Wants to have its cake and eat it too, but could retool them to advertise NBC Direct and its offering of free episode downloads and streaming.
NBC Universal Pres Jeff Zucker has been one of the most vocal critics of piracy, blaming it it seems for flagging profits instead of his failure to produce more quality television programming.
Just a few months ago on CNBC’s "Squawk Box" he lamented how copyright holders are in a losing battle against piracy and he wants everybody to pitch in and tackle the problem. He went on to compare content piracy with physical piracy, as in bogus pharmaceuticals and "counterfeit airplane parts," a preposterous conclusion similar to when he claimed that P2P is robbing poor corn farmers due to a diminished demand for movie theater popcorn.
Shortly afterwards he then gave a speech before the US Chamber of Commerce asking for ISPs, university network administrators, user-generated content sites, search engines, auction Web sites and even consumer electronics and home networking device manufacturers to install content filtering technologies to prevent the flow of copyrighted material. Basically, he wants to make every other sector and company with even the most casual relationship with NBC to have to work towards protecting its market share and product.
He went on to say that law enforcement needs greater tools and resources to fight the evil pirates of the world and that the annual $2.6 billion in lost tax revenues is reason enough for them to sit up and take notice. The $2.6 billion is based on a supposed figure of $58 billion in total lost revenues.
What’s interesting to discover however, is that NBC advertises on the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker site – The Pirate Bay. Yep, for all its ranting and raving about lost revenue, NBC actually puts money in the pockets of the pirates. How’s that for irony?
But, what NBC could actually stand to gain here is by retooling its ad to inform visitors searching out certain NBC shows is that you can now watch them in perfect quality for FREE on NBC Direct. In addition to being able to download shows like "Life," the "Bionic Woman," "30 Rock," "The Office," "Friday Night Lights," and "Heroes," you can also stream "Chuck," Journeyman," "Las Vegas," "Late Night With Conan O’Brien," "Passions," "Phenomenon," "Scrubs," "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno," and more. The benefit of both is that you don’t have to hassle with any download times or poor seeder ratios, or with the latter, that you don’t have to wait at all.
Zucker says that he’s in a "losing battle against piracy," but this may just be a situation where he can use it to his advantage. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
Looking for more stuff to watch or download?
NBC Chief: ‘We’re Losing the Battle Against Piracy’
NBC Says that P2P is Robbing Poor Corn Farmers
‘NBC Direct’ Lets You Download Full TV Episodes for FREE
TVLinks Alternatives for Free TV Shows & Movies
Tips on how to not get busted for file-sharing
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uTorrent – A Beginner’s guide to BitTorrent downloading
News Tip? Comment? Suggestion? jared@zeropaid.com
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it is probably an automated script that takes the content of the search box and matches it up and generates ads kind of like google does.
Yeah I was going to the same thing as ejonesss here. Must be a slow news day. What would Benjamin Franklin make of this?
Never saw these ads on TPB before……
BTW: I have adblock plus on my firefox
As deliciously ironic as this is I have to agree with enjonesss.
From what I understand web advertising is contracted out and the ad company displays their ads on websites that they have made deals with. The ad company made a deal with NBC (among other companies) to sell ads and it bought ad space on The Pirate Bay (among other websites) and then it let its automated context sensitive scripts do the rest.
I would still love to be the one to throw this in the face of those neophobic NBC execs. Truly it would make a happy new year for me.
I don’t understand the coherency.They advertise on Google Ads for free Office episodes so whats wrong with it?This has nothing to do with piracy as they own this series.
If there’s no bread eat cake ….
If there’s no demand for corn grow biodiesel.
regardless the ad could get someone to watch the show online instead of downloading it which isn’t a bad idea.