It may seem a bit of an obvious question, and even conclusion, but the “does Netflix streaming reduce piracy levels” question has been asked asked again this week. And the obvious answer is that yes, of course it does. But will it snuff it out completely?

Netflix streaming helping kill off piracy?

The file sharing info website TorrentFreak looked at how the growing subscriber numbers for Netflix, the popular streaming service are affecting torrent downloads. The fact that excellent quality streaming movies and TV shows are now easily, and cheaply available should mean an end to pirates.

Netflix subscriber numbers have grown to a mammoth 22.8 million and growing, so why take the hard piracy route, when for a low price your on easy streaming street.

After all, most torrent and download sites offer mammoth waiting times, lousy quality, all kinds of virus, malware and fake downloads etc. So why would anyone break the law and spend and wait hours for movie downloadw when it’s available instantly?

The problem is that piracy will always be around, there are always people looking for free stuff. It is just a case of how much it can be reduced. Wired have a good story about how piracy figures are different depending on who you talk to.

They spoke to two leading internet monitoring companies, they were Arbor Networks and Sandvine. The results came back mixed. Some forms of piracy seem to be down such as p2p which has dropped to 8% of North American network traffic. Down from 30% in 2007.

But it seems that streaming illegally may be on the rise. The report said:- “Netflix, iTunes and Direct Download all play a role in the diminishing P2P traffic volumes.”

Netflix and iTunes are legal but Direct download is not. The term refers to websites like MegaVideo wholet users stream and share instantly as well. Cutting out the need for torrent and P2P sites.

It seems that Netflix is helping, but it doesnt do enough. Regular arguments and comments are that Netflix o not have enough content, so watch it straight away illegally. Many say that they check on Netflix first, then go to the dark side.

Until the studios and the networks give people what they want. Cheap content quickly, there will always be the lure of piracy in whatever form it takes.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 2nd, 2011 at 4:21 pm and is filed under Internet TV news, Netflix. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.