Fox’s 8-Day Delay on Hulu Triggers Piracy Surge

http://torrentfreak.com/foxs-8-day-delay-on-hulu-triggers-piracy-surge-110822/

by chaostheory • 15 years ago

98 104 15 years ago

waffle_ss• 15 years ago

I pay for Netflix and Hulu Plus streaming (the latter of which still comes with ads). If it's not on there, I feel like I've done my due diligence and have no ethical dilemma with pirating.

absconditus5• 15 years ago

Viewing videos is not a necessity. It is possible not to watch something at all.

steverb• 15 years ago

Do you have something useful to say, or do you just like moralizing at people?

jrockway• 15 years ago

When you pirate something, you're sending the message that you want the content. Whey you don't watch something, the producers can't be sure if it's because it's simply not to your taste, or that you just don't like the mandatory delivery mechanism. Network middlemen aren't interested in "alternate" distribution mechanisms, but the people that actually want get paid for producing content are. Every time you pirate something, the world is one step closer to one where you can just visit a TV show's website, pay $1, and download this week's episode. Let's get there faster.

And anyway, is it even piracy when it was already broadcast into your house? (Anyone can watch Fox for free with a big enough antenna.) I can pay someone to clean my house; why can't I pay someone to videotape my TV shows?

ryanklee3• 15 years ago

I read an excellent argument against this idea not too long ago in an HN comment. I wish I could track it down because I am going to do an awful job paraphrasing it, but it basically amounts to this:

To ask someone not to participate in media (watch videos) is tantamount to asking someone not to participate in culture. Cultural participation is a basic human need: people will go to great lengths, will in fact in despotic, tyrannical, totalitarian or fascistic regimes go so far as to actually risk their own lives and the lives of their loved ones to participate in unsanctioned culture. Whether the sanction comes by way of money or by way of politics, it is no matter.

The idea that "not watching the videos" is somehow an option ignores this basic (desperate) human need to participate in culture. It's not going to happen. Media existed before money and before despots. Media is what happens when a culture expresses itself. People are going to watch Jerry Springer, The Sopranos, and listen to Lady Gaga and listen to Woodie Guthrie, money or no (though when payment is convenient, we all know what happens). They will in fact lay down their lives to do so if the circumstances demand it. If that's the case, (and we often find ourselves praising the bravery of such individuals in those cases), then it doesn't seem to me to make any sense to become moralistically reversed when the matter isn't of death but of a few measly dollars.

DasIch3• 15 years ago

In this case piracy doesn't affect the willingness to buy the product and it also doesn't hurt the producer, in fact the producer may still make a profit through merchandise and a satisfied viewer may provide free advertisment.

I don't see how this could possibly be ethically wrong.

biot• 15 years ago

I have a simpler standard: if the price being asked for digital content is less than or equal to the value I expect to receive, I'll purchase it. If it isn't and I can't find a legitimate lower price then I won't get the digital content.

I have no problems rewarding businesses (or individuals) which produce content of value to me. If it's not of sufficient value that I'd pay for it, why would I watch it anyways?

mikeryan• 15 years ago

I pay for Netflix and Hulu Plus streaming (the latter of which still comes with ads). If it's not on there, I feel like I've done my due diligence and have no ethical dilemma with pirating.

I tried to find a $200 Porsche, but couldn't so I had no problem stealing one.

bdhe• 15 years ago

I tried to find a $200 Porsche, but couldn't so I had no problem stealing one.

At first glance this might seem a fine refutation of the earlier point, but upon deeper inspection, it falls back on the fallacy that digital data is analogous to tangible property. By stealing a Porsche (whatever be your motivation) you are denying another person the right to his car. However, the same is untrue of pirating.

I am firmly of the belief that until we abandon the false and forced analogies and treat digital data and IP as something new, something that requires us to work out ethics and moral of afresh, we'll be stuck in this rut of old business models forcing new technology to fit into their mold and the consumers suffering because of bureaucracy.

I'll go further and state that the precise reason why Movie Studios and Recording Labels seemingly don't want to innovate and adopt new technologies to their benefit is precisely because of this thinking that immediately clouds all other possible arguments (oh, and maybe the people in charge of making decisions have got to the top because of their understanding of old technologies and therefore have little incentive to abandon that and embrace newer ways of doing business) /rant

lhnn• 15 years ago

Analogies between digital and physical items regarding piracy are always fallacies.

His point is that if he CAN'T pay for it, having no avenue to give them revenue, then it doesn't hurt the content creator for the OP to consume the video for free.

sp3324• 15 years ago

Ooh, a car analogy! Here's mine: I went to a car dealer and offered to pay for a copy of a car. But he wouldn't sell me one, so I found someone else who had the same kind of car and made a copy of theirs instead.

chopsueyar4• 15 years ago

You have a Porsche replicator?

Awesome!

protomyth2• 15 years ago

If the creator is only selling it on his/her website or on iTunes / Amazon, do you pay or pirate?

chc6• 15 years ago

That would be a question of marketing for most people, I imagine.

nitrogen8• 15 years ago

Regardless of the ethical justifications, and even if you have an ostensible legal right to be watching a show (e.g. you have a cable subscription and you recorded the show with your DVR), their watchdogs will still send DMCA notices to your ISP if you happen upon a file they are watching.

lean• 15 years ago

Interesting. Any data on how many more users signed up for Hulu+ in the same period?

tghw2• 15 years ago

The 8-day policy never made any sense to me. Let's say I have a show I regularly watch live on Monday nights. Then one week, I miss it. Since I don't want to watch the episodes out of order, I can't watch new episodes live for the rest of the season unless I grab a pirated copy so I'm caught up before the next episode. Otherwise, I just skip one week and watch the rest of the season on Tuesdays via Hulu.

This just smells like corporate bureaucracy, and it is unfortunate, because it helps no one.

ars2• 15 years ago

The entire business model is based on people paying extra to watch "now".

If you look at the cost to watch a movie, the earlier you want it the more you pay.

It starts with theaters, then pay per view, then buy it, then expensive rentals, then cheap rentals, and finally tv movie. You have b-list theaters somewhere in the last as well, and I may have missed some other places.

If you are willing to wait to watch your shows you will pay a LOT less for them. But apparently most people are not willing to wait, otherwise this model would not work.

alanfalcon2• 15 years ago

It's rather annoying when the rules are changed in the middle of the game. That's basically what happened here, with the final episodes of Master Chef (my current guilty pleasure) suddenly going to an eight day delay after the first 95% of the season was available on a one day delay.

I accidentally stumbled upon the winner of the show during my eight day wait for the episode to come to Hulu, and now I have no incentive to watch the final episodes and give Fox/Hulu whatever ad revenue they'd get from that.

The Hulu comments have been filled with angry viewers, some of which are listing the sites where people can go to pirate the show.

tghw2• 15 years ago

I understand that. The problem is, at least for me, time is not enough of a differentiator to make it worth my while. If they removed commercials, for example, then it might be more compelling, but I'm hardly going to pay for a service and still be forced to watch ads.

tejaswiy• 15 years ago

Relevant: http://xkcd.com/606/

SteveJS• 15 years ago

Does anyone know why the FOX considers an 8 day delay superior to a 6 day delay? Both are 'about' a week, but one sets you up to start watching the show live, while the other sets you up to stop watching the show.

irons• 15 years ago

Likewise, networks that start selling DVDs for season X only after season X+1 is underway. Seems to be almost the norm. Why not preserve the opportunity to convert customers to the most lucrative channel? At least with DVDs there's significant revenue involved.

ja2ke• 15 years ago

Yep. If they have to extend it, 5-6 days would make a lot more sense for that exact reason. Nobody can catch up online anymore.

snorkel• 15 years ago

What sad times we live in that this is called "piracy".

blhack2• 15 years ago

Do these people realize that there are a lot of pirates that pay for their ability to pirate things? Between seedboxes, or usenet, or a faster internet connection, or extra disk space...some of these people are paying as much to download this stuff illegally as they would if they just bought a cable subscription.

And, honestly, the lack of ads is a bonus, it's not the sole reason pirates pirate.

How the hell the media companies continue to screw this up is baffling. They've got a product that people want really bad. And yet...they don't really want to give it to people?

Huh?

If people were banging down my door to use a product that I had created, I think I would probably be working my ass off to facilitate their ability to pay me for it.

For places like FX, which carries several shows that I like: why on earth can't I just stream FX from your website?

wmf• 15 years ago

Selling content below cost sounds good at first, because right now The Man is getting nothing at all from pirates. Something — however small — has gotta be better than nothing, right?

But the Internet treats price discrimination as damage. Pretty soon everybody will be paying "pirate prices" and Fox will only be able to afford to produce reality TV. Perhaps such a new equilibrium is inevitable, but every year they can delay it is another year before the executives have to find new jobs.

blhack2• 15 years ago

Who said anything about selling it for nothing? Keep national ads in there, I don't care.

In fact, how many HN hackers do you think would dive at the chance to display localized ads in a stream from FX/TBS/USA/TNT/Comedy Central/etc./etc.

pavel_lishin• 15 years ago

I pay about $15/month for my legitimate newsgroups access and search engine. I think that's more than we pay for Netflix and Hulu, combined.

But my cable/Hulu/Netflix streaming bill isn't where Fox's revenue comes from - it comes from their advertisers. If they sell me their shows in a convenient .avi format, they're gaining me at $10/month, but they're losing every single company that pays for me to watch their commercials.

rhizome• 15 years ago

How much are you worth to Fox's advertisers on a monthly basis, then?

norswap2• 15 years ago

And this is for 8 days. Imagine now people in the EU, who have to wait months to get a badly translated version or the original dvds, despite the fact that they understand english perfectly (and even if they don't, amateur subtitles are often available the next day).

DasIch3• 15 years ago

Almost everyone simply downloads or views it illegally. The thing is it not only takes month for the series to arrive here, the DVDs are released only after the series has been shown on TV.

That is if the series is actually popular here and relatively easily available. Dexter, Weeds, Lost, Sons of Anarchy are a couple of series I can think of that are unpopular and therefore not as simple to come by.

norswap2• 15 years ago

My point, precisely (I live in Belgium) :)

absconditus5• 15 years ago

Television shows on HBO and Showtime (Weeds from your list) are usually not available in the US until the DVDs come out, which is usually shortly before the next seasons starts.

I am aware of HBO Go, but it is not available unless one already has cable and HBO.

kin• 15 years ago

For me, HBO Go does it right. My parents have cable and I pay for their HBO just for the HBO Go subscription. It comes with their ENTIRE archive of TV shows, every single episode of all their shows. Not to mention, I was able to watch Game of Thrones episodes as they came out the next morning before spoilers could make it to me, not much different than waiting for a show that airs in the east coast to hit prime time west coast.

Fox's problem is that they did this mid-season and they started with a FREE business model and then took it away. You can't give someone something for free and then half way through take it away and make me pay for it. It wouldn't make sense for me to want to pay for it, of course I would resort to something else.

absconditus5• 15 years ago

HBO Go is not available to those of us without cable even if we are willing to pay for it.

jackolas• 15 years ago

HBO should have had this with my cable company a while ago. Too little too late, they lost me as a customer by mock-C&Ding the cable company.

Historiopode• 15 years ago

Since many of these comments discuss piracy and content distribution, allow me to give you an unprompted insight from a country which is in a worse situation than the USA. As of today, the country I live in offer very few legal content distribution platform for movies and television shows, and none of them has neither tolerable pricing and acceptable DRM policies nor non-laughable title selection, proper listing & metadata—for example, I would not be able to know in which quality I am renting a movie. Anyway, most of the movies simply do not hit digital distribution. Physical movie rental is dying quite rapidly for most obvious reasons, which means that the few remaining services are starving and offer nothing but the safest-hitting movies.

As a remarkably honest biped (who, e.g., bought two Adobe Suite licenses, one for his PC & one for his Mac, and has purchased WinRAR), I am thus being put in the hilariously paradoxical position where not only I am hardly incentivized to legally purchase content, but I am unable to do so. I am struggling to do so, and I can not; this is such a tragicomical condition that my fruitless effort to legally retrieve movies&shows has become a running joke within my circle of friends. Adding insult to injury, every single major firm persists on sticking to this ridicolously unreasonable regional distribution paradigm—which adds basically no value even from a job-creation standpoint— whereas I would be absolutely happy to throw money at them by purchasing non-localized content.

P.S. To be clear, I live in European first-world country, where the value of the movie market is more than big enough to justify sensible business investments.

robrenaud2• 15 years ago

What prevents you from bit torrenting the content you want, and then sending appropriately sized cashier's checks to the content producers?

boyter• 15 years ago

I would be interested to see what happened if someone did that. My guess would be that the content producers (movie industry) would begin legal action as while you paid for the content you didn't pay for it in the manner they dictated.

nitrogen8• 15 years ago

I have a proposal for advertisers to reach the audience most likely to skip advertisements and stream or download shows:

Instead of expecting viewers to put up with 18 minutes of mindless advertising for every 42 minutes of actual content, just show a ten second long list of sponsors at the beginning of the show (along with their general product category), after the opening credits.

Example:

  We would like to thank the following corporations
  for sponsoring the production of this show.  Please
  consider thanking them as well, by purchasing their
  products.
  
  PanCorp - Maker of fine non-stick cookware
  Net Net - High-speed ISP, gigabit speeds
  ...

Then, the creators of the show would plead with uploaders to leave that ten second clip in. Advertisers could then count every download as a successful impression, and geeks like me who aren't significantly influenced by traditional advertising would learn about potentially interesting products and services.

chopsueyar4• 15 years ago

Hulu does that AND still sticks commercials in, paid or not!

hugh32• 15 years ago

I really don't think you understand how advertising works. I prescribe four seasons of Mad Men. (It's streaming on Netflix right now, y'know!)

geeks like me who aren't significantly influenced by traditional advertising

Do you really believe that you're magically superior to the things which influence the rest of the human race?

(If you do, then I know exactly how to make an ad to manipulate you already -- tell you what you want to hear by appealing to your sense of superiority.)

nitrogen8• 15 years ago

Do you really believe that you're magically superior to the things which influence the rest of the human race?

No, not magically, rationally. I deliberately disregard anything that is demarcated as an ad and look for and comment on things like product placement within shows. I've never seen a beer commercial with scantily-clad dancers and thought, "Man, I'd sure like a cold one." Cheap cable TV ads with flashing lights, out-of-gamut colors, and an 800 number repeated over and over just make me tune out and change the channel. I try to counteract the effect of logo and color familiarity by buying brands that look different from what I'd expect. Any time I learn of another subliminal advertising technique, I add a counterattack to my defensive arsenal. On top of that, if I record a show I use MythTV's commercial detection to skip ads entirely, and anyone who downloads their TV won't be seeing commercials either.

"But you're not in their target demographic." No kidding.

I'm not saying that I can't be reached by advertising -- I gave explicit directions for how to do so in my original post. I'm complaining that advertisers continue to reach to the same old bag of tricks, tricks that appeal to the lowest common denominator of animalistic behavior and consume 18 minutes of every programming hour. I'm saying those tricks don't work on me because I tune them out, skip them, block them, etc. I never answer surveys, I'm not a Nielsen participant, etc. I've tried contributing to media metrics with my Hulu viewing and rating habits, but Hulu continues to recommend shows from the same network rather than the same genre, and networks continue to alienate online viewers by delaying shows (Fox) or pulling them entirely (Syfy).

I'm offering a viable alternative for advertisers to earn money on someone like me, but advertisers seem to think they know better. In the mean time, I'll continue to apply whatever selective pressure I can to get advertisers and content producers to evolve.

(If you do, then I know exactly how to make an ad to manipulate you already -- tell you what you want to hear by appealing to your sense of superiority.)

I make a conscious effort to avoid this type of influence as well. [Edit: and I'm not motivated in this regard by a sense of superiority, either. The only sure way to influence me is with hard data demonstrating a high quality and utility of whatever product you're offering.]

tomjen3• 15 years ago

It hardly matters if they put the sponsors in or not -- I personally skip the introductions to all the movies I watch, why should anybody not skip the sponsor list?

And I doubt anybody would upload a tv series episode where the commercials hadn't been cut out.

nitrogen8• 15 years ago

Advertisers and content producers seem to have a problem with people skipping their ads, going so far as to sue DVR makers for including a "skip 30 seconds" button. Clearly they believe there should be some kind of social contract[0], where they expect viewers to view their ads in exchange for watching the associated content. Such a social contract would be far more likely to be upheld if the ads consisted of a simple and informative list. Dedicated fans of TV shows will sacrifice ten seconds in order to support show creators. For that matter, they don't even need to watch the sponsor list for the full 10 seconds, as long as they know it's there, and that buying goods from those sponsors will keep their favorite show running.

[0] Actually it seems they want the force of law behind their business model...

dmaz• 15 years ago

It's important to mention that for MasterChef, this was the season finale.

Fox’s 8-Day Delay on Hulu Triggers Piracy Surge

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