HN Explorer

8 comments

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zebra
Analyzing illegal activity is not illegal. I can't understand what all that fuss is about.
beedogs
Exactly; this just seems like good smart business on their part.
lifthearth
I imagine those who are charged with suppressing piracy are creating a fuss. If they do their jobs right they'll be devaluing the product.
pessimizer
Call me crazy, but I assumed that multiple consultancies were doing this already. There's lots of good information for content producers and marketers waiting to be mined from torrent sites.
graue
Is there an actual article here? I'm seeing only this pull quote and nothing else:

> With the purchase of a series, we look at what does well on piracy sites.

– Kelly Merryman, VP of content acquisition at Netflix

chadwickthebold
This shouldn't really be that much of a surprise. To me, Netflix has always seemed to be halfway between purchasing a series and pirating it. It'd be interesting to see someone crunch the numbers and see if releasing a series on Netflix decreases the rate of piracy for that particular property. I have a hunch that it does, and if it does the same is probably true for other digital distribution networks, i.e. Hulu, Steam and Amazon Prime.

But what do I know? :)

SifJar
Seems like a very sensible thing to be doing.
outside1234
This is basically a non-statement. Are they more or less likely to purchase if it does well on a piracy site?