Fox delays Hulu availability, piracy surges

Cory Doctorow 8:10 am Wed Aug 24, 2011

Fox recently decided to delay the availability of its programs on Hulu by eight days; TorrentFreak tracked the number of BitTorrent downloads of Fox's programming before and after the policy took effect, and, predictably, piracy surged when the legit channel degraded:

Over the last week TorrentFreak tracked two Fox shows on BitTorrent to see if there was an upturn in the number of downloads compared to the previous weeks, and the results are as expected. For both Gordon Ramsay’s Hell’s Kitchen and MasterChef the download numbers have surged.

During the first 5 days, the number of downloads from the U.S. for the latest episode of Hell’s Kitchen increased by 114% compared to the previous 3 episodes. For MasterChef the upturn was even higher with 189% more downloads from the U.S. For MasterChef; the extra high demand may in part have been facilitated by the fact that it was the season finale.

Aside from BitTorrent, there are of course many other options for people to catch up with a missed episode. YouTube for example, from where tens of thousands of people streamed the latest Hell’s Kitchen episode.

Fox’s 8-Day Delay on Hulu Triggers Piracy Surge

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