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32% of All US Adults Watch Pirated Content (torrentfreak.com)
Nearly a third of all US adults admit to having downloaded or streamed pirated movies or TV-shows, a new survey has found. Even though many are aware that watching pirated content is not permitted, a large number of pirates are particularly hard to deter. According to a report from TorrentFreak: This is one of the main conclusions of research conducted by anti-piracy firm Irdeto, which works with prominent clients including Twentieth Century Fox and Starz. Through YouGov, the company conducted a representative survey of over 1,000 respondents which found that 32 percent of all US adults admit to streaming or downloading pirated video content. These self-confessed pirates are interested in a wide variety of video content. TV-shows and movies that still play in theaters are on the top of the list for many, with 24 percent each, but older movies, live sports and Netflix originals are mentioned as well. The data further show that the majority of US adults (69%) know that piracy is illegal. Interestingly, this also means that a large chunk of the population believes that they're doing nothing wrong.
Most of those reasons for pirating are because they can't get the content very easily in a legal way. I guess most people are willing to pay, as long as it doesn't get too complicated.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
If you download & watch an old and obscure movie - which is not available anywhere for sale or rental - is it still pirating when there's no possible loss to anyone ?
Same question for old music, books, software ...
1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
I do believe that watching something you are not entitled to might be listed under copyright infrigement, but if you streamed a pirated video, you yourself didn't commit something illegal if my understanding is good (at least in Canada). So, 69% are wrong ?
95% of all U.S.A. adults watch pirate content, featuring Johnny Depp.
#DeleteFacebook
I pay for a lot of content through Dish, Netflix, iTunes, etc but if there's something I can't find there (and it happens more than I would have thought possible) then I don't even hesitate. It's 2017 and I want everything ever made and I want it at the click of a mouse or press of a button on my remote. I understand that it isn't something I'm in any way entitled to but that's how the world works a lot of the time now. Sorry.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
It's only illegal to make copies of copyrighted content without license. So torrenting = illegal. Streaming = legal.
I don't respond to or upvote ACs
* 32% of US adults *admit* to watching pirated content.
lets see pay tv prices have gotten so insane people are turning to the internet. wile stuff like netflicks and hulu have improved the ways to get content without pirating there library is still limited. its the content providers death grip that causes mass piracy.
I wonder how many of these "pirates" can rightly explain their actions as just time/format shifting? For example, I pay for cable/Netflix/Amazon Prime. Yes, technically were I to pirate content available on one of those three services, it might be legally wrong, but is it morally wrong?
Interestingly, this also means that a large chunk of the population believes that they're doing nothing wrong.
No, I'd say this means that a large chunk of the population believe that the value of the product (content) offered plus the probable cost to acquire the content is less than the sale price. People who watch pirated content are aware that what they are doing is not 100% clean. Most will shrug when asked if what they are doing is legal.
Unless the sale price drops or the probable cost to acquire the content rises, the value of the product (content) must increase to decrease pirating.
So, if you don't want to decrease the price point, and you can't think of an economical way to increase the probable cost to acquire the content, then you have to increase the value of the product. How can you increase its value? Well, for one, make it as easy as possible to get a copy of the content legally, and make that product as easy to use (for all values of use) as the pirated version.
However, content owners will simply view the equation as a need to come up with a cheap way to make the probable cost of acquiring the content alternately more expensive. Through higher rates of fining, or higher fines, or making piracy more difficult to achieve.
Changing the usability of the content or decreasing the price point are things the studios simply won't consider.
If only we could fall into a woman's arms without falling into her hands
When a third of your population admit to doing something illegal, maybe it's time to revisit the laws surrounding the legality of it - especially if it isn't a safety issue.
32% 'admit' to watching pirated content. The other 68% just do it and don't tell...
Sorry but the survey only lists that it was an online survey. How was this sample selected, and where if the response rate? Since I see no delineation between Sample Size and Completes I assume this was just a meaningless web survey that wasted their time weighting data that has no meaning because it's missing critical data points. This is how the media got deluded into believing Hillary was destined to win VS Trump. Honestly, if you're going to include a methods section then give me a bit more meat.
They believe that by pirating an old movie that they refuse to make available on DVD or streaming, you're not paying to watch the latest Transformers flick.
68% of US adults lie about watching pirated content.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
"Through YouGov, the company conducted a representative survey of over 1,000 respondents" ... no, on two accounts. 1) Self-selected survey (YouGov) and 2) 1000 respondents aren't statistically representative for the US population
it's in my head
It's not like all shows are available at a price and you just refused to pay it.
Content is often... /your country/
Old so not available
Not available in
Not available when you want to watch it
Has commercials
Better quality elsewhere, ability to pause play rewinid at your leisure.
Basically as usual, pirated content has the better product, even if you had to "pay" for it.
Stop restricting content by country
Stop restricting content to try and force people to accept certain content.
Oh yeah, they do it, fyi, deliberately pull other popular content from access just to get people watching their "new" show. It's like products, installing updates or things that cause it to run worse but it's a "security update" until they tell you to buy a newer, faster shinier product.
They keep trying to section off markets to milk the most of it etc. If instead, part of harmonization the entire world, allowed content to be accessible on a global level with specific standards for quality control, performance and user interfaces (As every company wants a piece of the pie) you would have a lot less people pirating.
I don't even watch netflix anymore because I've already seen anything good and their library is started to suck ass. I only keep it since a family member watches it still.
Pirates have global access to high quality on demand content of their choosing, free for the most part no less.
Your expensive services are terrible and don't even come close.
There's a lot of content I'd like to watch and would pay for access to watch it, but I can't, then you whine and complain because I'm not buying the products you want me to.
Ok, I'm going to go Ad Hominen here and call B.S. I posit that the 32% number is inflated, it's referenced on a site that makes money from torrents (many of which are indeed pirated content), from a survey published by an anti-pirating firm, which makes money "fighting piracy".
I mean, come on, one third? Where did they take this survey, the California bay area? Austin? I am reasonable sure the majority of people in my neighborhood here in science-hating Texas have no idea how to set up their routers to allow torrent uploads and avoid leeching limitations. Netflix, Redbox, Amazon Prime, Hulu, Vudu, video on demand... there are just too many inexpensive ways to watch almost anything you would want to see without dealing with Torrents. Yes, we on Slashdot may use torrenting to get to anime and other foreign content we can't get legally in the US, but we are outliers.
This is one of the main conclusions of research conducted by anti-piracy firm Irdeto
I would have thought that a far higher (almost 100%) of the population would have viewed some pirated material, at least once in their lives.
But if the "survey" came out with a figure even close to 50%, it would be shooting itself in the foot by showing that the behaviour was not considered immoral by such a large proportion of the population that to make it illegal was questionable. And once the "everybody does it" card is played, it becomes impossible for the courts to prosecute, since no jury could, statistically, find against a defendant.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
The data further show that the majority of US adults (69%) know that piracy is illegal. Interestingly, this also means that a large chunk of the population believes that they're doing nothing wrong.
No. That means 31% of the population doesn't know the law, which is a little hard to believe.
Knowing that it's illegal and believing that you're doing something wrong are completely different issues.
Nope, no sig
It's time to face up to it, most people don't see copyright infringement as being all that serious. That includes the big copyright advocates that get caught with infringing material on their websites or who never quite get around to paying the artists their royalties, or who claim copyright on things that expired years ago. Right down to agencies who collect "for" artists who never agreed to their representation and who never see a check for the amount collected.
Meanwhile, it can't be THAT big of a problem. The various media companies make more money every year.
I watched The Spanish Main.
Most cinema is utter crap these days. I've lost count how many times i've been burned by a crappy movie and 30$ tickets (2 tickets) for the priviledge of sitting in a disgusting cinema with speakers turned too high.
I pay for Netflix and Amazon Prime. That has been surprisingly worth it. Media costs too much. Lower the price, make it easy to get (I want cinema releases in my home damn it), and i'll be all over it.
It's hard to feel guilty downloading a movie illegally. Those in hollywood are disconnected from realty.
A similar number of adults admit to speeding. If caught they can get a small fine and a temporary increase in their insurance premiums.
Where as piracy you can be sued into bankruptcy and potentially imprisoned with other horrible criminals.
Yet only one of these activities risks human life.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I have a full cable package from Frontier. We get most of the premium channels including HBO, Showtime and Starz. My wife purchases way more DVDs and Blu-ray discs than I want her to. We also go to the theater from time to time to watch movies.
I am not willing to pay for the same content over, and over and over again. I am especially unwilling to continue to pay for content due to wear and tear. For example, my wife has watched Friends and Sex in the City so many times that some of the discs skip or are even completely unwatchable. I have zero qualms with pulling down a torrent of those shows and storing them on the NAS so that she can watch them.
Another example is with HBO content. I am on the west coast. I watched Game of Thrones and Westworld on east coast time plus about 30 minutes. It was more convenient for me torrent a 1080p rip, than to wait until HBO decided it was time for my part of the country to be "allowed" to watch it.
Am I 'stealing' from HBO? Am I 'stealing' from the DVD / blu-ray producer?
I worked in Hollywood for a while. I understand that all of the below the line people have to eat and deserve to make a living wage. I do not endorse out and out, wholesale piracy. Just because "the studios" are turning a profit does not mean that everyone involved in getting content onto the screen is rolling in dough. Most of them are just regular Joe and Jane Doe's, putting in their hours and trying to put food on the table.
On the other hand, I am okay with preserving content that I paid for. Just because I have the technical capability of doing so should not make it wrong. In my eyes, it is no more wrong than a mechanic fixing their own vehicle. Are they 'stealing' from the dealership service departments? They have to buy their tools and parts. I have to buy my computers and storage medium.
In the U.S., I thought it was only those who share who have been prosecuted or sued, not those who merely download -- due in part to the Betamax decision.
So if you go to a movie in a Theater, say you pay for 2 people and popcorn and all of that. about $60 these day. Then when the move comes out instead of paying for it again..you just download it, is that still piracy? and I spend alot on going to movies mind you, like twice a week, to support the kinds of movies I would like to keep seeing.
"I do it you do it and we'll all do it again"!
I'm here for the experience, not the Hyperbole.
No studios are doing this currently, even though they would MAKE SO MUCH MONEY HAND OVER FIST if they did. Instead they continue to try their region locking and limited releases and think we are going to feel sad for them for loosing some money to pirating.
Stop complaining, either sell your goods or get outta town.
I'd like to see those questions and responses, because 32% of all the adults I know find it hard to just get online - they wouldn't even try to download pirated content. Given this "statistic" was created by a group that would benefit from the a wildly inflated perception of the quantity of piracy, I'll take it with a grain of salt.
And by the way, only 69% of people know that piracy is illegal? Do they even understand the definition of piracy?
32% of the people who were surveyed admit to watching pirated content.
That says nothing about those who lied to the surveyors, nor does it say anything about the millions of law-abiding citizens that were not surveyed.
At the hospital I work at, I've noticed that a lot more people are watching pirated content. It's no where near the 32% mentioned in the summary, but certainly a much larger percentage than 5 years ago. I basically find out as we discuss various old movies and give each other suggestions on what to watch.
The interesting thing is how these people are getting the movies. It seems that they're getting 'hot boxes', which are apparently copies of Kodi with a set of streaming plugins to pirate sites. These guys (and girls) are not particularly tech-oriented. All they know is that the movies are streamed from pirate websites.
How these people don't get caught is beyond me. But none of them are concerned with the legality of it.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
I read this as 32% of people admit to watching pirated adult content and I thought only 32%?
If you torrent you have probably participated in a DDoS attack. This is a bit like getting free stuff in a shady venue so long as you do them a "favor". I don't like my friend, I get his public IP, list the hottest movie from his/her IP, bluray quality. Meanwhile they are at home thinking why is my Internet not working?
Weekly stories of woh coming from the big studios, as they annually report profits in the BILLIONS. Then they expect Joe-citizen to pony up and hour or more worth income every time they decide to watch their legally licensed content on a different device? Cry me a river.
Its funny, when you make laws that are so slanted, so in favor of the few, and so at the expense of the many, people just decide not to respect those laws. Then when you try to enforce these laws, people don't respect the enforcer. When you finally find a way to enforce these laws, people lose even more respect for the law, the enforcer, the body that stands to profit from the laws, the government that allowed it in the first place, and worst of all, people lose respect for the rule of law all together.
We all choose to play by this rule-set (copyright). If the game is rigged (DRM, region locking, no content shifting), we stop playing (piracy) and lose respect for the rules that we stopped playing by (copyright law) and the other players (rights-holders) and the stupid rules that we decided not to play with in first place. (copyright in general)
When first implemented, it was a good system... it fostered creation, paid out to the creators and generally was a pretty excepted way of doing things.
Over the years however, its been perverted to serve the opposite of what it was made to do, Copyright stifles creativity with the constant bogus takedown letters and violation notices, costs creators money defending original ideas, and allows studios to retain ownership of whole swaths of culture that should rightfully have fallen into public hands LONG AGO. Copyright is broken as it is now, and needs to be dialed back to reality. Once the laws are once again SANE, huge portions of the population will begin to respect it once again.
Don't even get me started on the double-dipping force feeding of commercials to consumers who've already paid (to much) for the programming on whatever format they are getting it on.....
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
Try to find the 52 episodes of Jimmy 2 Shoes and you wont. The closest you can get is a few episodes offered by Walmart.
I acquired a lot of free ebooks from Amazon, but guess what? They don't remove them from the lists or filter them out so I stop dealing with Amazon altogether unless I know specifically what I am looking for. They have no ability to exclude what you've already gotten from them at any price point. All of the systems seem to have this problem, though. I can't begin to talk about how many Steam games I have bought only for them to clutter my searches.
Of course, the story as it was written never needed to be made in the first place. A story of someone getting computer-like recall abilities could be done, but the original and remake were horrible on how the person supposedly acquired them in the first place then got them taken away.
Time is what stuff flows in. Time merely gets curved. Or rather spacetime. Time isn't one dimension. In sending someone back to the past depending on the lay of the land, either an alternative timeline gets created, information gets sent back to the past as in the DVD storyline, or a collapse of sorts happens when a paradox gets created, like in Angels in Manhattan. And that isn't the half of what can happen to the timeplane. What really bugs me is when time-travellers think they can reset reality to an original timeline like "Legends of Tomorrow" and "The Flash" and that other apparently non-DC Comic time-travel story, seem intent on doing. "Frequncy" gives me less problems, but with people in that reality having a hard time with the concept of information getting passed backwards and forwards in time and thus less people being allowed to be in on the secret, I don't like that aspect of it. "7 Days" was pretty good, though they didn't explain much. "Quantum Leap" gives me issues, however. "Back To The Future" just gives one of many ways time travel can break down, more than one, actually, but they focus on a handful of outcomes as one.
Doctor Who actually deals better with the possible outcomes of time travel than most. Because it treats areas of space time as places in which stuff happens and events reflow around them accordingly, it considers time as having at least a two dimensional component. The talk that an "antimatter" place is filled with unpeople, doing unthings, does not appear to address antimatter as the things antimatter currently refers to, but it still describes a possible reality where a region of space connected to ours behaves in a manner where the denizens behave in that manner when it comes to how the two spaces generally interact with each other. Then there's negative space, a space that helps Doctor Who explain the possibility of devices that can read "normal" space as positive coordinates and still relay information about that space despite being in negative space. Doctor Who goes to greater effort than Star Wars to describe the physics of the reality it exists in. I find it disappointing that the Master "went mad", especially since little has stepped up to field his old worldview that the universe does better with a strong hand at the helm. The Shadow Proclamation has done some of this. The Silence seems more interested in the notion that The Doctor causes more problems than he solves.
To the best of my knowledge, that's not how torrenting works. Where did you get that idea. I'm not sure how trackerless torrents work though. From my understanding, most torrents contain a list of trackers that people can go to to get a list of IP addresses that have told the tracker they have parts of the file. You could specify your friend as a tracker, but then the file would quickly get reported as bad.
At any given point in time, the equipment in question contains an infinitesimal amount of the copyrighted work in question.
I'm not entirely certain how aware my mom is that some of the stuff I get for her to watch is "pirated".
Just what is your definition of "Functioning member of society" and what about what you have said makes your guy not one? I am less of a functioning member of society than some by virtue of needing to be on disability and being unable to get hired to do anything and not being able to drive, but still, I try to contribute to society and that's really the important part in my book, but then my book isn't of any importance to you because I am, no doubt, not a functioning member of society, in yours.
to watch a movie still in the theater, maybe up to double the local ticket prices. I don't really like going to the theater, standing in line, missing parts if I need to use the bathroom, etc. But instead, I watch a "cam" for free, even though they usually are horrid it's better than my local theaters.
Um, no, that's not how it works. Your "friend" would have to actually be seeding said torrent, like in some program. You can't just "list" something, that's not how the protocol works. You MIGHT be able to sit outside near enough to your "friends" house to get on their wifi, assuming that's open, and then seed out torrents off a laptop or something...at least until they notice you sitting there for hours on end. Even then, your probably not going to be able to get enough signal to use up their entire pipe.
Now find a lawfully made copy of the TV series Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea playable in the United States. This was the English language dub of Les mondes engloutis, and it aired on Nickelodeon in the mid-1980s.
For every subchannel that a U.S. broadcaster offers, the FCC requires the broadcaster to broadcast three hours of educational and informative (E/I) programming for children on that subchannel during hours when children are likely to be watching. This is why even a 24-hour weather radar subchannel will cut to some syndicated E/I show like Jack Hanna's Animal Adventures a few times a week. The cost of syndicating this programming encourages broadcasters to end unpopular subchannels.
And that too is infringement, per the ruling in UMG Recordings v. MP3.com.
a large chunk of the population believes that they're doing nothing wrong
When the piracy is against someone like Disney who swears that they will continue to buy as many lawmakers as it takes to subvert the public domain clause of the Constitution and have already done so, then I have to agree with the pirates. I also have a gripe with studios like Miramax who release lower than DVD quality on BlueRay and then try to sell the consumer a better quality release later (but continue to press and sell the poor quality BlueRay discs as well). See the Stargate BlueRay release as just one of many examples. Legally the pirates may have done something wrong, but morally the studios are the bigger pirates.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I've always pirated movies and TV shows since they're not available in India, but recently Amazon Prime Video launched here - for the equivalent of $7 per year, you get access to their library, plus they've added a whole lot of Bollywood and Indian TV shows to gain popularity, so trying it out was a no brainer.
"..One hosts to look them up, one DNS to find them, and in the darkness BIND them."
"a large chunk of the population believes that they're doing nothing wrong"
No, it means that a very large chunk of the population has a different opinion about digital content consumption.Not easily dismissed.
However: "a representative survey of over 1,000 respondents" - Now, forget everything above, this whole thing is just another joke. A representative survey.
Funny.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
It is well known that statistics about perceived wrongdoing are notoriously low.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Wow, self centered much? Yeah, I was talking about you ... specifically. /sarcasm
Here is my $.02 worth. Your disability doesn't entitle you to robbing stores, pirating movies or any other "illegal" activity. Yeah, I know it sucks to be disabled. I know, because my wife can barely move due to a number of different, unrelated problems, but we have managed to not need to pirate movies in the process. So, while you think you are somehow excused from nominal social norms because of your disability, perhaps my post was directed to you after all.
Please stop justifying your ill manners on your disability. Actions such as this help give the rest of the disabled community a bad name.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Just based on my own informal surveys when I do speaking engagements (about free software and copyrights), about 80% (possibly more) people use illegally obtained copyrighted content and about 90% of those have no problems sharing such content with others. This includes wealthy people, lawmakers, judges, etc.
Torrent users are such a small percentage of those ignoring copyright and usage permissions.
Fuck that permitted BS - free people can do anything they wish including breaking the law.
Not to mention the whole legal concept wherein ownership of packets of electrons is ludicrous to begin with.
And 68% thought, that admitting to watch pirated content could get them sued.
While most would agree that broadcasting something you down own the rights to is wrong, simply tuning in shouldn't be a crime.
It's a perfect time for being wasted.
A perfect time to watch the stars.
- Burden Brothers, "Beautiful Night"