Illegal TV downloads as popular as they are only because the media refuses to deliver
Last night’s penultimate episode of Doctor Who series four didn’t let up on the excitement from the opening teaser to the last second. It was incredible, and how fans outside the UK can avoid spoilers before getting the chance to watch an official broadcast on their own local channels, I’ve no idea—but trust me, if you’re one of them, you should try. It has to be said, though, that fantastic cliffhangers don’t exactly discourage illegal downloads of shows via the likes of BitTorrent, do they? Not when populations are otherwise expected to wait a year or more to see all the fuss for themselves.
These days it’s perfectly possible for shows to go out simultaneously across all international markets. It happens more or less, with maybe just a few days between broadcasts, with the reimagined Battlestar Galactica–but the fact that American and Canadian viewers are really only now getting to grips with official series three transmissions of the new Doctor Who goes to show that the BBC and its associates aren’t really on the ball. The accessibility of the Internet, and explosion of file sharing in recent years, has copyright holders in the music and video industries seriously and somewhat understandably upset about piracy, but if only they’d catch up with what the technology offers instead of trying to stop it, they’d be doing right for a change.
tags: Apple TV, BBC, Blu-Ray, cult tv, Doctor Who, DVD, HD, illegal downloads, iPlayer, iTunes, media, piracy, TV
