BitTorrent sites are a great and free market research tool

Sep 16, 2013 08:48 GMT  ·  By

For a long time, the media industry associated piracy with pure evil. No good could come out of it and piracy was to be stopped at any cost.

For the most part, unfortunately, that's still the case and the entertainment business is still pushing for tougher laws or pressuring ISPs into punishing their customers.

However, some media companies are recognizing the benefits of piracy and, in fact, are making the most out of them. We're not talking about MegaUpload here, but Netflix, which looks at piracy as a guide to what shows to add to its collection, as TorrentFreak reports.

For example, ahead of the recent expansion into the Netherlands, the company looked at what shows were the most pirated in the country, either on BitTorrent or on sites and networks, and then added them to the lineup.

For example, Prison Break was still particularly popular in the Netherlands on pirate sites, so Netflix made sure it had it on offer when the local version launched.

Not only is Netflix using pirate stats to gather data, but it's also grateful for piracy since it believes it creates demand. People discover new shows they like on pirate sites, but they may end up subscribing to Netflix to watch the full show rather than have to mess with BitTorrent downloads, spammy streaming sites, or even spammier cyberlockers.

Netflix has always positioned itself as an alternative to piracy and boasts that it has had a positive effect in the countries it's available in.

Of course, in the end, it all rests on how much content Netflix can offer. The company has been investing in original content, with some success, but it still licenses most of the content it makes available.

It's no coincidence perhaps that some of the most pirated shows in the world, Game of Thrones for example, are precisely the ones that aren't on Netflix or similar services.