Ars Technica names their 2008 Ovatio Award winners. Taking the award for Best piracy-reduction program was...<envelope, drum roll, pregnant pause>
"Piracy reduction programs" generally conjure up images of 1) naval ships and eyepatches or 2) RIAA-style "sue-'em-all-and-damn-the-PR!" courtroom battles. But when it comes to digital content, few people truly want to fly the Jolly Roger (The Pirate Bay admins excepted, of course); they want access to content on-demand, in good quality, and at a fair price. Piracy is simply the means.
Meeting the demands of these digital whippersnappers sounds more like an idea from the bottom of a bong than anything resembling a business plan, but 2008 was the year in which companies showed just how well the model could work. [...]
Proving the naysayers wrong, signing up new high-profile content from Viacom and indie outlets (in addition to corporate backers Fox and NBC), and pulling in higher CPMs than anything on YouTube must be quite satisfying for the Hulu team. Offering all that content on demand, for free, and without apparent backend problems turned out to be satisfying for consumers as well, who are flocking to the service by the millions. And all this without even going international yet.
For those willing to drop a bit of dosh, Netflix offers its own on-demand streaming service for subscribers. Everyone who pays $6.99 a month and up gets unlimited on-demand access to more than 10,000 movies and TV shows. The company's expansion onto the Mac and into Xbox 360s--in high-def, no less--makes streaming a compelling adjunct to the base DVD-by-mail model.
We've been using both services around the Orbiting HQ extensively this year, and everyone on staff agrees: this is what a powerful antipiracy program looks like.
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