Most Downloads (recent episodes)
| ranking | (prev) | show | est. downloads |
|---|---|---|---|
| torrentfreak.com | |||
| 1 | (1) | Lost | 1,660,000 |
| 2 | (3) | Prison Break | 890,000 |
| 3 | (4) | 24 | 740,000 |
| 4 | (5) | House M.D. | 690,000 |
| 5 | (6) | Desperate Housewives | 630,000 |
| 6 | (10) | Fringe | 490,000 |
| 7 | (…) | Grey’s Anatomy. | 450,000 |
| 8 | (9) | Smallville | 475,000 |
| 9 | (…) | Supernatural | 460,000 |
| 10 | (7) | Family Guy | 450,000 |
Most Downloads (all episodes)
| Ranking | (last week) | TV-show | |
|---|---|---|---|
| showinsider.com | |||
| 1 | (1) | Heroes | |
| 2 | (2) | Lost | |
| 3 | (5) | 24 | |
| 4 | (4) | House M.D. | |
| 5 | (8) | Prison Break | |
| 6 | (9) | Desperate Housewives | |
| 7 | (3) | How I Met Your Mother | |
| 8 | (6) | Grey’s Anatomy | |
| 9 | (10) | Gossip Girl | |
| 10 | (12) | Fringe | |
To see past weeks lists the Most Pirated TV Shows click here.
I dont understand how these are allowed to be downloaded how come networks dont just claim copyright and have them deleted.
I’m sure it’s more of an issue of how many torrents are out there for these shows. I know they don’t want them pirated but it’s gotten to a point that it’s very hard to control.
Sean, it’s not like the producers aren’t trying… But it’s not as simple as it sounds and the producers are going about it the wrong way. Fighting your own consumers is just totally counter-productive.
What the number of downloads shows is one thing and that one thing only – the way businesses are conducted needs to change. There is a demand that the producers don’t supply for – but Bittorrent does.
It’s not just hard to control, it’s impossible to control.
The state won their case against Pirate Bay – and their servers are still up. Even if they can’t pay the huge fine (and I’m sure they can’t), they’ll just move somewhere else.
Or someone else will take over from them. There are thousands of sites.
The reality is that technology has obsoleted the concept of intellectual property. That is what technology does – obsoletes old ways of doing things. It doesn’t matter if it’s “right” or “wrong” – it’s real.
Things move from being expensive and profitable to being cheap and unprofitable to being worthless and replaced by something else expensive and profitable. About the time it becomes unprofitable to produce expensive TV shows and movies due to file sharing, computer power will be such that it will be easy to produce the same quality stuff on a personal workstation and sell it for a dollar, like iTunes.
Technology marches on. As Linus Torvalds said when he saw the cover on Bill Gates’ book “The Road Ahead”: “Anybody who’s standing in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me.”
Actually, I am wondering how many of the people that, for example, download Lost are from foreign countrys. Because I, for example, don’t want to wait till Lost airs over here (Which is almost a year after it airs in the US). And I can’t watch Lost on ABCs website. So I don’t really have any other choice but to download the episodes if I want to see them ‘on time’.
RSH, they have *not* won the case against Pirate Bay. The judge has a clear bias (he’s part of several pro-copyright lobbying groups, one of which also has a lawyer from the prosecution as member), so there will most likely be a retrial.
The only American case that went before a jury… declared a retrial as well. Because the prosecution used false claims which the judge and jury believed.
And that’s also part of the problem – the dirty tactics used by the media industry in dealing with piracy. Some tactics amount to pretty much intimidation and extortion. And all it does is, it breeds even more pirates.
@Sean
Because the files don’t exist on the torrent sites — they only facilitate the downloading process — but on the computers of the individual users. And how do you delete a million copies of LOST that are scattered on computers around the world?
Personally, I’d be lost without Bittorrent, as I download a lot of British TV that is not shown in the U.S. and would otherwise be unavailable.
The world is getting smaller, and in the digital world there are millions of people who want to watch something NOW – not months or years from now (like it used to be).
Now a lot of those don’t people don’t necessarily want to watch it for free, but there aren’t any useful and/or fair ways of doing that. If something is sold (its not really “sold” when its “intellectual property” – you buy a right to use it under certain circumstances, though that is a different and lengthy discussion) it is usually wrapped up in Digital Restrictions Management making it hard to us. A lot of people don’t want to watch it in on the computer for instance, witness the explosion of hardware devices which can playback Divx or Windows media files to the TV.
What the companies should have done a long time ago is realise that borders are disappearing and started to sell digitally to the world, but they try in small and stupid measures. Take something like Hulu – only available to the states! So what happens when the rest of the world tries to see a show there and is told they can’t? They head for the nearest Bittorrent site I bet! Clever business choice you made there!
Lost is sooooo popular!
@Gusar: “There is a demand that the producers don’t supply for – but Bittorrent does.”
I would go one step further and pluralise demand to demands. Bittorrent offers an availability and choice that many people don’t have, or simply can’t afford in the current economic climate. Things like a cable or satellite subscription and a TiVo or PVR aren’t cheap to many people. As I see it, anyone with a broadband internet connection and access to Bittorrent doesn’t need any of those things.
@Evil: “I don’t want to wait till Lost airs over here (Which is almost a year after it airs in the US). And I can’t watch Lost on ABCs website. So I don’t really have any other choice but to download the episodes if I want to see them ‘on time’.”
I live in the UK (England) and I couldn’t agree more with you. Trying to watch the popular US shows on British TV is practically impossible for most people. Anything on Fox nearly always goes to the Sky channels, which are subscription based for the most part regardless of whether you go through BSkyB or Virgin. Until Rupert Murdoch came along, all TV in the UK was free and many people believe it should still be free (TV license fee excepted of course). But apart from Heroes and Damages, which the BBC bought, almost everything else goes to Five (which half the country can’t receive because a nearby French TV station uses the same frequency) or subscription channels like Sky. So fans of Lost, 24, Prison Break, Fringe, Lie to Me, The Simpsons, Family Guy, etc. simply can’t see their favourite shows until syndication means that a free to air channel can buy the rights to show them, e.g. Channel 4 showing The Simpsons 4 years in arrears and then not showing the episodes in order, or missing some out altogether.
In conclusion, while I accept the intellectual property argument, I would welcome the big TV networks around the world taking some mature, sensible advice from the creators of South Park, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, who are on record as saying they don’t care about piracy for their stuff because they’re delighted people would take that much trouble to watch their show. It’ll therefore be very interesting to see, in the future, if anyone gets prosecuted for “illegally” downloading South Park, seeing as Matt and Trey don’t mind.
I think a lot of people here have hit the nail on the head.
I live in Australia and Free to Air Broadcasters stuff audiences around. Fringe, Burn Notice and the likes have only been given minimal runs and due to poor ratings they have been yanked.
Prison Break, Heroes and Lost air in graveyard slots.
Chuck, Pushing Daisies, Dollhouse, Privileged and True Blood are on Cable TV, which charges ridiculous prices just for the basic channels.
Couple that with Australia’s poor treatment of viewers, where shows seldom start on time and end on time.
I have been downloading shows for almost two years, its the only way to live down here. You can watch your favourite shows whenever you want and whereever you want with the added bonus of no adverts.
Gusar, you’re right. I haven’t kept up with the subsequent events, although I did hear about the compromising position of the judge. I just meant they won the initial decision in the case. As I indicated, in the end it won’t matter.
One thing I’ve always stressed is that people have never paid for content in history. They paid for ACCESS to content. If you wanted music, you went to a bar, pub or club and paid for booze while listening to a band. When radio and TV came out, you listened for free while having to listen to ads.
As the Grateful Dead used to say, “The music’s free, the concert costs.”
Obviously as soon as a way to get rid of the ads came about, people got rid of them. As soon as access was feasible in ways outside of tying yourself to a radio or TV or live performance, people made use of it.
Eventually, music will be done by live (or pre-recorded live) performance over the Internet by subscription. TV shows that are more or less unscripted may do the same – like the live variety shows of the ’50′s and ’60′s. Everything else will be produced cheaply using powerful computer generated imagery and sold by subscription or “live performance” in theaters with no DVDs produced at all.
It will be years, however, before these changes completely transform the industries. In the meantime, the industries will fight a losing rear guard action.