Piracy Collapses As Legal Alternatives Do Their Job

[silicon_toad2000]

http://torrentfreak.com/piracy-collapses-as-legal-alternatives-do-their-job-130716/

Entertainment industry groups in Norway have spent years lobbying for tougher anti-piracy laws, finally getting their way earlier this month. But with fines and site blocking now on the agenda, an interesting trend has been developing. Quietly behind the scenes music piracy has collapsed to less than a fifth of the level it reached five years ago while movie and TV show downloading has been cut in half.

...According to a new report published by Ipsos, between 2008 and 2012 piracy of music, movies and TV shows collapsed in Norway.

The report shows that in 2008 almost 1.2 billion songs were copied without permission. However, by 2012 that figure had plummeted to 210 million, just 17.5% of its level four years earlier.

As expected, piracy of movies and TV shows in 2008 was at much lower levels than music, with 125 million movies and 135 million TV shows copied without permission. But by last year the figures for both had reduced by around half, to 65 million and 55 million respectively.



So what is responsible for these significant drops in piracy? First of all this effect cannot be put down to anti-piracy campaigns. Only a tiny number of Norwegian file-sharers have been prosecuted in the past five years and only since July 1st has the law been loosened to allow that position to change.

So with scare tactics out of the way we’re left with the common sense approach yielding the best results.

“When you have a good legitimate offer, the people will use it,” says Olav Torvund, former law professor at the University of Oslo.

“There is no excuse for illegal copying, but when you get an offer that does not cost too much and is easy to use, it is less interesting to download illegally.”

The dramatic reduction in audio piracy suggests that the music industry has responded most effectively and that theory is backed up by stats in the report.

Of those questioned for the survey, 47% (representing around 1.7 million people) said they use a streaming music service such as Spotify. Even more impressively, just over half (corresponding to 920,000 people and 25% of Norwegian Internet users) said that they pay for the premium option.

While TV show piracy has reduced by half in four years, it actually peaked at the start of 2011 with 200 million shows copied without permission. However, since then with the introduction of legal alternatives, unauthorized copying is down more than 72%.

For movies the decline has been more steady but with the introduction of Netflix into Norway during October last year, figures for 2013 should be even more encouraging.

It’s likely, however, that the entertainment industry will put this year’s successes down to the new law. While that may have an effect it is clearly the legal offerings making the big differences in Norway.

[GhostShip]

I personally would suggest that its simply Spotify that might be a reason as to any shift in file sharing patterns, although I don't agree this is a valid set of statistics, its more likely that traditional but often unnoticed forms of sharing such as USB stick sharing and groups of folks converging to a friends house for a "LAN Party"  are on the increase, also the rise of dark nets that allow for anonymous sharing of files and zero monitoring ability are likely to give the impression of a cessation of copyright infringement but the reality is it will continue as its based on a global reaction to an immoral and corrupt overlong monopoly that steals from artists and the consumer, when vested corporate interests stop buying political influence and giving out fat brown envelopes to buy laws then the common folks may well back down also but I don't see that happening while so much is made by so many for so few.

* GhostShip tips hat to Winston Churchill