offer a TV on demand service over the internet blogcritics.org article.
They are working to introduce a service where the last 7 days of shows are available for download in a similar fasion to their online radio player.
Additionally they are hoping to introduce a service where archive content is also available for download, featuring old shows that no longer have the same broadcast restrictions as recent content.
TV on demand is already available through networks such as HomeChoice which offer both recent archive (spaced, black books etc..) content and some of the shows broadcast in the last 7 days (from EastEnders to 'The Sky At Night'), all provided over a ADSL/LLU network.
To me, all this suggest that the BBC is looking to embrace the new delivery technologies now available. I wouldn't be surpried if they found articles like this Guardian piece to be encouraging, in indiating the public's desire to adopt more flexible viewing choices.