I recently read an interesting article from across the pond which dropped the following logic bombshell: Turns out that American audiences illegally download British television shows, and American audiences illegally download British ones.
While the top ten most downloaded programs were all American, there’s a big fat surge here in the States whenever UK phenom Top Gear unspools an episode. Researches were shocked, shocked! that Americans then downloaded the most recent show to the tune of 300,000 over just a few days.
The practice was referred to as “socially acceptable pirating,” which, I suppose, is an echo of “you can’t steal what you can’t buy.” That’s ridiculous on its face—there’s no way the Louvre is selling the Mona Lisa anytime soon, but that doesn’t mean I have the right to swipe it for my dining room—however, it is understandable that when fans of an overseas show can’t quite get their hands on it, they’ll turn to the torrents.
This attitude is common amongst fans of the cult classic Mystery Science Theater 3000, which ran for ten years, but its earlier episodes are scarce. However, many fans who offer episodes electronically pull them the moment it becomes available on DVD. The credo here is "If you can get it, get it; if not, we've got it."
For its part, BBCA does a largely craptastic job in quickly making its most popular programs available in the US. Top Gear, for instance, just finished airing its thirteenth season, but has only now, with great fanfare, begun airing the seventh. Never mind that host Jeremy Clarkson’s hair has suddenly gone non-grey and in one episode made a reference to the then-alive Paul Newman simultaneously owning a race team and a Prius.
American fans eager for more recent Brit-clips are often less than thrilled to discover that many legally offered videos on the BBC website are geoblocked, and in Top Gear’s case only Season 10 of the series is available in region-friendly DVDs. Where else to go but the web?
Legal? No.
Moral? …Ouch.
