Whoa. This must have taken some major investigatory work. Real gumshoe-type investigating.
It appears as though TV shows, merely 12 to 18 hours after broadcasting on network television, are up, online, and ready to watch via "video sharing sites". I am not sure how they did their research, but they could have just asked me.
Side note: I keep back ups of several TV shows on a firewire hard drive, which I download via BitTorrent. This way I can delete them from my Tivo. I am typically able to download them about 2-hours after the original broadcast. Once the DVD of the season is available for purchase, I buy them.
I wonder if their investigation went deep enough to see that a huge portion of all copyrighted video online is typically recorded and distributed by only a handful of "hacker" groups that specialize in this sort of thing. And that, even if they do see this video on video sharing sites 12-18 hours later, typically it is due to the original groups getting the video online in the first place.
Source: Study: Pirated Web Video Peaks 12-18 Hours After Broadcast – 4/13/2008 – Multichannel News.