Why the drop in illegal movie downloads in Australia?
In this cross-posting from The Conversation Marc C-Scott of Victoria University says the explosion of streaming services in Australia has led to a decline in piracy.
There has been a decline in online piracy in Australia, according to a report by the Intellectual Property Awareness Foundation (IPAF) released this week at the Australian International Movie Convention, on the Gold Coast.
There is no doubt that piracy in Australia is far higher than many other countries. But why are the figures actually falling?
The IPAF report indicates that part of the decline in piracy of movies and television programs is associated with increased access to legal alternatives.
So what you are saying is if you give people easy, on demand access to good quality content, they’ll stop downloading it illegally? Who could’ve known?
If only the grave-circlers at News Corp and other companies understood this….
Stats seem obsessed with torrenting, which is a bit old school.
Streaming sites are all the rage now. You can stream pretty much anything. AFL was particularly popular this year with peers.
This year has seen a push of new VOD services, all competing for customers, including Netflix. Lots of free trials about. The IPAF data shows the growth in this area, which appears to be impacting on ‘casual’ pirates.
Let’s look at piracy rates once the activity among VOD providers has settled down a bit.
Also, the decline is driven by reduced illegal downloading of content; illegal streaming figures remain steady.
This could be attributed to the massive rise in VPN’s. Piracy is probably as strong as ever, but everyone’s off the grid
Note on language:
Journalists often give away their political leanings in the file sharing debate by using the incorrect term, ‘illegal downloads.’
Hollywood’s own lawyers use ‘unauthorised copying’ or ‘unauthorised file sharing.’
While loaded with negative connotations, ‘illegal downloading’ is a completely bullshit term. There is nothing illegal about sharing files in Australia, it is possibly a breech of someone’s copyright, but definitely not illegal (until the TPP is ratified, if the secret text is to be believed, and gets passed into Australian law).
I also believe that playing shows the same time as the US is a contributing factor. I remember when Australians would have to wait for an episode 2-3 weeks after it had already aired in America, and I think this led to a high piracy rate as people did not want to wait. Game of Thrones is a perfect example (despite the fact the first 4 episodes were leaked for season 5), they showed each episode the same time as the US and I think this is a contributor to a decrease in piracy