"It's all really a sticky subject," says Sandvine's Deeth. "Ultimately people steal content because they can't get it otherwise."īut Netflix failed to mention that some subscribers break its company policy when they don't get everything they want by accessing content restricted to other countries.Īs with many streaming companies, cross-border watching violates Netflix's policy, because content licensing agreements vary between countries. and Canada," company spokeswoman Marlee Tart told CBC News in an email. "There's been a notable reduction in piracy in countries where we operate such as the U.S. You're picking what you want to watch and you hit play and it's there," he says.Īlthough it's not offering any statistics, Netflix is quick to take credit for helping curb illegal downloading. It's like having a giant PVR that records everything for you. "Once you gain access to it, you think, well this is even easier than downloading. He was content to pay a fraction of his traditional cable bill to legally stream shows instead. So when Netflix Canada launched about six months later, Whitehead gave up piracy. "If you don't know what you're doing, you can infect your computer with some sort of virus."Īs well, it's against the law and there's always the risk of getting caught. "You never know what you're downloading," says Whitehead. Sometimes it takes endless hours only to wind up with a show with out-of-sync audio, stilted video or worse. Although it's free, downloading illegal content can be cumbersome. But if I can't legally pay for it in this country, I'll find ways," says Whitehead. "I only want to pay when there's new stuff, and I'm happy to pay for that. Some illegal downloaders are mending their ways, but others are still breaking cross-border rules to get access to all the shows they want. Torontonian Sean Whitehead says streaming services have cured his illegal downloading ways. Netflix Canada packages start at $7.99 a month. And that just speaks to the availability of these services and their ease of use, and the price point is often right," says Deeth. "When we talk about internet share, Netflix and other streaming services have grown and BitTorrent has declined.
Meanwhile, BitTorrent, a file-sharing tool often used for pirating content, accounted for just 2.8 per cent of the same traffic, a significant drop from 7.6 per cent in 2011. "People are shifting their activities and they've certainly embraced streaming video," says Dan Deeth with Sandvine, a broadband equipment company that tracks home internet usage.Īccording to its latest 2014 report, over a one-month period, Netflix alone accounted for almost 35 per cent of all downloading data traffic during peak hours in North America. BitTorrent Netflix and other streaming services have grown and BitTorrent has declined - Dan Deeth, SandvineĪ recent study by a Waterloo, Ont., tech company shows a preference for legal streaming over piracy. Netflix accessed by 1/3 of anglophone Canadian users
Now that easy-to-use streaming services are available at low prices, some viewers are losing the urge to illegally download copyrighted movies and television shows.īut it's not always a squeaky clean transition. Netflix and the online video streaming craze are taking a bite out of online piracy.