ZDNet: Impatient TV viewers turn to BitTorrent:

According to an independent study conducted by Alex Malik, a former general counsel for the Australian Recording Industry Association, the popularity of one P2P application -- BitTorrent -- in Australia is driven in part by local television networks which "have adopted a strategy of being slow to air current episodes of popular TV shows".

Malik's research showed that Australians have to wait an average of eight months to see first-run episodes of popular programmes from overseas. For instance, it takes an average of four months to watch the latest episodes of top-rated shows like Lost and Desperate Housewives, currently being aired in Channel Seven.

Brings me back to the 90's when fans would swap Tim Tams for tapes of Bab5...

I'm annoyed the article has no quotes from the TV networks on the issue. I want to hear them squirm.

This has been staring them in the face for years. All of those Movie Download DRM loaded website that they keep coming out with are a waste of time. TV is where the money is. I said this years ago. It's pretty much too late now.

I read a good quote about this on Slashdot. Something along the lines of, "don't be confused into thinking that you are the customer of the TV network. You're not. The advertisers are the customers. You're nothing. You're ratings percentage."

Actually, the US should make bittorrent distribution of their TV networks programs legal (as long as we keep the adverts in and allow the number of downloads to be tracked anonymously). It's in everyone's best economic interest! Think of the price these TV networks could charge for advertising in their show if it's watched by 2 million people on real TV and another 20 million on bittorrent?

The live music bittorrent site Easytree.org has been shutdown after some nasty letters. Hopefully all of the torrents from artists that specifically allow trading of live music (eg. those at archive.org/audio) move somewhere else.

We're very sorry having to tell you that we had to shut down EZT just a couple of minutes ago. We got a call from our provider, they had received a few letters from a couple of lawyers.

They requested EZT to be shut down immediately, otherwise we and the hosting service would be sued. As you may imagine, we do not have the funds to fight a battle we most probably can't win anyway.