The Most-Pirated TV Show of 2020 Was 'The Mandalorian' (cnet.com) 99
CNET reveals 2020's most popular show among video pirates:
It probably won't come as a surprise that Disney Plus smash hit series The Mandalorian has won the (unfortunate) title of most-pirated TV show of 2020 — using popular torrenting site BitTorrent.
According to analysis from TorrentFreak (via IndieWire), Game of Thrones was the most-pirated TV show seven years running. But the HBO series ended in 2019, leaving The Mandalorian to improve its ranking from third to No. 1.
The rest of the list, from IndieWire: Prime Video's irreverent superhero series "The Boys" is at number two, HBO's "Westworld" is number three, Prime Video's "Vikings" is number four, CBS' "Star Trek: Picard" is five, followed by Adult Swim's "Rick and Morty," AMC's "The Walking Dead," HBO's "The Outsider," CW's "The Arrow," and CW's "The Flash."
The rest of the list, from IndieWire: Prime Video's irreverent superhero series "The Boys" is at number two, HBO's "Westworld" is number three, Prime Video's "Vikings" is number four, CBS' "Star Trek: Picard" is five, followed by Adult Swim's "Rick and Morty," AMC's "The Walking Dead," HBO's "The Outsider," CW's "The Arrow," and CW's "The Flash."
It's not a surprise (Score:2)
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Re:It's not a surprise (Score:4, Insightful)
And when is most-pirated unfortunate?
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"See the history of a little-known program called "Harvard Graphics""
I pirated that in the day as well, just as now with the Mandalorian.
Re:It's not a surprise (Score:4, Funny)
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Your link did not contain any relevant or interesting history, nor did it mention your blah-blah.
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And when is most-pirated unfortunate?
When you're a producer who still clings to the belief that every last pirated copy is a "lost sale".
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And when is most-pirated unfortunate?
When you're a producer who still clings to the belief that every last pirated copy is a "lost sale".
If people are watching it, it's a lost sale. Done making excuses?
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If people aren't watching it, it's a lot of lost sales.
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If people are watching it, it's a lost sale.
So if I pay for it, and watch it 20 times, is that 19 lost sales? If I have 2 friends in the room, is it now 57 lost sales? Apparently that's the model you MPAA guys are driving towards.
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You didn't pay me your license fee to open your eyes, stop making excuses yourself!
FUcking hypocrite.
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The Baby Yoda Show (Score:2)
I spend hours navigating Wookiepedia and youtube for fun. I remember watching Lucas talk to the theater department at UCLA about ANH prior to the release of ESB on a local cable channel. I'm a lifelong Star Wars nerd.
When the show stops prominently featuring the baby yoda, much of the existing audience won't bother watching it (like 20% of the people I know, including myself). Someone must have noticed this.
The Mandalorian isn't a classic story, but a rough retelling with lots of increasingly complicated St
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You say that, and its possibly true, but equally there are a lot of people who want a Star Wars show which *isnt* about the bloody Jedi or Force - the universe that various people (pre-Disney canon, legends, post-Disney canon etc) have created is extremely rich, and not all of it revolves around the mystical bits we see in the films.
Rogue One is my favourite Star Wars movie, precisely because it dealt with normal people and Force stuff was relegated to a tiny role - the Mandalorian is similar, yes it has Ba
Availability (Score:5, Insightful)
Disney+ is only available in certain countries:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The rest of us generally have no alternative but to pirate it. If we wait for a local distributor to get it, chances are we will have seen so many spoilers online that it's pointless to watch.
Services like this are also only available on certain devices, and explicitly exclude devices which are otherwise perfectly capable of playing a video stream.
So long as there are arbitrary restrictions in place, people will continue to pirate because there is simply no other alternative.
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Even waiting just a few days, let alone months or a couple of years, means you can't even talk to your friends about it because they saw it immediately, discussed it among themselves then, and moved on to the next show or game or whatever.
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"The shoe fits." - Ralph on Happy Days.
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Re:Availability (Score:4, Informative)
This is why I'm a bit surprised Star Trek Lower Decks didnt make the list. It was completely unavailable in Australia and much of the rest of the world. And it was by all accounts an excellent animated comedy that poked fun at Trek without disrespecting the material or the fans, and had some absolutely ludicrously funny moments (Look up on you tube Q on Lower Decks, its seriously funny).
But unfortunately CBS made *two* mistakes with that show, they not only didnt secure distribution outside the US, they didnt even market it outside the US (Well maybe thats a good thing for them if it warded off the pirates). Still bad move CBS. I *believe* its coming to Amazon Prime in Australia, though dont quote me on that.
Re: Availability (Score:1)
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I pirated a few episodes of Lower Decks (not available here) and it wasn't good.
It's a series of rapid fire jokes and manic over-acting, which never takes the time to actually say anything interesting about Trek. There is a lot of material there they could use to both lampoon and explore some of the tropes, but it just speeds past them all at break neck speed.
Maybe it's not my kind of humour as I didn't find it all that funny, and perhaps other people did. But I was really hoping for something clever and en
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Maybe it's not my kind of humour as I didn't find it all that funny, and perhaps other people did. But I was really hoping for something clever and entertaining on more than a superficial level.
Like Galaxy Quest! Both the best Star Trek film and the best Star Trek parody all rolled into one.
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I think the issue is the peers used to compare the success of lower decks. If you compare it against the modern entries (Picard and Discovery), then it shines as the only Star Trek (we can argue the fine points of how bad disco and Picard are) show.
But if you compare Lower Decks to TOS or the original cartoon, the silly jokes and quickness to “sight gag” are brought to the surface.
I loved lower decks, but I can also acknowledge that it’s elevated by the absolute trash that CBS/Paramount i
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This is why I'm a bit surprised Star Trek Lower Decks didnt make the list.
Star trek what what? Never heard of it.
It's not surprising if something unknown doesn't make the most whatever list.
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I watched one episode of Lower Decks and it seems to be made for the ADHD crowd. Everyone speaks blisteringly fast for no actual reason.
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But unfortunately CBS made *two* mistakes with that show, they not only didnt secure distribution outside the US, they didnt even market it outside the US (Well maybe thats a good thing for them if it warded off the pirates). Still bad move CBS. I *believe* its coming to Amazon Prime in Australia, though dont quote me on that.
I'm not sure what you consider "outside the US" but Lower Decks is shown on CTV Sci-Fi channel in Canada which by all accounts is ouside the US. 8^)
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It's true that people will pirate if there's no other way, but I don't agree about the spoiler thing. I've not watched the Mandalorian nor seen any spoilers online beyond a few memes about baby Yoda.
It's so far not like Game of Thrones where spoilers popped up in newspaper headlines. That was really annoying.
Mind, my sister really wants me to see the Mandalorian, enough so she handed me a memstick with episodes and installed Disney+ on my TV. So far I've used that Disney+ to watch Ducktales episodes and tha
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I've not watched the Mandalorian nor seen any spoilers online beyond a few memes about baby Yoda.
You probably aren't seeing spoilers because you don't watch Mandalorian. My news feeds are very tailored to my browsing history, which in most situations is great because over half of recommended articles are ones I would be interested in reading. The downside is Google knows I like Mandalorian, so it shows me Mandalorian related articles the day of any new episode. Since they are released on a weekday, I have had a number of spoilers in the headlines of articles because I couldn't watch the show until the
Re:Availability (Score:4, Insightful)
Your point is taken, but you say "the rest of us generally have no alternative but to pirate it."
That's simply not true. Not consuming it is a perfectly valid option as well.
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True, not consuming it is an option.
However despite not being able to consume it, we are still exposed to some of the marketing which is designed to make us *want* to consume it. This is especially cruel, as it's basically taunting.
Pulse (Score:3)
Boy is my finger off the pulse of TV viewers.
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Re: who the hell is pirating arrow and the flash? (Score:2)
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A lot of people just use "pirating" as a way to time-shift the content they could have watched legally anyway or as a way to watch the stuff on another device offline where the option isn't there. Why buy a PVR or bother to go through the process of scheduling it to record something when you can just download it later.
This is one of the biggest reasons I can't stand network/broadcast TV. Remembering that I have to tune in at a certain time or remember to record it, and then I have to watch it on a certain
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Or they pirate it so they don't have to deal with all the commercial breaks. When an hour of "broadcast" television is 1/4- 1/3 commercial time you can save a hell of a lot of time pirating the shows instead.
Re: who the hell is pirating arrow and the flash? (Score:2)
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The first two seasons of Arrow and the Flash were actually good with nice character development and story building. They do get tired after a while though. But to answer your question:
People who enjoy those shows and their content but don't have access to them on streaming services, that's who.
Mind you piracy doesn't mean someone watched something. Finding a torrent with a complete season doesn't mean the viewer didn't watch one episode, formed the same opinion as you that it wasn't for them and then delete
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arrow and the flash were broadcast. you could get them over the air.
Whose air? Certainly not my air. http://maps.google.com/ [google.com] go to this site and zoom out and you'll realise there's a lot of air outside of whatever country you think is the only one which exists in the world.
So back to my answer: People who enjoy those shows and their content but don't have access to them
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The Dark Side of exclusivity (Score:5, Interesting)
I am not a Disney+ subscriber. This is a conscious choice; coming up with a better deal with Hulu or Netflix would have been better for everyone.
A friend invited me over, and I watched the first few episodes of The Mandalorian, and I enjoyed it. I would like to see more. However, I'm not subscribing to the service to do so.
CBS has shown a willingness to take my money, despite my unwillingness to subscribe to All Access, either. I have the first season of Star Trek Picard, and the first two seasons of Star Trek Discovery on Blu-Ray. I have no issue paying for them, and ironically, I probably have spent more than if I just subscribed to the service...but I'm okay with that.
Disney, on the other hand, still hasn't released Season 1 of The Mandalorian on DVD or Blu-Ray. That's fine. I won't be hitting up TPB for episodes of The Mandalorian...but until it's available on DVD (or Netflix or Hulu or Amazon Prime), The Mouse has sent the message that it is not interested in my money.
I'm not saying a DVD release would convert all of the downloads into paying customers, but I am saying that the reason The Mandalorian tops the list is primarily a supply-side problem.
Re: The Dark Side of exclusivity (Score:2)
Mandalorian tops the list is primarily a supply-side problem.
Exactly.
Also, isn't connecting both production and distribution to an arbitrarily limited market a type of monopoly? Imagine if COVID vaccines, or bread, were produced and distributed in such a way...
Granted, The Mouse pooping out LucasTrash isn't going to contribute to life and death for anyone, but equality, justice, fraternity, or something. c'est la vie.
Re: The Dark Side of exclusivity (Score:5, Interesting)
Only if you consider that you can only buy Ford cars from a Ford dealership a kind of monopoly. Or that Teslas are sold as a monopoly (because Tesla manufactures and sells to customers Teslas).
And it's like that for everything. If you want Wonder bread, you have to go to a Hostess distributor for them, and a store that decided to offer Hostess products. If you want a McD's burger for whatever reason, you have to go to McD's.
If you want a COVID vaccine, your government (or your pharmacist, depending on your health care system) would have had to do deal with Pfizer or Moderna. Who probably went and checked out your system to ensure you have the ability to keep the vaccine in storage conditions.
Disney created the show, Disney distributes it, and it's up to Disney to control it as it's their show. Now, they could be like CBS who decided they like money and offer the show in multiple ways - online on their service, but also a little while later on DVDs and Blu-Rays. Or they could feel they can make money keeping it exclusive. I don't care as I'm not a Star Wars fan (it should be obvious).
Heck, I don't have HBO, but it's nice to see DVDs of HBO shows make it out as well. I buy those and probably spent more on them than I would've on HBO. But Disney is Disney and free to seek money however they want. There are plenty of shows on AppleTV+ I want to watch, but I don't have AppleTV+. It's unlikely Apple would make them available either, so I'm sad about that, but then again, there's so much OTHER content I could watch, well, I have that. Just like I don't bother with buying videogames so much since I have so many unplayed ones that even the ones I want to play I can wait the year or so before it becomes under $10.
There's just so much content I already have legal access to I don't need to pirate it - I don't care if it ever comes out as I'm unlikely to miss it.
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Only if you consider that you can only buy Ford cars from a Ford dealership a kind of monopoly. Or that Teslas are sold as a monopoly (because Tesla manufactures and sells to customers Teslas).
And it's like that for everything. If you want Wonder bread, you have to go to a Hostess distributor for them, and a store that decided to offer Hostess products. If you want a McD's burger for whatever reason, you have to go to McD's.
Most of these are not good analogies. McD's for example are franchises, you're not directly buying from the central company. You can buy new Fords from various places and used ones from all over. I don't know what Wonder Bread is, although it's name makes me assume it's some sort of shit bread substitute, but I imagine that you don't have to hunt down a "Hostess shop" and can buy it from franchises similar to McDonalds.
Television is being strangled by its own greed at the moment. There just isn't enough mon
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Disney created the show, Disney distributes it, and it's up to Disney to control it as it's their show.
But did they? While I agree with your view in general it kind of breaks down in principle when a company like Disney comes and buys out another company (e.g. Fox) or buys the rights to another company's content (e.g. Lucas Films) and then proceeds to pull it from all other platforms.
The question isn't about the word "monopoly". People often use that word incorrectly. The question is when market forces are used (abused) to the detriment of end users; when corporate money is spent to stifle competition and sc
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Not good analogies - Unique show vs specific but generic items
Disney+ is not available everywhere and a DVD release would make money in those places
If people can't get Disney+ they will Pirate it, this is what is mostly happening
But also if this is the *Only* show they want to watch on Disney+ then they might also pirate it
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Your analogy falls down because I don't have to subsidise a Ford dealer by way of a monthly fee even though I'm buying a Hyundai. Similarly, last I checked I didn't have to have a paid monthly subscription in order to get my Big Mac.
But NOT being flippant; Ford dealers are not owned by Ford. That's the big difference. Similar story with McDonalds and Hostess; they're all franchises that are owned and operated by another corporation. The model they follow is actually far closer to the Netflix idea of licensi
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You can only buy a new Ford from a Ford dealership. But anyone who owns a Ford can sell you theirs. If someone really wanted, they could buy 100 Fords from a dealer and immediately resell them as new.
Sadly, this is one of the things we're losing with the shift to subscription streaming services. The right of first sale [wikipedia.org]. The copyright holders are winning their battle against the sale of used movies, music, and
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TBH Disney has always been terrible at digitizing its content.
They've been late to every new format.
Remember disastrous divx (the format, not the codec) - IIRC they were an early proponent.
This is just another example of how what seems to be overarching greed seems to again get in the way of their actually being even more successful (shrug).
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"the reason The Mandalorian tops the list is primarily a supply-side problem"
That only covers #1 and #2 (The Boys). No other exclusive is in the top ten. The rest of the top ten are available for purchase outside of a subscription.
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I've got a Disney+ subscription and was initially interested in watching The Mandalorian. But then they decided to release the episodes one at a time like I'm a toddler and not capable of making decisions about how I spend my time. Then pile on top of that the episodes are only half an hour and how much of that is credits? I've got too many other less tedious things available to waste my time on that. Perhaps one of these piratical people would be so kind as to take each season and edit them all together in
Why are people pirating that? (Score:2)
It is a complete waste of bandwidth. May not be the most stupid show I ever saw, but certainly comes close. The bad acting and writing is not even funny.
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Pretty much a stretched out Jar Jar A, action scene that tells little story, keep it simple for children and the adult cheetos brigade. You are not the target audience, you cost to much, you demand much more expensive writers who work much harder telling good stories. They want cookie cutter content that looks pretty to feed to the cheetos crowd, they want syfy and not Science Fiction.
We will get there, cooperatively creating animated content using better software and hardware.
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Re:Why are people pirating that? (Score:4, Interesting)
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This is basically it in a nutshell: https://youtu.be/HzLWQNhRygY [youtu.be]
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This is basically it in a nutshell: https://youtu.be/HzLWQNhRygY [youtu.be]
More entertaining than the original...
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Haha 43 whole views on that video.
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I get the feeling it is a repost as I first saw this over a week ago linked off a popular tweet. Maybe the first got taken down by a copyright bot because of the badly played recorder being too close to the actual theme for the algorithm to differentiate.
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Well look at mister film critic over here. It's an entertaining space western that's massively popular.
This is hardly an accurate metric. (Score:1)
Not on slashdot (Score:2, Troll)
I'll bet the most-pirated by slashdot users was one of:
High School DxD
Chaika, Coffin Princess
To Date a Live
To Love-Ru
or Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?
But not Sword Oratoria, they'd go all Gillette if they saw that side of the story.
I doubt they watched anything new. Ask again in 5 years, maybe they'll make it to the surface?
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Some of your mentions might have cross-demographic appeal, but TLR is pretty specific.
Not the first season that is actually just called "To Love-Ru." The first season was bait for normals. That's how a person like me, who only watches subs and pronounces anime as a Japanese word, knew about it.
Chaika, of course, is a masterpiece.
Why do I pirate? (Score:1)
I don't watch the Mandalorennes, but I watch a lot of movies, and especially movies that I cannot buy legally here in Norway in any way. The non-gaming entertainment industry's approach to regional locking of content and archaic distribution deals is beyond fucked up. Just let me buy and I will. I don't give a shit if it is translated or not.
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If you pirated Game of Thrones, seasons 6 & 7 (Score:4, Informative)
You just about got your money's worth.
On the other hand, that's 30 hours of your life you'll never get back.
Re: If you pirated Game of Thrones, seasons 6 & (Score:2)
Re: If you pirated Game of Thrones, seasons 6 & (Score:2)
I must have been caught in a very realistic nightmare. Whew! Thank heavens I'm awake now!
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Why wouldn't it be? (Score:2)
Who's going to fork over for Disney+ to watch a single show? I'm certainly not.
But, it's fair enough given that Disney are pirating Star Wars material themselves:
https://amazingstories.com/202... [amazingstories.com]
So, yeah - fuck 'em.
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"Fork over"? It's $7 a month, cancel any time. You don't exactly need to sell a kidney.
Star Wars (Score:2)
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After Phantom Menace, I don't give a damn in Hell about anything. ANYTHING having to to with the Stars Wars uniiverse, although Ryan George manages to skewer it nicely. Fuck, at this point, the Christmas Special would almost be welcome, but, probably not.
I tried getting drunk and watching the Christmas special with my SO. It's so bad we ended up bailing after not very long. Have rewatched Ep 1 (it's bad), the the Christmas one is a special kind of awful.
How do they know the numbers of anything (Score:1)
How? (Score:2, Informative)
After seeing this garbage [9cache.com], how can people remotely want to watch this show? In one scene you have: a) storm troopers invoking the trope of not being able to hit the broad side of a barn, b) storm troopers standing in the open rather than using the abundance of cover, c) storm troopers coming at the protagonist one by one despite outnumbering their opponent 20 to 1, d) a character who has a shit ton of weapons on him, including his knees, who moves with ease, e) troop carriers which apparently have no weapo
Re:How? (Score:4, Insightful)
At least they aren't sitting side-by-side in an 80's fighter-plane without helmets or flight suits, having a quiet conversation, travelling 9000km in one night without refuelling...
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You tuned into the wrong station. This is a fictional series. The WW2 documentary is down the hall.
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Isn't the entirety of Star Wars just like that?
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You must be new to Star Wars, and perhaps to fiction in general.
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Wow, that is a joke! A fight sequence so bad it would be laughable in a one-man-army movie from the 80's. A goofy scene like that belongs in a Futurama episode rather than in a live-action show.
Rocks & boulders everywhere to take cover under, but instead the Stormtroopers take turns running in the open, in single-file, towards the guy shooting at them! "You three go in and get that guy, everyone else provide cover fire" is beyond their training.
They all have ships capable of interstellar flight in da
The Mandalorian: is being pirated. (Score:2)
Here's some advice... (Score:1)
Well, Disney did pirate ADF books... (Score:1)
Alan Dean Foster wrote a number of Star Wars books under a license obtained from Lucasfilm (or something).
Then Disney bought Lucasfilm and decided that the license would not be honoured, but the books are still selling, just no royalties will be paid to ADF.
Pirating Disney content at this point seems like a civic duty.