The rules keep changing...
Or is this just a PR ploy for a five year old TV series I stopped watching
after season 2?
Regards
Craig
https://www.wired.com/2017/05/orange-is-the-new-black-leak/
The Orange Is the New Black Netflix Hack Was a Terrible Idea | WIRED
Brian Barrett
It must have seemed like a safe bet, as extortion plots go: Steal a prized
original series from Netflix and shake the company down with the threat of
releasing it months before it airs. But the sudden appearance of season five of
Orange Is the New Black on torrenting site The Pirate Bay shows the crime was
destined to failure, because the people behind it misunderstand how streaming,
and the internet, work today.
A hacker or hackers using the moniker thedarkoverlord reportedly grabbed
Orange—along with unaired shows from several outlets—from post-production
company Larson Studios. When the thief or thieves held the show ransom and
threatened to release it, Netflix refused to pay. And so it appeared on The
Pirate Bay. This definitely isn’t ideal for Netflix, but it also wasn’t worth
paying even one cent to prevent.
Islands in the Stream
Although the hack offers a reminder that even the best security can be undone
by the so-called “weakest link”—Netflix can’t do much if a vendor is
compromised—it provides a bigger lesson in how the internet has largely shifted
away from torrenting. If a show lands on The Pirate Bay and nobody watches, did
it really stream?
Consider that in 2011, BitTorrent accounted for 23 percent of daily internet
traffic in North America, according to network-equipment company Sandvine. By
last year, that number sat at under 5 percent. “There’s always going to be the
floor of people that are always going to be torrenting,” says Sandvine
spokesperson Dan Deeth. That group will surely enjoy whatever Piper’s up to in
season five. But the idea that so small a cohort might prompt Netflix to
negotiate with hackers seems absurd.
For the sake of argument, let’s assume that a significant portion of the 98.75
million people who subscribe to Netflix do so only to watch Orange Is the New
Black. (Doubtful, given that the show constitutes 10 of the 1,000 hours of
original programming Netflix will release this year, but go with it for now.)
The fact the hacker made it available a month or so early on a torrenting site
still doesn’t amount to much of a threat.
“Are some people going to torrent it? They are,” says streaming media analyst
Dan Rayburn of Frost & Sullivan. “But at the same time, a lot of people really
don’t want to do that. If you’re really into a show, and you have a 50- or
70-inch TV, you’re going to want to watch it on that.”
It’s not that torrenting is so onerous. But compared to legitimate streaming,
the process of downloading a torrenting client, finding a legit file, waiting
for it to download, and watching it on a laptop (or mirroring it to a
television) hardly seems worth it. Especially when a monthly subscription to
Netflix or Amazon Video or HBO Now costs about as much as lunch. Yes, Game of
Thrones provides what seems like an obvious counterpoint; hundreds of thousands
of people torrent it every year, suggesting a healthy appetite for the
practice. But it proves less instructive on closer examination.
“Even though you can get HBO Now in the US, in Canada and most of the world you
would still need a premium television subscription,” Deeth says. Game of
Thrones‘ torrenting popularity stems in part from the fact torrenting is the
only way to watch it in many parts of the world. Netflix, on the other hand, is
available in 200 countries. That speaks to another reason why plopping Orange
Is the New Black online early didn’t pay off: The joy of binge-worthy TV hinges
on knowing that other people also binge. A water cooler that only the Pirate
Bay gathers around defeats the purpose.
“It’s not an experience,” says Rayburn. “People want to watch it with friends.”
Nipped in the Bud
Netflix doesn’t have much to say about the incident. “We are aware of the
situation,” it said in a statement. “A production vendor used by several major
TV studios had its security compromised and the appropriate law enforcement
authorities are involved.” Brevity likely works best here. The fact is, nobody
really knows how much the leak will hurt Netflix, in part because nobody knows
how many people watch Orange Is the New Black. Besides, Netflix already sent
the most important message it could, by not paying up.
If a show lands on the Pirate Bay and nobody watches, did it really stream?
The more hackers realize that threatening to release a show early won’t pay
off, the less likely they are to do it. Hush money could embolden bad actors to
try again, creating an ongoing problem. While this leak won’t make or break
Netflix, it remains an inconvenience. The company clearly doesn’t want to
encourage anything that threatens its subscriber base, however minimally.
That’s especially essential in light ofthe company’s billion-dollar investment
in homegrown movies and TV shows that only its subscribers will see.
“What they’ve realized is that they can put more of their money into original
content, stop licensing older stuff, and have a smaller selection of content
that’s higher quality that people will love Netflix for,” says Rayburn. “Down
the line, that makes them more vulnerable to leaks.”
At a certain scale, maybe that has a material impact. It’s best to avoid
encouraging more leaks to find out. In the meantime, though, Orange Is the New
Black landing on torrent sites won’t make Netflix blue. As anyone in Litchfield
Penitentiary lockup can tell you, crime doesn’t pay. At least not this kind.
