Study Claims 1 in 3 are Pirating DVDs

Respondents in both the US and UK admitted to making unauthorized copies of DVDs in the last 6 months, up from just over a quarter of respondents in 2007.

The second annual study by Furturesource Consulting, a research and analysis firm, called "Consumer Home Piracy Research Findings," once again surveyed respondents in both the US and UK to gauge the levels of which consumers are making unauthorized copies of DVDs.

The online survey took place in May 2008 amongst consumers in the USA (3,613) and in the UK (1,718) and asked respondents about their home piracy habits of the last 6 months.

Around one third of all respondents in both countries admitted to making unauthorized copies of DVDs, up from just over a quarter of respondents in 2007. They pirated an average of 12 titles in the US and some 13 titles in the UK. It is 18-24 yo males who are most likely to pirate DVDs, but it is the 25-24yo combined age group that copied the most titles overall.

In both countries the most popular source for copying DVDs was rented or borrowed discs, and the most common method of copying was either from a DVD player to a DVD recorder, or using PC software for burning DVD copies.

Asked whether they would have purchased the films had they not been able to copy them, 63% of respondents in the UK and 77% in the U.S. said they would have purchased all, some or at least a few of the titles, "clearly indicating the scale of the lost revenues to the home video industry from home copying," said the study's conclusion.

Moreover, I think trying to take a few thousand respondents and trying to extrapolate to populations that number in the tens and hundreds of millions will always be a flawed proposal no matter how skilled the researchers claim to be. I just don't buy it. Also, the study was funded by the Macrovision Corporation which specializes in developing and marketing DRM technologies for companies concerned with things like DVD piracy.

Either way, the study fails to say how many people simply made backup copies of preexisting DVDs they owned or borrowed from family and friends, both of which seem like harmless enough practices unless your a multibillion dollar corporation trying to make sure everybody shells out $20 bucks for crappy titles like "Inspector Gadget" or "Gigli."