Netflix has become a household name with it's on demand streaming services that deliver a massive lineup of movies and TV shows. A lot of decisions that the company makes on which content to license can come from a surprising source. Netflix sees which movies are being streamed on file sharing sites like BitTorrent, and pays attention to which shows are the most popular.
Television shows like Prison Break, an American drama series, had become very popular in the Netherlands even if viewers had gone through pirating sites to watch their shows. Netflix has since bought the rights for the show to make it more accessible for consumers to just "push play" and watch their program instead of having to manage a ton of files in order to watch one show.
As Netflix has expanded to regions outside the United States, it has simultaneously dealt with piracy in its own manner. Countries like Norway and Canada have seen significant drops in the use of file sharing sites after Netflix set up operations in those respective countries.
Sources
- D'Onfro, Jillian. "Netflix Has A Surprising Relationship With Piracy Sites." Business Insider. N.p., 16 Sept. 2013. Web. 18 Sept. 2013
- Woollacott, Emma. "Netflix Checks Piracy Stats To Help It Decide What To Buy."Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 16 Sept. 2013. Web. 18 Sept. 2013. <http://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2013/09/16/netflix-checks-piracy-stats-to-help-it-decide-what-to-buy/>
I have never thought about Netflix as contributing to help avoid piracy. That is an interesting way to look at it. To me, it was always a way for people to have that convenience factor. I do see how it can help but in most cases I feel as if people download files illegally to keep from buying these TV series or movies, so many of them probably wouldn't want to spend the $8/month on Netflix, either.
ReplyDeleteIt is a great topic to talk about. When I was reading this blog about how Netflix helped decrease the piracy problem, I was thinking about why did people choose to pay for Netflix every month instead of keep watching shows for free? In this case, I think the most important reason is people prefer to pay a certain amount of money for convenience. So the piracy problem is because there is no convenient service for people to pay for? But is that the reason for all the piracy problem? I find that not very convincible. So I'm really interested in what's the most popular reason for piracy. Anyway, very impressive topic and case!
ReplyDeleteI think the reason Netflix does this is because for one they're getting data on which shows are most popular so they know which shows they need to get to attract more people to use their service. When you think about it $8 seems like not that big of a deal in comparison to like Luis stated in his blog having to manage a bunch of files or also you run the risk of getting viruses on your computer using these different sites or getting caught and getting in trouble for piracy so $8 seems a lot more convenient and a lot less work then trying to watch the show illegally. However I can see it from both sides in terms of why people would turn to piracy DVDs are so expensive and music prices have rose from .99 cents to $1.29 so it is definitely tempting to take the risk and get something for free.
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