Interesting announcements from Foxtel and Australian free-to-air broadcasters that they will begin broadcasting US originated shows soon after their US broadcast in an effort to fight piracy.
One wonders why they did not do this sooner. Has it taken this long for piracy to become a sufficiently mainstream practice that it's only now a serious concern?
I'd guess one reason for holding up fast-tracking is the problem it creates by fragmenting audiences. If the broadcaster's business model is built around selling advertising for prime time audiences you have unavoidable time zone issues. For example with US Thursday night being Australian Friday morning, to fight piracy does an Aussie broadcaster broadcast the same episode that Friday night? Or wait til the following Sunday or Monday evening when audiences are likely to be larger?
Every time I think about TV piracy I end up with the same conclusion - IPTV. In an IPTV world you could have content originators from anywhere in the world and without the limitations of a fixed broadcast schedule content can be conveniently viewed by anyone, anywhere, at any time. Ads could be targeted specifically to the viewer, not based on some generalisation about a show being popular with a particular demographic. Or the episodes could be viewed sans advertising for a small fee!
As with all transitions the hard question is how do we get from here to there?
I wonder if, unfortunately, the Australian broadcasters' efforts may be too late. Otherwise law abiding citizens have already learned how to pirate TV. Now that they know how to do it, and that it's ad-free, why would they go back to watching FTA or [paying for] Foxtel?
I'd actually argue that it's in the interests of viewers to continue pirating as it will -- by reducing traditional broadcast audiences -- accelerate the transition towards IPTV which will ultimately lead to a wider array of content being legally available.
Would Hulu exist if BitTorrent hadn't been invented?
