What’s wrong with sites like Hulu? Well nothing, per se, except for the fact that they can’t be used anywhere outside of the Unites States. As if other countries don’t want to watch… um, really great shows like “Extreme Makeover” and “The [American] Office”! Perhaps that’s why, then, BitTorrent site EZTV has seen traffic double, mainly from non-American IPs, in the past year? For whatever reason, people want to watch these shows, but since there’s no legal outlet to do so, well, it’s not exactly hard to configure uTorrent or Transmission, now is it?
The problem goes back to a time before the Internet ruined Hollywood’s business model. Back in the day (and still today, actually) people in other countries had to wait months, if not years, for “American TV Show” to show up on their local TV networks. That wasn’t much of a problem before the Internet, because how could you get jealous in London that a new season of The Simpsons started when all you had access to was whatever the hell Sky put on the air? You can’t want to see something if you don’t know it exists.
With apologies to alt.tv.simpsons, where I used to hang out for a minute.
But now you can’t visit Digg or Facebook without seeing your online, American buddies chatting about “30 Rock” or “Curb Your Enthusiasm. These shows won’t show up on your local TV stations for months, but that’s why there’s BitTorrent!
It’s like this: would you rather wait months and months to see “Whatever” when you can download it in seconds from EZTV? That’s what I did when I was in Barcelona and wanted to see “Generation Kill.” I downloaded the episodes a few minutes after they made their way to whatever site I was using at the time.
Is that piracy though? I mean, I guess it is, but what are you gonna do? Wait around like a jerk for Local TV Station to pick up the shows?
What the studios should do, but probably never will, is either A) eliminate staggered release schedules or B) set up international versions of sites like Hulu. I mean, why do they do that staggered release nonsense anyway? To protect the local market from imports or some nonsense? One World, baby, so treat it as such.
And why can’t a Web site be set up where my BROTHERS FROM ANOTHER MOTHER~! can stream “Family Guy” from the comfort of their home in Vienna, Melbourne, or Rio? It’s a stupid, Old World restriction that no longer make sense in this environment.
And yes, I know you can merely use a U.S. proxy, but that’s not the point, now is it?
Agreed, any time a company/group does something like this that makes piracy MORE user friendly than actually paying for the product, this is going to happen.
I had something similar happen recently, when my fiancee’s little brother(who currently lives with us) bought Spore: Galactic adventures. You have to have the damn dvd in the drive EVERY SINGLE TIME you start the game. So, rather than using it and passing the disk back and forth between our multiple computers, we found the disk image on piratebay and have been using that ever since.
I totally agree, I would pay to watch Hulu from Canada if I could, but all I have left to watch shows like Stargate Universe is to get it on bittorrent. How sad is that!
The same was true for eBooks a while back, I couldn’t buy the books I wanted because I was in Canada, the only option left to me was illegal download again.
I can and I want to pay for what I use, but sometimes they just won’t let me.
Totally agree. I think Japanese animation companies and some Korean TV production companies have caught on to this and have started charging it’s international fanbase to watch simulcast shows with subtitles on specific sites. I think your average person doesn’t want to steal anything so if you can pay a small fee, do it legitimately and get what you want when you want, why bother doing anything else?
What about making shows available in the first place.
Season 2 of The Big Bang Theory is not available in any form online (except for illegal)
It’s not that hard to figure out is it? It is supposedly now a global economy with ease of access to content, but the media companies have to figure out ways to protect territory. With products that are purely digital, it is rapidly becoming apparent that the traditional idea of “territories” are completely fictious.
I haven’t watched “TV” in Australia for about 3 years now, and I am still of a generation that pays for things. The media companies have completely lost people under the age of 18.
I dont understand this concept of pirated TV shows.
I mean, how can you pirate something which is transmitted over the air freely? All you need to view network TV shows is an antenna.
How is downloading it online different than recording it on Tivo or a VCR?
Living outside the US, I can tell you that its stupid that the Networks, Studios, and record Industry won’t open up their distribution world wide and have release dates that are at least close to that in the US. I am yet to hear valid reasons why they don’t – they are behind the times trying to make an out of date business model work (and they are loosing more and more revenue because they keep sticking to it).
Nailed it Nichloas!
There is another problem, too: If I would be that stupid and wait for say the 5th season of HIMYM than in my homecountry Germany I would have to watch it in German. And if I wanted to watch in proper English , I would have to wait another year or so to get it on DVD and that would be for about 30€ (some 45$).
that’s the main reason for downloading tv-shows for me: crappy translation
That’s the thing I don’t understand about the British TV model: it’s already a subscription (license) plan, just let this Yank subscribe, FFS!
I agree, this is not just the american studios, I also have to download Dr. Who and Torchwood from England if I want to watch it.
We’re not even allowed to buy digital downloads from online sources like Amazon or iTunes!