From The IP Kat:
The percentage of internet users in Europe that occasionally download or stream content illegally has decreased between 2014 and 2017. The decrease occurs for music, films/series and books. For games, the pattern is mixed. Meanwhile, expenditure on legal content has increased in most countries. This follows from the Global Online Piracy Study conducted by the Institute for Information Law (IViR) together with Ecorys.
. . . .
The research team conducted consumer surveys among nearly 35,000 respondents, including over 7,000 minors, in13 countries: France, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Brazil, Canada, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, and Thailand. The survey deals with the acquisition and consumption of music, films, series, books andgames through legal and illegal channels. Illegal channels studied are downloading and streaming from illegal sources (including via dedicated technical devices), and streamripping. Comparative legal research was performed on the basis of questionnaires on the legal status of online copyright infringement and enforcement, completed by legal experts in the 13 countries.
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Despite some legal uncertainty, the majority of acts studied are qualified as direct copyright infringement by users or give rise to liability for intermediaries. Moreover, ISPs are often subject to injunctions and duties of care even when they benefit from safe harbours. On the whole, copyright holders have a vast arsenal of legal enforcement measures to deploy against end users and ISPs. There is a trend in many countries toward copyright enforcement through civil or administrative measures aimed at blocking websites that provide access to infringing content. Notices to infringers and to platforms hosting or linking to infringing content with the aim of removing/blocking such content are likewise regularly used, the latter in the context of notice-and-takedown systems. Criminal measures are less popular.Still, despite the abundance of enforcement measures, their perceived effectiveness is uncertain. Therefore, it is questionable whether the answer to successfully tackling online copyright infringement lies in additional rights or enforcement measures, especially if these will not lead to additional revenue for copyright holders and risk coming into conflict with fundamental rights of users and intermediaries. Instead, it might be sensible to search for the answer to piracy in the provision of affordable and convenient legal access to copyright-protected content.
Link to the rest at The IP Kat
Or more have learned not to admit to it in case it comes back to bite them in the behind.
Funny that they think sales are up and piracy down, as sometimes the only way to learn that you liked something was to pirate it and see if you liked it before buying. Perhaps streaming is giving them the ‘try before you buy’, though why buy if you can always stream?