Netflix Uses Piracy Websites As Guide For Content To Offer To Users

Netflix Uses Piracy Websites As Guide For Content To Offer To Users

Although Netflix is against illegal downloading, it monitors popular targets for piracy to find out which programs it should provide for its clients. The main objective of the partnership of the streaming service with Hollywood is to help eliminate illegal downloading. It added that this can be facilitated by offering identical content popular among pirates.

While it competes with websites that provide internet users the capability of downloading content for free, the service collects information from these sites to check the programming it should offer to its clients.

The video streaming service of Netflix was offered in the Netherlands recently. Following its roll out, the vice president for content acquisition of Netflix in Europe, Kelly Merryman, revealed that the purchase decision process of the company is influenced by piracy websites.

Merryman indicated that the company checks the activities of piracy websites when they take a series into consideration. The decision to acquire “Prison Break” was influenced by information taken from these websites. Merryman added that the hit television show was an extremely popular download on these piracy websites.

The CEO of the company, Reed Hastings, indicated that the company aims to offer internet users an alternative to these piracy websites. He added that these websites create the demand for the pay service of the company.

Hastings said that torrenting is happening all around the world. But some of these simply create demand. He believes that illegal downloaders may be converted when the service is easy to use. He said that the streaming service is easier to use than torrenting. It will not be necessary for users to download files. All they need to do is to click and watch.

Last May, Hastings said that there was a significant decline in the number of users of BitTorrent in Canada ever since Netflix introduced its service in the country around three years ago.

Posted by Kade Quinn on Monday September 16 2013, 11:04 AM EST. Ref: CNET. Link. All trademarks acknowledged. Filed under Entertainment, Featured News. Comments and Trackbacks closed. Follow responses: RSS 2.0