As @lyndahere or Lynda Elstad loads up a new Alan Doyle song from Great Big Sea that no one has heard before I am struggling to understand why people pirate music, television series, movies or anything. There is nothing like a continual spoiler on social media. But also @lyndahere has made another decision about how this music should be heard by the world. Because she has the technology to do so doesn’t make it right.
The recent newspaper articles and Internet sites around the
world reporting the current piracy trends in television shows have interested
me. The reports from Torrent Freak and newspapers describe Australians as the
biggest pirates of Game of Thrones television series followed by Americans and
Canadians. The television show has seen it as a complement rather than as a criticism.
Torrent Freak wrote “Interestingly, many
of the people connected to the show saw it as a compliment rather than a major
threat that needs to be dealt with…The most outspoken position was taken by
David Petrarca, the show’s director, who noted that unauthorized downloads
actually do more good than harm. According to the director, pirates are partly
responsible for the “cultural buzz” the show needs to thrive and survive”.
Others like the American Ambassador to Australia were less
complementary. “ After the season got
underway some critical notes also appeared. “The Ambassador of the United
States of America to Australia recently complained about the “plain theft”
being carried out by Australians”. Unless a person is familiar with how television
operates in Australia and has operated then it is difficult to understand why
Australians are the biggest pirates of the television show Game of Thrones. Television
and social media have been intertwined as people jump online to discuss the
latest happenings. Australians are no different but as events like series 3 of
Game of Thrones appears in the US they are excluded. Social media screened
elsewhere throughout the world can destroy story lines if it is not shown simultaneously.
And the moment is lost when it finally does appear.
Australians have been left out of participating in
significant social and cultural events for years through no fault of their own.
In America and Canada it is different. They are able to watch television programs before anyone else. They don’t have far to travel to significant cultural events and if
they choose to spend their time doing other things and their money on other
things why should they use piracy as way to participate in things for free by
people like @lyndahere who have made a career out of piracy. If she is
concerned at people missing out then I am kind of interested why she doesn’t
respond to many people who contact her one social media.
There are many reasons people illegally download either
television or music. They range from getting something for free in the here and
now rather than waiting until it is screened on television after the event,
constant advertising and social media. Also
I believe there are many television viewers like me totally unaware of the
options now available online for watching the latest television programs. Research
shows illegal downloading has been over all decreasing and there are a number
of reasons why this is happening. And it seems a lot of people are willing to
pay for television programs in particular from subscription television and
other TV streaming sites. Other issues like ethics, extreme fandom and the
thought that piracy may affect the networks to make expensive television series
is combating piracy as people choose legal means. I bought the DVDs.
In the U.S. the situation is not much better, and to a certain degree one could claim that HBO is to blame for Game of Thrones’ BitTorrent record. They want to keep access to the show “exclusive” and even Netflix wasn’t able to buy the rights no matter what they offered. However companies who produce programs like Game of Thrones and Foxtel sign agreements that prevent viewers from buying it legally until they have finished viewing it on their own network in the US. It seems while Australians and others continued to be excluded from simultaneous viewing because of various legalities and philosophies of the companies that produce the programs they will find creative ways both legal and illegal to watch television shows.
At the same time results from the piracy were being
published on Torrent Freak.com The Australian the national newspaper in
Australia published some interesting results on a survey conducted on piracy.
The APRA (the Australasian Performing Right
Association) surveyed 1000 people on piracy. What I found interesting about the
research was it challenged stereotypes of who committed piracy. “The research confirms the stereotype that
illegal downloaders of content are younger, with 44 per cent of the 210 people
who admitted to it being aged under 30 (and over 18)” when in fact a large
amount of piracy was being committed by people who were older, educated and financially
well off.
The Australian writes “However, it also throws up the unedifying
prospect that the concept of the illegality of stealing copyrighted material is
not getting through to educated professionals and is perhaps even knowingly
being flouted”. While this may be true of some of the Australians surveyed
it seems to be that way for people across a range of countries like America and
Canada. @lyndahere tells us she is educated yet she has no concept of the
illegality of stealing copyrighted material and has clearly flouted the laws.
There seems to be a whole range of people who tweet and retweet her bootlegged
and music pirated videos that they are promoting illegal material to publicize
people.
The research provided an
interesting way to combat the piracy…Two-thirds
of respondents agreed in principle to action to discourage people who
repeatedly download copyrighted material illegally, although only 37 per cent
of those who download illegally agreed. This aligns
broadly with research by Sycamore Research in 2011 that showed 72 per cent of
respondents would stop accessing illegal content online if their ISP sent them
a notice. It would be great if this
also applied to people uploading and distributing illegal content.
'Record' by Ernesto June 10, 2013 Torrent Freak.com (no copyright infringement intended).
The season finale of
Game of Thrones has set a new BitTorrent record with more than 170,000 people
sharing an episode simultaneously. In just one day more than a million people
have downloaded a copy of the show, figures no other TV-show comes close to.
Despite the invasion of pirates, HBO wants to keep the show as an exclusive and
is not expected to put it on Netflix anytime soon.
game-of-thrones3 Yesterday
evening the season finale of Game of Thrones aired on HBO and shortly
thereafter the first unauthorized copies were uploaded online.
In recent weeks the
hit show has been shared millions of times online, but never before have we
seen this many people sharing the same file.
Within a few hours
after it was released hundreds of thousands grabbed a copy of the show via The
Pirate Bay and other torrent sites, breaking the old record Game of Thrones set
just a few weeks ago during the premiere of the third season.
At its height the
Istole tracker reported that 171,572 people where active on a single torrent,
128,686 sharing a complete copy while 42,886 were still downloading.
Data gathered by
TorrentFreak shows that, within 24 hours, the season finale has been downloaded
a million times. This could increase to more than five million during the weeks
to come and means that unless a miracle happens, Game of Thrones will be
crowned the most pirated TV-show of the year once again.
As previously
revealed, Game of Thrones downloaders come from all over the world. Most
downloaders come from Australia, followed by the United States, Canada, and the
United Kingdom.
Australia stands out
in this list as it also has the smallest population, and this hasn’t gone
unnoticed. The Ambassador of the United
States of America to Australia recently complained about this “plain theft” by
Australians. However, since the local cable provider has chosen to decrease
instead of increase availability next year, things are not going to change
anytime soon.
In the U.S. the
situation is not much better, and to a certain degree one could claim that HBO
is to blame for Game of Thrones’ BitTorrent record. They want to keep access to
the show “exclusive” and even Netflix wasn’t able to buy the rights no matter
what they offered.
It’s clear that HBO
prefers more exclusiveness over less piracy, a stance that is reflected in
recent comments from HBO programming president Michael Lombardo. He sees piracy
as a compliment and doesn’t believe it negatively impacts DVD sales.
The huge numbers of
unauthorized downloads don’t bother the show’s makers all that much either,
quite the contrary.
David Petrarca, the
show’s director, noted that these unauthorized downloads actually do more good
than harm. According to the director, pirates are partly responsible for the
“cultural buzz” the show needs to thrive and survive.
Game of Thrones will
be back next year, and if most torrent sites are still unblocked in in most
parts of the world, we can expect another record to be set.
'Top 10 Most Pirated TV-Shows of the Season' by Ernesto, published in TorrentFreak.com on June 22, 2013. (No
copyright infringement intended)
With more than five
million downloads for a single episode, Game of Thrones is by far the most
pirated TV-show of the spring season. Thanks to the continued worldwide hype
around the show and its high piracy rate, the number of downloads via
BitTorrent show a 25 percent increase compared to last year. Aside from this
HBO success story, several new series did well among pirates too, including
Vikings, Hannibal and Arrow, with over a million downloads each.
game-of-thrones3Game
of Thrones has the honor of becoming the most downloaded TV-show of the spring
season 2013.
The achievement comes
as no surprise since the show has broken two piracy records in a few weeks, and
the high number of unauthorized downloads has been widely covered in the press.
Even before the third
season started there was already a lot of talk about Game of Thrones piracy.
Interestingly, many of the people connected to the show saw it as a compliment
rather than a major threat that needs to be dealt with.
The most outspoken
position was taken by David Petrarca, the show’s director, who noted that
unauthorized downloads actually do more good than harm. According to the
director, pirates are partly responsible for the “cultural buzz” the show needs
to thrive and survive.
After the season got
underway some critical notes also appeared. The Ambassador of the United States
of America to Australia recently complained about the “plain theft” being
carried out by Australians.
This was countered by
many self-confessed pirates including Timo Vuorensola, director of the Disney
movie Iron Sky. The Finnish director told HBO that their legal service “sucks”
and promised to download the show from The Pirate Bay instead.
The end result is that
the most shared episode of Game of Thrones, the season opening, was downloaded
by 5.2 million people all over the world. This dazzlfing statistic represents a
25 percent increase compared to last year and three times the amount achieved
by several of the TV shows further down the top 10.
The increase in
viewers wasn’t limited to the pirated channels though. HBO also saw ratings for
Game of Thrones increase by roughly a quarter, driving many new customers to
their paid subscriptions.
Whether the number of
legal viewers would be higher or lower without piracy is hard to measure, but
it could go both ways.
Looking at the full
list we see that it contains many household names that have done well over the
years, such as The Big Bang Theory and How I Met Your Mother, which are listed
in second and third place respectively.
There are also some
notable newcomers. In fact, three shows in the list of most pirated shows just
completed their first season – Hannibal, Vikings and Arrow. All three achieved
between one and two million downloads per episode.
Below we have compiled
a list of the most downloaded TV-shows worldwide (estimates per single episode)
for the spring season from March up until June 2013, together with the viewer
average for TV in the US. The data is collected by TorrentFreak from several
sources, including download statistics reported by public BitTorrent trackers.
It is worth nothing
that online streaming and cyberlocker downloads are not included since these
can’t be measured accurately. The full piracy numbers will therefore be
significantly higher.
Most downloaded
TV-shows on BitTorrent, Spring 2013 US TV viewers torrentfreak.com
1 Game of Thrones
5,200,000 5,500,000
2 The Big Bang Theory
2,900,000 20,000,000
3 How I Met Your
Mother 2,850,000 10,510,000
4 The Walking Dead
2,700,000 12,420,000
5 Hannibal 2,100,000
4,380,000
6 Vikings 1,900,000
6,210,000
7 Arrow 1,850,000
4,140,000
8 The Vampire Diaries
1,800,000 3,180,000
9 Modern Family
1,750,000 12,520,000
10 Revenge 1,700,000
9,740,000
'Online piracy appeals most to those who are better educated' by Michael
Bodey published in The Australian on 10 June, 2013. (no copyright infringement intended)
THE more highly educated and
affluent an Australian is, the more likely that person is to engage in online
piracy.
New research commissioned by
APRA (the Australasian Performing Right Association) and a number of other
content groups shows a striking demographic trend in the 21 per cent of adults
who say they engage in online piracy.
The quantitative survey of
1000 adults aged 18-plus, shows that 30 per cent of those who admitted to
illegal downloading of digital materials (including music, movies, television,
books and games) earned more than $100,000 a year.
The proportion rises across
annual household incomes, from a low of 14 per cent for those earning less than
$40,000 to 27 per cent who earn $60,000-$100,000 and the 30 per cent earning
more than $100,000.
That result correlates with
the highest educational qualification earned -- with 17 per cent of illegal
downloaders achieving a primary or secondary qualification, 21 per cent a TAFE
or trade qualification and 25 per cent of whom had a university education.
The facts on illegal piracy
The obvious conclusion is the better-off a consumer, the more likely they are to have access to media allowing them to download material.
However, it also throws up the
unedifying prospect that the concept of the illegality of stealing copyrighted
material is not getting through to educated professionals and is perhaps even
knowingly being flouted.
The research confirms the
stereotype that illegal downloaders of content are younger, with 44 per cent of
the 210 people who admitted to it being aged under 30 (and over 18).
Again, this figure decreased
with age, with a quarter of the downloaders in the 30-49 age group and only 11
per cent aged 50-69.
Metropolitan respondents were
also more likely to download than rural respondents.
When asked if they engaged in
online piracy, 65 per cent of respondents said they "never downloaded
pirated material" and 10 per cent said they had "completely
reformed".
Of the 21 per cent who did
engage, 7 per cent said that they did it weekly, 6 per cent monthly and 8 per
cent "every six months".
However, it also throws up the
unedifying prospect that the concept of the illegality of stealing copyrighted
material is not getting through to educated professionals and is perhaps even knowingly
being flouted.
The survey did not ask for the quantity of downloading, with anecdotal evidence in this country suggesting frequent downloaders do so in high volumes.
Questions regarding attitudes
to retail downloading showed some disturbing results.
Seven per cent of all
respondents disagreed the work of musicians, authors, filmmakers and other
artists should be paid for if the creative work were made available for sale in
a retail store (and 13 per cent among illegal downloaders).
That figure increased to 8 per
cent (and 15 per cent for downloaders) if the works were for sale on the
internet.
Two-thirds of respondents
agreed in principle to action to discourage people who repeatedly download
copyrighted material illegally, although only 37 per cent of those who download
illegally agreed.
This aligns broadly with
research by Sycamore Research in 2011 that showed 72 per cent of respondents
would stop accessing illegal content online if their ISP sent them a notice.
Earlier this year, the Australian
Home Entertainment Distributors Association released figures showing Game of
Thrones and True Blood were the most popular legally downloaded TV shows last
year and The Hunger Games was the most downloaded or streamed movie, suggesting
younger viewers are more comfortable with the process of digital downloading or
streaming, legal or otherwise.
