A recent study finds that one-third of the customers in the United Kingdom and United States make pirate copies of commercial DVDs. Vendor Macrovision funded the research and saw a dramatic increase compared to last year, when roughly a quarter said they've illegally copied discs.
Main reason behind the increase is that it's easier than ever to become a pirate. More and more PCs and laptops are equipped with recordable DVD drives and many DVD players have recording capabilities. Besides this we also see the introduction of software that allows you to easily bypass the copy protection on commercial discs.
As expected the biggest group of pirates are men aged from 18 to 24 using both software and recorders. In the U.S. these men copied 13 movies over the last six months, compared to 22 in the U.K. Although many don't regret their contribution to global piracy, a large group says they would've purchased the DVDs if they were not able to duplicate it. Secondly the majority stated they would be likely to buy new movies at promotional prices.
Movie studios will have to find a way to lower the amount of home copying by introducing new DVDs at lower prices. This will give some the idea to buy that one, very nice movie, while at home you duplicate the boring, not interesting, shitty movie.
