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United States Piracy Entertainment

32% of All US Adults Watch Pirated Content (torrentfreak.com) 257

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.
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32% of All US Adults Watch Pirated Content

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  • by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Thursday January 19, 2017 @05:23PM (#53699047) Journal
    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.
    • by houstonbofh ( 602064 ) on Thursday January 19, 2017 @05:33PM (#53699129)

      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.

      I would rather pay in money than in time and frustration. I WILL NOT pay in both money and time/frustration.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I'm perfectly willing to watch advertisement-embedded streams, knowing that that is one way the content can be legally provided. But too many studios don't seem to want to offer their archives as advertisement-embedded streams, thereby sowing the seeds for piracy. They reap what they sow, therefore.
      • by networkBoy ( 774728 ) on Thursday January 19, 2017 @07:59PM (#53700101) Journal

        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.

        I would rather pay in money than in time and frustration. I WILL NOT pay in both money and time/frustration.

        This is the perfect summary.
        I *pay* for Netflix && Amazon Prime. I don't expect to see something in my streams when it's new to the theaters, or even when it first hits shelves on disk (though it'd be nice), but when I can't stream a 5yo movie/TV series then fuck it, off to usenet to pull down a copy.

        It really is that simple. I used to pirate piles of shit when I was younger, now it's not worth the hassle unless I really want to see it and my paid services don't make it available.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        If you have a decent understanding of Linux, it'll take you about a day to set up an OS instance (mine is built as a virtual-appliance type setup on top of VMware ESXi 6.5 using two Ubuntu Server instances) that has sickrage, rtorrent/rutorrent, couchpotato, and plex all stitched together on top of a ZFS filesystem on public trackers. It will take you longer to do so on private trackers which will allow you to have your shows within minutes of airing. (I joined some very big ones by entering first through W

    • Restated as 32% of Americans admit they disagree with American copyright law. Passing laws that most people don't agree with causes the people to stop respecting all laws, leading to them not respecting the government. This is a road that eventually ends with the ruling class dying in a violent revolution.
  • Old movies (Score:5, Insightful)

    by psergiu ( 67614 ) on Thursday January 19, 2017 @05:24PM (#53699069)

    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 ...

    • Re:Old movies (Score:4, Informative)

      by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Thursday January 19, 2017 @05:41PM (#53699177) Journal

      is it still pirating when there's no possible loss to anyone ? Same question for old music, books, software ...

      The answer is yes, although only the rights-holder is able to sue you, and if they aren't around, then you can get away with it.

      Under copyright law (this is the way the law is written), not only do you have to pay for actual damages, you also have to pay for theoretical damages. So the copyright holder can say, "We weren't releasing it to increase demand at a later date, when we theoretically would release it. Your piracy robbed us of those theoretical potential profits."

    • by fedos ( 150319 ) <allen...bouchard@@@gmail...com> on Thursday January 19, 2017 @05:43PM (#53699187) Homepage
      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.
      • 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.

        Which is why copyright terms should be similar to patents. After 20 years you've made your money, now focus on new content.

    • Re:Old movies (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Anubis IV ( 1279820 ) on Thursday January 19, 2017 @06:19PM (#53699401)

      In the pre-YouTube days, Red vs. Blue [wikipedia.org] was available for free, but the only official point of distribution was the website for the guys that made it, and they limited which episodes were available at any given time so as to prevent people from killing their bandwidth by binge watching. Quite a few people thought they'd do the guys a favor and re-host the videos on their own sites or via P2P networks. After all, the guys were clearly having trouble bearing the cost of hosting videos that they were letting people watch for free, so taking some of the load off of them would be doing them a favor, right?

      The guys made it clear that they didn't want that done.

      Fast forward a few years, and those guys have built a media empire around the success of that and their subsequent video series. Their piddly operation has exploded to include dozens (hundreds?) of employees across the nation. They sell those episodes on DVD and Blu-ray, stream the episodes on YouTube and Netflix, sell shirts and other merchandise for them, and on and on. While it wouldn't have looked much like piracy to distribute those videos in the early days, given that they were already available for free and there were no obvious plans to monetize the videos, they understood that controlling distribution then would give them opportunities for monetizing the videos later, so even though they didn't have anything at the time, they still insisted on controlling distribution.

      Likewise, old videos that may seem abandoned may actually be about to get a remastered re-release or whatnot that the pirated copy would undercut. And old video games? I can't count the number of times that older games have gotten the "remastered in HD" treatment or have been repackaged for modern platforms when a new entry in the series comes out. As such, how are we to say when "there's no possible loss to anyone"?

      • There's some pretty famous games that almost certainly only got that rerelease because people kept passing around copies--some of them pirated simply because of how rare the game and/or functional consoles to play it on are--and believe me, any "remastered in HD" treatment for a game that's worth paying a cent for is going to include fixes of bad bugs and quite a few have the remaster announced well ahead of time. A couple I'm waiting to see are promising to do things like get stuff they ran out of time fo

    • Forget obscure, old is enough. Copyright should exist as a means of supporting creative works, not a way for large media corporations to sit on something in perpetuity and collect revenue with the only expense being 'investments' in congress to extend copyright.

      I'm more than willing to pay for something new because that supports the production of creative works I like enough to give time and money to. Music, movies, books, video games, sure, I will and do buy them. But there's are many things out there t

  • 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 ?

    • by alexo ( 9335 )

      20 years is still too long. With current means of distribution, 5 should be tops.

  • by JudgeFurious ( 455868 ) on Thursday January 19, 2017 @05:27PM (#53699097)
    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.
  • It's only illegal to make copies of copyrighted content without license. So torrenting = illegal. Streaming = legal.
    • by mattyj ( 18900 )

      You're out of your mind and spreading fallacies.

      Subscribing to Netflix, say, gives you a license to stream content from them, sometimes locked to a region. It's illegal to, say, use a VPN to pretend you're in Canada to stream content. Or to share your HBONow login with 100 people.

      As others have mentioned, for most of us it's a question of convenience. There will be those that steal just to steal, but there's absolutely no reason why I should have to subscribe to a cable package to watch the Golden Globes wh

      • by MrNJ ( 955045 )
        Your examples are all violations of the CFAA. While illegal, they have nothing to do with "pirated content" or "copyright infringement"
  • Admission (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    * 32% of US adults *admit* to watching pirated content.

    • Re:Admission (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Archangel Michael ( 180766 ) on Thursday January 19, 2017 @05:53PM (#53699263) Journal

      The statistic is almost meaningless.

      How many adults have ever shoplifted something? Once is the same as a repeat offender on such a question, while in reality they aren't nearly the same. I mean, I stole a candy bar from a store when I was like 7 years old, and I would raise my hand. Far too many stories have meaningless statistics involved.

  • 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.
    • There is no "mass piracy" going on. There are pirates who won't pay for anything, because they thing they are awesome and don't have to be functioning members of society, because they think they are better than all those "idiots" (everyone else). I know of a guy that pirates movies he never watches, because he thinks it is cool. He has thousands of movies in his "collection", more than any human could watch in a lifetime. He is a mass offender.

      • There is no "mass piracy" going on.

        I know of a guy that pirates movies he never watches, because he thinks it is cool. He has thousands of movies in his "collection", more than any human could watch in a lifetime. He is a mass offender.

        There is a difference between mass piracy and a mass offender. I do believe mass piracy is going on but it's only because of a few mass offenders. My kids (9 and 11) have even learned that typing "[movie name] full movie" or "[show name] season X episode X" in google usually returns several listing where you can stream whatever movie or show they want. They can even tell you which websites are good and which websites don't work before even clicking on the links and if nothing does turn up in google they

  • Twist (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Punko ( 784684 ) on Thursday January 19, 2017 @05:36PM (#53699153)

    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.

  • hmm (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fishscene ( 3662081 ) on Thursday January 19, 2017 @05:37PM (#53699157)
    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.
    • Maybe it's just time to re-evaluate your pricing. Piracy is not without risk, and if avoiding risk was cheap, few would do it.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Many people are saying the same about illegal immigration. The hordes of undocumented workers coming across the border wouldn't stay if they couldn't get jobs.

  • Sampling Bias (Score:5, Insightful)

    by medv4380 ( 1604309 ) on Thursday January 19, 2017 @05:42PM (#53699185)
    Sorry but the survey [irdeto.com] 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.
  • by Overzeetop ( 214511 ) on Thursday January 19, 2017 @05:44PM (#53699193) Journal

    68% of US adults lie about watching pirated content.

  • by Troed ( 102527 ) on Thursday January 19, 2017 @05:47PM (#53699213) Homepage Journal

    "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

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday January 19, 2017 @05:51PM (#53699237)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by sims 2 ( 994794 )

      I would love to be able to download digital copies of movies i've purchased.

      I mean seriously they often cost more than buying a physical copy that includes a digital copy what's the problem with letting me make my own dvds?

      I can do it with music why not movies?

    • It would be cool if movies (after some period of time like a year) went to a music-royalty type arrangement where anyone could broadcast as long as royalties are paid.
  • 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

    • 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.

      Who said anything about torrents? My kids (9 and 11) know how to type "[movie name] full movie" and "[show name] season X episode X" into google and start streaming a show in seconds. If they have figured this out then most adults have likely figured it out too.

  • 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, st

  • by drew_kime ( 303965 ) on Thursday January 19, 2017 @06:05PM (#53699323) Journal

    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.

  • 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

  • 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 fro

  • by OrangeTide ( 124937 ) on Thursday January 19, 2017 @06:37PM (#53699517) Homepage Journal

    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.

  • by dave562 ( 969951 ) on Thursday January 19, 2017 @06:38PM (#53699523) Journal

    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.

    • ... My wife purchases way more DVDs and Blu-ray discs than I want her to. ....

      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.

      IANAL, but as I understand it, this is not piracy and you're completely in the clear doing this. (As long as you can show the original discs that you bought, should it ever come to that.)

      • DMCA says that if there is any kind of copy protection, you are not allowed to break it. Period. Full stop.

        Exemptions ave been made, but (correct me if I'm wrong) breaking DVD/blu-ray/Cable-box encryption is *not* one them. This is why the Slysoft suite of ripping tools went away. They made it too easy. Grandma could do it. They made a lot of money because it was easy and attractive, and they got shut down for it.

        When format shifting is made illegal, only pirates will format shift.

        • <just saying'>It might be good if you read the parent post. He does not mention breaking encryption or copy protection. He says if the disc becomes unplayable he downloads a copy from the Internet.</just sayin'>
  • 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.
  • "I do it you do it and we'll all do it again"!

  • 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.
  • by MMC Monster ( 602931 ) on Thursday January 19, 2017 @08:19PM (#53700183)

    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.

    • One, streaming isn't as illegal as torrenting, since the end-user isn't distributing it. So their less of a target. Two, by using Kodi you are avoiding the actual site's pages themselves. And, with Kodi, your rarely streaming for long from the same source, so it's harder to track and even harder to prosecute. And at a place like a hospital, it would be pretty difficult for the RIAA / MPAA to bring a suit against them, as they would have to somehow force a hospital to hand over their internal DHCP / DNS
  • Crocodile tears. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by WolfgangVL ( 3494585 ) on Thursday January 19, 2017 @09:01PM (#53700329)

    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.....

  • 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.
  • by frovingslosh ( 582462 ) on Friday January 20, 2017 @12:32AM (#53701147)

    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.

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