Here's the results of an online survey folks that seems to show US folks are not always interested in legal video downloads.
http://www.ccnmatthews.com/news/releases/show.jsp?action=showRelease&searchText=false&showText=all&actionFor=63970179% of Americans who are downloading movies do so illegally despite access to subscription based services.
US consumers are still downloading movies illegally despite the growing availability of subscription based movie download services according to a study conducted by Advanis Inc. Subscription based movie downloads have grown in prevalence with companies like Apple Inc., CinemaNow, MovieLink and most recently Wal-Mart offering movie downloads for a fee.
Yet 79% of those downloading movies are still doing so illegally, according to the study and is estimated to be costing the industry $598 million.
"The industry can respond to this stubborn core of piracy in one of two ways," said Phil Dwyer, Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Advanis. "It can spend its time and resources pursuing the pirates, and attempting to get them to change their ways, or it can put those same resources into accelerating the adoption of these services by the early mainstream consumers, who are more inclined to behave legally."
"The experience of the music industry, and the evidence of our research suggests there is a hardcore of illegal downloaders who are unlikely to change their behavior. The industry would be better advised to focus resources on migrating new, and legally inclined consumers on to these services."
Despite the convenience of the movie download services, consumers are unwilling to pay a premium for them. In fact, online movie addicts, on average, value downloads at $2.59, while they value a movie bought in a store at more than double that - $5.98.
No doubt its going to be hard to transition folks to the pay per view model but I'm sure in the majority of cases over time this is what will occur, unlike the music market that is severely over priced and unlikely to see customers switch to anti consumer models that limit the usefulness of all legally purchased products.
