Piracy Survey: 39% of U.S. Consumers Don’t Care That Studios Lose Money From Illegal Sharing (Variety)
Most people know that content piracy is illegal — but a significant number of consumers say the fact that Hollywood studios lose money because of pirated movies and TV shows has no bearing on how much illicitly-obtained content they consume.
That’s according to a new survey commissioned by Irdeto, a provider of digital security technologies, finding that 74% of U.S. consumers acknowledged that producing or sharing pirated video content is illegal while 69% agreed that streaming or downloading pirated content is illegal.
Overall, 32% of the survey’s respondents said that they watch pirated content. And, according to the study, when informed that pirated video content can result in studios losing money — hurting their ability to invest in creating new content — 39% of consumers said that has no effect on the amount of pirated video content they want to watch. Moreover, only 19% of respondents said that the financial damage caused by piracy would stop them from watching pirated content altogether.