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'Pirates' Tend To Be the Biggest Buyers of Legal Content, Study Shows (vice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: According to a paywalled survey of 1,000 UK residents by anti-piracy outfit MUSO first spotted by Torrent Freak, 60 percent of those surveyed admitted that they had illegally streamed or downloaded music, film, or TV shows sometime in the past. But the study also showed that 83 percent of those questioned try to find the content they are looking for through above board services before trying anything else. And while the study found that 86 percent of survey takers subscribe to a streaming subscription service like Netflix, that total jumped to 91 percent among those that admit to piracy. The survey found that the top reason that users pirate is the content they were looking for wasn't legally available (34 percent) was too cumbersome or difficult to access (34 percent), or wasn't affordable (35 percent). "The entertainment industry tends to envisage piracy audiences as a criminal element, and writes them off as money lost -- but they are wrong to do so," MUSO executive Paul Briley said of the study's findings. "The reality is that the majority of people who have gone through the effort of finding and accessing such unlicensed content are, first and foremost, fans -- fans who are more often than not trying to get content legally if they can," Briley added.
So the upshot of this study is that people who consume a lot of content consume a lot of content, and they consume some of that content legally.
That's it. There's no indication that people who download lots of contents are some huge fanbase.
the more they stay the same.
A few years ago I came across a magazine article from 1981. Back then, the record companies were complaining about "piracy". The villain, they said, was cassette tape recorders. People were using cassette decks to record their friends albums, instead of buying them.
So the RIAA commissioned a study which they hoped to take to the government and convince them to do something to stop this terrible problem. Unfortunately (for the RIAA), the study showed that people who owned cassette decks bought 80% more albums than people who didn't. And the study was shelved and never pursued.
But isn't. The material I pirate are material that would be really, really hard to come by (rarer music and movies). I have Netflix and Amazon Prime, in addition to having additional accounts here and there. At some point my CD collection was over 600 and my DVD collection over 800.
Another issue is also that I feel like I paid my dues. Between cassettes, CDs, DVDs, bullshit cable TV subscription for 30 years, I feel like I'm done contributing for the most part. I don't watch recent movies, and if I do, I pay for them. I definitely don't listen to today's crap music. So when I'm looking for a song from the 40's, I hit YouTube and rip the music out. Even 80's would be the same.
At the end of the day, it's the studios that fucked themselves up the ass by gouging their user base. Had they not been so greedy and made music affordable and available, they wouldn't have half the problems they're having right now.
I used to be a huge "pirate" but that I would download movies all the time, in the last 6 months I have probably downloaded like 4 movies all of them stuff so old that legit they should be free by now or at least able to be streamed from one of the gob of services I pay for...
Anyway what changed my habits was Netflix, Amazon Prime, Youtube, Roku channel and Direct TV Now. Between those options if I can't find something to watch that would say more about me than the content... As a "pirate" I don't mind buying my content if it has some sort of benefit to me like ease of access or choices, hell I will even endure ads if I must... (sometimes I enjoy those too... sometimes lol)
Love streaming my movies and TV.
Importantly, what this is saying is that a portion of the population that pirates do so for reasons that the distributors control or can address.
Increasingly draconian DRM and punitive punishment does little to either decrease piracy or create more customers.
Increasing the ease of access to content and either lowering price and/or offering some kind of tiered pricing will do both.
Guarantee you that The Expanse was saved by pirates downloading the show. If it wasn't for the response of the pirate community on forums and chats to go buy the show on Amazon, it would have been cancelled.
It just amazes me how little these idiots underestimate this medium and the pirate community. How completely under utilized it is for many shows to gauge if a show is popular or not. You can actually tell if a tv show is absolutely shit by looking how many seeders it has on torrent sites.
People pirate because they want to see if it's worth watching.