Illegal video downloading underestimated
By George Gardner
A recent report by The NPD Group, a leader in consumer and retail information, is stating that downloading Illegal videos has surpassed legal videos by 5 to 1; and it’s not surprising to see the majority of them have pornographic content.
In these times, with quick computers, fast broadband connections, and P2P applications (including torrents), it’s not difficult to find and download illegal, copyrighted media.
According to The NPD Group, 6 million U.S. households with active Internet users have illegally downloaded at least one video in the past 4 months from a P2P service. More notably, 60 percent of them were adult movies; while 20 and 5 percent being television shows and mainstream movies, respectively.
Russ Crupnick, vice president and senior industry analyst for The NPD Group, optimistically noted, “Paid usage could double or triple within the next year as more content comes online.” Although, you shouldn’t believe this will happen until laws against these actions are strictly enforced.
Additionally, the report points out that only 2 percent of U.S. households with Internet access actually paid for a video; and it’s to no one’s amazement to see that Apple’s iTunes led the market for paid digital video downloads.
As if there could possibly be an ulterior motive behind this study, The NPD Group’s software, VideoWatch, aimed at legal digital media distribution companies, provides the ability to monitor anti-piracy efforts and place a value on lost physical sales due to piracy. This may be the right technique; prove there is a problem, then offer a solution.
To me, the results of this study are misconstrued; the samples were taken from 12,500 U.S. homes that agreed to install NPD’s VideoWatch digital video tracking software. This suggests that their video downloading numbers are grossly underestimated; I, for one, would not engage in such activity while knowing I was being monitored.
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on Tuesday, December 26th, 2006 at 3:30 pm
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