Even though movie studios have attempted to fight piracy using numerous methods -- both physical and digital -- they simply haven't been able to keep up with digital pirates, recent research indicates.
Warner Brothers tried its best to keep "The Dark Knight" from being pirated, but by the end of 2008, the movie had been reportedly downloaded more than seven million times across the world, a media measurement firm found. Many Hollywood blockbusters also are heavily pirated, with millions of people downloading and streaming the content to an even wider audience.
As more people begin to adopt broadband Internet at home, and the availability of streaming video sites increases, more users are finding it easier to find copyrighted content to watch. The struggling global economy also may help persuade movie viewers -- especially people who normally go to the theaters and buy DVDs -- to instead watch pirated content.
"Streaming has gotten efficient and cheap enough and it gives users more control than downloads do," Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey said. "This is where piracy is headed," he added.
"Consumers are under the impression that everything they want to watch should be easily streamable."
The battle against Internet piracy hit the mainstream when the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) began suing individual file sharers accused of illegally uploading copyrighted music to other users. Since most users couldn't tell the difference between the music download and CDs purchased legally, music piracy began to explode.
Users also had the ability to download movies and copyrighted video, but the difference in quality between going to the movie theater or purchasing a DVD -- and the fact that movies were much larger files to download -- helped stifle video piracy for a few extra years.
Online streaming video sites continue to grow in popularity, so expect a higher amount of copyrighted material to be available before Hollywood is able to track it down and have it removed. Furthermore, many streaming sites based in other countries do not adhere to U.S.-based copyright laws, so it often times takes very long time periods before copyrighted materials are removed, if at all.
