Overseas Lost fans eager to see the series' feature-length finale contributed to a surge of illegal downloads over BitTorrent earlier this week.
TorrentFreak reports that downloads of Lost's final two episodes neared one million people in less than one day, with more than 100,000 people simultaneously sharing a single torrent. The number of downloads is expected to reach four or five million by the end of the week. "As far as we know, this is a new download record for BitTorrent in such a short time frame," the site writes.
TorrentFreak didn't break down the statistics by country, but estimated that 15 percent of all downloads were to Australia, and a generally high number of downloads were from outside the United States. This can at least partly be attributed to delays between U.S. and international broadcasts, with viewers unwilling to wait.
With Lost, however, global distributors Walt Disney sped up the process, delivering the show to 59 countries either simultaneously with the United States or within 48 hours of the first broadcast. Australian viewers, however, are stilling waiting for the finale to air in their country. So perhaps Disney's efforts to deliver the finale quickly fell short.
The Brisbane Times' digihub blog has another theory, that local channel Seven makes watching live broadcasts nearly impossible. "The programmers love to tinker with the schedule, run shows late, run promos over the top, cram in a tonne of ads and generally do everything they can to annoy loyal viewers," the blog notes. There seems to be general agreement among the sites commenters, several of whom say they've already downloaded and watched the finale.
With LOST, giving fans immediate access to the finale was crucial, so they could partake in the online theories and discussion that inevitable took place afterwards. It's too bad Disney and some overseas broadcasters couldn't quite deliver.
