Karl Pilkington Shares a Pirated Copy of His Own TV-Show
UK entertainment giant Sky is widely known for taking a hard line on everything piracy related.
In recent years the company has chased vendors of pirate subscriptions and hardware, both in and outside of court.
These efforts are meant to signal to the public that piracy, streaming piracy in particular, will not be tolerated. However, this message has apparently not hit home with one of the companyās own stars, Karl Pilkington.
Pilkington is an actor, comedian, and presenter who is widely known for āAn Idiot Abroad,ā the Sky 1 travel series with a comedic twist. He also worked with Sky on the documentary āThe Moaning of Lifeā and more recently he ventured into the sitcom arena with the series āSick of Itā, again at Sky.
Sick of It is about to premiere its second season and to give his 1.5+ million fans on Facebook something to get in the mood, Pilkington recently decided to share an episode of the show from last year.
That usually isnāt a problem. However, Sky doesnāt share the show for free and only offers it on-demand but that didnāt prove to be too much of a hurdle for the showās co-writer, who found a freely accessible streaming copy on Vimeo.
āFor anyone who hasnāt seen it yet. Hereās an episode. Series 2 soon,ā Pilkington wrote.
This clearly isnāt an official release. The tags on the video reveal that this copy was sourced from a āsceneā group, PLUTONiUM in this case, and reuploaded to Vimeo by someone named Gary. The same person also shared a copy of the first episode through the same account.
This means that Pilkington is effectively sharing a pirated copy of his own show with over a million people. And since Sky holds at least some of the rights, thatās not supposed to happen.
The āmistakeā didnāt go unnoticed. Commenters on Facebook highlighted that it was a pirate release and the same was pointed out on Reddit, where many appreciated the unusual move.
The question is, of course, whether this is indeed a mistake or some kind of PR stunt. Giving over a million people a free teaser may draw in some extra eyeballs and if thatās picked up by the news, it means even more exposure.
However, when we look closer at Pilkingtonās previous engagement on Facebook we started to notice a trend. Apparently, heās keeping a close eye on the comments. When someone said that she wasnāt familiar with Sick of It, but would like to watch it, Pilkington kindly shared a link.
And that wasnāt the first time either. The showās co-writer has been doing this for weeks, sharing the same link to everyone who shows interest. In particular, those who donāt have access to it.
To us, it appears that Pilkington means no harm and simply wants to get people to see his show. That makes sense. As a creator, you want people to enjoy what youāve made. The fact that heās sharing a pirated copy may not have even entered his mind.
Whether Sky will like this is another question of course. At the time of writing all links are still online, but it wouldnāt be a massive surprise if they are soon taken down. Technically, Pilkington is now a repeat infringer so he could even lose his Facebook account.
Unless he takes action before Sky does, of course.
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.
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