It turns out that Fox’s assumption is right. We decided to look into the download locations of one of the most popular Prison Break torrents and found that, based on a sample of more than 250,000 downloads, most downloaders are located in Europe.

In our sample, which represents approximately 10% of the total downloads this week, the show was most downloaded in Poland (12%). UK and France were in second and third place respectively, followed by Canada and The Netherlands. The US was sixth in the list with only 4% of the total downloads, and Greece, Spain, Australia and Brazil complete the top 10.

As we have said before, availability seems to the key issue why people turn to BitTorrent. Non-US Prison Break fans sometimes have to wait for weeks or even months before the show airs on TV in their country, and many of them are not that patient, or willing to torture themselves. Until this problem is addressed, we’re not likely to see a decrease in TV-show downloads from BitTorrent.

The 4% US downloaders that preferred to get the show via BitTorrent instead of streaming it online probably did so because they wanted to watch it on their TV or get a higher quality copy – streaming isn’t all that. Both Fox and Hulu, the two sites that offer Prison Break streams have not published any numbers, so it’s hard to compare the number of US downloaders (~100.000) with the US streamers.

We do have a new TV-torrent download chart, with plenty of newcomers. So, let’s take a look at the 10 most downloaded shows this week. The data for the weekly download chart is collected by TorrentFreak from a representative sample of BitTorrent sites and is for informational and educational reference only.

Top Downloads August 31 – September 07

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The Czech dubbed version of The Simpsons Movie made it to BitTorrent trackers a few hours after its world premiere, followed by a Pirate Bay celebration. Due to the Czech Republic screening movie premieres on Thursdays, the Czech fans were amongst the first people worldwide to watch the movie.

The Bontonfilm company – the official Czech distributor of the movie – was apparently a bit surprised when a CAM version of the movie made it to various torrent sites including the Czech tracker MegaTorrent.cz and Sweden’s The Pirate Bay, just a few hours after its premiere.

As for quality, it’s a typical CAM version. People who have already seen this copy are saying that sound quality is satisfying for a CAM version. However, English speaking citizens are likely to be disappointed, its dubbed in Czech and there are no subtitles.

Representative of Bontonfilm Kristina Maixnerová said: “We’ve received an announcement from Czech Anti-Piracy Union that there has been made a recording of this movie directly in the cinema. At this point, it’s still unclear in which cinema, or who made the recording. As far as we know, this is the first case of this type of leak whatsoever in Czech Republic.” She also said that Bontonfilm will make a prosecution against the unknown offender (John Doe) on Monday.

Apparently, the guys at FOX international didn’t like the work of this unknown Simpsons fan either. As Maixnerová said: “Foreign reputation of Czech republic really suffered due this case. As FOX International stated, this will means tightening the security measures in Czech movie distribution.” Night vision goggles, anyone?

This is not the only piracy controversy to hit the Czech republic recently. A DVDrip of Czech film Vratne Lahve (Empties) leaked to the internet a few days ago. The special watermarked copy was originally sent by the Director of the movie to the Czech Culture Department for the purposes of review. Just after this it started showing up on BitTorrent.

As a Czech Homer Simpson might say: “SáákryÅ¡!”

(doh!)

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

]]> http://torrentfreak.com/fox-threatens-measures-after-the-simpsons-movie-leak/feed/ 29 http://torrentfreak.com/burger-king-myspace-to-sell-24-downloads/ http://torrentfreak.com/burger-king-myspace-to-sell-24-downloads/#comments Mon, 15 May 2006 13:44:13 +0000 Ernesto http://torrentfreak.com/burger-king-myspace-to-sell-24-downloads/ Burger King and Myspace join forces. They will start selling episodes of the popular TV-Show “24″. The first episodes of season 1 and 5 will be for free, just to warm the customers up, the other episodes will cost for $1.99 per download.

They will advertise with the popular slogan: “Have it your way”. However, it’s doubtful if DRM will be “an option”.

Earlier this year Fox and ABC started to offer TV streams, but that’s clearly not the solution. People demand high quality, cheap, DRM free content, whenever and wherever they want.

Selling downloadable TV-episodes is the first step in the transformation of TV. Offering the episodes for free, supported by micro-ads is the second.

Gillian Smith, media director at Burger King, said:

“We know our customers spend a lot of time on MySpace. The important thing for us as an advertiser was to make sure we were providing content that resembles entertainment more than advertising.”

The 24 downloads will be available on Myspace next week

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

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