To know how popular a TV show is, look no further than the number of illegal online downloads of the series.
Gearing up for a launch event in the Netherlands, Netflix (NFLX) Vice President of Content Acquisition Kelly Merryman explained how illegal downloading sites factor in to the decision-making process.
“With the purchase of series, we look at what does well on piracy sites," she told the news site Tweakers.
Merryman cited Prison Break as one such show that was so popular in the online downloading world, Netflix decided to purchase broadcasting rights for the show.
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," Hastings says.
In the past, Netflix has noted that it is killing these illegal downloading sites — pointing out the BitTorrent traffic dropped 50% in Canada after the site launched there three years ago.
Eventually these BitTorrent users may want to switch to Netflix as it's a much better user experience than torrenting, according to the CEO.
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