Piracy is the Future of Television:

The convergence of television and the Internet is in its early stages, and the two media will increasingly
interconnect over the coming years. A number of services are currently competing to become the
dominant protocol for consumption of TV content via the Internet. This paper examines the major
services that are currently available for downloading or streaming television programs online, both
legal and illegal. We propose that, of the options now available to media users, illegal downloading is
the most usable and feature-rich, and bears the greatest potential for pioneering new modes of audience
engagement, as well as new global revenue streams, related to television products.

This paper will recommend that legitimate services facilitating the online downloading/streaming of
TV adopt some of the protocols innovated by online pirates in order to improve the quality of their
offerings. Although Internet piracy has been regarded in many circles as a threat to television’s present
economic models, we argue that piracy can also be a boon to media corporations invested in shaping
TV’s evolution in the Internet era. Contemporary online piracy may prove to contain the seeds of
television’s future. http://convergenceculture.org/research/c3-piracy_future_television-full.pdf