The most effective way to combat piracy - convenient and cheap legal services

More and more research confirms the same fact: punitive measures and reprisals against users and distributors of pirated content are not the best way to combat piracy. The most effective measure is cheap and high-quality legal services that people will enjoy using.

Another study on the subject conducted the New Zealand telecommunications company Vocus Group and published the results in the article «Netflix kills content piracy" .

“Legal streaming content providers are achieving what Hollywood could not do: they eradicate piracy by broadcasting films and TV shows that people like at a reasonable price and with maximum convenience,” the final report said.

A survey commissioned by Vocus Group was conducted among New Zealand users, but it can be said with great certainty that the same laws apply in all countries where convenient and inexpensive legal services are freely available.

The study showed that piracy “dies by natural death”, as more and more people prefer to access their content legally: “To summarize, the main reason people leave piracy is that it’s just more troublesome than it’s worth it, ”said Taryn Hamilton, general manager of the Vocus Group New Zealand consumer market.

“The study confirms what many Internet experts instinctively understand: the drivers of piracy are not the criminals, but the people who cannot easily or affordably get the content they want.”

Although many Internet experts “instinctively understand” this, this fact has not yet become obvious to copyright holders. For many years in different countries, they continue to hunt for users who download pirated content: from mass filing of lawsuits to attempts to disable Internet access to pirates(copyright holders operate through Internet providers). Rightholders are investing millions of dollars in this fight against piracy. But all these punitive measures have proven to be ineffective: they practically do not affect the level of piracy. But legal and affordable services like Netflix, on the contrary, are very influential.

A survey of more than a thousand New Zealanders on a representative sample confirmed that when content is provided at a fair price, people choose it instead of piracy. The survey also showed that piracy has de facto declined recently: “About half of all respondents watched pirated content at some point in their lives, but most rarely or never do it now,” says Hamilton. According to him, at the moment, the piracy rate in New Zealand is estimated at about 10%.

Of course, in other countries this indicator is much higher, but the principal conclusions from this do not change. If there is a convenient paid alternative, people prefer to pay a little rather than face the inconvenience of unlicensed content. This is indicated by a survey of those who still sometimes view pirated content. They were directly asked in which case they can abandon this habit - and with a huge margin from other options, they won “cheaper streaming services” (57%) and “more diverse content in existing streaming services” (48%). Punitive measures, such as the prosecution of pirates and censorship of pirate sites, found only 33% and 22% effective, respectively. The amount is more than 100%, because it was possible to choose several answers.

In New Zealand, there are remarkable statistics on how to watch live sports. Even there, paid streaming broadcasts (29%) have already outstripped free television in popularity (22%).

Researchers note that the level of piracy has dropped significantly thanks to free and paid streaming services such as YouTube and Netflix. Most people find it much easier to watch videos through them than solve the technical difficulties of downloading unlicensed content.

But by prohibiting and blocking resources it is impossible to solve the problem: “For those who understand something on the Internet, it is clear that censorship does not work here. People know that there are several sites where you can download illegal materials. They also know that blocking the most popular ones simply means that you will receive pirated material elsewhere, ”says Hamilton.