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What we're downloading from P2P: 54m for Heroes

by Tarinder Sandhu on 28 August 2009, 11:13

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Millions of users are now using file-sharing services to watch illegal downloads of popular films and TV programmes, according to research by P2P monitor Big Champagne.

Tracking of torrents has revealed that popular programs are illegally downloaded millions of times, with US series Heroes leading the way with over 54m. The top-10 list, as provided by Big Champagne, via the BBC, looks like this:

Programme Torrents (seeds/peers)
Heroes 54,562,012
Lost 51,151,396
24 34,119,093
Prison Break 29,283,591
House 26,227,954
Fringe 21,434,755
Desperate Housewives 21,378,412
Grey's Anatomy 19,916,775
Gossip Girl 19,706,870
Smallville 19,598,999

Add them together and that's almost 300m torrents. No real surprises in the list which is dominated by US programmes. Big Champagne singled out the BBC's Top Gear as one of the most internationally-downloaded TV series, with half the downloads originating in the USA.

Film

Film Torrents (seeds/peers)
Watchmen 16,906,452
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button 13,133,137
Yes Man 13,038,364
Twilight 11,632,645
Fast and Furious 10,613,668
Gran Torino 9,880,770
Marley and Me 9,099,219
Slumdog Millionaire
 8,840,884
Bolt 8,690,633
Australia 8,628,012

Film torrents are noticeably lower than their TV counterparts. Plenty have watched Watchmen and almost 9m torrents for Slumdog Millionaire highlights its worldwide appeal.

Interestingly, the piracy for live events was much, much lower than for TV series, but just imagine if TV and film studios could get $1 for every torrent.

Are you surprised by what's on the list? Did you expect any other entries? We'd love to find out in the HEXUS.community.

HEXUS Forums :: 27 Comments

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Posted by Arthran - Fri 28 Aug 2009 11:20
who hasn't torrented an episode of Heroes or Lost that they missed on TV?

As said in another thread, give us Hulu!
Posted by cordas - Fri 28 Aug 2009 11:48
Maybe TV companies should start trying to show the big named shows as close as they can around the world…. Why wait 6months for a show you really want to watch (with adverts and often on at a silly time) when you can just download it now and enjoy it at your leisure NOW.

Or why not put it up for streaming on a website and charge a small fee per episode. Bolting the stable door once the horse has bolted is pointless…. Get on the horse and ride it!
Posted by j.o.s.h.1408 - Fri 28 Aug 2009 11:51
Are people surprised? i bet most hexus users download a tv show of some sort.

not a new thing and as said before, why cant they broadcast episodes around the world instead of waiting so long for them to come out? plus the adverts pisses people off big time as well.

personaly i dont see a big issue in downloading tv shows because their free to watch and view on bbc or sometimes even sky one. Its not like movies where you have to pay to watch it in cinema's or pay for a blu ray or dvd when it gets released. yes you can always wait a year after to watch it for free legitamtly on sky but still not the same has tv shows.

The wire for example has just started being shown on bbc. pathetic. Dexter season 3 started showing a few months ago dispite the series ending late last year over in america?
Posted by GaryRW - Fri 28 Aug 2009 12:46
j.o.s.h.1408;1763639
personaly i dont see a big issue in downloading tv shows because their free to watch and view on bbc or sometimes even sky one.

Ahhh…. but if you watch it on tv, in theory at least, you are contributing to the viewing figures and, again in theory, increasing the ad revenue.

BBC is different obviously, and so I guess it's arguable that if you're just downloading an episode you missed last week, there really is no harm. At least no harm that I can reasonably think of. No doubt you would still be breaking IP law, but I really struggle to see how they are affected (assuming you actually pay the licence fee :)) The only argument I can see is that you should go out and but it on DVD to catch the episode you missed, but are the DVDs released concurrently? (I don't know)

As for Sky One and other premium, subscription channels - that's where the industry will struggle to beat piracy. For non-premium stuff, e.g. channel 4, itv etc… they could just set up websites that forces you to watch adverts. I've not used Hulu but I assume that's what it does. I think being legit and ease of use would deter a lot of the casual pirates. (& yes no doubt people would crack it so you could skip the adverts, but assuming they are sensible and don't make the adverts excessive, how many people would go to that effort??)

For the subscription/premium channel stuff though the industry will presumably still want to charge, and I guess they would argue ad revenue wouldn't be enough. For a lot of people though, the simple position is that torrents are free… Maybe the industry needs to take a step back and work out whether a reduced per viewer revenue from ads rather than subscription/fee is better than no revenue at all from the millions of people downloading via torrents.
Posted by Terbinator - Fri 28 Aug 2009 12:58
You still need to pay for a TV license and Sky/VM so its hardly like you have it ‘free’ in the first place so this vibe of entitlement is actually quite pathetic. There will be licensing reasons why the shows arent here originally or at all in some cases - not just because they don't want them here.

Also i take it you've download the Pixar film Up as well then? You know seen as it was released in May(?) in the US but its not out here yet til Q4 O.o

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