It's Somewhat Official: Fox's New Online Content Policy Turns Hulu Viewers Into Pirates
It's Somewhat Official: Fox's New Online Content Policy Turns Hulu Viewers Into Pirates
Posted 08/22/2011 at 10:27am
| by Brad Chacos
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Hulu’s good for stimulating more than multi-billion-dollar buyout bids; as it turns out, the service can send impatient content-seekers to illegal P2P downloads in droves, too. Just a few weeks ago, we speculated whether or not Fox’s new eight day delay for online content would send those of you without a cable subscription to Pirate Bay, or if the online horde would patiently wait the extra week for their Family Guy fix. Well, the policy’s gone live, and it looks like online viewers aren’t the sit around and wait type.
The numbers comes courtesy of TorrentFreak, which conducted a limited study since Fox’s implementation of the new policy on the 15th. The website tracked torrents for Gordon Ramsay’s Hell’s Kitchen and MasterChef. The statistics were pretty conclusive: the download numbers for the newest episode of Hell’s Kitchen were 114 percent higher than they were for the previous three episodes. Even more people pirated MasterChef: the newest episode saw a 189 percent increase in download rates, although TorrentFreak notes that it was the season finale for the show.
Tens of thousands of people also streamed the show on YouTube rather than turning to P2P. Commenters have been thanking the uploaders on torrent sites and YouTube, whereas the criticism has been scathing on Hulu and Fox.com. Unfortunately, Hulu watchers don’t seem to know that the switch came at Fox’s direction. Most of the screams of rage target the streaming service itself. An example, from Hulu user Abby List:
“I just went through this sh!t with MasterChef, and I try to watch Hell's Kitchen and see I can't even watch the next episode? Hulu, you really need to consider a new marketing strategy. This is complete bullsh!t.
I don't even like these shows that much, I just liked the convience of watching them on Hulu. Now that Hulu's no longer convienent, I can honestly say (but not completely honestly because of your bullsh!t censoring even on a show that have people cussing and sleeping with each other) go f---- yourselves, you f------ sons of b------. Have some f------ respect for your f------ patrons. Jesus Christ.”
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fellowleo
August 22, 2011 at 2:40pm
I think this is a new revenue stream for them. Since they know which IPs have been accessing their Hulu content, they now can monitor to see if the same IPs are seeding torrents. The ISPs then roll over like a lap dog and give these people up and forward the whole package to the legal department where they send out a nice give us $5k for us to leave you alone letter. Brilliant!
Asterixx
August 22, 2011 at 2:18pm
Just imagine how we Canucks have it. Thanks to the CRTC Canadian based "specialty" networks have near monopolies, thus no Comedy Central, Cartoon Network for us (we get the Comedy Channel and Teletoon instead). These Canadian stations mostly show American content, but long after it debuts in USA. We don't see new South Park episodes until they're months old, and the newest season of Futurama has not even started to be shown here yet. The newest Futurama we see are the made-for-TV movies. Many of the programs advertised as "new" here are half a decade old, they just haven't been shown here before. This is because the CRTC wants to promote Canadian content, which results in really crappy Canadian shows plus really old American ones (our Canadian stations buy them when they're old because they're cheaper then).
All it serves in reality is to drive people like me to download the newest episodes via Bittorrent...
aarcane
August 23, 2011 at 11:29am
Trey Parker and Matt Stone have come out as unofficially supporting the free download of all their content. the only reason they don't just give it away themselves is because comedy central hates it's viewers and, sadly, owns their stuff.
IIAbeII
August 22, 2011 at 4:27pm
As a fellow Canadian, I completely agree with you. The CTRC is completely broken, ever since the internet became so popular. They really should stop trying to force Canadians to watch Canadian content. They should instead support the creation of good Canadian content, with grants and arts funding. Americans are free to watch what ever content they want, but they mainly watch American content because there is so much of it, and some of it is great.
Holly Golightly
August 22, 2011 at 1:23pm
Oh, this is not much of a surprize. Actually, this has been a trend among TV stations nationwide. So I am not surprized. AdultSwim from Cartoon Network is taking a similar approach to this. With Gold Membership, exclusively available to select Cable/Satellite TV providers. It is apparent these providers are clinging on with every nail they have before their great collapse. Fact is, we should not be paying for TV if commercials already pay for our programming. What these guys are doing is practicing greed, which is self destructive. Come on everybody, let's hop on the NetFlix train!
Rockyn
August 22, 2011 at 12:30pm
I am a pretty big fantasy nerd and I used to watch Legend of the Seeker religiously when it was fairly new and Hulu had ALL of the episodes up. I would even watch the commercials too. Then they changed it so that you could only watch certain episodes within some weird timeframe from when they aired. I lost continuity with the series and I haven't watched a single episode since. I'm sure I am not alone in this regard and they are losing a bunch of advertising revenue because of this behavior.
blkpanthr
August 23, 2011 at 7:24am
you know Legend of the Seeker has been off the air and canceld for almost a year, right?
lol
I was pissed, i loved that show, ive read every one of Terry Goodkind's books...
Slugbait
August 22, 2011 at 12:28pm
So if I am understanding this correctly, Fox manged to help plug the hole in their "profit boat" that pirates were sinking. And now that the hole isn't so leaky, they are going to possibly make it bigger again because?
You forgot to use /sarcasm tag...some people might think you're serious
Brad Chacos
August 22, 2011 at 11:09am
Ha, that was a copy-and-paste job from Hulu. I ain't scared of tossing up a little adult language, but I'm not going to go out of my way to manually add it back in.
iceman08
August 22, 2011 at 12:40pm
lol, all good. I was just going along with the copy'n'paste. Reminds me of South Park, which I an conveniently watching on Hulu
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