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Not Even Free TV Can Get People To Stop Pirating Movies and TV Shows (qz.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Quartz: Since the internet made it easier to illegally download and stream movies and TV shows, Hollywood struggled with people pirating its works online. About $5.5 billion in revenue was lost to piracy globally last year, Digital TV Research found (pdf), and it's expected to approach $10 billion by 2022. Streaming-video services like Netflix and Hulu have made it more affordable to access a wide-range of titles from different TV networks and movie studios. But the availability of cheap content online has done little to curb piracy, according to research published in Management Science (paywall) last month. Customers who were offered free subscriptions to a video-on-demand package (SVOD) were just as likely to turn to piracy to find programming as those without the offering, researchers at Catolica Lisbon School of Business & Economics and Carnegie Mellon University found.
The researchers partnered with an unnamed internet-service provider -- in a region they chose not to disclose -- to offer customers who were already prone to piracy an on-demand package for free for 45 days. About 10,000 households participated in the study, and about half were given the free service. The on-demand service was packaged like Netflix or Hulu in layout, appearance, and scope of programming, but was delivered through a TV set-top box. It had a personalized recommendation engine that surfaced popular programming based on what those customers were already watching illegally through BitTorrent logs, which were obtained from a third-party firm. The study found that while the participants watched 4.6% more TV overall when they had the free on-demand service, they did not stop using BitTorrent to pirate movies and TV shows that were not included in the offering.
The researchers partnered with an unnamed internet-service provider -- in a region they chose not to disclose -- to offer customers who were already prone to piracy an on-demand package for free for 45 days. About 10,000 households participated in the study, and about half were given the free service. The on-demand service was packaged like Netflix or Hulu in layout, appearance, and scope of programming, but was delivered through a TV set-top box. It had a personalized recommendation engine that surfaced popular programming based on what those customers were already watching illegally through BitTorrent logs, which were obtained from a third-party firm. The study found that while the participants watched 4.6% more TV overall when they had the free on-demand service, they did not stop using BitTorrent to pirate movies and TV shows that were not included in the offering.
Smells like bullshit to me. I've been offered so many "free" services all the time I turn them down without even thinking. I pay for Netflix, though rarely watch anything there or anywhere else. I'm sure I'm not the only one who is conditioned to turn down free services knowing there's a catch.
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About $5.5 billion in revenue was lost to piracy globally last year
It's been proven time and time again that people who download "illegally" wouldn't actually pay for it in the first place, so you can't assign a dollar value to it.
Giving people what they don't want at any price, including "free", is not a substute for giving them what they want.
Seriously, we've all been there... I feel like watching, I don't know... "Dr. Strangelove" and netflix doesn't have it so it suggests "Dr. Strange", "Young Frankenstein", "House of cards", "Pulp Fiction", "Oliver Stone's Untold History of the..."
So I torrent Dr. Strangelove, because I've already seen, or do not care to see any of those titles; and I *want* to see Dr. Strangelove.
Well, you could put a value to it, but it would be more accurate to state, "people pirated $5.5 billion worth of content" rather than, "$5.5 billion in revenue lost," because, as you say, most of those people wouldn't have paid for it. They just seized the opportunity to get it for free.
After 45 days, your account will be billed the full charge of $89.95, with a 2 year contract and 400.00 cancellation fee.
Seriously, every damn thing in 2017 has been some kind of underhanded anti consumer one sided deal, or a scam. Is anybody surprised nobody jumps at "Free" anymore? It's lost it's meaning. This is what happens when you fool an entire generation by redefining the meaning of words.
"Free for 45 days" means You can borrow it for a month and a half and all you pay is the processing fee, box rental fee, America fee, local fee, internal, and external fee, media tax, box tax, local and state tax and federal tax. The free 45 days also has a value of cash value 700 dollars (because we said so) and that's also going to count a income... so more tax.... and if you don't return the box and cancel service by 2AM on sunday (we're closed) you will be liable for the whole 700 dollars, btw Wendy the service cancel specialist and box processor will be out of the office that week so sorry in advance for that minor inconvenience. What a deal. Tell your friends and your welcome.
All this study proves is that bit-torrent is the most honest about the cost of the media, is reliable, less annoying, less conniving and underhanded, and has a better media selection.
If you wan't people to respect your laws, you need respectable laws. Artists death+70 year copyright owned by some corporation or media titan aint respectable even a little bit. Suck less big media. Nobody buys your bullshit anymore.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
Yeah, I occasionally have the misfortune to catch an hour or so of "Tee Vee" in some public location, and am always blown away by how much advertising there is. As well as by how idiotic most of that advertising is. After some 15 years of exclusively watching online, ad-free content, it's like being teleported into some horrible alternate dimension.
Hell, it's even worse than using a browser on someone else's computer and finding out they didn't install AdBlock.
I don't know how people can stand it ...
It's not about price. It's about selection. If the powers that be want to kill piracy they should all get together and offer reasonable online purchase and and rental of ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING EVER MADE. If people knew everything was available from a reliable source for a reasonable price there would be no temptation to pirate. But they won't do that, because they all want to try to squeeze out the other guy and think that will some how magically give them more money. So piracy continues because people want what they want.
The study found that while the participants watched 4.6% more TV overall when they had the free on-demand service, they did not stop using BitTorrent to pirate movies and TV shows that were not included in the offering.
It hardly seems shocking to discover that when you give people free access to content they don't care so much about, they'll still use Bittorent to find the content they really want to see.
I used to think that Netflix was going to stop movie piracy, then the studios decided that they didn't want one streaming provider to have access to everything, so to really watch everything I want to see, I need to subscribe to Netflix, Amazon Video, Hulu, HBO, Starz, Disney's upcoming streaming service and more.
While I *could* track down all of the services I need to use and subscribe to them, why bother when with a few clicks, Bittorrent has the content for free?
I pay for Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO, and a basic cable package. But I still download all of my shows and put them on my Plex server. I do this for two main reasons. 1) Avoid commercials.....I hate commercials. 2) To have all my shows in one app for my viewing pleasure. Regardless of what these media companies think, convenience is king and jumping around from platform to platform isn't fun. Yes yes, I know cable provides the convenience but the horrible service, commercials, and paying for content I never intended to watch ruins the convenience.
Okay, I'm a "legitimate content" person. I don't pirate. I see no point - I earn good money, I have enough spare to pay for what I actually want, which gives me titles I can play where/when I want to, and for which I don't have to worry about viruses, huge downloads, being marked by my ISP, or whatever.
I know, everyone does it, but I'm one of those odd people who just pays for my stuff. In fact, for the stuff I like, I've often paid several times over over the years. I have Amazon Prime so I get their Instant Video, and I have Google Play for a load of other things. I don't do Netflix as I don't see what they add for me and even with a friend's Netflix in the same house, I see no reason to use it.
But... this is my problem. If I want to watch it, I want to watch it. Every ad in front of the thing I paid for is an abomination. Every restriction on device, etc. is a pain in the butt. And every time you don't have the content I want, it's even more frustrating. I'm often standing in front of a online store, wanting to give them money, for maybe the crappiest old movie that's available everywhere and easily for free and I can't because it's not on offer for that service.
Two things pop to mind. Aliens: Special Edition. I love it. I'd love to have it on either the Google or Amazon account. But you can't. You can have Aliens. You can have boxset which include Aliens (but which you can only tell the version of by the runtime, and it's not Special Edition). You can have Alien: Director's Cut. But you can't have Aliens: Special Edition. Go into a shop, however, and that's all they sell, even in the boxsets.
Another is an old sitcom from the 1970's called The Two of Us. It's UK-specific but so is a lot of the content I buy and the online stores don't have a problem obtaining or selling it. But they released one series on DVD only, nothing else, and then never released the second series (despite it being listed as a pre-release item on Amazon for 8 years now and various dates promised). I can't find either online.
Now, I'm sure if I really Google hard, I could come up with somewhere selling the first as an online streaming movie, and I could download the latter in a minute via a torrent, I'm sure. But... I'd quite like to own them legitimately and on two of the largest services in the world today. And I can't. It's simply not possible.
Until the media industry gets together to make a rights consortium that can handle such things so that all the relevant players can licence content properly, and that the same levels of content are available across services, it's really just wasting my time and money. I'm literally trying to give them money for products they already have, but they have no interest in taking it, no way to gauge my interest, no way for me to give feedback.
By contrast, all the top line of Google Play Movies / TV and most of the stuff I see on Amazon Instant Video I have absolutely zero interest in. Literally I have stopped looking, because it's all just "latest cinema release", six months later, at premium prices, advertised only at the rental prices, that I wouldn't want to watch if they were free to do so anyway.
Given the amount of tech involved, I don't get why it's so hard to tap into a licensing database, of official content, allowing me to buy anything and everything that's ever been digitised, while recompensing all those people involved fairly, via any service I like, and to actually make sensible recommendations based on what I like to buy.
To be honest, it's totally worked against them. I just stopped watching movies instead.
Allow me to quote from TFS:
"The study found that while the participants watched 4.6% more TV overall when they had the free on-demand service, they did not stop using BitTorrent to pirate movies and TV shows that were not included in the offering."
(emphasis mine)
You're REALLY surprised that people kept downloading the stuff they couldn't get from your package? How on earth is this in any way a miracle? Or a proof that people would still "pirate" if they could stream it for free?
Here's the problem, let me put it in bold so you actually might get it: You did not offer what people wanted.
If you stream I Love Lucy for free, it will not convince anyone wanting Game of Thrones to stop downloading it.
I honestly wonder whether you're so stupid or whether you hope lawmakers are stupid enough to believe you.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.