The number of films illegally downloaded in the UK increased by about 30 percent in the last five years, according to new data gathered by consultancy firm Envisional, which focuses on media piracy.
The film industry has calculated that these downloads account for £170 million in lost profits, and said that illegal downloading puts jobs at risk.
Included in this study are figures on downloads of television series, which are also on the rise. The five most popular shows in the UK were shared 1.24 million times last year, an increase of about one-third as well.
Dr. David Price, the Envisional researcher who led the study, identified four major reasons for the increase in media downloads:
1) better technology
2) more readily available media
3) the ambivalence of the new generation toward illegal downloads
4) demand for media that is unavailable in the UK
Price told the BBC, "We're very eager to get the television shows as soon as they get broadcast in the US. But we often have to wait...[so] people naturally turn to the internet to get that content as soon as they possibly can."
Kieron Sharp of the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) noted that UK Government figures put global losses due to film piracy at half a billion pounds a year.
"About a third of that is due to illegal downloading of film and TV content. Clearly that is unacceptable,” he said.
Not everyone is convinced that media downloading is bad for the economy. The BBC interviewed a man identified only as “Steve”, who expressed the opinion that filesharing is good for jobs, “With all these ISPs that are producing super fast broadband we are actually helping create those jobs.”
Price doesn’t even seem to toe the Big Media party line, stating that media companies "need to compete with piracy and get their content out there themselves as easily and as quickly and as cheaply as possible.”
