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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%"
Well, since US television tends not to make it to Britain for a long time after it airs here, it makes a bit of sense. A lot of shows have a one- or two-season lag time. It makes sense that fans who follow the show online would want to see the show as it comes out.
On the other hand, I score TV shows because I fucking hate commercials, and because I don't have an actual television any more. Funny how original Star Trek was about fifty-five minutes long, while newer "full hour" shows are more like forty-two minutes. That's nearly four times the ads. Yecch.
Also, it's convenient to be able to watch them when and how I'd like. And I get to insulate myself from the vast bulk of crap that's on TV most of the time, and pick the best of what's out there. (Firefly, Babylon 5 and perhaps some softcore lesbian porn: The L Word.)
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Didn't have to watch comercials and it was better quality then the crap Comcast quality I get. I would have paid money to see them in high resolution and with better sound, but these executives just don't seem to get it. I can download a TV show in less than an hour, in fact, I can download faster than I can watch. It is all about the industry clinging to a dieing business model and not seeing the future. Fine, do a 5-computer iTunes thing with DRM, it is not like music where I need to listen to them anywhere.
when the press spouts statistics without any reference as to how the data was collected..
No, American girls are ridiculously underwight with grotesquely fake-looking skin. No, actually, that's not true either
"beautiful" american girls are as above. the majority are McDonalds-stuffed rhinos
Or shall we just stop with the stereotypes?
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
"The UK is known for many things, great food, a wonderful climate and beautiful women..."
I'm assuming this is an attempt at sarcasm, but apart from the "wonderful climate" I wouldn't have realised. Sure we have a reputation for crap food, but then Americans have a reputation as ignorant redneck fuckwits, and we all know that's true, right?
Hmmm, someone has a problem with Brits, no?
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
Sorry if I'm stating the obvious, but it's television. Signals broadcast through the air. Sorry to burst the bubbles of the folks in Hollywood, but you can't control the genie if you're throwing it out of the bottle at the speed of light. Accept the fact that people have the right to record their television shows, and don't complain when they trade them.
(It's never too late to join the Renaissance)
Exactly. Why do Brits download so much US TV
i) They don't want to wait for it appear over here.
ii) Unlike other European countries, they don't need TV companies to dub/subtitle it into a different language.
File under : Not Rocket Science.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
You forget bad teeth. But a good british accent can be sexy on a woman, not as sexy as a french accent but it'll do.
Good food and good weather? haha cute.
Now on to the topic, TV piracy seems... I dunno almost impossible, ASSUMING it's something I get normally. How can you "pirate" say, Survivor (ugh) it comes on my TV normally, it's not something I couldn't watch otherwise, so what if I decide to watch it on saturday night around 1am via an mpeg? Ok so I didn't record it myself, I COULD have. Is it any more piracy for me to download that episode of south park, or Tivo it?
Sure I suppose if it's something I wouldn't normally get but then another argument comes into play "if I wasn't ever gonna get it no way, have I taken anything away from the provider?" it's not like "hey I was gonna buy this DVD but I downloaded it instead" ok that's theft of a sort, or "hey instead of buying this music cd I got it via kazaa" this is TV shows, they kinda give those away anyway.
Yeah I know, all sortsa lawyers could shoot all sortsa holes in my arguments but really what's being pirated? Either you get the show normally and could easily enough record it yourself or you wouldn't ever get the show at all normally and you're merely adding to the viewership, I can't see how this would be a "bad thing" for the people behind the show "hey not only did we get a nielsen rating of X there were at least another Y thousand viewers via internet downloads, PEOPLE LIKE OUR SHOW, please renew our contracts, k thx".
I dunno just seems like a no lose situation for the studios, it's not like they sell me the TV shows I watch (I wouldn't PAY for most of them UGH TV sucks ass).
--- www.f-theocean.com
I personally hope downloads become more of a broadcast medium. Sure, throw some commercials in that 320x240 video! I'll watch them to watch decent News/Information/Entertainment. If I could subscribe to the Daily Show and scrap cable, I would. Even for like $10-$20 a month. I grab legal stuff from some places like Archive.org and play it on my PDA. There's some good content online both streaming and to download, but the models for getting to it (subscribe al la iFilm/Real, finesse google syntax, pray) suck when compared to downloading a file that I can convert into any format for any player I wish from the pirate channels. This, like other entertainment IP problems, comes down to convenience for a lot of folks. Listen up Networks!
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
People will pay for bandwidth, then spend time searching and downloading and burning to CD-R that which you broadcast for free.
Bottled water. Seriously. It's a business model. You don't have to sue people who drink from the tap to make it work, either.
I can think of quite a few shows that I'd pay a bit to see again, and maybe burn to CD. If I knew they'd be available at the same price essentially forever, I wouldn't even bother hoarding them.
In the US, you can see everything you want on cable first runs. If you want a copy you can TiVO it. In the rest of the world, we have to wait months, or up to two years for them to show up on our sets. In Hong Kong I can buy the Sopranos and Six Feet Under on DVD six months or a year before they're shown on TV. I'm not devoted enough to download them though.
But as for production quality; there are many, especially historical, British TV series of world class and the nature documentaries are the best in the world; often if you look at the credits you'll note they're co-productions with American, Canadian, Australian networks to spread the cost.
It's unfortunate, but that's the case. For a while anyway.
...I realised television really has the absolute most shitty quality content of any medium bar none.
When my DSL was connected, I spent the first 2 months downloading gigs & gigs of television, eager to find out what the rest of the world was watching. All of these television shows the US and Europe was getting that we never saw, not even on cable or satellite television.
And I watched them all, and I downloaded more, and in the end...
I imagine once broadband takeup in australia approaches the maximum, there won't be the influx of broadband-newbies to keep up the multi-GB downloads of foreign television crud that's as bad as our own homegrown crud.
Now, what the industry needs to grasp is that if they provided me a service with:
- Fast download speeds
- No DRM
- Open format video
- Acceptable price
, then I would USE IT instead of getting the episodes using BitTorrent without paying for them.I am not downloading the series because I am cheap, I am downloading the series because of the flexibility it gives me. This is something the TV industry can EXPLOIT to earn money. The Internet will not kill the TV industry, as long as the TV industry understands that it needs to adapt.
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,
Boys and girls, remember that every time you use the word "piracy" in this context you are guilty of newspeak. The people who want the public to use these words have a political agenda. The **AA want you to associate not for profit copying with attacking ships and murdering people.
Oh, woe to be British and lumbered with all these ugly, ugly, women.
They're not glamourous or sexy, which is why Hollywood won't touch them with a bargepole.
If only we could produce hotties like Madeleine Albright, Condaleeza Rice, and Barbara Bush.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Just to put how pitifully cheap the TV License is:
Last year, in amongst all those other hours of great television, the best radio in the world, and one of the most important news sites on the net, we had all the Euro 2004 football matches screened. With no adverts and excellent commentary.
It actually cost my friend in the US MORE MONEY, even given the fact that the dollar is worthless right now, just to watch the matches on pay-per-view, with a really, really crap commentary.
So anyone who likes football (and that's a fairly huge number in the UK) should consider everything else their TV license funded last year as effectively a free bonus.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
It works both was I think. Majority of UK downloads are of import series. Majority of US/Canada downloads are probably of non-US/CA series.
I don't think the TV companies realised that they started to lose about 10 years ago. The Internet was not suitable for downloading shows then, but the information about the shows was suddenly far more easily (and quickly) available than it ever was.
People (either side of the pond, or in other countries) suddenly had at their fingertips information about this year's shows - not shows where we were lagging behind by a few seasons, or where the show got dropped before the end. That should have been the signal for the companies to work towards worldwide air-dates. OK they started a little, but not enough.
By the time the Internet could handle downloaded shows they should have pulled out all of the stops and gone for worldwide releases. Instead they hold out for better deals of whatever, but lose viewers. Especially here in the UK where they try to crowbar shows into an earlier timeslot to get more ratings - and cut (or drop - BBC dropped the Quantum Leap episode "Shock Theater" from re-runs as although it was fine for the 9pm airing it didn't work for their 6pm re-runs) the episodes to make them suitable for that timeslot.
Strangely enough people don't like waiting a year or more to get a cut-up episode, or one run out of order.
And (apart from possibly the cutting aspect) I'm pretty sure that US fans of UK shows feel similar to how some of us Brits feel about US shows. In this "new" world of instant information "Last Year's Episodes" just don't cut it anymore.
Tiggs
"120 chars should be enough for everyone..."
So ... English speaking countries that get second class treatment from the media companies take the matter into their own hands by downloading behind the bloated backs of those media companies.
... why does a free nation ALLOW stupid things like region encoding: it is a complete restraint on free and fair trade, a profit maintenance scheme. Why should $1 of taxpayers' money going into upholding or policing such a anti-consumer scheme?
To borrow a phrase: the market treats restrictions as damage and routes around them. I call "market failure" - or rather, the failure of government intervention in the form of artificial monopolies and de-facto cartels. Britain and Australia download, because the market isn't serving them - it expects consumers to serve the corporations' own fantasies of total control.
The state should let the media companies adapt or perish. THAT is capitalism. Not the fascist state of play in which the government props up corporate monopolies and acts as the corporate policeman. Imagine if carriage builders had been able to block the use of any vehicle that didn't use a horse
I am anarch of all I survey.
Because they bought the rights to screen it. That's like saying "BBC2 show Star Trek, so they must own it".
Americans don't have free dental care like we do in the U.K. Therefore the condition of teeth becomes an indication of wealth (and status). E.g. if you're poor you can't afford to have nice teeth.
While us Brits don't have this association, so its not AS important to make your teeth look perfect..
Thats my theory anyway.
Again with the stereotypes.
As an Expat I am sick of people saying that Britain is a lousy place, with lousy weather, food, beer, women etc.
I hate the politicians [all partys], one reason I will never return, but the climate is great.
[Warm and moist!]
Try living in a semi-arid climate like Colorado. You have to wear skin moisturizer like some girly-man. And the static shocks off of car doors will drive you mad.
Then the food. It is a pitty that the people who appreciate British food the least are the British themselves. The french and italians love their own food, and by talking loudly about it for many years have made it popular worldwide.
The British propensity for self deprecating humour has extended to their food, and made it a global joke. Which Is unfortunate. British food Is actually a damn sight better than it is given credit.
We have hundreds of varieties of cheeses like Cheddar, Lancashire, Lincolnshire, Leicester [Red and normal], Wenslydale, to name just a few.
We also have a huge variety of sausages, think lincolnshire and cumberland, and even a meatball called a faggot [Not very PC nowadays, but hey the UK definition is older than the US definition], made from liver and onions, for which I used to run home from secondary school for on Thursdays. ["Thursdays. Faggots and chips for tea"]
We also have the traditional Roast dinner, with Yorkshire Puddings, and it is delicious. [Far better than the US so-called London Broil rip-off.], many different types of meat pie, bread that tastes like bread [How can Americans put up with the bread they eat is beyond me], and of course, our famous fish and chips.
Plus the beer is a damn sight better than the water that comes out of the US. [Except for some small microbreweries and brew-pubs that actually make something with a flavour that you can drink at non-cryogenic temperatures.]
Having lived in various countries I can also testify that the ratio of "mighty-fine" to "minger" is not so bad in the UK as common prejudice would dictate.
Even in the bleak industrial north of the country. ["Eeh, It's grim up north"]
So stop with the ridiculous, sarcastic, and ignorant, jokes about some of the things I, and most other expats, actually miss of the "home country".
Cracking. Every American who likes Python should try and find it.
Actually, the count is higher in the UK and Australia because new shows/series screening in the US are delayed before they're shown here.
If there was no lag, I think you'd find the download counts a lot more even, or weighted towards the US.
Australia, as you noted, really doesn't have the best speeds/rates for broadband -- a lot of customers would be hit with huge bandwidth bills if they were to regularly download movies/TV shows.
'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
Point out how stereotypes are bad, then proceed to cast your own stereotype about Americans. Brilliant.
One guy wrote that article, there's no need to offend the other 280 million people living here.
I went to England last year and I liked it. Didn't meet too many people like you.
The term "piracy" has been used to refer to this sort of activity since well before the **AA existed. This meaning is listed in every dictionary I own, and has been for years. In fact, from the Online Etymology Dictionary entry for "pirate":
It's sad how many people on Slashdot seem to accept compaints about using "piracy" or "theft" for copyright infringement as a substitute for informed, logical argument. Ironically, perhaps the biggest offender in the "not quite what the word really means" stakes is the FSF's use of "free", but few people ever object to that.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
funny, and here was me thinking that wales was a part of the british isles
Ask the Welsh if they're British.
You upset a lot of Welsh people when you say they're not British almost as much as you upset them if you say they're English.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
You no longer need the TV companies to distribution your shows...
I would quite happily download AND WATCH shows that contained adverts from the internet.
THINK about it... why bother getting a bad quality rip of a TV show SOMETIMES if you can go to the studios website and download a show for free.
The Studio could sell advert space in the downloads.
I would have no problem watching an advert or two.
Current TV shows are 40 minutes long repending on 20 minutes of adverts to fill up the 1hour slot.
Why not make 40minute shows with 10 minutes of advertising (you will not have the overheads to support of one of the networks!)
but for heavens sake do NOT try to force us to watch the adverts... we don't have to do that now (simply using a VCR and forwarding through adverts, or just going out to make a cup of tea)
surely theres a businessman out there with some nouse...
Yawn. Little Britain series one, funny. Little Britain series two, repetitive. At least Python played with their own formula a bit, and the Fast Show managed stay funny within their character base. This series of Little Britain has been the same jokes over and over again. Shame.
neuro at well dot com (when I post, it's my opinions, no-one elses)
only because the Welsh WERE the Britons before the Saxons came. Wales comes from the Anglo-Saxon (old English) word walash, meaning a "foreigner", so calling them Welsh is more of an insult than calling them british. But i'm a Paddy, so what do I know.
Well , I am a Mexican who recently moved to Liverpool UK. Now for my experience living here (about 6 months) I must tell I found the following:
1. Women are pretty, yep at least I can say that the "average" woman is prettier than in Mexico, I may generalize the UK woman as: "if its not fat, its good" but I am just talking about AVERAGES.
2. The food, well it really sucks from my point of view. The only thing I eat are Pizza (Italian?), Kebabs (India??), Hamburgers (USA?) Fries (???) and English Breakfast (now I eat this, and I think is the best thing they have as a dish...).
I have tried something called Bovril (and Marmite), and it tastes Terribly Bad in the bread... it tastes better as an infusion...
As for salaries, I have seen at least for computing seem to be fine (again, comparing from Mexico so... it may not be even).
3. The ppl here is of course colder than in Mexico, and I think that girls are kind of dumb (the average-standard). Someone told me that he bought (in UK) an Atlas of Europe in order to help him traveling when he was in vacation in UK, and, his surprise was that the atlas didn't included UK!!! (so as if UK was not part of Europe for English...)
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
It makes sense that the U.K. tops the list of TV downloads. Most of the TV programs downloaded are produced in the U.S. The U.K. is a populous country of people whose culture and language are largely similar to the U.S. Most of the TV programs downloaded are not available in the U.K., or are if they are available, they're aired in the U.K. later than in the U.S., or and only on premium satellite or cable networks.
Your only true correct example is Elizabeth Hurley.
Uh, she's Welsh. My dad knocked up her mum on the sly; we Welsh are like that. Besides, everyone knows all English men ae really homosexuals that prefer caning young boys.
Ok I'm exagerating. It's just the men in politics and that work for the BBC.
God knows how many half brothers and sisters I have.
Need Mercedes parts ?
"Pirating" in this context has been used since the second Apple ][ computer was built...
If you still think of "piracy" as attacking ships, you're such a moron you probably buy food for your computer's "mouse" and try not to open any "windows" during winter in order to keep the heat in.
If you still think of "piracy" as something invented by the **AA, you are so braindead you've been easily brainwashed by the same **AA that you hate.
Moron!