bittorrent distribution

The season premiere of HBO’s GAME OF THRONES set all kinds of records this week with well over a million, um, “unauthorized downloads” in less than 24 hours. That fact, coupled with TVWriter™’s longtime concern about the “battle” between creators’ rights and the rights of the audience, makes the following a very important bit of knowledge indeed:

Game-of-Thrones-thing

by Andy

Last month the director of Game of Thrones admitted something that his paymasters had HBO might have avoided. Huge online piracy doesn’t hurt the show, he said, and in fact might create benefits by generating cultural buzz. Well check the date if you like folks but the following is absolutely genuine. HBO programming president Michael Lombardo has just announced that not only is the huge piracy a compliment, but the phenomenon hasn’t hurt DVD sales at all. read article

Fairfax, one of Australia’s largest media companies, says it is.

And inasmuch as they’re Big Dogs in the country that gave us WILFRED, we’re all ears:

Show Doing Well on BitTorrent? We’ll Buy It, Says Media Giant – by Ernesto

Fairfax’s head of video Ricky Sutton has admitted that his company’s acquisition strategy is in large part based on what content is popular on BitTorrent. Not only is Fairfax using BitTorrent as a market research tool, the company also admits to advertising their content offerings directly on BitTorrent sites, in an attempt to convert pirates into paying customers. read article