United Kingdom Leads the World in TV Downloads
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Fri Feb 18, 2005 04:31 AM
from the stolen-telly dept.
from the stolen-telly dept.
SumDog writes "The UK is known for many things, great food, a wonderful climate and beautiful women. However, according to a story on the Guardian, a new study puts the UK ahead in one more category: it leads the world in TV piracy, accounting for 38.4% of the world's TV downloads, with Australia coming in second at 15.6% and the US in third at a pitiful 7.3%"
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United Kingdom Leads the World in TV Downloads
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Malfunction, Will Robinson! (Score:5, Funny)
(http://siliconcarne.org/)
My sarcasm detector must be malfunctioning, I actually had to read that twice before it blipped ...
Re:Malfunction, Will Robinson! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Malfunction, Will Robinson! (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.justgiving.com/garethowen | Last Journal: Thursday October 31 2002, @02:07PM)
They're not glamourous [tgfmall.com] or sexy [extractando.com], which is why Hollywood won't touch them with a bargepole.
If only we could produce hotties like Madeleine Albright, Condaleeza Rice, and Barbara Bush.
Re:Hold it right there Dr. Smith... (Score:5, Funny)
Better yet, ask them that in Welsh. They'll probably ask you to repeat it in English.
Without a Country I (Score:4, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Sunday November 18, @06:01PM)
He could be any passenger waiting for a flight, sitting patiently on a red plastic bench in Charles de Gaulle Airport's Terminal One, luggage piled neatly by his side.
He sips a cup of hot chocolate and scans the crowd, occasionally cocking his head to listen to the airport announcements. He peruses a book, Hillary Rodham Clinton's "It Takes a Village."
But Merhan Karimi Nasseri is going nowhere. He has been waiting for a flight out of France, he says, for 10 years.
Nasseri was expelled from Iran a decade ago for his political views. Through a series of fateful missteps, he landed here without any documents. Since then, Europe's increasingly stiff stance toward refugees and his fragile mental state have kept him at the airport here in legal limbo.
His is a story of broken hopes and bureaucracy, of a trip across Europe in search of a homeland that became a journey into mental chaos and despair. And it is a story of a man who has searched for his family, only to find an adopted one here, at Charles de Gaulle.
"He's like a part of the airport. Everyone knows him," says Muhamed Mourrid, the manager of the Bye Bye Bar, pointing to the spot where Nasseri, 47, has lived for a decade. "That's his table, his chair, his place." Adds Marise Petry, a Lufthansa clerk, "He's one of us. We even get letters for him."
Among the annals of horrific refugee tales, Nasseri's story is remarkable for its pathos and complexity. It begins in Iran in 1977, when Nasseri, fresh from studying in England, was expelled for protesting against the shah. His expulsion left him without a passport.
Nasseri came to Europe. He bounced from capital to capital, applying for refugee status and being refused, again and again, for nearly four years. In 1981, his request for political asylum from Iran was finally granted by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in Belgium.
That decision gave him refugee credentials, which in turn allowed him to seek citizenship in a European country. The son of an Iranian and a Briton, Nasseri decided in 1986 on England with the hope of finding relatives there.
He got as far as Paris, where in 1988 his briefcase containing his refugee documents was stolen in a train station.
Nasseri boarded a plane for London anyway. But when officials at Heathrow Airport found he had no passport, they sent him back to Charles de Gaulle. At first, the French police arrested him for illegal entry. But as Nasseri had no documents, there was no country of origin to which he could be deported.
So he took up residence in Terminal One. From its circular confines, he and his attorney, the Paris-based human rights lawyer Christian Bourget, battled to define his status and send him to London. In 1992, a French court finally ruled that Nasseri had entered the airport legally as a refugee and could not be expelled from it.
But the court could not force the French government to allow him out of the airport onto French soil. In fact, Bourget said, French authorities refused to give Nasseri either a refugee or transit visa. "It was pure bureaucracy," said the lawyer. French immigration authorities have no comment on the case.
Bourget and Nasseri then focused on Belgium, where they hoped to reclaim Nasseri's original refugee documents. But Belgian refugee officials refused to mail them to him in France. They argued that Nasseri had to present himself in person so that they could be sure he was the same man to whom they had granted political asylum years before.
But, inexplicably, the Belgian government refused at that point to allow Nasseri to return there. And under Belgian law, a refugee who voluntarily leaves a country that has accepted him cannot return.
In 1995, the Belgian government finally told Nasseri th
Re:Malfunction, Will Robinson! (Score:5, Funny)
(Last Journal: Monday April 03 2006, @07:23PM)
Well, you do have Margaret Thatcher...
Not to mention the whole royal family...
Re:Malfunction, Will Robinson! (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.stevegula.net/)
Re:Malfunction, Will Robinson! (Score:4, Funny)
(http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Wednesday October 04 2006, @01:02PM)
It's all a big conspiracy.
You probably believe in North Dakota, too.
Re:Malfunction, Will Robinson! (Score:5, Funny)
(Last Journal: Tuesday February 11 2003, @03:56PM)
Re:Malfunction, Will Robinson! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Malfunction, Will Robinson! (Score:5, Funny)
Dont know about torrents but emule links here http://www.the-realworld.de/modules.php?name=ed2k& op=Category&cid=1&csid=541 [the-realworld.de]
Re:Malfunction, Will Robinson! (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.colingregorypalmer.net/)
-Colin [colingregorypalmer.net]
Re:Malfunction, Will Robinson! (Score:5, Funny)
(http://siliconcarne.org/)
Re:Malfunction, Will Robinson! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Malfunction, Will Robinson! (Score:4, Funny)
It also seems to help if they have drunk quite a lot first...
Re:Malfunction, Will Robinson! (Score:4, Funny)
Reminds me of a joke (told from an Indian's perspective of course!!).
Heaven is: American Salary, British Home, Chinese Food, Indian Wife.
Hell is: Indian Salary, Chinese Home, British Food, American Wife.
Re:Malfunction, Will Robinson! (Score:5, Funny)
Ahh there is always a down side :-)
Re:Malfunction, Will Robinson! (Score:5, Funny)
Hell is where the police are German, the lovers Swiss, the machanics French, the chefs British, and it's all organsed by the Italians.
Re:Malfunction, Will Robinson! (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.cs.cofc.edu/)
Hell is where the police are German, the lovers Swiss, the machanics French, the chefs British, and it's all organsed by the Italians.
We hereby note that the latter arguement should be changed to: Hell is where the police are German, the lovers Swiss, the machanics French, the chefs British, the spellers Slashdot readers, and it's all organsed by the Italians
Re:Malfunction, Will Robinson! (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.alioth.net/ | Last Journal: Wednesday November 14, @02:04PM)
Re:Malfunction, Will Robinson! (Score:5, Informative)
I'm a Briton who now lives in Canada. I miss the climate. Vancouver sounds pretty appealing on this frosty morning in Toronto. It was below -20 here before Christmas. I was in the UK over Christmas and out running in T-shirt and sun glasses - no worries about frost bite there. The second year in a row for me. Yeah, it did get below 5C some days, but after what we put up with here that's nothing. No gloves, no hat, just pull on your coat. No shoes melting in to huge filthy puddles by the front door. No shovelling the driveway. In the summer when it's revoltingly hot and humid here, England will be a pleasant 20-25C. The thing is with that place is that the weather is so variable: sun, cloud, wind, rain, everyday! Of course, we're not going see any life here until May, when we get our short month of spring. The UK will start seeing signs of spring very soon (well, at least in the SE where I grew up).
Re:Malfunction, Will Robinson! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Malfunction, Will Robinson! (Score:5, Funny)
Surely you mean "Oprah Winfrey stretched over 300 million people?"
Climate has improved now people drive 4x4s (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.aoakley.com/)
It hits 100F pretty much every year nowadays.
Global warming may be turning Africa, Asia and the Mediterranean into arrid deserts, but... actually, now I come to think of it, some silver linings don't have a cloud! (Disclaimer: I'm British and drive a 4x4... albeit only a 1.3 litre, and I live next to a farm)
Re:Malfunction, Will Robinson! (Score:5, Insightful)
As an Expat I am sick of people saying that Britain is a lousy place, with lousy weather, food, beer, women etc.
I hate the politicians [all partys], one reason I will never return, but the climate is great.
[Warm and moist!]
Try living in a semi-arid climate like Colorado. You have to wear skin moisturizer like some girly-man. And the static shocks off of car doors will drive you mad.
Then the food. It is a pitty that the people who appreciate British food the least are the British themselves. The french and italians love their own food, and by talking loudly about it for many years have made it popular worldwide.
The British propensity for self deprecating humour has extended to their food, and made it a global joke. Which Is unfortunate. British food Is actually a damn sight better than it is given credit.
We have hundreds of varieties of cheeses like Cheddar, Lancashire, Lincolnshire, Leicester [Red and normal], Wenslydale, to name just a few.
We also have a huge variety of sausages, think lincolnshire and cumberland, and even a meatball called a faggot [Not very PC nowadays, but hey the UK definition is older than the US definition], made from liver and onions, for which I used to run home from secondary school for on Thursdays. ["Thursdays. Faggots and chips for tea"]
We also have the traditional Roast dinner, with Yorkshire Puddings, and it is delicious. [Far better than the US so-called London Broil rip-off.], many different types of meat pie, bread that tastes like bread [How can Americans put up with the bread they eat is beyond me], and of course, our famous fish and chips.
Plus the beer is a damn sight better than the water that comes out of the US. [Except for some small microbreweries and brew-pubs that actually make something with a flavour that you can drink at non-cryogenic temperatures.]
Having lived in various countries I can also testify that the ratio of "mighty-fine" to "minger" is not so bad in the UK as common prejudice would dictate.
Even in the bleak industrial north of the country. ["Eeh, It's grim up north"]
So stop with the ridiculous, sarcastic, and ignorant, jokes about some of the things I, and most other expats, actually miss of the "home country".
Piracy is why Battlestar Galactica is on usenet. (Score:3, Funny)
In fact... (Score:4, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Friday December 17 2004, @05:39AM)
I'm not sorry if I've offended someone.
Re:In fact... (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Monday July 12 2004, @04:36AM)
It works both was I think. Majority of UK downloads are of import series. Majority of US/Canada downloads are probably of non-US/CA series.
I don't think the TV companies realised that they started to lose about 10 years ago. The Internet was not suitable for downloading shows then, but the information about the shows was suddenly far more easily (and quickly) available than it ever was.
People (either side of the pond, or in other countries) suddenly had at their fingertips information about this year's shows - not shows where we were lagging behind by a few seasons, or where the show got dropped before the end. That should have been the signal for the companies to work towards worldwide air-dates. OK they started a little, but not enough.
By the time the Internet could handle downloaded shows they should have pulled out all of the stops and gone for worldwide releases. Instead they hold out for better deals of whatever, but lose viewers. Especially here in the UK where they try to crowbar shows into an earlier timeslot to get more ratings - and cut (or drop - BBC dropped the Quantum Leap episode "Shock Theater" from re-runs as although it was fine for the 9pm airing it didn't work for their 6pm re-runs) the episodes to make them suitable for that timeslot.
Strangely enough people don't like waiting a year or more to get a cut-up episode, or one run out of order.
And (apart from possibly the cutting aspect) I'm pretty sure that US fans of UK shows feel similar to how some of us Brits feel about US shows. In this "new" world of instant information "Last Year's Episodes" just don't cut it anymore.
Wrong number (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.eagereyes.org/)
more numbers... (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.gnaa.us/)
Re:more numbers... (Score:5, Insightful)
If there was no lag, I think you'd find the download counts a lot more even, or weighted towards the US.
Australia, as you noted, really doesn't have the best speeds/rates for broadband -- a lot of customers would be hit with huge bandwidth bills if they were to regularly download movies/TV shows.
Re:more numbers... (Score:4, Funny)
(http://conceptjunkie.blogspot.com/ | Last Journal: Monday August 25 2003, @10:22PM)
We Americans lead the world in quantities of cheap, mindless TV. We are the envy of the world! And half of it is copied from British TV in the first place.
winge (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.colingregoryp