Why Piracy Wins: Convenience, Timeliness
I had a nice little chat with the PR representative from TeleToon (the Canadian equivalent of Cartoon Network) the other week. She had contacted me for some help contacting TechVibes, and so I took the opportunity to ask when the new season of The Venture Brothers would be airing in Canada. She stated they were working to get it on the air sometime in the new year.
This is, in a word, suicide.
At this point, Cartoon Network had already broadcast half the season in the US already. I pointed out to the PR representative that because the show’s demographic skews heavily toward the geek-set, many of their viewers know how to obtain the show easily, albeit illegally, online using tools such as Miro and sites like tvRSS.net. By the time TeleToon airs the show in the new year, no one will care. She acknowledged this was probably true, and that they were trying to turn around shows faster.
I had a similar conversation at the Bridging Media conference when I talked with Gary Marcuse, a programming executive with the CBC. I asked him when the latest season of Doctor Who and Torchwood would be coming to Canada. Again, the latest seasons were already being broadcast in the UK but nowhere to be found in Canada, despite the fact that both shows are co-produced by the CBC and the BBC. Gary didn’t know the details of arrangement with the BBC, but guessed that the delay was likely due to either licensing legalities, or the terms of the co-production deal.
While iTunes has solved the problem of distributing US programming, the same isn’t true for international programming. While British classics such as Peep Show and the IT Crowd have been running for years, they haven’t made it onto iTunes, despite the sales success of other BBC shows distributed there. You can’t even buy the DVDs of these shows in North America. Your only option to get these programs currently is to buy the non-North American DVDs and a region-free DVD player – a solution which will become illegal if C-61 (“the Canadian DMCA”) becomes law.
I can’t believe that this is problem of manpower – after all, how hard is it to upload a file to the iTunes servers? Or outsource pressing of DVDs to a third party? Not very hard at all. In all likelihood the real culprit here is the nuances of licensing and international law. I imagine there’s a lot of guys spending a lot of time in dimly-lit rooms arguing over fine print for each and every country. No wonder they’re not in a hurry to do this. It sounds horrible.
The incremental approach to media distribution is what’s undermining consumers’ patience. This is why people pirate media – because it’s just damn easier and faster than waiting. In the meantime, media companies are leaving a lot of money on the table by not leveraging their assets to the fullest possible extent.
As consumers have altered their media consumption habits over the past decade, Big Media has tried every trick in the book to maintain the status quo: suing their customers into submission, deploying technological countermeasures, and lobbying for legislation to protect and perpetuate their crumbling business model. But they’ve ignored the obvious solution – we’re willing to pay, but we’re not willing to wait.
We want the good stuff, and we want it now.
this is an easy question:
The studios have antiquated licensing deals throughout the world that were set into place long before the current internet boom. The licensees jealously guard them without any eye toward viewership as what they receive is not tied to how many people actually view the product. Thus far they haven’t managed to work out that they are slitting their own throats being several years behind the rest of us.
I can’t work out why they don’t immediately stream television or allow it to be downloaded the world over as soon as it airs. They could embed commercials and offer superfast transfer speeds. Downloaders would flock to their sights and they could push all of the advertisement they liked.
Guess that’s what happens when you live in the 20th Century but work in the 21st.
There is a good video (and book/website) by Matt Mason The Pirate’s Dilemma, that is an enjoyable presentation of this subject. The media distributors are apparently unwilling to accept that the Internet has eliminated national markets for media. The result, as you point out, is that they are losing revenue to piracy because they’ve failed to recognize that the pirates are their competitors. When it comes to intangibles like digital media the solution to piracy is not to fight the pirates but to out-compete them. Do what they are doing, but offer better service. There are some ever improving examples of media companies finally getting it, hulu, and others have greatly reduced the domestic demand for The Daily Show, Simpsons, etc. on torrent sites. Unfortunately these programs are just as popular as ever outside of the narrow (US) market that Hulu serves.
I’m surprised that you didn’t mention the program that was the breakthrough for this phenomena in the US. The first season of Battlestar Galactica was broadcast in the UK 8-10 weeks ahead of the US. Given the audience and demand for this program it should be no surprise that many viewers had their first exposure to downloading media via torrents in order to satisfy their insatiable demand for “BG”. Once viewers find that the Internet satisfies their demands for immediacy there’s no going back. Should a program of interest, “IT Crowd” for example, be broadcast anywhere in the world then interested consumers will use whatever means are available to access it as quickly and efficiently as possible. Whether those means fit into distributors narrow “Region”-coded definitions is irrelevant.
Every summer for the last three years I’ve ordered up the previous season of “Corner Gas” DVDs which generally go on sale about the same time as the new season begins. Living in the US it’s been the only legal way for me to get my CanCon. Last season I was rather excited because CTV said that new episodes for season 5 would be available for download. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that because I live outside of Canada iTunes.ca would not accept my $1.99. So, really, do you think I waited until September 2008 for season 5? Yes, CTV, I’ll still buy the DVDs but you had a willing, able, ready customer wanting to give you money and you gave that business to the pirates.
@mjweir: Yep. The licensing rights process is definitely the choke point.
@Mike: Even though I’m a huge BSG fan (half of the Caprica scenes were filmed in our old neighbourhood in Vancouver), I didn’t know about them broadcasting in the UK ahead of the US. However, I observed a similar phenomenon with “Doctor Who”, though the delta was a year not 8-10 weeks.
I find it ironic that you can’t buy “Corner Gas” online. Canadian television series’ are often fairly hit-or-miss, so failing to publish a good quality successful series as far and wide as possible is plain stupid.
I also got into “Corner Gas” down in the US because a fellow Canuck introduced me to the series by loaning me his DVDs. It was a serendipitous event. And that’s part of why piracy is still winning – it allows us to get access immediately to something we decide interests us.
For example, I encountered “Peep Show”, “IT Crowd”, and “That Mitchell and Webb Look” on a Virgin flight to the UK two years ago. Yet these shows fail to appear in iTunes, or be available as DVDs. Huge missed opportunity for the producers to make money from me.
A related confession of a dirty pirate over on the Tor.com blog.