Despite Global Release, Breaking Bad Heavily Pirated

tlhIngan writes "One reason that many people pirate TV shows is 'it's not available in my country until months after it airs.' Which is why the second episode of Breaking Bad's final season was aired globally within a few hours of each other yesterday evening. Despite this, many users still decided to download it than watch it when it aired locally. Australia users we the top, perhaps because it was on FoxTel. This was followed by U.S. and Canada (who obviously got to see it when it aired), and the UK where Netflix had it within hours of the U.S. premier. Fifth on the list was the Netherlands, where it had aired hours before the U.S. premier on a public channel. It's obvious that despite the global release, the show was headed to top its previous highs in number of downloads. Could this spell the doom to future global releases, since the evidence is people just pirate them anyways?"

Comments

How many knew that it was a global release?

[Anonymous Coward]

There would be no need to pirate it if everyone knew that it would be on TV. How many knew that this was the case?

Re:How many knew that it was a global release?

[InterBigs]

I'm from the Netherlands and I did not know it aired on a public channel on the same day as in the US. I can't find any information about it either. All I know it airs on a premium channel 5 days after the US release, which is still not bad!

Re:How many knew that it was a global release?

[Jane Q. Public]

"There would be no need to pirate it if everyone knew that it would be on TV. How many knew that this was the case?"

Then there is that other issue, for which people used to use their VCRs. It's called "Time Shifting". Which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled was legal...

BUT almost nobody records on tape anymore. And most DVRs are, sadly for everybody, linked to a particular service.

So what "time shifting" option do they have these days? Unless it's something on Netflix, It's called BitTorrent...

Re:How many knew that it was a global release?

[jimicus]

I didn't, but even if I did, it wouldn't make much difference because Breaking Bad is on Netflix in the UK.

Netflix isn't available over the air so I can't get it from that.

Netflix doesn't bounce signals off a satellite so I can't get it with satellite TV.

Netflix don't run a channel through Virgin's cable network, so I can't get it with Virgin (even if they did, my town isn't cabled).

My PVR is a Humax, and has its own Internet-based portal but that doesn't allow you to watch any arbitrary Internet-delivered channel; only channels that have partnered with Humax to provide it. Netflix have not partnered with Humax.

I'm not a big gamer, so the Wii isn't even plugged in any more and I'm not about to plug it in for one show.

Yes, I can plug the laptop in; it has an HDMI connection. But the laptop doesn't have the same convenience as all the other equipment that's controlled from a Logitech Harmony remote. So already Netflix is looking at least a little inconvenient (yes I know there are /.'ers who don't consider it the slightest inconvenience to repurpose an old PC as a Roku box and control it with a full keyboard but I'm not one of them).

The UK is chock-full of "Only £5/month!" deals; most of them have strings attached like "rises to £15/month after 3 months, minimum contract period 18 months" in microscopically small print. So I'm naturally wary of anything that involves regular payment - particularly as it's only for one show and I have no idea whether or not I'd like to keep it for anything else.

Lazy? Maybe. But I took the decision a long time ago that I mess around with technology enough for work purposes; I'm buggered if I'm going to do the same for leisure. Once plugged in and setup, it either JFW or it's not plugged in in the first place.

Re:How many knew that it was a global release?

[Jane Q. Public]

I'll add to that:

The "content" companies created this situation themselves. They don't want people recording (even for legal timeshifting purposes). They want people to stream (which is terribly inefficient) or rent, or otherwise pay royalties. Even on TV shows.

Well, this is what they get as a result. They have nobody to point fingers at but themselves. The hell with them.

And the really shitty part is: they'll complain that this is yet more evidence that people are dishonest. When in reality, it's only more evidence that trying to lock people in to their corporate bullshit profit-and-power-mongering has consequences.

Re:How many knew that it was a global release?

[bfandreas]

I live in Germany and I wasn't aware of it. If something like this isn't heavily publisized then the old habits prevail. They should have taken out ads on Pirate Bay and gone to the popular media if they had wanted a proper test case.

The Internet has no oceans. Yet they still think that dividing the world into regions is still viable. The other heavily pirated TV show that I am aware of is the British Top Gear. They can not release the full show on DVD even though they'd love to. they can't do it because they use a lot of music. The executive producer of that show said that it is nearly impossible to negotiate deals with the music industry for a global release on DVD. They'd have to talk with so many rights holders they wouldn't know where to begin.
Another annoying habit that stems from this region thinking is what they did in Germany. They sold(and still sell) DVDs with the German audio track only. Sometimes if they sell them with the English audio track they have German subtitles that can't be swithced off(VLC ignores this madness). All for publishing reasons.

So the Breaking Bad experiment failed due to lack of publicity(making front page on /. is not publicity). And the publishers tried to sell overcoming regional releases as something new while we have been blissfully ignoring it for years.

Re:How many knew that it was a global release?

[Anonymous Coward]

I torrent ALL te shows I watch... I also have a satellite subscription that gets ALL the shows that I watch... Why I hear you ask... Well, it is easy... I travel for work. I travel around 90% of my time. I torrent the eps when they become available, and watch them in my hotel room on the TV with my WDTV media player. This way, I do not have to deal with "local" TV and "local" languages. I can also watch the episodes when I want, and commercial free. So, not freetarding... I pay Murdoch a lot of money monthly NOT to watch his ads...

Re:How many knew that it was a global release?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhm yeah, the breaking bad episode in the netherlands was not the premier of this season, but the last episode of LAST YEARS season.
Here's a link: http://programma.vpro.nl/drama/afleveringen/breaking-bad-serie-4/aflevering-13.html
The article is misleading.

Re:How many knew that it was a global release?

[wbr1]

From one post:

The Internet has no oceans. Yet they still think that dividing the world into regions is still viable.

From another:

We need to move to global licensing for music, but I can't see how that will ever happen because of the wide variations in laws and licensing rules between countries. Europe would never accept the US system and vice-versa, and China has completely different ideas.

I submit that -this- is the ocean we must cross now. There are no real physical boundaries on the internet, but we must still span the sea of greed and sail the oceans of unfairness and lack of understanding.

Re:How many knew that it was a global release?

[gravis777]

I'll take it a step futher. I ended up canceling the cable. Here is why:

4 choices here - Dish, DirectTV, Time Warner, and AT&T Uverse. I wanted to bundle in internet, and have unlimited data. That rulled out everyone except Time Warner.

Time Warner said that they would bundle cable for $10 a month more. But then there was the charge for the HD reciever. Then the HD tier. Then they didn't carry all the channels I wanted in HD.

Then I tried to get a DVR. There was one option, with a tiny harddrive that held about 10 hours of HD recording. And there was a DVR fee (on top of the HD box fee) and a DVR service fee.

The choice to get out of the fees was to get either a TiVO (wait, there are fees there) or a cable card for the PC. I elected the latter - I got terrabytes of storage space, and I could archive stuff to disc..... EXCEPT....

Time Warner puts broadcast flags on EVERYTHING. Would not work in Linux or a half dozen programs I tried in Windows - it ONLY worked with Windows Media Center. The recordings were then wrapped in DRMed crap, meaning it would not play in anything other than Windows Media Center. Which would still be an option, except that if you moved the recordings to another location or device, the recordings became unwatchable.

So, the $10 extra a month became $80 extra a month to get HD channels and a DVR that held almost no data, third party solutions did not work, and the MAJORITY of the shows I watch are available on Netflix or Hulu? That was an easy choice for me. I cut the cable, Netflix, Hulu or Amazon what I can, Vudu the couple of shows I can't, (which averages the same cost as a little over a month of cable for a year's worth of shows - I guess about 2-3 months if you add in subscrition costs to the other services) and torrent the stuff that is not available on any of those services.

I did look at going back and getting cable and DVRs through one of the other three companies and keeping internet through Time Warner (I loved Dish's DVR when I had them), but when the quality of streaming media off of Hulu looks better than Dish's or UVerse's HD channels, and DirectTV's pricing system and contracts make me cringe, the solution was simple - fast internet pipe and streaming services.

Broadcast TV

[kwiqsilver]

Do they still broadcast TV shows?

Re:Broadcast TV

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking specifically of Australia program was only broadcast on Foxtel which is a private pay TV provider where the cheapest plan is roughly 4 times as expensive as NetFlix and the premium plans are up to 10 times as expensive (and still lacks the programming choice of similar overseas pay tv networks). Due to restrictive region restrictive licensing agreements NetFlix and other similar services aren't available to potential Australian customers without using methods which hide where the customer is located, something that's beyond the tech understanding of most of the potential customers. Given the restrictive choice and the high pirating level here I can only assume our inability to view the program has contributed to the high piracy level which further leads me to conclude that despite the piracy level apparent in other countries it would be even HIGHER without the timely broadcasting that studios are attempting.

False.

[Anonymous Coward]

They also doubled their viewership. It's obvious piracy is not a problem.

Re:commercials

[anubi]

AC posted posted my first impression of the problem.

Ads.

Countless amounts of legal and technical efforts go into trying to make us ingest a nauseating pill. Its like trying to get a cat to swallow a pill. If you have ever owned a cat, you know this routine.

I have seen ads that were entertaining, but very seldom.

Most ads are delivered with all the finesse of a panhandler trying to bum the price of a beer off some restaurant's clientele - and if the beggars get too annoying, the clientele goes elsewhere just to get away from the beggars.

Since a lot of decision makers read Slashdot, I'll offer up this bit of feedback... instead of trying to coerce your audience to watch your ad through skip-resistant technologies, frequent interruptions, punitive and legal means, and other highly annoying tactics and threats.... instead how about getting some artisans to work on your idea to make it entertaining... something people will hold their pee for.

Look to Google. I note they apparently are doing research on ads.

On YouTube, the ads are often skippable, but you know what? Some of the ads are better done than the thing I dialed up in the first place - I end up watching the whole ad and then skipping the video when what I had originally intended to watch turned out to be a disappointment.

My guess is Google figured it was probably better to let people skip the ad if it was simply annoying to them, lest they leave the website completely; ramming a ad onto someone non-receptive to it is completely counterproductive. However introducing a new product to someone interested in it is the ultimate goal. The problem is matching them up. The cat does not like the oats which interest the horse, nor does the horse find birds of culinary interest.

TL:DR You are wasting your time trying to force people to watch your ad. Make them interesting!!!