Within two days of the beginning of the fifth season of ABC’s hit television series, Lost, over two million copies of the season premiere had been downloaded over BitTorrent — making it “the most pirated TV show” in the world.

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then flat-out theft must be a close second.

This is the paradox at the heart of illegal file sharing: call the file-sharers what you will — “pirates”, “thieves”, “copyright infringers” — they are also “fans,” who go through the slightly arcane and time-consuming task each week of BitTorrenting the show — not for the adrenaline rush of petty theft, but in order to watch it.

[Whether they realize it or not, these "pirates" truly do want the content creators to profit from their creations, because without profit, there won't be any more shows.]

Though the term “social networking” has become nearly synonymous with services like Facebook and Twitter, which explicitly connect their users to one another,  the term also describes a whole other set of implicit connections between networked users.  For example, Google is a “social network,” insofar as it is able to aggregate billions of search queries, and use them to point to real-time social trends.  Every time we submit a Google search, we implicitly participate in this social network.

Likewise, BitTorrent users also form a kind of social network, and an aggregate tally of their behaviors offers valuable information.  One principle of Web 2.0 is that “markets are conversations” — and according to this, these two million BitTorrenting Lost fans are telling us something.  Or, rather, several things:

1. People like Lost.  (Not incidentally, each week that there is a new episode, Lost is not only the most pirated show, but also the most downloaded television show on iTunes, at $2.99 per episode.)
2. People like things that are free.

But — and here is where the story gets interesting — ABC makes Lost available for free on its website, on demand, any time, the day after an episode airs on television.  The episode streams to a computer and play full screen, in decent quality, and with advertising that is minimally intrusive.

In other words, the most pirated show on the Internet is available for free, without pirating — and two million people pirate it anyway.

Why?

The data won’t be able to answer this for certain.  It’s safe to conjecture that some people prefer to download a file in its entirety, rather than stream it; that some people may be put off by even minimally-intrusive ads; that some people may get an adrenaline rush from petty theft.

But the data also tells us this:

3. “The vast majority of the people who download the show are located outside the U.S., where it may take up to a year before season 5 will actually air on TV.”

In an age of international digital connectivity, the old media models for distributing to different regions on different timelines may no longer be a viable one.