MarCom Professional

Has Channel 4 has fixed online piracy?

Piracy. Regardless of your view its clear something has got to give.

Countless websites such as alluc.org and surfthechannel.com offer viewers the very latest programming, hosted illegally on third party sites, at no charge. 

Sure, iTunes has had some success at promoting the paid-for model but the vast majority of licensed content is still being streamed/downloaded illegally in torrent form.

So ubiquitous is this practice that numerous content providers, including Comedy Central (www.southparkstudios.com), the BBC (www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer) and Fox (www.fox.com/FOD) have resorted to giving away content free of charge, presumedly to claw back control from the ether.

However, although they now have more say on the standard of content out there, Fox et al still have not found a viable way to make money from this service. Until now.

Channel 4's new Watch Online service embeds 30 second spots at the start of each programme. As per copyright warnings on DVD, these spots are unskippable, and a tad annoying. The thing is though, they work.

Illegal sites are inconsistent. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. Buffering is a problem, as is quality. Therefore trying to watch your favourite programme online can be a bit of a lottery. When faced with the option of watching a 30 second spot versus spending 10 minutes hunting for a decent link, the spot wins every time. What's more, the Channel 4 brand underwrites the entire user experience, meaning accountability, maintenance and performance. 

Piracy will always exist and I have no doubt that hackers are all ready working on ways to remove these spots. However, for the large percentage of people out there who want to watch Peep Show but only have half an hour to spare, embedded spots are the way forward. As long as content providers don't overdo it, I will happily accept the trade-off.

Also posted on www.endpoint.co.uk