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Movie Studios Fear a Piracy Surge From Google Fiber

posted by n1 on Friday January 02 2015, @05:05AM   Printer-friendly
from the corporate-fear-of-change dept.

Bill Dimm writes with an article from TorrentFreak:

Earlier this week we received a leaked presentation covering the results of a Google Fiber survey conducted on behalf of Warner Bros and Sony Pictures Entertainment. The research was conducted in 2012 and aimed to get a baseline of the piracy levels, so changes can be measured after the rollout.

[...] Drawing on an MPAA formula that counts all pirated views as losses the report notes that it may cost Hollywood over a billion dollars per year. That’s a rather impressive increase of 58% compared to current piracy levels. The research also finds a link between piracy and broadband speeds, which is another reason for Hollywood not to like Google’s Internet service.

[...] What’s most striking from the above approach is the way the studios frame Google Fiber as a piracy threat, instead of looking at the opportunities it offers.

 
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  • (Score: 2) by CRCulver on Friday January 02 2015, @10:15AM

    by CRCulver (4390) on Friday January 02 2015, @10:15AM (#130976) Homepage
    But those cost money. And the amount of extra effort required to sign up at an HD torrent tracker is minor compared to the immense cost savings.
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  • (Score: 2) by Tork on Friday January 02 2015, @09:48PM

    by Tork (3914) Subscriber Badge on Friday January 02 2015, @09:48PM (#131089)
    They aren't that expensive. Also you have to wait for your torrent to arrive and you have to have the resources to store and serve it .
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    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 03 2015, @07:00AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 03 2015, @07:00AM (#131225)

      You don't have to wait for your torrent to arrive with torrent streaming. It downloads the first pieces of a video file first, and plays in a media player capable of streaming from file like VLC. Well-seeded popular torrents (thousands of seeds) are usually the type of show/movie you would find on Netflix and would download fast on 10 mbps. With a gigabit connection, no matter how you choose to torrent the file, it will likely be completely done in under a minute.

      Storage is cheap unless you are SSD only. You can delete the file after you're done. You can reuse the same 10-50 GB to download a batch of content and delete it as you watch it. H.265 is *starting* to cut some file sizes in half and can play on machines that are a few years old.

    • (Score: 2) by CRCulver on Saturday January 03 2015, @09:29AM

      by CRCulver (4390) on Saturday January 03 2015, @09:29AM (#131267) Homepage

      They aren't that expensive.

      Yes, they are. When one watches a lot of films, the costs of watching them legitimately can rise into the hundreds or thousands of dollars. Meanwhile, torrents are free.

      Also you have to wait for your torrent to arrive

      With gigabit, even HD torrents arrive very quickly, within the time that one is, say, preparing some snacks for the film and rearranging chairs. Nowadays this is true even for less popular content like some obscure art films; there's always a couple of seeders around and the download is pratically instantaneous. The days of waiting in agony for torrent content are over.

      ...and you have to have the resources to store and serve it.

      Not everyone wants to save films after they've watched them, but even if they do, storage is cheaper than paying for content. As for serving it, a Raspberry Pi acting as a media center is $30.

      • (Score: 2) by Tork on Saturday January 03 2015, @07:38PM

        by Tork (3914) Subscriber Badge on Saturday January 03 2015, @07:38PM (#131387)
        I watch a LOT of stuff and am not even breaking $50 a month.
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