“It’s Like Flipping A Switch”
Fox could lose up to a third of web viewers to piracy
“I’ll just go back to pirating my content”: That was the response some of our readers had after hearing about Fox’s plans to restrict online access to full episodes of its shows to viewers that can either authenticate themselves as Dish Network subscribers or pay for Hulu Plus. The question is: How many users will authenticate, how many will wait eight days for content to become freely available and how many will go back to BitTorrent once the changes go into effect in mid-August? …
Few doubt that there will be a direct impact on piracy. “It’s like flipping a switch,” said Eric Garland from the Los Angeles–based media measurement company BigChampagne during a phone call on Wednesday, adding that he has seen “immediate and direct correlations” between the availability of online content on sites like Hulu and piracy.
