More than 25% of Australia are IP pirates, IPAF says
- 04 June, 2012 11:29
- Comments 6
More than a quarter of Australians illegally stream or download protected intellectual property and 37 per cent have stolen content now or in the past, the Intellectual Property Awareness Foundation said in a new study. They do it because it’s free, said 78 per cent of Australians surveyed.
About 27 per cent of the population are currently active streaming or downloading protected content. Ten per cent are “persistent” downloaders who download or stream at least once a week, while 17 per cent are “casual” downloaders who do it monthly or less frequently. Another 10 per cent of the population are not active, but have illegally downloaded the content in the past.
The problem is growing, IPAF said. More than a quarter of illegal downloaders surveyed said they have increased their frequency of illegal download in the last 12 months. Another 28 percent said their activity has stayed the same. Just 39 per cent reported decreasing illegal activity.
But only 64 per cent of persistent illegal downloaders believe they contribute to the problem of movie and TV piracy, the study found.
Pirates are more likely to download than stream, IPAF said. When acting illegally, 50 per cent reported downloading content while just 24 per cent said they streamed. By contrast, 27 per cent of legal viewers of content said they streamed while just 13 per cent reported downloading the content.
IPAF commissioned an independent market researcher, Sycamore, to do the study in conjunction with Newspoll. Sycamore surveyed 1,654 Australian adults aged 16-64.
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Comments
Trev
1
"More than" a quarter (25%) increased.
"Just" 39% decreased.
Loaded words..well done.
Don't the above stars imply it's going down?
James
2
"stolen" is also another word loaded with connotations. Strangely, none of them are relevant to the downloading and viewing of material that is the subject of Intellectual Property claims. Journalists, eh?
kalpanaceo
3
Informatics Outsourcing is an Offshore Intellectual Property Services company. They are providing Intellectual Property services for Bio Technology, Biochemistry, Drug Discovery, Chemistry, etc
Harquebus
4
Ones and zeros can not be copyrighted and if you can read a one or a zero, you can write that one or zero. Something our politicians are too stupid to understand.
Bourkie
5
IPAF deliberately avoided the real issue here:
Region Coding (geographical market segmentation).
You and I have been bent over a barrel with our strides between our ankles for almost two decades now - since DVDs were released in 1996.
Unlike VHS, DVDs and Blu-ray Discs are not limited by our television broadcast standards (PAL/NTSC etc) - which was the studios 'excuse' for region coding prior to 1996.
Instead there is no excuse - they have been illegally involved in racketeering (price fixing) for almost 20 years - it's time for you to stop being raped by the obscenely-wealthy American suits and stand up for yourself!
Hollywood persists with its criminal acts of geographical market segmentation (price-fixing), yet has the hypocrisy to complain when individuals break the law on a much smaller scale! Pot Kettle Black much?!
You wouldn’t steal a car.
You wouldn’t steal a handbag.
You wouldn’t steal a television.
Region coding is stealing from consumers!
Don’t buy into movie studio piracy!
Kevmeister
6
Some people will always pirate stuff because free is always preferable to "not free".
Some people will pay for content when the cost of the content fulfills their personal value proposition.
Lots of people would pay for content I think if the price was right, the content was good quality (eg. I am not going to pay good money for iView-like quality), and the content is easily accessible.
The iTunes model shows people are prepared to pay for content, and the iTunes model also shows that over time the model can become successful enough to relax DRM. All it needs is some vision. Let's face it, the movie companies aren't earning anything from piracy right now, and they need to stop extrapolating copies pirated to lost revenue, because much piracy is opportunistic and would not necessarily translate into revenue if the piracy could be prevented.