Since Doctor Who's thunder was stolen earlier this year when the show's first instalment was leaked on the internet and downloaded by thousands of fans, the latest victim to fall foul of web piracy is the Premier League.
Illegal distribution of TV coverage of live football games via the internet is jeopardising the league's£1bn TV rights deals. Having hired a company to locate and shut down websites carrying unauthorised live footage, the league now wants to sue one of the sites as a test case.
In the case of Doctor Who, an internal investigation by the BBC and its Canadian broadcast partner identified the individual responsible for leaking the episode onto the net who was subsequently sacked. BBC Worldwide is now considering further legal action.
"Individual broadcasters need to address internet piracy of TV programmes now and so should the industry working together as a whole," believes Ben Green, rights negotiation manager at the BBC.
Yet the industry as a whole appears divided on just how big a problem piracy is. While the BBC sees the problem as significant, ITV appears less concerned. According to Simon Fell, ITV controller, emerging technologies, it's the rights-owning programme-makers who have more to lose. He adds: "The reality of downloading a TV programme from the internet is that it still takes quite some time to do, you then have to put it onto a DVD to watch it on your TV as there's not yet any low-cost equivalent of the iPod for video. Then there's the fact that image quality is often poor. As a result, it's not widespread."
Easier to find agreement on, however, is the belief that the threat of internet TV piracy isn't going to go away and its profile is growing fast.
Typically, copies of programmes can now be found on the net hours after their transmission - often thanks to individuals who record them off air and believe they're providing a public service. Programmes are encoded into a computer file which is then made freely available for download by other net users through file-sharing programmes such as BitTorrent and eDonkey which break up a file into fragments before distributing them to numerous users. In this way large files - like TV programmes or feature films - can be shared quickly and easily.
For a US series like West Wingthis means the first episode of the latest series can be downloaded by British viewers months ahead of its scheduled UK transmission. According to Envisional, a company which tracks the use of internet content, some of the top illegal TV downloads are 24, Stargate Atlantis, The Simpsons, Enterpriseand Stargate SG-1. This is closely followed by The OC, Smallvilleand Desperate Housewives.
A typical episode from a show like 24(series four) is downloaded by about 100,000 people globally - and this is a 15% increase on the rate of downloading since the show's third series. Envisional estimates that almost one-fifth of all TV downloading worldwide is carried out by users in the UK.
Envisional's figures are at once both striking and easy to play down. One hundred thousand people downloading TV shows globally hardly sounds like a major threat. Besides, the shows most vulnerable to it seem to be the largest international programme brands. But the point is that demand for downloadable TV content is growing. And while 24may be the most popular illegally downloaded TV show, many other shows are also available for those who know where to look - from Shamelessto Fifth Gearand even According to Bex.
Despite the experiences of the music industry, broadcasters have been slow to respond. Earlier this month in the US, the Motion Picture Association of America filed lawsuits against six BitTorrent sites hosting links to other sites holding illegal copies of TV shows. It's the first time the association has acted in this way against TV pirates - its previous focus being the illegal downloading of feature films.
UK broadcasters and production companies are starting to consider ways of beating the internet pirates. For some this means pursuing them through the courts. For a growing number it means establishing a legal alternative: authorised downloading services.
John Nolan, head of commercial production at North One, has already discovered some of the company's content being distributed illegally via the web. "We consider legal action if it's feasible - a production company just doesn't have a choice nowadays: it must pursue people stealing its content in the same way Marks & Spencer prosecutes shoplifters. And we're exploring ways of offering good quality material to people via a legitimate downloading service," he says.
For the latest series of Fifth Gear, North One and Five teamed up with technology outfit 7 Digital to set up a legal downloading service which allows viewers to access sequences from the show via the internet. The company has also designed a similar initiative with Granada for the first series of Hell's Kitchen. According to 7 Digital's managing director, Ben Drury, if broadcasters don't start providing these kinds of services, viewers will start downloading the shows anyway.
"It's about developing new revenue streams and making it easier for people not to rely on pirates. Unlike the music industry, where people assumed they had a right to tracks for free, there's a solid culture in television of people paying for content if the price is reasonable. It's an area ripe for exploitation, " he says.
With Fifth Gear, four- and five-minute segments from the show were offered via the internet for£1.50 per clip. Initially, four clips were offered free of charge to showcase the quality of the sequences (which Drury claims is far better than for pirated shows) and then 40 were charged for. With minimal promotion more than 200,000 free clips have since been downloaded and several thousand pounds of revenue generated.
The Fifth Geardownloading service is now being expanded and may soon be extended to other North One-produced shows.
Some pundits claim that in the near future services like this will also be used for the authorised distribution of complete programmes. But Fell thinks that this is still some way off, pointing out that while the internet is ready for it and many consumers seem to be interested, a disincentive remains the need to download programme material to a PC instead of a TV.
"I just don't believe people really want to consume TV-related material on their PCs and as yet equipment like Microsoft's Media Centre which places the PC at the heart of the sitting room are not mass market," he explains. "A desktop PC may be fine to sample the odd piece of content, but it's no basis for regular consumption of TV."
Another issue holding back the development of authorised TV downloading services is digital rights and their effective management. "People still don't understand the rights involved or what to do about digital rights management," Fell adds. And others agree the complexity of securing rights to create authorised downloading services - which requires one-to-one negotiations with each right owner - is proving tricky.
According to Channel 4 managing director of new media, Andy Taylor, developing authorised downloading services is the best way to combat the threat of internet pirates. But the complexity of internet and mobile phone rights for TV content is making it difficult for C4 to develop a comprehensive "catch-up service" - a chance for viewers to download from the web programmes they've just missed airing on C4 - for the time being, at least.
Securing the rights to provide such a service would entail one-to-one deals struck with every production company C4 works with, Taylor adds: "It would be far too cumbersome." Which is why the channel is currently focusing on investing in enhancing the technology behind its broadband platform to improve the management and exploitation of the limited content it's making available to download.
Endemol is one of a handful of production companies with which C4 has struck a deal to develop authorised downloading, and this year's Celebrity Big Brotherand Big Brother 6were the first demonstrations of just what can be done via the channel's new and improved broadband infrastructure. C4 and Endemol have made certain clips available with digital rights management rules built in. This means that people downloading parts of the show to their PC can only access that material for 24 hours. They are also prevented from forwarding material to their friends' PCs.
"This is the first year we've really pushed downloaded content for Big Brotherto PCs and 3G mobile phones," says Peter Cowley, Endemol UK's director of inter-active media. "Although for reality shows piracy is less of an issue than it is, say, for blockbuster drama, there will always be some events that become moments in history, and these clips gain currency. This is what we are now attempting to tap into, although in our experience it makes more sense to focus on downloading content to mobile phones than to PCs as mobile phone users are more willing to pay."
At this stage it's the BBC which is furthest advanced in creating an authorised alternative to illegal TV downloading and the broadcaster has confirmed plans to expand trials of its interactive media player, iMP. As it owns the rights to a significant proportion of the programmes it broadcasts, rights pose few challenges; more testing will be ensuring the digital rights management technology works and winning approval for the full-scale consumer launch of its iMP.
"The live iMP trial, which is due to start in September, will incorporate a digital rights management system to ensure that content - although provided to the user free - will be copy protected and, once downloaded, will expire after seven days," says Green. "A number of people see the impact of internet piracy as negligible. Our view is the opposite. But we firmly believe that our focus should be on creating a legal, safe and trusted environment to allow people to get the content they want."
The digital home
Most programme content downloaded from the internet is received either via a PC or 3G-enabled mobile phone but for a growing minority the traditional boundaries between TV and computer are blurring due to the arrival of Microsoft's Media Centre.
The software enables a home PC linked to a TV set to become the control centre for the much touted "digital home of the future". This means that numerous household devices - including home entertainment equipment - when linked together as part of a "home network" connected to the internet, can be controlled from a TV screen using a remote control.
Using Media Centre, an individual can manage and control all forms of digital entertainment content centrally - from CD and DVD collections to TV and radio broadcasts and internet content. An on-screen menu allows users to play their favourite CD, hear their favourite radio station, watch EastEnders live or an episode they recorded the night before, or download audio and video content from the web.
For broadcasters and producers Media Centre means viewers no longer need think about where a piece of digital content has come from: everything is equally accessible. All content is flexible to use, too, as Media Centre has a built-in PVR and a Microsoft-designed electronic programme guide similar to Sky+. This enables viewers to access TV content via digital broadcast or the web seamlessly, making web-delivered TV content as simple to access as turning on your TV.
"Web content accessed via remote control is a fairly new concept. But it's an indication that we believe broadband will have a big impact on what entertainment content services we will be able to deliver in the future," says Microsoft marketing manager Joel Davies. "As content becomes digital, the fact that everything can be accessed from any source, sorted and stored on a PC connected to your TV and navigated as you would a TV set becomes increasingly appealing."
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