The tides have turned: there's been a post-pandemic piracy revival

[midian182]

In brief: Piracy is back in fashion, and it's not (just) because of One Piece. After seeing years of falling figures, the European Union is experiencing an uptick in online piracy, which actually declined during the worst of the pandemic and the lockdowns.

The European Union Intellectual Property Office's most recent biannual report on copyright infringement in the UK and Europe makes for some interesting reading. Based on data from MUSO, a UK tracking firm, the years-long decline in piracy traffic has reversed since the start of 2021.

According to the report, 48% of all piracy comes from the illegal viewing of TV content, the most popular category. It adds that 58% of this practice is done via streaming sites, while 32% of pirates download their episodes from torrent-based file-sharing sites.

The data includes live sports piracy for the first time. It shows the category has increased by around 75% between the start of 2021 and the end of 2022.

One category that hasn't seen an uptick is music piracy. Once an incredibly popular area, the industry's crackdown on music piracy services and sites has been proving successful.

It's easy to blame Covid for piracy becoming more accepted. The Motion Picture Association previously said piracy increased during the lockdowns and continues today as consumers are more comfortable being able to access copyrighted material through illegal services.

MUSO's data, on the other hand, shows that piracy actually dropped during the pandemic. Film piracy showed an especially rapid decline. The dip is attributed to more users opting for legal means to access platforms featuring content they are interested in, along with fewer outdoor activities to spend money on during the lockdowns.

The report notes that the availability of more legal streaming services helps reduce piracy in some countries. There are also factors such as a nation's capita per income, level of income inequality, and percentage of youth unemployment influencing how popular piracy is in each region.

While piracy is on the rise, levels still aren't as high as they were in 2017 and earlier. However, one has to wonder if streamers such as Netflix and Apple TV increasing their prices will push more people to this option.

MUSO's data comes from tracking traffic to piracy websites, along with information from official databases such as EUROSTAT, and from the EUIPO IP Perception studies. What it doesn't include is IPTV piracy, which has grown into one of the most popular ways of consuming pirated content. If the hard-to-measure IPTV data was part of the report, the figures would no doubt be a lot higher.

h/t: torrentfreak

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/100659-tides-have-turned-there-post-pandemic-piracy-revival.html

 

[winjer]

Who could have guessed that increasing prices like crazy, would drive consumers back into piracy?

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Who could have guessed that increasing prices like crazy, would drive consumers back into piracy?

Increasing pricing, declining quality of content, obnoxious DRM, splitting content into dozens of services, pulling content for being "problematic", the list goes on.

 

[3ogdy]

"the industry's crackdown on music piracy services and sites has been proving successful."

The pirate's software that gets music off streaming sites has become better and more useful.

 

[Demote6060]

"the industry's crackdown on music piracy services and sites has been proving successful."

The pirate's software that gets music off streaming sites has become better and more useful.

I would say the larger factor is that music streaming is more convenient for most. All of the services offer mostly the same music collections, so they have to compete based on features and price. Video streaming services do not do that which is why they are pirated at much higher levels.

“One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue,” - Gabe Newell

 

[kira setsu]

Torrent sites that know what theyre doing honestly have a better handle on content than the corpos do,

you can find complete sets of shows/movies etc in whatever form you want, video definition, file size, audio type with subs n everything, then you can pair them with any of the free media players that you can glam up to look like whatever you want(kodi is my choice).

the bottom line is torrenting is easier than ever while actually paying causes you to work through a myriad of hoops, then they jack up the price once youve settled in.

one thing people will always do is find the easiest path to the prize, especially when money gets tight.

 

[dirtyferret]

Who could have guessed that increasing prices like crazy, would drive consumers back into piracy?

but but all the online prates say they only steal stuff so they can sample it and will purchase it if they like the product. Are you trying to say they are lying and are simply stealing stuff because they can get away with it in most cases?

 

[ScottSoapbox]

Many people have less money from the economic downturn caused by governments' overreaction to covid.
+
Rising prices from inflation caused by governments' bad monetary policy.
+
Raising prices for streaming to offset slowing subscriber growth.
=
Getting TV shows & movies for free sounds a lot better than before.

 

[ScottSoapbox]

the industry's crackdown on music piracy services and sites has been proving successful.

Incorrect.

The cost-benefit analysis for most people is that easy access to all the music in the world is worth $10/month.

Whereas, somewhat clunky access to some shows/movies for $10-23 times 3-7 services/month is less clearly worth it.

(The fact you have to google where a show is streaming as a first step is already half the battle lost.)

 

[Nobina]

Content is worth less in my eyes since there's so much of it. Hatred for companies has gone up.

 

[GeorgeTheNerd]

If you make customers jump through hoops to get to your content, they will jump through hoops to get it for free.

Make the process slick and convenient, and they won't mind paying for it.

I don't want to get another app on every TV and device, setup another login, watch that many more ads, or read the fine print on which plan provides what or which bundle covers what content. Every jump makes me question 1) is the price still worth it, 2) is there another way to get this, and 3) is there something better to do with the time.

And, yes, what I am asking for is what a cable subscription use to be as much as what streaming use to be. Before it was ads as much or more than broadcast, before new channels that took popular shows required new packages, before content drift made every channel reality TV. Streaming has become the same game with the same players as what it was supposed to replace.

 

[Kashim]

Who could have guessed that increasing prices like crazy, would drive consumers back into piracy?

Yes, and next year when they post record breaking profits again they will still cry about the countless billions they (supposedly) lost due to piracy. Funny how that works.

 

[axiomatic13]

*cough https://media1.giphy.com/media/YYfEjWVqZ6NDG/giphy.gif

 

[magisys]

Ginormous fragmentation of video streaming plus continous pricing increase are the main reason of why people is rediscovering p2p, but continue to pay music streaming services because they do have all that peolpe want (the world music) with a much less inflated price.
p2p is returning thanks to those that were able to reduce its weight in the content distribution. people are only following the best service all-round out there...

 

[techstrike]

Wondering how these reports have created, what happened to GDPR?

 

[BobHome]

Many people have less money from the economic downturn caused by governments' overreaction to covid.
+
Rising prices from inflation caused by governments' bad monetary policy.
+
Raising prices for streaming to offset slowing subscriber growth.
=
Getting TV shows & movies for free sounds a lot better than before.

I get a lot of my movies and TV series from our local library.
I'm on the list for the latest 2 Star Trek series and the newer version of The Haunted House movie.
(I hope some of it is worth watching. At least free only costs me my time.)

 

[BobHome]

"However, one has to wonder if streamers such as Netflix and Apple TV increasing their prices will push more people to this option."
- How about this: there's nothing worth pirating? All action, superhero movies are same story, different names & faces. Start happy, then a sad event, working through 'stuff', to the (usually) happy ending. It makes me think D+ no longer has imagineers.

 

[p51d007]

When Netflix was pretty much the go-to place for streaming movies it wasn't bad.
Then all of the studios said "hey! why don't we offer streaming too!" Then they pulled
content from a lot of what Netflix had, and now if you really really want to watch everything
you had on netflix, you need MULTIPLE subscriptions. Plus, they are jacking up the prices.
Couple that with the Bidenflation, people don't have the extra money for all of the streaming
services, so they pirate.
Most of the new stuff I overlook anyway...to woke, to politically correct. I have a library full of
old movies. Otherwise, I watch the oldies channels like GritTV, AntennaTV, CoziTV, INSP, MeTV.

 

[Prrredictable]

I would say the larger factor is that music streaming is more convenient for most. All of the services offer mostly the same music collections, so they have to compete based on features and price. Video streaming services do not do that which is why they are pirated at much higher levels.

“One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue,” - Gabe Newell

Yea, as soon as I read that line in the story I laughed out loud. Music streaming services make music piracy more annoying than its worth. You pay one fee and get all the music you could ever want.

 

[RandomWAN]

People moved to streaming platforms to get most everything they were looking for in 1-2 sites, on demand, and without the ads. Now streaming services have started fracturing their offerings (everybody starting their own service), they stuff more and more low quality fluff into their services and misrepresent what genre it belongs to (to make it look like they have more content than they do), increase their prices on top of making you pay for an additional tier to avoid ads, and then put more and more limitations on how they can consume that content.

In the words of Obi-Wan, "You have become the very thing you swore to destroy." Streaming platforms have just become cable TV all over again, so surprise, surprise, people are returning to piracy. If you make it convenient enough and hassle-free enough, the people will pay for it. Everyone always ignores the customer service aspect of their business and then it costs them in the long run. Nobody seems to learn this lesson no matter how many times it is taught.

 

[mordantfare]

As others have said, there's some absurdity of thinking on the side of media companies.

1) Music piracy numbers are down because there's a healthy ecosystem of music streaming services at very reasonable costs whose services all have every song you can think of. Netflix used to be able to offer (close to) this type of one-stop service. And then the fractionalization started. You can draw a straight line between the recent uptick in piracy and the creation of all of these containerized services (Disney+ (Late 2019), Apple TV+ (Late 2019), Paramount+ (2021), Peacock (2020), HBOMax (2020), etc.).
2) The primary stated reasons people fled cable was cost and convenience. Recreating cable in the aggregate through content fractionalization is only going to encourage pre-streaming levels piracy. It's also going to drive otherwise paying customers to either rotate subscriptions or do without, reducing the inward money flow even further.
3) F'ing ads. Here they're shooting themselves right in the big toe. Everyone has ads now, even when you pay them. And nobody in Hollywood can see how this is a problem somehow. Ads will push former pirates back to the bays of pirates. It's a basic service issue. Torrents and Usenet are cost-free, but they are also ad free.

So if you want to keep seeing piracy numbers grow, keep pushing ads, fractionalize content, and driving prices up. There's a surefire recipe to drive folks back out to sea.

 

[Nybblem3]

Who could have guessed that increasing prices like crazy, would drive consumers back into piracy?

The sad thing is movies have been so s*** for the last few years that they are not even worth pirating...

 

[xanthn]

When Netflix was pretty much the go-to place for streaming movies it wasn't bad.
Then all of the studios said "hey! why don't we offer streaming too!" Then they pulled
content from a lot of what Netflix had, and now if you really really want to watch everything
you had on netflix, you need MULTIPLE subscriptions. Plus, they are jacking up the prices.
Couple that with the Bidenflation, people don't have the extra money for all of the streaming
services, so they pirate.
Most of the new stuff I overlook anyway...to woke, to politically correct. I have a library full of
old movies. Otherwise, I watch the oldies channels like GritTV, AntennaTV, CoziTV, INSP, MeTV.

Sure, because biden is responsible for the inflation I experience here in Australia, not to mention how most of the world with varying leaders are all experiencing inflation......smh why do Americans forget that they aren't the whole world?

 

[PEnnn]

but but all the online prates say they only steal stuff so they can sample it and will purchase it if they like the product. Are you trying to say they are lying and are simply stealing stuff because they can get away with it in most cases?

Well, maybe because 99% of the products these days are overpriced boatload of crap?

 

[RandomWAN]

Sure, because biden is responsible for the inflation I experience here in Australia, not to mention how most of the world with varying leaders are all experiencing inflation......smh why do Americans forget that they aren't the whole world?

The petro dollar is a thing. If you think the valuation of US currency doesn't have an effect on the rest of the world, you're kidding yourself. Inflation has been markedly higher the world over because all of the clowns in charge for most countries spent over a year crushing economies and then do things like printing money or borrowing money to try to offset the damage they did. But I digress.