Two surveys emerged during the last week both making much light of the fact that movies have apparently over taken music as the most downloaded file of choice.
On Thursday the increasingly paranoid MPAA were drumming up several (sometimes) hysterical headlines in the press.
“Illegal Downloads Are Growing, Hollywood Says” (Information Week),
“Video, Software Downloads Overtake Music” (Biz Report)
“Online Piracy Dogs Movie Industry” (the Guardian)
“Movie Piracy Takes Off Worldwide” (ECommerce Times) and 100’s more.
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) says its worst fears are coming true. People are illegally downloading more movies, and as a result they’re paying to view movies less frequently, according to a ‘worldwide’ study conducted by the MPAA and online research firm OTX.
The ‘World Wide Internet Piracy Study’(PDF), released Thursday, indicates that nearly a quarter of Internet users have downloaded unlicensed copies of films, and that half of those did so for the first time within the past year. It also found that more than one-fourth of downloaders are buying fewer films on DVD and videotape, and 17% say they’re attending fewer theater screenings.
The ‘worldwide’ study was infact data samples taken from eight countries, the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Japan, Australia, Italy, and Korea. Study participants were screened to be active moviegoers. With the help of OTX sample provider partners GoZing and Ciao, a total of 400 respondents were initially recruited in each country. This sample was augmented in several countries in order to provide a minimum sample of 100 movie downloaders per country.
Not everyone is convinced of the veracity of the findings. Jim Burger, an attorney with the Washington, D.C., law firm Dow Lohnes & Albertson, says the study lacks any empirical evidence.
“It is impossible to tell with any clarity that this is a valid study,” says Burger on Information Week
. “It’s interesting, but as far as I can tell, it may be picked out of the sky.” He says the MPAA is essentially making a connection between users saying they’re downloading more films and the fact that Hollywood saw a 3% drop in box office sales in 2003, when the two things may be unrelated.
Burger says the study’s findings could very well serve a political purpose as Congress considers the Inducing Infringement of Copyright Act of 2004, which would hold technology companies liable for enabling copyright infringements whether or not there is intent to do so.
The MPAA’s findings are backed by a seperate, second report from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which says more movies were illegally downloaded last year than music tracks.The report to be published Monday says that across the OECD’s 30 industrialized member countries, music accounted for 48.6 percent of files shared online, compared with 62.5 percent in 2002, according to excerpts of the report seen by The Associated Press.
The OECD research, which was compiled with help from statistics from Big Champagne, a Los Angeles company that tracks digital downloads, says that illegal movie and TV downloads accounted for more than 34% of downloads over peer-to peer networks such as KaZaA, Limewire and Bearshare. The OECD report does not give separate numbers for pirated downloads and those that do not infringe copyright.
The study, which will be included in a larger technology report later this year, emphasizes that P2P technology should not just be equated with illegal downloading of music and movies. It is, the report said, a powerful technology that allows efficient distribution of legitimate files and data of all types.
“We see the technology as opportunity,” Wunsch-Vincent of the OECD said in ECommerce Times. Music and movie downloads “are only the start of how one could creatively exploit the idea of peer to peer networks.”
South Korea leads the world in the number of people who use broadband connections. Nearly 80% of the country’s residents have high-speed connections at home.
“Within two and a half years, we expect more than 70 per cent of our households will have Internet connections with access speeds of 20 megabits per second, which will allow them to download movies to watch on their high-definition TVs,” Chin Daeje, South Korea’s minister of information and communications said recently.
Its not by accident that countries with a higher reach of broadband access at home have more download activity. So that would make South Korea and Canada the ‘busiest’ file sharing countries in the world. So the OECD study claim that web surfers based in Italy, Belgium, France, Norway, Britain, Finland and Poland also downloaded a higher percentage of movies than those in the United States doesn’t make sense.
Poland has one of the smallest broadband reaches in Europe, the UK , despite government claims for a ‘wired Britain’ trails 20th in the world for broadband reach (only slightly ahead of Italy). The US. broadband reach is climbing towards 50% while in the UK only one in four has access to high speed internet.
Related Reading
Piracy Paranoia [the Fool]
Software Downloads Overtake Music [Yahoo! News]
Film Industry Needs an iMovies [Net Imperative]
Online Film Piracy Set to Rise [BBC News]
Respect Copyrights [RespectCopyrights.org]
Broadband Access in OECD Countries [OECD]
A Guide to Wireless Broadband for Public Sector Procurers UK (PDF) [Dept of Trade and Industry]
DSL Reports USA [DSLReports.com]
Broadband Use in the UK [ADSL Guide]
the Bandwidth Capital of the World [Wired]
US Broadband Dream is Alive in Korea [CNet-May 2003]
