Impatient TV viewers turn to BitTorrent

Some Australians are turning to file-sharing networks for new episodes
of their favorite American television shows.

According to a new report, the popularity in Australia of one
peer-to-peer application--BitTorrent--is driven in part by local
television networks that have adopted a strategy of being slow to air
current episodes of popular TV shows.

Alex Malik, a former general counsel for the Australian Recording
Industry Association, generated the report. Malik believes that by
delaying the broadcast of these programs, Australian TV programmers have
increased the domestic demand for the shows. "As a result, impatient
viewers have increasingly turned to BitTorrent to download their
favorite shows," he said.

Online forums dedicated to discussions about popular TV shows, Malik
said, revealed that one in three of the conversations touches on where
and how to pirate TV programs on the Web. Although it is hard to
quantify the number of people illegally downloading shows through
BitTorrent, Malik said, a "substantial" number of people are doing it.

"It's difficult to put a number on it because not a lot of people talk
about (online pirating) especially since it's illegal. It's similar to
illegal music file sharing...Not a lot of people admit to it, but there
is a substantial amount happening," he said.

Malik's research showed that Australians have to wait an average of
eight months to see first-run episodes of popular programs from
overseas. For instance, it takes an average of four months to watch the
latest episodes of top-rated shows like "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives."

Malik said local networks also delayed the telecast of top programs
during Australia's summer so as "not to waste successful programs"
during a period of low viewership.

"These delays provide a window of opportunity for viewers to upload TV
programs after their American broadcast date, thereby making them
available to viewers outside of the U.S., and viewers within the U.S.
who may have missed the program."

To download these shows, all consumers require is a broadband connection
and BitTorrent software. While download quality is variable depending on
its source, BitTorrent users have found the quality to be satisfactory,
the report said.

"While there are no accurate Australian BitTorrent usage figures,
anecdotal evidence and reports from online forums suggest that
Australians are downloading TV programs in large quantities," Malik added.

A previous survey released by Web monitoring company Envisional found
Australia to be the second largest downloader of online pirated TV
programs in the world (15.6 percent), second to the United Kingdom (18.5
percent) and ahead of the United States (7.3 percent).

The report said that increased bandwidth, technological advances and a
high demand of U.S.-based TV shows are some of the reasons for the boom
in online piracy. The report also said that around 70 percent of the
piracy occurs through BitTorrent.

Recently, there has been an effort to clamp down on the use of
BitTorrent technology to aid copyright infringement.

The Australian recording industry has targeted Perth-based Internet
service provider Swiftel, which allegedly owns and operates computer
infrastructure that hosts Web pages using BitTorrent file-sharing
software. In March, the Australia-based Music Industry Piracy
Investigations Unit took Swiftel to court. The hearing is set to resume
Thursday.

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