7 ms·

Netflix CEO says torrent piracy in Canada down 50 per cent since Netflix

92 points by austengary 13y ago

luminaobscura 13y ago
that makes 0.5 per dollar. nothing significant.
selmnoo 13y ago
Okay, I'll just come out and say it. As a poor college student, I used to pirate a lot, I don't after having gotten Netflix. It just makes things too easy, that's all there is to it. Also, interestingly, because I've basically watched all the shows and movies that I was interested in I'll actually be cutting my subscription soon.
BruceIV 13y ago
Imagine how far piracy would drop if Netflix Canada actually had some decent content (there's some good stuff, but if you go looking for anything specific, it's nearly always not there - American Netflix is far superior).
- eigenvector 13y ago
  Every single Netflix subscriber I know also uses a US VPN service. Netflix Canada just isn't worth the money.
  - tacoman 13y ago
    I disagree. My young kids and wife love the stuff on the Canadian service. It's easily worth the 8 bucks a month.
- cclogg 13y ago
  As a Canadian, that's what I've heard too. Netflix Canada = sucks. Not that I personally like streaming anyway... but the piracy problem is a tough one because it's so quick and easy, but is not always reliable nor safe (and obviously screws the creator in terms of $$). However, piracy can also go beyond the original creation, like how Warcraft 2 was ported to work on modern operating systems. Will be interesting to see in 10 years where things go.
  - hrkristian 13y ago
    Ironically, I have used my vpn service to access Canadian Netflix because you were the only ones who had for instance Community. Also, streaming from Canadian servers were better than from the U.S. for a while. (Norwegian)
parennoob 13y ago
"Young consumers, taking on their first apartments..., are ignoring the existence of $100+ premium cable bundles." I live in a college town and can attest that a lot of the new graduates I know forgo cable subscriptions, either because they are broke, or because they can't be bothered to navigate Comcast's bewildering array of "packages". "Have the intentions of mandatory CanCon TV spending drifted so far from the reality that the whole scheme should be scrapped?" [edit] Canadian HN'ers, what are your impressions of CanCon? Is it like a Canadian version of the BBC, and if so, does it make shows with that quality? (The BBC makes a few really decent shows and some amount of debatable tripe.)
- yahelc 13y ago
  >Canadian content (abbreviated CanCon, cancon or can-con) refers to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) requirements, derived from the Broadcasting Act of Canada, that radio and television broadcasters (including cable and satellite specialty channels) must air a certain percentage of content that was at least partly written, produced, presented, or otherwise contributed to by persons from Canada. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_content http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_content
  - parennoob 13y ago
    Ah ok, it's a quota requirement rather than a separate channel. Should have wikipedia'ed it before.
- kitcar 13y ago
  CanCon stands for Canadian Content. High level, in order to maintain a broadcast licence in Canada, you need to have a certain percentage of your content be defined as "Canadian". The way you get a piece of content certified as Canadian is via point system - Canadian director, +1 point, Canadian lead actor, +1 point, etc... more info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_content http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_content One really odd thing about Canada is we don't "naturally" produce enough content for broadcasters to meet their Canadian content requirements (let alone content people actually want to consume), therefore there are HUGE subsidies in place for the production of Canadian content - like billions of dollars a year huge. These subsidies enable broadcasters to pick up Canadian shows cheaply in order to meet their quotas. Most Canadians don't realize how much money is given to media creators because the money is distributed in many different forms from different institutions, at both the provincial and federal level, i.e. those which invest in media (http://telefilm.ca/ http://telefilm.ca/) distribute tax credits (i.e. http://www.omdc.on.ca/ http://www.omdc.on.ca/ ), and so fourth. This is ignoring the CBC by the way, the government financed broadcast organization. The subsidies haven't followed changes in Canadian media consumption patterns though, meaning we over-subsidize mediums which are consumed less and under-subsidize those that are consumed more. It will be interesting to see if / how things change moving forward.
jack9 13y ago
I find this hard to believe. Based on what evidence? This fails even the common sense test. Netflix doesn't have TV show episodes the day they come out or movies within the time you would remember them. I've even gone and RENTED a movie before it came out on Netflix.
SwellJoe 13y ago
I have a process when I want to watch something: Is it on Netflix? Cool. Watch it. Is it on Amazon Prime? Cool. Watch it. Is it on Amazon Instant Video for rent or purchase? Cool. Buy it and watch it. Is it available anywhere online for purchase? Cool. Buy it and watch it. Not available for purchase online? Pirate Bay.
- smtddr 13y ago
  My process is sorta similar: 1. Netflix? 2. Hulu? 3. Amz-Inst 4. Shady streaming site. And since the vast majority of what I watch is anime these days that hasn't been officially brought to USA yet, I pretty much go straight to #4, animehere.com or animecenter.tv or similar. I even have scripts that scrapes the page for the direct video-file URL and fetches it. I run it every Saturday night to get the newest Attack on Titan & Hunter-x-Hunter-2011. Here[1] is a bash script I put together to download all of the One Piece video files from watchop.com . Of course, now that I've posted the script it'll probably stop working in the not-too-distant future. 1. http://pastie.org/pastes/8353546/text http://pastie.org/pastes/8353546/text
  - SwellJoe 13y ago
    I gave up on Hulu. It's too misleading. I kept going to shows or movies and finding only trailers and clips. Why would I want either of those things? I don't go looking for ads. I just don't...I have less than zero interest in seeing ads, even for shows or movies I wanted to watch. I used to love Hulu. It works on Linux (which is a big thing for me, especially during the day when I'm working and watching TV), and it used to be a place where I could watch current season shows. Now, it's just too much hassle to find any actual programming.
    - Karunamon 13y ago
      Same here, for the same reason. One of the reasons I stopped paying for cable TV was the utter overabundance of ads. Hulu wants me to give them money so they can make me watch ads? Yeah, no. One more benefit the torrent sites have over the legit item, apparently.
el_chapitan 13y ago
People far smarter than me have been saying for a long time that if you make the price of the content more reasonable and make it far easier to get, most people wouldn't bother to pirate. I have no idea about the numbers, but it's good to see someone who makes money on providing the easier content providing some data on the fact that one of the best ways to remove piracy isn't to randomly sue people to scare them, but to provide them a good product, at a reasonable price and not to go out of your way to make it difficult for people to purchase/license/rent your product.
- venomsnake 13y ago
  The piracy confrontations are not about the money or revenue maximizing. They are about gatekeeping and distribution control.
  - chii 13y ago
    gate keeping is a means to obtain profit. If you controlled it all, like the old media companies used to, you can make a lot more profit. but with the advent of the internet and p2p distribution, it's becoming hard to control, and this they have completion.
  - andyhmltn 13y ago
    I really don't get that argument (from them of course, not you haha.) If you make something super easy to get and a reasonable price (eg: Quite a few comedy specials are appearing for $5 DRM free) then more people will just download it than go through the hassle of a torrent or getting their friends to put it on a memory stick.
wluu 13y ago
Well, hopefully their next step is to open up in Australia. There is a demand for it here, and there's even many Australians that buy a US VPN service to buy a Netflix subscription. See - http://www.zdnet.com/au/australians-encouraged-to-bypass-netflix-geo-block-7000017615/ http://www.zdnet.com/au/australians-encouraged-to-bypass-net...
shaggyfrog 13y ago
"post hoc ergo propter hoc"
- batiudrami 13y ago
  Is there anything else which has happened recently in the Canadian media space which could have led to the decrease? I understand that we should be careful with correlation/causation, but it seems like a fairly reasonable connection.
- Karunamon 13y ago
  I've always regarded these piracy statistics with great suspicion, regardless of the point the person pushing them is trying to make (even then, usually any comments made about piracy statistics are by media industry types banging on about how they're close to bankruptcy or similar). I assume they're doing something like connecting to a random swarm and counting IPs, problem is that makes a number of faulty assumptions: * 1 IP = 1 person * Person on the swarm is necessarily there to download * Person on the swarm is necessarily downloading something they don't have a license for * Person on the swarm is necessarily consuming the media they're downloading (some people just like to collect) * Public trackers are the only means of pirating via torrent * Other mediums are completely ignored (IRC/Usenet/HTTP sites/EDonkey/DC++/etc etc etc etc)
methodin 13y ago
I'm sure it would decrease in the U.S. as well if all the cable companies weren't greedy, antiquated whoremongers. Consumers find alternatives when all the options available are sub-par. That being said I'm glad newer options are becoming increasingly more available, despite setbacks from the regulators.
beloch 13y ago
The impressive thing is that this happened with Netflix Canada's selection being a joke compared to that of the U.S. version of Netflix. This doesn't just show that people will choose the legal path to obtaining the content they want if it's available. It actually shows that a significant number of people will limit their choices to what is legally available! Personally, I was hoping Netflix Canada would have a tougher time until they bother to improve their selection just a tad.
quanticle 13y ago
Gabe Newell put it best, two years ago [1]: In general, we think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. Those two sentences should be tattooed on every music, film, and publishing executive's forehead. As every convenient online service (iTunes, Netflix, Steam, Kindle) has demonstrated, people will legally purchase content, so long as the option of legal purchase is easier and more convenient than piracy. [1] http://www.tcs.cam.ac.uk/story_type/site_trail_story/interview-gabe-newell/ http://www.tcs.cam.ac.uk/story_type/site_trail_story/intervi...
- Sniperfish 13y ago
  Even Netflix, Kindle, iTunes have significant accessibility issues - as a Canadian I find US friends online have access to a much greater library than the Canadian equivalent. I can only assume this is license related (as opposed to concerns around the incremental cost of distribution of online streams!). A good example actually comes from BBC - QI (Quite Interesting) uses some media whose licensing/copywrite is prohibitively expensive in the US relative to UK that the program cannot be broadcast by BBC America / BBC Canada.
josephagoss 13y ago
We can't even get Netflix in Australia. And the lawyers and politicians wonder why we Australians pirate the most.
andyhmltn 13y ago
I've said time and time again: IMO Piracy is often not out of malice and being unwilling to pay for things (although no doubt it happens.) It's about convenience. If you give three options: 1) Walk into town and pay £15 for a disc totalling around an hour. 2) Download it from a pirate site totalling about 10 hours but with no effort required for free. 3) Pay £1.99 on iTunes so I rent it and have it instantly available to stream. I am ALWAYS going to pick the last one.
marvin 13y ago
Why isn't the movie industry posting this happy news about piracy? Because this is actually defeat to them. They no longer control the most important distribution channel. This is what the war on piracy has been all about for the last 10 years. And the industry is finally losing the battle.

92 points by austengary 13y ago

that makes 0.5 per dollar. nothing significant.

Okay, I'll just come out and say it. As a poor college student, I used to pirate a lot, I don't after having gotten Netflix. It just makes things too easy, that's all there is to it. Also, interestingly, because I've basically watched all the shows and movies that I was interested in I'll actually be cutting my subscription soon.

BruceIV 13y ago

Imagine how far piracy would drop if Netflix Canada actually had some decent content (there's some good stuff, but if you go looking for anything specific, it's nearly always not there - American Netflix is far superior).

eigenvector 13y ago
Every single Netflix subscriber I know also uses a US VPN service. Netflix Canada just isn't worth the money.
- tacoman 13y ago
  I disagree. My young kids and wife love the stuff on the Canadian service. It's easily worth the 8 bucks a month.
cclogg 13y ago
As a Canadian, that's what I've heard too. Netflix Canada = sucks. Not that I personally like streaming anyway... but the piracy problem is a tough one because it's so quick and easy, but is not always reliable nor safe (and obviously screws the creator in terms of $$). However, piracy can also go beyond the original creation, like how Warcraft 2 was ported to work on modern operating systems. Will be interesting to see in 10 years where things go.
- hrkristian 13y ago
  Ironically, I have used my vpn service to access Canadian Netflix because you were the only ones who had for instance Community. Also, streaming from Canadian servers were better than from the U.S. for a while. (Norwegian)

parennoob 13y ago

"Young consumers, taking on their first apartments..., are ignoring the existence of $100+ premium cable bundles." I live in a college town and can attest that a lot of the new graduates I know forgo cable subscriptions, either because they are broke, or because they can't be bothered to navigate Comcast's bewildering array of "packages". "Have the intentions of mandatory CanCon TV spending drifted so far from the reality that the whole scheme should be scrapped?" [edit] Canadian HN'ers, what are your impressions of CanCon? Is it like a Canadian version of the BBC, and if so, does it make shows with that quality? (The BBC makes a few really decent shows and some amount of debatable tripe.)

yahelc 13y ago
>Canadian content (abbreviated CanCon, cancon or can-con) refers to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) requirements, derived from the Broadcasting Act of Canada, that radio and television broadcasters (including cable and satellite specialty channels) must air a certain percentage of content that was at least partly written, produced, presented, or otherwise contributed to by persons from Canada. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_content http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_content
- parennoob 13y ago
  Ah ok, it's a quota requirement rather than a separate channel. Should have wikipedia'ed it before.
kitcar 13y ago
CanCon stands for Canadian Content. High level, in order to maintain a broadcast licence in Canada, you need to have a certain percentage of your content be defined as "Canadian". The way you get a piece of content certified as Canadian is via point system - Canadian director, +1 point, Canadian lead actor, +1 point, etc... more info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_content http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_content One really odd thing about Canada is we don't "naturally" produce enough content for broadcasters to meet their Canadian content requirements (let alone content people actually want to consume), therefore there are HUGE subsidies in place for the production of Canadian content - like billions of dollars a year huge. These subsidies enable broadcasters to pick up Canadian shows cheaply in order to meet their quotas. Most Canadians don't realize how much money is given to media creators because the money is distributed in many different forms from different institutions, at both the provincial and federal level, i.e. those which invest in media (http://telefilm.ca/ http://telefilm.ca/) distribute tax credits (i.e. http://www.omdc.on.ca/ http://www.omdc.on.ca/ ), and so fourth. This is ignoring the CBC by the way, the government financed broadcast organization. The subsidies haven't followed changes in Canadian media consumption patterns though, meaning we over-subsidize mediums which are consumed less and under-subsidize those that are consumed more. It will be interesting to see if / how things change moving forward.

jack9 13y ago

I find this hard to believe. Based on what evidence? This fails even the common sense test. Netflix doesn't have TV show episodes the day they come out or movies within the time you would remember them. I've even gone and RENTED a movie before it came out on Netflix.

SwellJoe 13y ago

I have a process when I want to watch something: Is it on Netflix? Cool. Watch it. Is it on Amazon Prime? Cool. Watch it. Is it on Amazon Instant Video for rent or purchase? Cool. Buy it and watch it. Is it available anywhere online for purchase? Cool. Buy it and watch it. Not available for purchase online? Pirate Bay.

smtddr 13y ago
My process is sorta similar: 1. Netflix? 2. Hulu? 3. Amz-Inst 4. Shady streaming site. And since the vast majority of what I watch is anime these days that hasn't been officially brought to USA yet, I pretty much go straight to #4, animehere.com or animecenter.tv or similar. I even have scripts that scrapes the page for the direct video-file URL and fetches it. I run it every Saturday night to get the newest Attack on Titan & Hunter-x-Hunter-2011. Here[1] is a bash script I put together to download all of the One Piece video files from watchop.com . Of course, now that I've posted the script it'll probably stop working in the not-too-distant future. 1. http://pastie.org/pastes/8353546/text http://pastie.org/pastes/8353546/text
- SwellJoe 13y ago
  I gave up on Hulu. It's too misleading. I kept going to shows or movies and finding only trailers and clips. Why would I want either of those things? I don't go looking for ads. I just don't...I have less than zero interest in seeing ads, even for shows or movies I wanted to watch. I used to love Hulu. It works on Linux (which is a big thing for me, especially during the day when I'm working and watching TV), and it used to be a place where I could watch current season shows. Now, it's just too much hassle to find any actual programming.
  - Karunamon 13y ago
    Same here, for the same reason. One of the reasons I stopped paying for cable TV was the utter overabundance of ads. Hulu wants me to give them money so they can make me watch ads? Yeah, no. One more benefit the torrent sites have over the legit item, apparently.

el_chapitan 13y ago

People far smarter than me have been saying for a long time that if you make the price of the content more reasonable and make it far easier to get, most people wouldn't bother to pirate. I have no idea about the numbers, but it's good to see someone who makes money on providing the easier content providing some data on the fact that one of the best ways to remove piracy isn't to randomly sue people to scare them, but to provide them a good product, at a reasonable price and not to go out of your way to make it difficult for people to purchase/license/rent your product.

venomsnake 13y ago
The piracy confrontations are not about the money or revenue maximizing. They are about gatekeeping and distribution control.
- chii 13y ago
  gate keeping is a means to obtain profit. If you controlled it all, like the old media companies used to, you can make a lot more profit. but with the advent of the internet and p2p distribution, it's becoming hard to control, and this they have completion.
- andyhmltn 13y ago
  I really don't get that argument (from them of course, not you haha.) If you make something super easy to get and a reasonable price (eg: Quite a few comedy specials are appearing for $5 DRM free) then more people will just download it than go through the hassle of a torrent or getting their friends to put it on a memory stick.

wluu 13y ago

Well, hopefully their next step is to open up in Australia. There is a demand for it here, and there's even many Australians that buy a US VPN service to buy a Netflix subscription. See - http://www.zdnet.com/au/australians-encouraged-to-bypass-netflix-geo-block-7000017615/ http://www.zdnet.com/au/australians-encouraged-to-bypass-net...

shaggyfrog 13y ago

"post hoc ergo propter hoc"

batiudrami 13y ago
Is there anything else which has happened recently in the Canadian media space which could have led to the decrease? I understand that we should be careful with correlation/causation, but it seems like a fairly reasonable connection.
Karunamon 13y ago
I've always regarded these piracy statistics with great suspicion, regardless of the point the person pushing them is trying to make (even then, usually any comments made about piracy statistics are by media industry types banging on about how they're close to bankruptcy or similar). I assume they're doing something like connecting to a random swarm and counting IPs, problem is that makes a number of faulty assumptions: * 1 IP = 1 person * Person on the swarm is necessarily there to download * Person on the swarm is necessarily downloading something they don't have a license for * Person on the swarm is necessarily consuming the media they're downloading (some people just like to collect) * Public trackers are the only means of pirating via torrent * Other mediums are completely ignored (IRC/Usenet/HTTP sites/EDonkey/DC++/etc etc etc etc)

methodin 13y ago

I'm sure it would decrease in the U.S. as well if all the cable companies weren't greedy, antiquated whoremongers. Consumers find alternatives when all the options available are sub-par. That being said I'm glad newer options are becoming increasingly more available, despite setbacks from the regulators.

beloch 13y ago

The impressive thing is that this happened with Netflix Canada's selection being a joke compared to that of the U.S. version of Netflix. This doesn't just show that people will choose the legal path to obtaining the content they want if it's available. It actually shows that a significant number of people will limit their choices to what is legally available! Personally, I was hoping Netflix Canada would have a tougher time until they bother to improve their selection just a tad.

quanticle 13y ago

Gabe Newell put it best, two years ago [1]: In general, we think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. Those two sentences should be tattooed on every music, film, and publishing executive's forehead. As every convenient online service (iTunes, Netflix, Steam, Kindle) has demonstrated, people will legally purchase content, so long as the option of legal purchase is easier and more convenient than piracy. [1] http://www.tcs.cam.ac.uk/story_type/site_trail_story/interview-gabe-newell/ http://www.tcs.cam.ac.uk/story_type/site_trail_story/intervi...

Sniperfish 13y ago
Even Netflix, Kindle, iTunes have significant accessibility issues - as a Canadian I find US friends online have access to a much greater library than the Canadian equivalent. I can only assume this is license related (as opposed to concerns around the incremental cost of distribution of online streams!). A good example actually comes from BBC - QI (Quite Interesting) uses some media whose licensing/copywrite is prohibitively expensive in the US relative to UK that the program cannot be broadcast by BBC America / BBC Canada.

josephagoss 13y ago

We can't even get Netflix in Australia. And the lawyers and politicians wonder why we Australians pirate the most.

andyhmltn 13y ago

I've said time and time again: IMO Piracy is often not out of malice and being unwilling to pay for things (although no doubt it happens.) It's about convenience. If you give three options: 1) Walk into town and pay £15 for a disc totalling around an hour. 2) Download it from a pirate site totalling about 10 hours but with no effort required for free. 3) Pay £1.99 on iTunes so I rent it and have it instantly available to stream. I am ALWAYS going to pick the last one.

marvin 13y ago

Why isn't the movie industry posting this happy news about piracy? Because this is actually defeat to them. They no longer control the most important distribution channel. This is what the war on piracy has been all about for the last 10 years. And the industry is finally losing the battle.