However, China has recorded a relatively low total of 4. An increase in demand for music downloads indicates that more music downloads are taking place illegally now than people would expect, given the rise of streaming services like FireStick and Spotify. While desktop devices used to be the preferred machines for illegally downloading music, more people are now accessing pirated TV and music content via mobile devices. To verify their suspicions, researchers looked into thousands of licensed and unlicensed services.
Stream-ripping is exactly what it sounds like. It involves illegally downloading a file that is being played on any streaming platform, including Spotify and YouTube. Indeed, there are dozens of stream-ripping websites and tools that anybody can find with a simple Google search. A study conducted by the licensing body PRS for Music found that this massive surge eclipses all other illegal online music activity. According to MusicWatch, an estimated 57 million Americans engaged in stream-ripping or pirating music just a few years ago.
Back in , online statistics on music piracy pointed out that people aged between 14 and 25 had an average of pirated songs on their iPod. Almost half of them said they were willing to share their digital music with others, enabling others to copy hundreds or even thousands of music files at a time.
Nowadays, few people still use old-school iPods, but the habit of illegally downloading and sharing music lives on. Is it illegal to download music from YouTube? More than half of the correspondents said they had illegally downloaded music at some point.
Music industry piracy statistics highlight the costs of music piracy and the immense consequences on the American economy.
Music theft costs American workers significant losses in jobs and earnings as well as costing the US government substantial lost tax revenues. Piracy is not just about music and movies; the constant demand for popular TV shows is stronger than ever. TV shows remain the most popular among pirates, with Is streaming movies illegal in the USA? This remains a blurry subject for lawmakers in the country.
This study investigated the impacts of digital video piracy on the US economy. This number surely affects the US economy in terms of lost movie industry revenue as well as lost jobs and tax revenue.
This trend is especially prominent in the TV and movie industry. Statistics for film piracy then showed the total value of pirated content and revenue lost due to widespread piracy. Global internet piracy is growing rapidly in spite of stricter piracy laws in the US and the potential for harsh penalties. The same study found that, in those three regions, Movie piracy statistics from show that almost exactly half of the consumers were still watching pirated movies using their desktop devices.
Desktop computers are still the most popular tool for online torrenting, but that might not be the case for long. Even if you never illegally download, you probably know people who do.
Statistics for film piracy gathered across a range of studies point out that the device you use for pirating could get infected with malware, which can compromise your personal information within seconds and put you at risk of falling victim to identity theft. When you consider all that, your free pirate movie no longer seems such a good idea.
According to this BSA survey, the reason for such an increase in the amount of stolen software between and was a rise in PC shipments sent to countries with emerging economies. It's a reason people often state for pirating a game, but is that really the why, or it it simply a justification, with the real answer being 'don't want to pay?
We can't answer that, but we can show the answers we were given. Here's how the results panned out, broken down by age, income, and country. The youngest and oldest gamers cared about DRM the least, and the oldest gamers were also the least likely to flat-out refuse to pay for a game, or to pirate it because they didn't like the publisher.
From their 20s to mids, almost 60 percent of gamers said they pirated games to demo them. The 'can't afford' justification fell off from a high of nearly 60 percent at to less than 30 percent at older than Complaints about DRM or specific publishers, though common online, weren't too often cited as reasons to pirate. Those reasons never rose above 20 percent. Sorted by income, the answers closely mirror those of age. Because we had responses from so many countries, we've divided those answers into the three charts below.
These are the same countries depicted above, which all had at least respondents. The concept of pirating games to demo them is commonplace, but significantly less popular in some countries. While about 65 percent of Belgian pirates said they wanted to demo a game before buying it, a common answer, less than 40 percent of pirates in India said the same. Croatia and Serbia had similarly low results, while having some of the highest occurrences of the 'too expensive' and 'can't afford' answers.
Clearly, the bulk of pirates in those regions claim cost is their main obstacle. In wealthier countries, like the US and UK, Finland, Germany, and Normay, fewer than 30 percent of gamers complained about the prices of games but many did say they couldn't afford them. Close to 60 these pirates wanted to demo the games before considering buying them. More than 50 percent of respondents said they pirate games to demo them before buying.
Does that answer really check out? Nearly half of the respondents said they purchase games after pirating more than 50 percent of the time, while another third said they did so rarely. Overall, about 90 percent of the responses indicated that pirates do sometimes, even oftentimes, buy games after pirating them. How long after we don't know—it could be during a bargain bin sale or bundle deal, or could be as soon as they confirmed that the PC version ran well on their machine.
Going all the way back to our first statistics, more than 90 percent of PC gamers have pirated games at some point in their lives, but only about 35 percent actively pirate today. A similar problem exists in the sales of music and movies on the Internet. It only takes one person to find a way past the DRM, and everybody on the Internet can then get hold of a cracked or decrypted copy. If it can be played, it can be copied.
A game with DRM "protection" will be spread illegally just as much as one without. DRM is a thus far failed attempt at a technical solution to a problem that is entirely social. Education is the industry's best weapon against piracy, but as far as I can see, piracy is a part of society that will never entirely disappear.
Kirk, Colchester, England This article and probably Todd misses oen major aspect of the story. What do they do about this issue besides whine and come up with overly complicated "solutions"? Pirated copies exist for any type and platform. I personally would love to see the PC "delegated" to second tier platform and leave the pirates to crack and ruin the XBOX or playstation or what have you market just as virus makers mainly hit Windows systems leaving other OS platforms alone.
That way the prices might fall, quality might replace quantity in gaming again as the big publishers finally take their Sauron-esque eyes off the PC gaming industry and I just might be able to afford to pay for all the games I want to play throughout the year.
Stefanos Patelis, Athens, Greece I've downloaded a few games in the past and ended up purchasing a couple of them. My motivation for downloading a games is more of an extended try-before-you-buy than to avoid paying for it. I suspect that much of what developers think of as piracy in the games industry falls along that line. There will always be those that crack the games as a pastime, I doubt that will ever be eliminated.
And there will always be those that just don't want to pay. Until they make copy protection less obtrusive and more professional with less bugs then I wouldnt resort to downloading cracks for games ive brought.
Vorash, I regularly download PC games including the Battlefield game mentioned in the article. It hasn't reduced my spending either I bought a legimate copy of BF soon after downloading it , it has though stopped me wasting my money on sub-standard products. These are soon deleted from my hard drive and the money I would have spent I can use of better titles. The irony is that I have one game where the legitimate copy doesn't work due its copy-protection system but the hacked version works fine!
You put in a console game, it plays. You put in a PC game, and you have to install it installing its own protection software , type in a character string of gibberish, register online, remove any software the protection scheme disagrees with, patch immediately, then try to figure out why its insisting you haven't inserted the correct CD.
Is it any wonder that people download cracked games that have most of these hurdles stripped out? I'm assuming Enemy Territory is going to be a FPS game - why not do what Halflife did, and create a massively compelling online gaming service that you need a legit copy to use?
Making the game not suck in multiplayer would help too - after Doom 3, I'm not that hopeful. Phil B, Preston, UK i will repeat what others have mentioned over and over -- most users pirating the software wouldn't have paid for it anyways. Anonymous I do download PC games simply because most of them are so poor that they are not worth buying. Most console owners can buy a game, try it and return it within 10 days if they are not happy with the game. The argument from the industry is that you can download a demo for free, but the demo's are often very early versions lacking vital features and often the finished article is very different.
Until this is rectified i will continue to download games and only spend my hard earned money on the games that offer true value. Also even though my pc meets the recommended spec for most games they only run at a low resolution. This is because the games are designed to run on custom chipsets found in the latest consoles and back tracked to run on the pc.
Hardware dongles are horrible things for the end-user, sometimes used by proprietary software of all types, not just games, but a "solution" that is always going to be detested by the customer a. Is reverse-engineering a constrained program or cracking copy-restrictions wrong? Some might think so; on the other hand, there can be extremely good reasons for wanting to use a cracked program if one is available, even after legally purchasing the authentic original game.
One such reason are to be able to run the game without needing to put the original disk in the drive every time you play, with the likelihood that sooner or later you will inadvertently scratch or damage it - if it wasn't copy protected, then it's possible start by making a backup, putting the original disk safely away, and playing from the backup, which is no problem if it gets damaged. Another reason might be to play the game at all in the first place, since copy protection inevitably can have false positives, and stop legitimate users playing the game they have purchased.
That happened to me with the title Civilisation IV - the only computer I had available which had the oomph to run the game was a laptop, with a DVD drive that would not co-operate with the copy protection. So I was not able to run the game I wanted to play and had purchased legitimately on my own computer until I used a cracked version to bypass the copy protection; was that wrong, then? John Carmack was spouting this rubbish last year, telling PC games mags that the PC gaming industry was getting torched.
After ID chucked their toys out the pram beacuse the critical savaging Doom three very few gamers listen to their opinion. Paul Delaney B. The best strategy for reducing piracy is keep prices low read: stop ripping us off!! James, Benfleet, Essex. Low graphics Accessibility help. News services Your news when you want it. News Front Page. E-mail this to a friend Printable version.
Enemy Territory has already been leaked online. The community who love PC games needs to recognise they are poisoning the well we all drink from. Designer hopes for love in games. Virtual worlds set for shake-up.
Sony unveils its new 3D universe.
0コメント