Pirates On The Move Again!

UK Saw 30% Growth In Pirated Movie Downloads

The UK Internet research company called Envisional confirmed that it has witnessed an increase in unauthorized film downloads by 30% within the last 5 years. It is clear that such factors as the increase of connection speeds and the development of file-sharing methods over the years were responsible for this rapid growth.
The research carried out by Envisional found that the top 5 box office films of last year have accounted for nearly 1.4 million downloads in the United Kingdom only.
Dr David Price, the researcher from Envisional, explained that the methods of piracy had become much easier, downloads had become quicker, and searching for content had also become easier. In fact, today almost anyone having Internet connection can do it.
Unsurprisingly enough, at the top of the list with the largest number of downloads (about 200,000) is well-known Avatar – a film which, nevertheless, still generated box-office revenue of nearly $170 million in the country in 2010. However, the report reveals that the increase of downloads did not just apply to films – in comparison with 2006, last year the most popular TV shows have also seen a 33% growth, which totaled to about 1.24 million downloads. Dr David Price admitted that the UK currently has a big demand for North American TV shows in particular. For example, Glee and House are the leaders of unauthorized file-sharing, and their series are downloaded heavily in the United Kingdom. By the way, I’m not sure about Glee, but House is beloved all over the world – for example, the most recent Russian survey revealed that Hugh Laurie is the most popular actor among the youth – and that’s considering that House was not even shown on TV in that country!
Meanwhile, the UK researchers say that their citizens are very eager to get the TV shows as soon as they get broadcast in the United States, but they very often have to wait for a month or two to see them legitimately in the United Kingdom. Besides, they also pointed at the need for adapting and innovating that should have come from the movie industry to make unauthorized file-sharing less attractive to people.
Dr Price suggests that the best way to challenge this is to give consumers what they want. In fact, people are ready to pay for downloads, which means that making it legitimately available would be a great step forward.