Jan 8
Hulu vs Torrents
Hulu.com has opened it’s doors into beta for some time now. And it has been stirring quite a commotion on twitter and the blogsphere, just because it’s a legal way to watch TV series episodes for free at anytime on your computer. Which is nothing new.
It has been done for years now by downloading tv torrents which as you may now is illegal. Most people avoid downloading illegal stuff from the internet and i really understand that.
In my humble opinion i fail to see why downloading a tv show that was broadcasted for free on tv should be illegal. But it is, and there’s nothing i can say or do to change that.
But i think it won’t be long now until tv’s start broadcasting their shows for free with ads on the internet. Hulu just comes to show that it will happen. It’s just a matter of time now.
For all those people outside of the US where you can’t watch hulu your only option still is to download the shows illegally. It makes now sense, but that’s the way it is.
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The problem is that shows are broadcasted for “free” on TV but you’re getting commercial breaks every 10 minutes or so. And they’ll still be limited (geographically speaking) to a confined area. When someone buys the broadcasting rights, these are indexed to a specific area (and I think the prices for a TV station are always indexed to the number of potential viewers they’ll get) and to the number of times (or time frame) they’re entitled to show it.
This may mean it may not be illegal to P2P “local” shows, using the excuse you provide (”I could have watched this for free”) and hence the fact that Hulu is legit in the US and not for the rest of the world.
If hulu expands to europe for instance. It will obviously also expand it’s ad space to include european advertisers.
And you must remember that most people don’t have the understanding of how this stuff works nor do they care.
They want to watch CSI and they’ll go for the cheaper and easier way to watch it.