I meant to post this when it first came out, tech site TorrentFreak posted this interesting article about Netflix’s take on piracy;
“With the purchase of series, we look at what does well on piracy sites,” Netflix Vice President of Content Acquisition, Kelly Merryman told Tweakers.
One of the shows that Netflix acquired the rights to in the Netherlands is Prison Break, since it is heavily pirated locally. “Prison Break is exceptionally popular on piracy sites,” Merryman says.
In a separate interview Netflix CEO Reed Hastings adds that his company is aware of the many people who download content without permission via torrent sites. However, this is not exclusively a bad thing, as it also creates demand for the content Netflix is offering.
“Certainly there’s some torrenting that goes on, and that’s true around the world, but some of that just creates the demand,Netflix is so much easier than torrenting. You don’t have to deal with files, you don’t have to download them and move them around. You just click and watch,” Hastings says.
