New study shows that many pirates would buy movies if they couldn’t pirate
- July 8th, 2008
- 11 Comments
An interesting study (PDF) carried out by an organization called Futuresource Consulting (and sponsored by Macrovision, for you tin foil hat types) just showed up in our inbox claiming that consumers love to pirate stuff, sorta. The study looked at folks in the United States and United Kingdom, and found that one-third of respondents admitted to the horrible crime of copying a DVD in the last six months. “Copying” includes using DVD copying hardware, which I’d wager few people use, and software-based copying on a computer. Mac the Ripper, etc.
It seems the whole point of the study was to prove, in some fashion, that movie studios and the like do lose money as a result of copying. The numbers show that 63 percent of those in the UK and 77 percent of those in the U.S. would have purchased the DVD in question if they hadn’t been able to copy it. (Presumably, these people are copying DVDs their friends give them, or they get at BlockBuster or something.)
Oh, and the most likely people to copy a DVD are guys aged 25-34, which is a little surprising. I would have thought the high school crowd would be heavy into piracy.
mathew (Who am I?)
3 months ago
Why is this surprising? The stuff I get as a dodgy download isn’t available to buy online. If it was, I’d buy it.
Just put together something like the Amazon MP3 store that lets people buy MPEG-4 video. Until then, stop whining about piracy.
Jim (Who am I?)
3 months ago
Then there are some of us that only bother to watch movies if we can get them for free. If we can’t pirate, we won’t watch them. That should be taken into consideration as well, although I doubt there are really that many that subscribe to the same way of thinking.
Carl (Who am I?)
3 months ago
It is common sence if someone can’t copy a DVD and they like like it.. they will buy if is affordable.
There is no need of a “study” to determine that.
Carl (Who am I?)
3 months ago
It is common sence if someone can’t copy a DVD and they like like it.. they will buy if is affordable.
There is no need of a “study” to determine that.
David (Who am I?)
3 months ago
It’s funny to see all this effort by the MPAA to show how evil mean and profit sucking the American people are, meanwhile we’re paying $10 for a movie ticket that grosses them millions of dollars, then buying the DVD which grosses them hundreds of millions of dollars. If American piracy is so bad, how come no studios are going out of business? How do they afford to pay the actors millions of dollars?
And what about the real problem? China and Russian pirates copy movies for profit, hell you can get a Russian bootleg often days after it’s out in theater. Why not go after the people profiting from this illegal activity and cut our own people some slack? Well the answer is easy really, why waste time and effort going after these foreign pirates for little or no money, when we can sue college gets and grandmas, hell they are LOADEd with bucks right MPAA?
B. Ogus (Who am I?)
3 months ago
No way, it is way too time consuming and complicated that even 10% of the DVD consumer population copy DVDs. I have had several non-geek people ask me how to do it an by the time I get to the second step their eyes roll back in their heads and they have no idea what I am talking about.
Randy (Who am I?)
3 months ago
New study shows that many pirates would watch free movies if they didn’t have to pirate them.
Ken (Who am I?)
3 months ago
1/3 of what sample size and how was the sample obtained? That is a ludicrous number and is absolutely meaningless absent context.
steve (Who am I?)
3 months ago
I have decided that since i dont go to theaters than they are not losing my business there. The rentals are cheap enough but I usually end up paying late fees. So I have come to the conclusion that the only thing I am hurting is by not paying somebody late fees.
Larry (Who am I?)
3 months ago
If the movies sold here as cheaply as they do overseas (as in China), no one would even bother to pirate them. The average cost of a movie in China is only a dollar or two. The studios still make money even after shipping the movie overseas! So why are Americans paying so much? That is why they pirate, because you can make a copy for pennies.And you can say the same for CD’s too.
zombiedata (Who am I?)
3 months ago
I will always pirate shit; things are too expensive.
The movie industry needs to stop whining…they make tons of cash. Their movies are too expensive to watch in theatres, and theire DVDs are too expensive new. Sorry, but they need to be cheaper. Even if they were, I still would pirate shit, because its free. I like free.
Music is another problem. Its too damn expensive too. I think music should be free…and then artists can charge for merch and live performances. I make music, thats what I do.
But fuck it. I will always pirate. And if all of us did, they wouldn’t be able to do shit. We should all just continue to do it, and reccomend it to our friends. Get your granny on board. Show her how to DL torrents. Lets create a monster they really are afraid of. EVERYTHING FREE!
Fuck the world.