Breaking Bad Sparks Global Piracy Craze

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I guess we can throw the whole "we need easy access at a reasonable price" argument out the window. My theory? People pirate stuff because they can, plain and simple.

Yesterday evening the second part of Breaking Bad’s fifth and final season premiered in the U.S. Within hours of airing the show became available in the UK, Australia and several other countries, but despite these legal options hundreds of thousands of people decide to pirate it via BitTorrent instead. Are these people simply too cheap to pay, or are there other factors that can explain this piracy craze?
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sadly, sometimes it's easier to pirate than to use legit services that are encumbered by DRM and various technical restrictions.

Sometimes, it's also due to timezone differences.
 
I don't really follow the show, but... Is the latest episode reliably available as, or shortly after, it airs, in a non-DRM format, with high quality, on a per-episode basis, for a small fee with no commercials or advertisements, and no subscription requirement?

Because that's basically what you get when you pirate, except for the fee thing.
 
I'd go with time zones for people outside the US, gotta watch it ASAP to avoid spoilers, heh.
And maybe the CBS/TWC spat for people within the US?
 
I'm waiting for the day when we can simply buy individual episodes of current shows that we want to watch for a couple bucks apiece, instead of paying ridiculous cable / satellite prices for hundreds of networks that air pure crap 99.9% of the time. Right now the only alternative is waiting a year and buying ridiculously overpriced Blu-ray collections of series, or just crossing your fingers that maybe some day the show you want to watch might be on Netflix / Hulu / Amazon.
 
Given the delay between other countries, and people wanting to be up to speed on everything, of course they are going to download it.
 
TeeJayHoward said:
I don't really follow the show, but... Is the latest episode reliably available as, or shortly after, it airs, in a non-DRM format, with high quality, on a per-episode basis, for a small fee with no commercials or advertisements, and no subscription requirement?

Because that's basically what you get when you pirate, except for the fee thing.
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we have a bingo
 
Outamyhead said:
Given the delay between other countries, and people wanting to be up to speed on everything, of course they are going to download it.
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I'd go with this, you will be surprised that a lot of people really don't give a damn about piracy, its just the availability, release it all at once unified across every time zone and see if it makes a difference :D
 
TeeJayHoward said:
I don't really follow the show, but... Is the latest episode reliably available as, or shortly after, it airs, in a non-DRM format, with high quality, on a per-episode basis, for a small fee with no commercials or advertisements, and no subscription requirement?

Because that's basically what you get when you pirate, except for the fee thing.
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Amen. What are these legal options for someone who doesn't want a subscription service?
 
Haven't watched the show (though a lot of coworkers tell me I should), but my question is when it became available legally, was it in a format that I could store on my media server and watch 4 months from now when I get caught up to that point? And more importantly, in a format where I can easily transfer it to my android tablet or phone to take with me and watch at work during lunch without wifi access? Or copy to an external hard drive to take with me on my next trip and watch via my SageTV extender in standalone mode (or whatever standalone media device I have at the time)?

If I'm going to pay for media, it needs to be available at all times, on my schedule, without DRM or commercials. When that happens and I have complete control over the media I purchase.. we can talk about a fair price ;)
 
I DVR'd it and still prefer to torrent because I dont have to bother to skip commercials. Some things I will torrent just for the hell of it even if I have access to it legally.
 
Networks have to learn that we're in a global society now all connected. You cant delay in one country and expect people to wait for it to get to their country.
 
The show was good but SoA kick the hell out of it imo. Top 5 though for sure.
 
The whole darn cable TV system just needs to finally break finally, I know if I didn't live with someone who had cable I wouldn't have a TV (at least not one hooked to cable provider, just my PC). I would have a dedicated box with TBs of storage connected over a private VPN or Tor, not because piracy is easier, but because cable TV is darn expensive. I sub to Netflix, Amazon Prime and Google Play Music Plus and I get tons for what I pay. TV all I seem to be getting is commercials, censorship and political opinions on every channel I turn to and they still want me to pay an arm and a leg for it. I'm paying to have them tell me what I should buy, have someone else decide what I shouldn't see and to have someone one else tell me what to think, I'm sorry I had k-12 and a decade of college for that, I'm now earning money and I want to do with it as I please.
 
Fair price + easily accessible = win for everyone.

Horrible price + not easily accessible = win for Seed Box providers.


;)
 
I'm not reading the thread until I watch the episode tonight on my DVR in case there are spoilers, but I want to say one thing.

People are seriously stupid if they pirate something they are a fan of, instead of supporting is properly. I'm a huge Breaking Bad fan, and I know that it costs money to make the show. If they didn't make any money they wouldn't make the show. No amount of pro-piracy arguing will ever refute the fact that if everyone pirated they things they love, those things would cease to exist.
 
Maybe after years and years of not having fast timely access people have just gotten used to using torrents...Or maybe their download scripts just grabbed it automatically when it was posted. You snooze you lose, should've offered cheap same day downloads a decade ago.
 
funny how it still managed to break record views, almost as if this "rampant piracy" didn't hurt it
 
I thought it was Game of Thrones that sparked the Global piracy craze?...don't condone piracy but I'm happy that more people are watching Breaking Bad
 
I have U200 so most of what I torrent are channels I have but sometimes I forget to DVR. On the other hand when it comes to Showtime, HBO, Sundance I do DVR because I pay 175 a month for basically 10 channels. I think that's kinda crap to be honest.
 
Must be ready for download asap.
Must be inexpensive.

$2.00 an episode is not inexpensive IMO. Not worth it to me. I'll put up with 2 to 4 commercials during normal breaks while streaming.

HBO should offer direct streaming subscriptions. I'd pay $10 a month for HBO, but probably no other service.
 
DPI said:
Sons of Anarchy is better than Breaking Bad? What are you, twelve?
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I personally think SoA is a horribly overrated show just my opinion. I agree with you Breaking Bad is leagues ahead of SoA.
 
RangerXML said:
The whole darn cable TV system just needs to finally break finally, I know if I didn't live with someone who had cable I wouldn't have a TV (at least not one hooked to cable provider, just my PC). I would have a dedicated box with TBs of storage connected over a private VPN or Tor, not because piracy is easier, but because cable TV is darn expensive. I sub to Netflix, Amazon Prime and Google Play Music Plus and I get tons for what I pay. TV all I seem to be getting is commercials, censorship and political opinions on every channel I turn to and they still want me to pay an arm and a leg for it. I'm paying to have them tell me what I should buy, have someone else decide what I shouldn't see and to have someone one else tell me what to think, I'm sorry I had k-12 and a decade of college for that, I'm now earning money and I want to do with it as I please.
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Even though I pay for directv and could have recorded it I agree with this post. I would pay $5 a month for A&E if I could stream all their shows commercial free.

Better question would be why wouldn't they offer that to gain a new revenue stream? They could completely cut out any middle man and only have to pay for cloud hosting. I would effectively pay for their channel twice.
 
I get it legally through my cable subscription (and before I'd have chance to watch it these days, which has been a nice change) that said I still download them because it's more convenient through a HTPC with a nice UI than trying to grind through the UI on my cable box.
 
///AMG said:
I personally think SoA is a horribly overrated show just my opinion. I agree with you Breaking Bad is leagues ahead of SoA.
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SoA = days of our lives with motorocycles.

There's a reason these final episodes of Breaking Bad are going to break cable viewing records.
 
My DVR failed to record it, so I'll be pirating it shortly. Of course this will probably be counted as a lost sale by the industry.

Oh, and SOA is a fluffer to Breaking Bad.
 
Can you guys not like ...both shows?
I love Breaking Bad, but I love SOA as well, both great shows for different reasons.
 
///AMG said:
I DVR'd it and still prefer to torrent because I dont have to bother to skip commercials. Some things I will torrent just for the hell of it even if I have access to it legally.
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/raises hand .... yeah me too
 
but despite these legal options hundreds of thousands of people decide to pirate it via BitTorrent instead. Are these people simply too cheap to pay, or are there other factors that can explain this piracy craze?
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While I watched it on AMC, since I am not "too cheap to pay", I basically pay $70/month for what amounts to "basic" TV with the minimum amount cable type channels. DVR monthly fee, monthly fee to watch HD channels (even though just about every channel that's watched has it), so it's hard a "cheap" alternative if all I cared about was this show plus some others.

Other factors, wanting to watch the show NOW. Now I can't understand a few hours time difference and not wanting to wait, but days or weeks... I could.

Other factors, a big "fuck you" to AMC for splitting up the 5th season (and final) season into two half seasons a season apart to try and keep any money rolling in from the series. I mean watching the commercials I saw a big "fuck you" from AMC to fans by selling "season 5" on dvd, now I don't know if it cost less than the previous full seasons, but I doubt it cost half as much.

Other factors, maybe they don't have a TV and hence no cable.

Other factors, maybe they want to be able to watch it in a portable fashion on a tablet, laptop, or *horf* smart phone.

Overall though, I don't buy that this is piracy which costs them money. Yes they make money based on commercials, but the cost of commercials is based upon the number of viewers, and they base the number of viewers off whomever their sampling of "Nielsen families" are which make up a much smaller part of the population, and those people obviously have TV and cable/satellite shows so chances are they aren't pirating shit, and people are not going to get a cable subscription to watch a single show.
 
Wrecked Em said:
My DVR failed to record it, so I'll be pirating it shortly. Of course this will probably be counted as a lost sale by the industry.
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And if you talk to the industry they'll say your ability to skip through commercials affects their sales as well :D
 
The problem comes from what everyone here has been saying, there is no easy way to get the channels or even just the singles shows you want in a legal way. If there was a way where we could subscribe to just a single channel for a decent price I would be willing to bet they could make a LOT of money off of that. It could be a service where you can stream it from their website with decent quality, or download it for the high quality video or something.

Or another idea would be to make it where you could subscribe to even just a single show from the company for a low price!

The point is that these companies are so far behind the times with the way the conduct business that customers are resorting to other means to get their product. Much like how MP3's were several years ago. Now-a-days it is easy to but a single song for $.99 and a whole album for maybe $10-20 depending on the artist. They even have other free (with advertisements) and monthly subscription based streaming options for music now!
 
Ya, I mean its not like you can just go to Amazon.com or iTunes and get the season pass and watch the eps as they air online for a decent price. I mean that idea is just to far out there.

...you see what I did there :D

(FYI, I don't consider $2.99 per ep at barely HD quality a good price)
 
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