TV programmes are uploaded to the Net instantly after being broadcast

An increasing number of popular TV series are being downloaded to PCs immediately after being broadcast in their original countries

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By Jussi Ahlroth
     
      The Internet has become the cheapest and fastest means of distribution for television programmes. The problem lies in the fact that television channels and production companies themselves have no control over this. Illegally transferred TV programmes have become the latest big hit on online peer-to-peer networks.
      "This time last year, the most popular series, shows like 24 and Desperate Housewives, were downloaded one or two hundred thousand times. Now, the number has exceeded a million downloads for the most popular series", says David Price, the head of the piracy unit at Internet monitoring company Envisional, in describing the growth.
     
Not much public attention has so far been paid hereabouts to the illegal distribution of movies and TV series. Downloading music has been the leading subject of debate.
      The reason for this is clear. The holders of music copyrights and rights of publication are Finnish artists and companies operating in Finland, who have all loudly defended their rights.
      The broadcast rights to TV series belong to foreign production companies, who have had better things to do than think about the piracy situation in Finland.
     
Most of the illegal data transfer online has nevertheless involved movies and TV series for some time now, and the trend is growing - in Finland as elsewhere.
      Price explains that when an episode of the second season of Lost, currently being aired in the United States, ends on the East Coast at 22:00 local time, it takes only 15 minutes for it to be ready for downloading in a worldwide peer-to-peer network.
      Somebody on the East Coast has recorded the digital broadcast, transferred it onto his computer, compressed the data, and uploaded it to the Net.
      A speedy downloader in Europe can watch the show hours before it is aired at prime-time on the West Coast, owing to the time difference.
     
It is not only American drama that circulates on the Net. European league football is eagerly downloaded, especially in Asia. Japanese cartoons are popular all over the world.
      The numbers confirm that peer-to-peer networks are no longer the harmless pastime of a small coterie of nerds. According to Cachelogic, a company monitoring Internet traffic, in 2004 about 60 percent of Internet traffic in Europe took place in peer-to-peer networks. The corrsponding percentage in the United States was almost 70, and it went over over 80 percent in Asia. These figures have certainly not declined since then - quite the contrary.
      The most popular peer-to-peer networks are currently BitTorrent and eDonkey. Jukka Ruotsalainen, a member of the board of Electronic Frontier Finland, an organisation protecting people's electronic rights, estimates conservatively that there are at least 40 million BitTorrent users worldwide.
     
According to the Anti-Piracy Centre in Finland, there are about 150,000 users of peer-to-peer networks in Finland.
      BitTorrent alone comprises one-third of all information transfer on the Internet. This is a staggering amount of data.
      The exact figure is difficult to estimate, but the traffic on peer-to-peer networks must already be of the order of hundreds of millions of gigabytes. The average home desktop has about one hundred gigabytes of hard disk space these days. This is enough for storing a hundred movies, 25 full DVDs, or a dozen seasons of a TV series, assuming one season consists of 24 episodes.
      When, for example, a million such machines are packed full of movies, television series, games, music, and other software, all of the data they contain moves around the world's broadband connections 24 hours a day, in all the time zones. Around 60 percent of the data is movies and TV series, while only 27 percent is music.
     
No requests for investigations have been posted as yet as a result of downloading primarily movies and TV series. It is assumed that this will change.
      "Up to now, all requests have been very music-oriented, but this year there will be production companies who own the network rights to films and TV series among the injured parties", estimates Jussi Mäkinen from the Anti-Piracy Centre in Finland.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 17.2.2006

More on this subject:
 FACTFILE: What is a peer-to-peer network?
 Movies end up online through a small group of people inside the film industry

Links:
  Envisional
  BitTorrent
  About BitTorrent (Wikipedia)
  Electronic Frontier Finland

JUSSI AHLROTH / Helsingin Sanomat
jussi.ahlroth@hs.fi