OZschwitz: Illegal downloads soar as hard times bite

Hundreds of thousands more Australians have turned to illegal download sites in the past year to save money on movies, music, software and TV shows during the economic downturn, new figures show.

Total visits by Australians to BitTorrent websites including Mininova, The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, TorrentReactor and Torrentz grew from 785,000 in April last year to 1,049,000 in April this year, Nielsen says. This is a year-on-year increase of 33.6 per cent.

The figures, which do not include peer-to-peer software such as Limewire, are in line with a Newspoll survey of 700 Australians in April, which found almost two-thirds of respondents said they were more tempted to buy or obtain pirated products in tough financial times.

The movie and music industries are battling revenue declines because legal downloads are not yet making up for the drop in physical disc sales. They have ramped up the pressure on governments and internet providers around the world to do more to prevent online piracy.

"I'm a guy who doesn't see anything good having come from the internet. Period," Sony Pictures Entertainment chief executive officer Michael Lynton said this month.

Lynton complained the internet had "created this notion that anyone can have whatever they want at any given time ... and if you don't give it to them for free, they'll steal it".

In Australia, iiNet is being sued by six major movie studios and the Seven Network in the Federal Court for allegedly failing to stop customers from downloading movies illegally.

Last week, 12 jurors in the Sydney District Court found Yong Hong Lin, the owner of an Eastwood music and movie store, guilty of 15 serious copyright offences. A police raid netted more than 16,000 pirate movie and music discs being offered for sale to the public.

With more and more Australians visiting illegal download sites, physical CD sales declined last year by 12 per cent, the Australian Recording Industry Association said. But, in the same period, legal digital music downloads were up 35 per cent.

Marianna Annas, general manager of ARIA's anti-piracy arm, Music Industry Piracy Investigations, acknowledged the data showing an increase in visits to illegal download sites. However, she said the ARIA figures for digital downloads showed "consumers are choosing to purchase music from legitimate channels".

The increase in piracy has done little to deter cinemagoers, with box office takings growing 6 per cent to $946 million in 2008, the highest grossing year on record, the Motion Picture Distributors Association of Australia says.

LNK

OZschwitz: Illegal downloads soar as hard times bite

OZschwitz: Illegal downloads soar as hard times bite

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