'Prison Break' ratings might fizzle, but it sizzles on illegal file-sharing sites

By Eriq Gardner

On April 17, Fox brought back "Prison Break" to end its four-year run with six final episodes. The premiere managed to garner only 1.2 million adults 18-49, But "Break" was a huge hit in underground circles, bested last week only by TV's ever-popular pirated show, NBC's "Heroes." Here are the ten most-pirated shows for the week ending April 26.

In other piracy news:

• The Pirate Bay verdict has been translated into English with interesting surprises, like the drugs confiscated from one of the defendants, the fact that the Swedish government covered the legal expenses of many of the defendants, and other defenses that were contemplated but never amounted, including seeking "safe harbor" and pointing out that Google isn't so different than Pirate Bay. Read the interesting story here. 
• Business Week has a story about one business sector that has really heated up in recent months: digital rights vendors. According to the article, "turning anti-piracy into rights management is really starting to resonate for content holders," and even President Barack Obama is said to be a hip anti-pirate. Hmmm. 
• We previously peeked at an offer by French president Nicolas Sarkozy to pay the band MGMT exactly one euro as penance for using its song in an online campaign video. Looks like the band turned President Sarkozy down because the two sides have agreed to settle the case for a much more generous 30,000 euros.

Comments

[LLB]

Millions of dollars in profits are stolen from production companies because of illegal file sharing. Some even make multiple copies and distribute them for monetary gain.

[Harp]

I lay you odds that 90% of the Supernatural downloads are from non-US citizens. The fanbase has a crazy international following (we're talking flying from China to LA for a convention).

The industry would do well to figure a way to release the shows for an international audience sooner than the typical 2-4 years AFTER they've aired in the US. By-passing the selling of the shows to international companies, and selling it themselves for a small fee within 1-2 days of airing it in the US would likely severely drop the number of illegal downloads. This is especially true since as far as i know, iTunes only works in the country of origin - that is, a person in Australia can't buy a show aired in the US from iTunes.

Its about changing their business model to better capture the international audiences more than running around suing people. These people WANT the product, so I say make it available to them. Its all supply-and-demand, and yet the television industry can't seem to wrap their heads around that. They'd rather kvetch about it.