TV Show Piracy Soars After CBS Blackout

TorrentFreak reports that piracy rates of the television show Under the Dome shot up by more than a third last weekend, even though official ratings dropped. What caused the increase? On Friday, three million subscribers to Time Warner's cable TV service lost access to CBS programming, the network on which Under the Dome airs. The article says this provides compelling evidence that the availability of a show is a key factor in the decision to pirate it. "To find out whether download rates in the affected markets increased, we monitored U.S. BitTorrent downloads of last week's episode as well as the one that aired this Monday following the blackout. The data from these two samples show that in Los Angeles, New York City, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Detroit and Pittsburgh, relatively more people downloaded the latest episode, an indication that customers are turning to unauthorized channels to get the show. With hundreds of thousands of downloads Under The Dome is one of the most pirated TV-shows at the moment. Of all sampled downloaders in the U.S. 10.9% came from the blackout regions for last week's episode, and this increased to 14.6% for Monday's episode, a 34% increase. In New York City, one of the largest affected markets, the relative piracy rate more than doubled from 1.3% of all U.S. downloads last week to 3% for the episode that aired after the blackout."

Comments

What's funny about Under the Dome

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that you can get that night's episode hours before it airs on CBS, without commercials. I'm not sure where else it's airing (maybe Canada) that shows it early.

Re:What's funny about Under the Dome

[Vanderhoth]

My wife and I watch it at 9:00 PM Atlantic time. I thought it was on Global, but the Global site says it's on at 10:00 PM Eastern time, that's 11 for us. part of the reason I pirate a lot of the shows we watch is because most don't come on until 11 our time and staying up until midnight knowing I have to get up at five the next day to look after our 2 year old or go to work just doesn't work. It sucks paying $150 a month for basic cable and internet and all the stuff you want to see is on after you go to bed. Under the dome is one of the only shows we watch on cable because it's actually on at a decent hour.

Re:What's funny about Under the Dome

[Vanderhoth]

This comes off sounding angry at your question, but I'm not, I'm mad at the cable company for making me pay for service and then nickel and diming me in to oblivion.

Mainly because the cable company wants another $15/mo to rent a DVR, which they only rent to you if you get the premium digital channels another $30/mo. I'm already paying $150/mo for internet and cable. Cable that I don't watch because everything I want to see is on after 11. Sometimes we'll stay up to watch something that's on at 10, but that's still pushing the envelope for us. We're both earlier risers and prefer to be in bed and asleep by 9:30.

So I'm not going to pay another $45/mo on top of $150 to get more channels I don't watch just so I can record the stuff I've already paid for that's on too late for me to see when I can download them the next day while I'm at work anyway. I have Sickbeard setup to get the shows I want when they become available. I only went that far because my wife's download list, which includes a lot of shows we don't get at all in Canada, was getting too long so I setup Sickbeard and she can add the stuff she wants to it.

Re:What's funny about Under the Dome

[Beardo the Bearded]

I used to record shows... or try to.

You have to, without question, use the cable company's box. No other box will work. Let's put aside the question of cost, and further, let's assume that it costs me $0 for cable service including the box.

The DVR that my provider game me would start and stop at a few minutes before or after a show. It couldn't be predicted, but about 10% of the time I'd miss the start or the end of the show.

Sometimes I wouldn't get any sound on the recording. That was about once a week. It's tricky at best to watch a show without sound.

Other times the recording would be pixelated. Sometimes it was for a second, sometimes it was for a few minutes. Not really a deal-killer.

About once every couple of months the DVR would erase every recording I'd ever made. So if I hadn't had a chance to watch a show, I could never watch it.

It was pretty bad and the cable company gave me a $100 a month credit for a year to compensate me for their crappy system. Now let's get rid of that cost assumption -- it wasn't $0, it is close to $100 a month to get a box that doesn't record and an encrypted feed that gives up. I'd guess that about 25%-35% of the time the show was unwatchably corrupted or just gone. (There were no problems watching a show "live", just when recording.)

Which meant I had to rent the shows... ooh, wait, there's no rental place that has them.
Okay, I can buy the DVD... oh, it won't be out for a year and I'd have to buy the whole season for $150...
Does the library have a copy to loan me? No.

There is one alternative...

I've never had a problem when renting from the famous Swedish library. Never once have I had a bad video, missing audio, or anything else. What you have is a free system that provides error-free and convenient watching of shows. The other option is expensive, error-ridden, and a pain in the ass.

Re: What's funny about Under the Dome

[Vanderhoth]

Some stuff we can. A lot of the time I get "Content not available in your region" some times I even get it when trying to stream from Canadian sites. There are undoubtly 1001 ways I could aviod pirating, but I've already paid for the show on cable so I should be able to access it however is most convienent for me. I shouldn't have to spend extra time or money just to watch stuff I paid for already.

Q.E.D.

[jxander]

This means that those "new" pirates had the capacity to pirate all along, but chose not to.

People are quite willing to pay for services such as television, but given the absence of legal means to do so, they will turn to illegal means.

Increase the legal avenues to access media and piracy will decrease accordingly.

Re:Q.E.D.

[penix1]

Although you may be correct, the real telling will be how many return to cable after getting the shows illegally without the advertising. Once the forbidden fruit is bitten, they may like it and never return...

Re:Q.E.D.

[roc97007]

Although you may be correct, the real telling will be how many return to cable after getting the shows illegally without the advertising. Once the forbidden fruit is bitten, they may like it and never return...

Yet another reason to provide a good enough service at a reasonable price from the very beginning, so that people never have a reason to explore illegal avenues.

Re:Q.E.D.

[Opportunist]

That's why DRM created more copyright infringements than anything else.

People buy something, they notice that it doesn't work the way they're used to (like, say, that you're able to time and medium shift the content), get upset, get told that there are "other ways" to get said content, notice that those "other ways" are not only more convenient but also free and a new "pirate" is born.

Re:Q.E.D.

[wierd_w]

This goes well with an assertion I have held about piracy for years.

It goes something like this:

Producers control supply, and have a "target" price they wish to meet. This could be perfectly sensible, or it could be inflated in a fashion that would make even the debiers diamond cartel blush. Does not matter. They control the supply, and have a target price.

Because they control supply, they restrict the supply until demand for the product permits them to reach that target.

Piracy happens when:

The hidden and intrinsic costs of piracy are less than the inflationary costs induced by restricting supply, via puncturing the producer's stranglehold over the supply.

Thus, piracy rate is a fundemental feature of the modern information economy. It shows, without bias, how artificially stacked the target price is against what the natural market price is. It is every bit as useful as tracking wages, tracking unemployment, or tracking free time.

The problem, is that you whave whole sections of the economy that are propped up by the wholesale control over supply. Without being propped up above the true market ideal price, and enforced via artificial scarcity, the product is simply not profitable to produce. (At least in some circumstances.) The market really does not fucking care about that. The price is inflated, and piracy rate consistently indicates that fact.

Piracy, being a fundemental feature of the information economy, (owing to the nearly free cost of duplication and distribution that can be employed), should not be seen as "the boogey man" of content producers. They would be much better served to simply accept piracy to be as inevitable as a rainy day is, and instead focus on how their business can cope with the presense of piracy in the market.

Again, piracy occurs when the implicit and explicit costs of piracy are less than the costs of legal purchase. Those costs are NOT all monetary.

1) downloading a bulk pack of episodes takes time.
2) the download saturates the download pipe, preventing the downloader from doing other things, like playing games online.
3) the download could be broken, encoded poorly, be in the wrong language, have hardcooked subtitles in chinese, etc.
4) the download could contain malicious software
5) you could be sued for many millions of dollars per file downloaded.

People are willing to put up with a pretty significant amount of crap, if the inconvenience cost of the legal distribution method is less inconvenient than the illegal method.

This is why there was a HUGE reduction in "illegal MP3 activity" when iTunes hit the stage, and went DRM-free. While iTunes is FAAR from perfect, and clearly does not nor is meant to, service everyone-- it does present a significantly "easier" and "cheaper" alternative to the illegal alternatives, that is usually much safer as well. (Some argument can be made about the quality and nature of the iTunes client software that are noteworthy in that dept, but this is slashdot, and I am sure you already know.)

Likewise, when Netflix came on the scene, there was a HUGE reduction in illegal movie activity.

The reason, in both instances: the cost of the legal offering came down significantly, both in terms of monetary value, and in terms of inconvenience. They both presented an option that was "simply better."

The inconvenience costs of the pirate distribution system are endemic, and can't easily or sensibly be removed. Some pirate distribution systems have tried to deal with that problem through exclusivity, like demonoid, but that only compartmentalizes the problem, and imposes another inconvenience to the pirate distribution model-- namely, now you also have to be invited to pirate, rather than simply participate. (If you can become a member to the sanitized secret pirate social club, the benefits become obvious, but the initial obstacle cannot be less than the trouble associated with the consequences of working with the rabble they keep out. Virus whores, porn re

CBS screwed themaselves even more

[dirk]

Another reason the torrent numbers probably wen up is that CBS also blocked TW customers from accessing their shows from the CBS website. If a TW customer went to the CBS website to try and watch a show, they weren't able to. So any money they could have made from that was gone as well. So really, CBS actually pushed people who would go through the next legitimate channel further down the line. Sure, they could possibly buy it from Amazon or iTunes, but at a dollar per show, that is a pretty hefty price for a show you will watch once and then delete.

Re:What's with...

[Guppy06]

Most of these shows can be watched legitimately at cbs.com, but CBS is currently blocking anybody with a TimeWarner Cable IP address.

Well, DUH!

[Opportunist]

What do you expect?

Let's face it, for most people simply turning on the TV is more convenient than downloading a show and then figuring out a way how to watch it sensibly on their computer equipment. They easily and willingly accept ads as the price for that convenience. Remember that they're not technical people like most on here, they want something that "just works", and they don't consider watching shows on their computer or connecting it to a TV very convenient.

But if they have a favorite show, especially if it's a show that spans a longer story arc and doesn't just consist of self contained episodes, they will go that extra mile to compensate if their cable provider drops the ball. And no, you may rest assured that they're not happy about it, far from it. It was most likely a hassle for them to get that show, they had quite a bit of "expense" (in terms of time and 'nerves') to get their show back.

It's actually even likely that they will not continue this policy despite the ads. It's simply more convenient for them to just switch on the TV, grab a box of chips and sprawl out on the couch rather than tinkering and toying with the computer to get that.

Obligatory Oatmeal

[tepples]

I don't have a magnet link, but I do have an HTTP link. Perhaps someone's HTTPS Everywhere rules have fallen out of sync.

History of nonsense

[BenJeremy]

Pre-1996:
TV Stations: Broadcast all day long... what's that, Cable company?
Cable company (10% of TV viewers): We are going to carry your station in our market, bringing you to some new viewers.
TV Stations: (SHRUG) OK, go for it. More viewers means more ratings! More ratings means more advertising revenue!

1996:
Federal Government: Here you go, Broadcast stations, you can now demand payment for being carried on a cable provider! with The Telecommunications Act of 1996
Cable Companies: WTF?
Federal Government: The free ride is over
TV Stations: Hmmmm... free money, we like that!

Post-1996:
TV Stations: GIMME, GIMME, GIMME, GIMME, GIMME, GIMME, GIMME, GIMME, GIMME, GIMME!
Cable Companies: It's not worth THAT much for us to caryr you. How about we start whittling down the network affiliates to a single, small local-market station

(time passes)

TV Stations: Our ratings our down, we are losing ratings to cable stations - it's all the cable company's fault! Raise the rates!!
Cable Companies (now 95% of the viewers): Geez, not this again, this is ridiculous, we're outta here. Goodbye, CBS.

(Sometime in the next decade):
TV Stations: Where did all our viewers go? Doesn't anybody have antennas? Why does the FCC want to narrow the broadcast spectrum to "auction valuable unused frequencies"? Hey Cable Company, want to carry us at a slightly discounted rate?
Cable Companies: (Chirp Chirp Chirp)

----------- At least that's the way I see it. Where does CBS think those viewers will come from? Will they magically sprout an ATSC TV antenna out of their collective asses and start receiving OTA signals again? Over 90% of their viewers no longer HAVE antennas and don't care. They can PIRATE your programs and why feel guilty??!? They got the programs for "free" before.

GREED is the ultimate downfall of broadcast networks. Cable providers do OTA broadcasters a SERVICE by providing access to large numbers of viewers, which in turn incereases ratings, which, in turn, increases revenues. There was NEVER a need to double dip by demanding cable companies pay a fee.

Re:Been years since I've watched TV...

[Subm]

> I'll be damned if I'll be spending (wasting) my remaining years on this planet sitting zombie-like in front of a screen

... written on Slashdot