Can Netflix Stop Piracy? Study Finds Little Effect

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While Netflix, Hulu and other on-demand streaming video services continue to grow–and new ones are regularly popping up—the availability of legal streaming platforms has not helped to curb the prevalence of pirated content, a new study has found.

Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and Universidade Católica Portuguesa recently analyzed BitTorrent downloading habits provided by a major telecommunications company to determine how often people are still turning to illegal means to get content they can’t find on streaming services.

The researchers used a sample of internet subscribers using the unnamed internet service provider—half of which were provided a free, 45-day subscription to a premium TV and movies package that allowed them to watch popular shows and movies on demand and half of which who were not offered the package.

After measuring the BitTorrent activity—a process of downloading files from peers who host them across decentralized computers—the researchers compared how often the users who had free premium content turned to piracy compared to those without the package.

As it turns out, there wasn’t much difference; subscribers with the free subscription tended to watch more TV, but their piracy habits remained almost identical to those who were not offered the free package.

“We find that, on average, households that received the gift increased overall TV consumption by 4.6% and reduced Internet downloads and uploads by 4.2% and 4.5%, respectively. However, and also on average, treated households did not change their likelihood of using BitTorrent during the experiment,” the researchers wrote.

Researchers found that a small portion of subscribers with the free premium content package did lessen their piracy habits, dropping downloads by 18 percent and decreasing upload traffic—when torrenting, users who download files then become peers for others to download the files from as well—decreased by 45 percent.

Those who saw their torrenting habits drop—just 12 percent of those surveyed—found that the premium content service offered to them mostly fit with what the wanted to watch. For most, the profile of shows and movies offered didn’t cover the majority of content they wanted to watch, which resulted in pursuing alternative means of viewing—including piracy.

The study highlights one of the biggest problems that streaming services have: procuring and maintaining content that people want to watch. Because of licensing deals, content is regularly changing hands and coming and going from streaming platforms, leaving viewers stuck with either subscribing to multiple platforms or trying to find other ways to get the content.

The findings are don’t necessarily hurt streaming providers, who are still growing and gaining more viewers as people turn away from traditional cable packages, but do suggest that studios and networks may run the risk of having their content pirated if they are stingy about making it accessible through streaming platforms.

“We show that licensing windows impose significant restrictions on the content that can be included in SVoD catalogs, which hampers the ability of content distributors to offer catalogs that cater to the preferences of pirates,” the researchers concluded.

The researchers found that households where people pirate content are willing to pay $3.25 per month to access a platform with selection the size of Netflix’s—less than half of what the company’s current cheapest plan runs. Until prices come down on platforms or more content becomes available through a single service, piracy is not likely to decrease any time soon.