A recent survey indicates eight percent of consumers located in the United Kingdom, United States, France and Germany illegally download movies and other video content through the Internet.
The Futuresource Consulting survey discovered two-thirds of people in the UK who were asked responded to often or sometimes watching TV and video content online, with US consumers just behind. Around 15 percent of those file sharers are watching illegal content online, according to Futuresource, though legal video services are still growing.
"This widespread availability of illicit content presents a major obstacle to the development of online content services, and continues to heavily impact upon revenues, despite governments’ and industry authorities’ renewed attempts to tighten up the system," the Futuresource report indicates.
Video copyright holders are having a difficult time trying to stifle video piracy, especially as more consumers continue to adopt faster broadband Internet speeds. National governments are attempting to help groups like the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), but it’s certainly and uphill battle tha it looks like the copyright holders are losing.
England and France are both working on various legal bills and legislation that could ultimately disconnect file sharers who are accused of sharing copyrighted files. The MPAA and Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) also are transitioning away from targeting file sharers so they can focus more on putting pressure on ISPs to stop users from sharing files.
How will the companies tackle video file sharing? Will putting pressure on the ISPs to disconnect service actually work?
13 Comments
All I know is I just bought a Sylvania iPod Touch knockoff at Future Shop for $70 plus tax (so $79). It's nowhere near as slick as the Touch, but the AC/DC MP3s I threw on sound awesome and I just ripped and converted Pitch Black and threw that on. Looks great. Nobody tells me what to do with the music or movies that I buy. If they try then that's when Duke fires up his bittorrent program and punishes them. The golden rule is don't bite the hand that feeds you. Do you need 12 guys with MBAs on the company payroll to figure that out?
You can't attack the source.
Believe me, there are waaaaay more people unaware of this stuff than the opposite. The funny thing is, they are making so much noise about it in the medias that more and more become aware of the system and start using it.
It's backfiring at the copyright holders asses faster than the speed of light. They will never stop it.
I think more like 38% ...
Also as a Canadian I am blocked from most legal forms to watch tv online. Because of different distribution rights, the nice high quality (sometimes in HD) streams the major us networks offer, are blocked from Canada. The versions the Canadian stations stream (if they bother) are very low quality and painful to watch.
Another problem is the cost of cable tv. I think cable tv used to just take satellite signals and pass them one to people out of reach of OTA signals. Now they have to pay licensing fees to the tv stations for broadcase their commercialzed tv. Its lame. Huge cable bills to watch tv with commercials.
I really do think they are pushing people away from tv, allthough the one thing that would be hard to replace are live sports games, as they are better watched live.
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