Solutions Research Group claims that 25% of the total 147 million online population of the US have downloaded a movie illegally using a P2P file-sharing site of some kind.
Solution Research Group recently released more data concerning its syndicated consumer trend study Digital Life America. The study was conducted between June and September of last year (2006), and involved taking nationally representative samples of over 2,600 people by telephone and online, which was 1,016 and 1,600 respectively.
Digital Life America was first launched in 2005 and its focus has been studying consumer behavior and attitudes in the entertainment, media, technology and leisure sectors.
This latest study as part of Digital Life America concerned movie file-sharing trends.
It claims that 32 million Americans 12 years of age or older have downloaded a full-length movie at some point in the past. Of this number, 20 million are so-called “regular users” having done so in the last month.
Some other findings include:
A typical movie downloader from file-sharing sites is 29 years of age and has 16 titles stored on their PC – 63% are male and 37% are female.
80% of downloaders, or 25.6 million people, only use illegal P2P and file-sharing networks to get their movies, and the number of these users doubled in size between 2005 and 2006.
56% watched a DVD on a PC at some point and 29% viewed a
DVD on a PC last month.
25% watched a streaming TV show on their PCs.
One of the more curious findings that they study revealed is that ” Unauthorized downloads of copyrighted movies are not perceived as a serious offense.”
The study referred to this as the Robin Hood effect, in that people believe that celebrities and movie studios are “..rich already and as a result don’t think of movie downloading as a big deal.”
It noted:
Only 40% believe downloading “copyrighted movies off the Internet” is a “very serious offense” – compared to the 78% who
believe “taking a DVD from a store without paying” is a very serious offense. As another point of comparison, Americans are
much more likely to believe that “parking in a fire lane” is a very serious offense (59%).
The study’s author, Kaan Yigit, concluded that “The current crop of ‘download to own’ movie services and the new ones coming into the market will need to offer greater flexibility of use, selection and low prices to convert the current users to their services – otherwise file-sharing will continue to thrive. ”
Now the study doesn’t specify exactly what P2P and file-sharing programs people are using but, my guess is that the increasing use of BitTorrent by users has allowed for such a dramatic rise in number of movies being shared illegally online. The combination of the BitTorrent protocol and home broadband connections has made it even easier for users to share large movie files quickly and efficiently like never before.
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