Enlarge (credit: Solskin )

Over the last few decades, research has grown ever more international. Big projects, like major astronomical observatories, genome sequencing, and particle physics, are all based on large teams of researchers spread across multiple institutions. And, because of the technology that makes remote work possible, even small collaborations that cross countries or continents have become increasingly commonplace.

In theory, this should make it easier for researchers to build teams that have the right talents to bring a scientific project to completion. But is it working out that way? Some recent studies have indicated that the research we produce may be getting increasingly derivative . And a study released today ties that directly to the growth in what it calls "remote collaboration."

So, is science-by-Zoom at fault? While it's a possibility worth exploring, it's difficult to separate cause and effect at this point.

Enlarge / Even hermit crabs have individual patterns of behavior — personalities, if you like. When scientists ignore the effects of such differences, they may produce research that’s flawed. (credit: NurPhoto via Getty Images )

Several years ago, Christian Rutz started to wonder whether he was giving his crows enough credit. Rutz, a biologist at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, and his team were capturing wild New Caledonian crows and challenging them with puzzles made from natural materials before releasing them again. In one test , birds faced a log drilled with holes that contained hidden food, and could get the food out by bending a plant stem into a hook. If a bird didn’t try within 90 minutes, the researchers removed it from the dataset.

But, Rutz says, he soon began to realize he was not, in fact, studying the skills of New Caledonian crows. He was studying the skills of only a subset of New Caledonian crows that quickly approached a weird log they’d never seen before—maybe because they were especially brave, or reckless.

The team changed its protocol. They began giving the more hesitant birds an extra day or two to get used to their surroundings, then trying the puzzle again. “It turns out that many of these retested birds suddenly start engaging,” Rutz says. “They just needed a little bit of extra time.”

In two weeks, the 93rd Academy Awards ceremony is scheduled to take place in Los Angeles.

The Oscars are the most prestigious film awards and millions of movie fans are looking forward to seeing what this year’s “Best Picture” will be.

Fans had to be patient as the official ceremony was delayed by a few weeks due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

Oscar Piracy

That’s not the only thing that changed. The legal availability of many top contenders, including Nomadland, is also lacking in several countries. That’s the result of closed theaters and slow digital releases.

A few weeks ago UK piracy tracking firm MUSO warned that the unavailability of these movies could trigger a piracy boom . The piracy numbers for Oscar winners tend to shoot up every year. When these films can’t be accessed legally, this will only be worse.

Do Nominations Boost Piracy?

With this in mind, we certainly plan to take a closer look at how the upcoming winners will ‘perform’ on pirate sites. That said, could it be that the nominations themselves have had an effect already?

To research this we looked at a sample of torrent downloads of the Best Picture nominees “Nomadland” and “Judas and the Black Messiah”. The timeframe starts March 5th, ten days before the nominations were announced, and ends ten days after, March 25th.

Generally speaking, pirated movie downloads will vary quite a bit throughout the week, usually peaking on the weekend. While the nominations were announced on a Monday, we decided to add the non-Oscar contender “Honest Thief” as a control.

Piracy Peaked

The results in the graph below clearly show that the downloads for both Oscar contenders peaked after the nominations were announced. Meanwhile, there is no significant change in downloads for “Honest Thief,” which even appeared to dip a little bit.

Percentage-wise, the nomination boost is obvious as well. On the day after the nominations, “Nomadland” downloads were 213% higher than the week before. A week later, these had dropped by more than 50% again.

A similar pattern can be seen for “Judas and the Black Messiah” which saw a 74% increase compared to the week before, to then drop by more than 50% a week later.

Availability is Key

It is worth noting that pirated copies of all these films were available in a high-quality format during the entire period, so that didn’t impact the results in any way.

The only logical conclusion is that Oscar nominations act as a promotion. This drives legal consumption but also piracy. With that in mind, the rightsholders would be wise to make sure that their content is available legally when the winners are announced.

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Note: The data used in this article comes from Iknow , which tracks torrent downloads through DHT and PEX. While it may not be able to track all downloads, it’s a substantial sample, which acts as a good proxy for the overall interest on all pirate sites and services.

It is worth stressing that this sample only looks at torrent downloads. Views on streaming platforms, direct downloads, and other piracy sources can’t be measured directly. That said, we assume that the trend will be similar there.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

After a film premieres at the box office, movie fans typically have to wait a few months before they can see it online, depending on the local release strategy.

This delay tactic, known as a release window, helps movie theaters to maximize their revenues. However, for many pirates, this is also a reason to turn to unauthorized sites and services.

Shrinking Release Windows

In recent years these release windows have slowly decreased and this process was accelerated in the COVID pandemic. Increasingly, traditional delays have come down, and in some cases, release windows have disappeared completely. Warner Bros, for example , now releases movies on HBO Max and in theaters simultaneously.

This shift is nothing short of a historic breakthrough. While more choice is good for consumers, these changes also breed uncertainty. Some movie industry insiders and theater owners, for example, fear that their income will be negatively impacted. At the same time, there are concerns that piracy will spike.

These and other questions are addressed in new research conducted by Carnegie Mellon’s Initiative for Digital Entertainment Analytics ( IDEA ). The research group, which received millions of dollars in gifts from the Motion Picture Association, just analyzed how early releases affect piracy and box office revenue.

Impact on Box Office and Piracy

The results are published in a non-peer-reviewed paper titled The Impact of Early Digital Movie Releases on Box Office Revenue: Evidence from the Korean Market.

As the title suggests, the research focuses on the Korean movie market which is the fourth-largest in the world, following the US, China, and Japan. In recent years movie studios have experimented with release windows in korea, which are significantly shorter than in other countries, including the US.

Instead of waiting three months, Korean “Super Premium” digital releases typically come out a month after the theatrical release. This means that movies are available while they are still playing in theaters.

The researchers use this unique situation to compare various movie revenue streams, as well as piracy figures, with the United States. To get the full picture, they also add in the effect of early versus regular digital releases in Korea itself.

Box Office Revenue is Unaffected

Following a complex statistical analysis, the researchers can estimate the effect of the early “Super Premium” releases on Korean box office revenue. They find a small negative effect of less than 1%, which isn’t statistically significant.

“We find a statistically and economically insignificant decline in theatrical revenue due to the early SP release, equivalent to an approximate 0.8% drop in total theatrical revenue in Korea during the first eight weeks of the theatrical run,” the researchers conclude.

This is an important finding as it shows that releasing a digital copy of movie months in advance doesn’t hurt theater revenues. This suggests that both consumption channels are complementary, which is great news for movie studios.

More Revenue for Movie Studios

And indeed, the researchers find that “Super Premium” video on demand (SPVOD) releases boost studio revenue by roughly 12% during the first weeks.

“Using digital movie sales data in Korea and industry estimates of studio margins on theatrical and SPVOD revenue, we estimate that SPVOD releases increase the marginal revenue received by studios in the first eight weeks of a movie’s Korean release by approximately 12%.”

While this all sounds positive, it’s undeniable that these early releases also impact piracy. This is confirmed by the data which show that the “pirate” release windows are also decreasing. Not just in Korea, but globally too.

No Boost in Piracy Figures

According to the researchers, however, this isn’t much of a problem. People will download pirated copies earlier, but the data don’t show that the piracy volume in Korea or the US increases for these movie titles. Pirates just get to download a film sooner.

“Finally, while the data from torrent piracy suggest that early SPVOD releases lead to earlier global availability of high-quality piracy sources, we see no evidence that these early sources increase piracy demand for movies released in SPVOD windows in either the Korean or US markets.”

All in all, the findings show that the movie industry is on the right track by shortening release windows. It’s not just good for consumers but also increases studios’ income too.

More Research Needed

That said, it’s far too early to generalize. This study looked at a very specific set of movies for which the “Super Premium” release came out after 28 days. It could very well be that longer, shorter, or no delays will have a different impact.

This shortcoming is recognized by the researchers who also stress that more research into the effects on piracy is needed. Especially in cases where a movie is released in one country before it’s available somewhere else.

But with more and more release experiments taking place, we expect that follow-up studies are already underway.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

The European Union Intellectual Property Office ( EUIPO ) regularly conducts studies to see how piracy develops over time.

These studies help the public to understand local piracy trends and can be used as input for future policy decisions.

Last month, for example, EUIPO research showed that EU citizens increasingly pay to access content legally. However, a group of stubborn pirates , who often pay for legal content too, remains.

This week, EUIPO released another in-depth piracy report titled “Online Copyright Infringement in the European Union.” The research is a follow-up to a report published last year which found that access to pirated content across Europe dropped by more than 15 percent.

Last year’s study revealed some broader effects as well. For example, it found that people from lower-income countries tend to pirate more and that awareness of legal options doesn’t always decrease piracy.

Most Popular Pirated Titles

The new research is partly based on the same data, which was purchased from the piracy tracking firm MUSO. Instead of looking at the broader piracy effect, this time the research zooms in on the most pirated movies, TV-shows, and artists.

These data are estimated from public BitTorrent tracker data which were extrapolated to other piracy services, such as streaming and direct download sites. While this method is far from exact, it should give a good indication of the broader piracy demand.

The 123-page report is in large part made up of tables with the most pirated titles in the EU as a whole and in individual member states. It’s based on data that covers only part of 2018, which means that it’s limited in scope and a bit dated. Still, it’s worth scanning over the results.

Justice League, Walking Dead, and Ed Sheeran

With over 42 million estimated downloads, Justice League was the most downloaded movie in the EU. The Walking Dead was the most pirated TV-show, with over 435 million downloads, and with nearly 7.5 million downloads, Ed Sheeran was the most pirated musician.

The most popular titles and artists show a lot of overlap between EU countries. That said, there are some local outliers as well.

Local Favorites

For example, the Norwegian metal band Immortal tops the music piracy chart in Norway, and the Swedish metal band HammerFall takes the top spot in Sweden. In Spain, American singer Luis Fonsi is pirated more than any other artist, and in Germany Bob Dylan managed to beat Ed Sheeran by a few thousand downloads.

There are similar outliers for movies and TV-shows. For example, The Mummy was disproportionately popular in Spain, taking the top spot in the film category. In the TV category, South Park does surprisingly well in Finland, beating all other shows.

These local trends are intriguing, but they don’t necessarily lead to broader conclusions. However, a more analytical approach shows that there is something to learn.

Film Piracy Findings

The findings show that there isn’t that much difference in film tastes between various countries. There is a lot of overlap between the 30 most pirated films per country and for the EU as a whole. Also, piracy is mostly affecting newer and commercially successful mainstream films.

This leads to the perhaps obvious conclusion that commercial success is linked to piracy. In other words, when more people see a movie in the theater, it’s pirated more frequently as well.

“This analysis shows that commercial success is associated with higher levels of piracy: when the number of tickets sold increases by 10 %, the number of illegal downloads increases by 3.7 %,” the findings read.

The second film piracy effect is more intriguing. Films from Canada, Australia, China, Finland, Germany, India and Russia take a bigger share of the total pirate downloads, compared to the total box office numbers.

“Piracy of films from these seven countries represents 2.8 % of film piracy and 1.8 % of admissions in EU cinemas. Although the total cumulated piracy of the last group is low, they suffer a relatively higher piracy rate than the more widely distributed films.”

This can be partially explained due to the fact that these films are not always available legally due to limited availability in movie theaters. Piracy is then a convenient alternative.

TV and Music Piracy

TV-shows are by far the most popular content on pirate sites. Obviously, more recent TV-shows are pirated more frequently but the link with legal consumption is less clear than with music and films.

While there’s a bit more variety in taste between EU countries, on average, 19 of the 30 most popular series are also on the EU’s top 30 list.

Local differences are most apparent when it comes to music, as our examples earlier already illustrated. On average, 16 of the most popular artists in a country also appear in the EU’s top 30.

In terms of volume, music is the least popular category of the three. The most popular artist, Ed Sheeran, was downloaded 7.5 million times while The Walking Dead topped 435 million downloads.

In addition, it appears that piracy preferences are lagging behind actual sales a little.

“In music, there is also a relationship between commercial success and piracy, although with a delay: many of the best-selling musicians of 2017 were the most pirated artists in 2018,” the report reads.

Conclusions and Future Research

The EUIPO study concludes that piracy seems to be driven by demand. Consumers want to watch the content that’s most appealing to them, legally or illegally. When it becomes harder to access something through legal channels, piracy tends to increase.

“These results underscore the importance of legal accessibility as one of the ways in which consumption of pirated content can be reduced,” the report concludes.

With the constantly evolving media landscape, EUIPO’s Audiovisual Observatory plans to follow up the current findings with more in-depth research. This includes the effects of movies that skip cinema releases and are made available on-demand immediately, by Netflix and Amazon for example.

And with Warner Bros’ recent decision to premiere all 2021 movie titles on HBO Max and in cinema simultaneously, another area of research just popped up.

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A copy of the “Online Copyright Infringement in the European union title-level study: Film, Music and TV”, is available here

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

France has been fighting on the anti-piracy enforcement frontline for more than a decade now.

The country was the first to introduce a graduated response system , Hadopi, where Internet subscribers risked losing their Internet connections if they were caught sharing torrents repeatedly.

This elaborate anti-piracy scheme provided a great opportunity for researchers to study the effects on legal consumption. Over the years, many papers have been published, documenting both positive and negative effects.

Recently, a new study was added to the mix that looks at the effect of the three-strikes law on movie theater visits. The researchers specifically examine the effects of Hadopi’s early period. That’s years ago now, but the academic papermill moves slowly.

The paper, published in the peer-reviewed journal Information Systems Research, shows that the anti-piracy law didn’t increase box office revenue overall. However, it did have an effect on the type of movies people were picking.

Hadopi Boosted Market Share of US Films

“We show that, following the introduction of the Hadopi law, the market share for US films increased by 9% at the expense of other movies,” says Christophe Bellégo, Assistant Professor in Economics at ENSAE and lead author of the paper.

This market share increase comes at the expense of other films, including French ones, as the overall expenditure on box office tickets remains relatively stable. The researchers expect that this increase in U.S. movies can be explained by the belief that these are riskier to pirate.

“Without an anti-piracy law, some people illegally consume American movies online and legally watch domestic movies in theaters because illegal copies of American movies are easily available on the Internet during their theatrical exhibition. This is much less the case for other movies,” Bellégo tells us.

While one might think that overall movie theater visits would increase, that’s not the case. According to the researchers, this can be explained by the fact that people have limited time and money.

No Overall Revenue Increase

The findings are not very uplifting for the French movie industry. Instead of boosting revenue, attendance of French films dropped. However, the researchers don’t want to conclude that the three-strikes measures failed. They simply changed consumption habits.

“[The effects are] clearly not in line with the French cultural policy aimed at supporting the production of domestic films and cultural diversity. However, depending on what the ultimate goal of the government is, supporting fair competition or supporting domestic cultural production, the policy is more or less efficient.”

Put differently, Hadopi corrected legal consumption patterns in favor of the US movie industry, which more accurately reflects people’s true demand. At least, when it comes to movie theater visits.

Limitations

There are some limitations to the study of course. The research period is limited to the period between 2008 and 2011 when Hadopi was getting started. It’s likely that these effects wore off over time. Similarly, the researchers only looked at the theatrical market. Other revenue streams, such as DVDs and Blu-ray sales, were not considered.

That said, it’s clear that anti-piracy measures affect various types of content in different ways. For some it’s positive, and for others, it clearly isn’t.

“As in many other areas, the effects of policies are complex. They often lead to redistributive effects where there are winners and losers. It’s a bit like sitting on a waterbed. Your weight displaces some water elsewhere, but the total volume is the same,” Bellégo tells us.

“Understanding the asymmetric effects has important implications for firms whose profits may be affected by legislation fighting piracy as well as for governments for the design of their policy,” he adds.

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The paper by Christophe Bellégo and Romain De Nijs, titled “The Unintended Consequences of Antipiracy Laws on Markets with Asymmetric Piracy: The Case of the French Movie Industry,” is available here (paywall) . A free pre-print can be found on SSRN .

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Every year, dozens of piracy studies and surveys appear online. These can help to signal new trends and changes in user behavior.

When done right, research can be a valuable tool to shape future law or to direct enforcement efforts and priorities.

This also appears to be the goal of a recent report published by PRS for Music , which was put together by Incopro . The report looks at the current state of the online piracy landscape and how it has developed over time. The conclusions from this endeavor are somewhat surprising.

1390% Increase in Stream-Ripper Traffic

The headline figure , which was taken over by dozens of mainstream news outlets, is that stream-ripping piracy has grown explosively. Between 2016 and 2019 the use of stream-ripping services in the UK increased by no less than 1390%.

This unprecedented boom is unexpected. At TorrentFreak, we keep a close eye on piracy statistics, but we never saw this coming. Intrigued by this mysterious traffic boom, we decided to take a closer look, starting with the data sample.

The PRS report is based on traffic estimates to a few dozen of the most popular sites. The appendix provides an overview of the sites that were considered for the study. This includes many of the expected names, including The Pirate Bay, Openload, and Flvto.biz. However, there are also a few unusual suspects.

French ISP and Huawei Listed as Top Pirate Sites

For example, the website of the French Internet provider Free.fr is seen as one of the top pirate sites in the UK. This is strange, as the site is in French and not at all dedicated to sharing pirated music. Instead, it’s used to sell Internet subscriptions.

The official website of the Chinese technology company Huawei is also listed among the top 50 pirate sites. Why remains a mystery, but it’s hard to see what the appeal of club.huawei.com is to UK visitors, especially since the site is in Chinese.

These two are not the only odd entries. The list also includes the website of the popular torrent client uTorrent, which doesn’t link to or host any infringing content. The same is true for the link shortener sh.st, which simply forwards people to URLs.

At the same time, the top 50 also features a lot of dead pirate sites, which haven’t been online for years. This includes some we have never heard of, such as usd.bravo-dog.com, which appeared to be associated with malicious popups in the past.

While it’s possible that some of these sites have links to pirated content somewhere, they shouldn’t be listed among the top pirate sites. Especially not when considering, for the purpose of the report, all traffic to the sites is said to be copyright-infringing.

Flaws Aside, What’s Driving the Reported Traffic Boost?

We could stop here, as the above suggests that there are critical flaws in the dataset. However, we remain intrigued by the reported 1390% boost in the usage of stream-ripping sites in just three years. According to the research, stream-ripping now dwarfs any other form of music piracy, as illustrated below.

This boom started somewhere in 2017 but it really took off between January and October 2019. In just nine months, the usage of stream-ripping services in the UK grew by more than 500%.

It’s not entirely clear why this happened and the PRS report provides no answers either. Instead, the report simply attributes this effect to one site, y2mate.com, which suddenly became very popular.

“Later in 2019 we can see another surge, this is likely due to the emergence and popularity of the site y2mate.com, which has the highest usage of all sites. All other services remained fairly steady,” it reads.

Google Trends and Other Stream Ripper Data

This is an odd conclusion. Stream ripping sites don’t just become very popular. It all starts with an increase in demand that drives more people to visit these sites. This report suggests that in 2019, a lot of UK visitors suddenly became interested in stream-ripping, and they all went to the same site.

We tried to find evidence for this “boom” through Google trends. According to the PRS report, roughly 50% of all traffic to these sites comes from search engines. So, one would expect the search volume for ‘YouTube to MP3,’ a popular term for these sites, to increase as well.

This is not what we see in Google trends. UK searches for ‘YouTube to MP3,’ which is good for 10% of all traffic to y2mate.com, according to PRS, remained stable in 2019. In fact, the trend since 2016 goes down instead of up.

Perhaps people might search for the site’s name instead? We considered this as well, but despite the reported explosive growth of y2mate.com traffic in 2019, the search volume for the keyword “y2mate” didn’t change.

Could it be that we’re missing something here? In search for a replication of the reported increase, we looked at the traffic numbers piracy tracking firm MUSO.com reports for stream-ripper sites in the UK.

We specifically zoomed-in from January to October of 2019, where PRS reports a ~500% increase in stream-ripper traffic. However, there is no such increase in MUSO’s data*. If anything, the trend is going down.

TorrentFreak spoke to MUSO’s CTO James Mason who explained to us that their dataset is different from that of Incopro. The latter, which is used for the PRS report, uses a limited number of sites, which can more easily result in biased results.

Biased Data?

“We can see that in January 2018, just 25% of our music stream ripper traffic is on domains included in the Incopro domain list. This rises to 68% by October 2019, indicating that the Incopro stream ripping domain list is biased towards more recently active sites.

“This bias is likely the main reason why their data shows a dramatic increase, whereas our data includes a fuller coverage of stream ripper sites within the earlier reporting period and so we have measured the more complete (higher) traffic in earlier years,” Mason adds.

There are other differences in methodologies as well. For example, MUSO only looks at music-related traffic to the domains, while the PRS report doesn’t make that distinction.

Based on all data that are reviewed by us, we find it hard to believe that the dramatic increase in stream-ripping usage actually exists.

We have shared our findings with PRS for Music and asked for a comment on our findings. PRS, with relayed several questions to Incopro, did not specifically respond to our question about the legal sites that were flagged as piracy portals. Not did they respond to our question about the spectacular boost in Y2mate traffic.

Like MUSO, PRS and Incopro did point out that there are differences between research methodologies. The PRS report only looks at a relatively small number of pirate sites.

“The key analysis [of this study] is of the Top 50 Music-Only piracy sites and is based on cumulative data collected between October 2016 and October 2019. As such, sites which are active for only a small portion of this time period may not feature in the analysis of high-usage sites. We acknowledge in the report that many sites from the original 2016 landscape are now offline – demonstrating the effectiveness of enforcement approaches over this period, and showing how the landscape from 2016 has evolved,” the companies inform us.

“Whilst different analyses may give differing results, it is clear that stream-ripping remains a serious and growing problem for music and we hope that this report can contribute to the debate on how to address it,” they add.

Limited Research Shouldn’t Used to Create Policy

The problem, however, is that the report is out in public now. This means that it will likely be used as input for future policy decisions. In fact, the report’s figures we already cited in a recent publication from the UK Intellectual Property Office , without a mention of any possible caveats.

That said, the goal is not to show that one tracking company or methodology is superior to another. All research comes with flaws, including MUSO’s findings. However, it’s obvious that these reports should be properly scrutinized, especially when legal sites are flagged as piracy portals, and when there are massive shifts in piracy habits.

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* Note: MUSO data includes an algorithm change on August 1, 2019, but that appears to have had a minimal impact on the reported stream-ripping traffic.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Two decades ago, piracy was booming at university campuses where high-speed Internet access was readily available.

This threat was quickly recognized by copyright holders, who swiftly took action in response.

The RIAA and MPAA, for example, helped to lobby in favor of more strict legislation including the 2008 Higher Education Opportunity Act (HEOA). This law requires institutions to issue an annual anti-piracy warning to all students and to create a policy to “effectively combat” infringement.

Despite these measures, piracy hasn’t disappeared from campuses completely. A new paper published by researchers from Texas Christian University and the University of North Texas shows that it remains a common pastime.

Piracy Habits Among Private and Public University Students

The researchers conducted a survey among public and private university students and specifically focused on the legal and illegal consumption of movies online. This allowed them to see how common piracy is and if there are any differences between private and public universities.

Generally speaking, private university students are believed to have more money at their disposal. As such, they should be less likely to pirate, assuming that cost is a critical factor.

“The logic is that students who have more disposable income who come from a more affluent family and can attend an expensive private university should easily be able to legally stream or buy movies,” the researchers write.

“Conversely, students who come from a lower SES background would be assumed to have less disposable income and therefore piracy would be a good ‘free’ alternative,” they add.

A Counterintuitive Finding

However, the researchers found the exact opposite. While the data indeed show that students in private universities are tied to wealthier families, they also pirate more. In some cases, twice as much.

“This study finds that students sampled from the expensive private university pirated significantly more than from the public university, even when considering different factors,” the paper reads.

A quick glance at the statistics indeed shows a clear difference. Among the private university students, more than 40% admits to downloading movies from unauthorized sources. For students from public universities, this was just 19%.

Similar differences are also observed for streaming movies from unauthorized sources (48% vs. 28%). For movies downloaded through peer-to-peer networks, the difference is smaller (18% vs. 14%) but that question only covered movies that were not yet available for purchase.

The paper doesn’t give any overall piracy statistics, but it shows that piracy remains prevalent, particularly among private university students. The same students who tend to be wealthier and on average have a higher socioeconomic background.

What About Paid Streaming Services?

That cost is not a crucial factor becomes clear from the fact that students at the private university also have more access to paid streaming services. More than 94% have access to Netflix, and roughly a third have access to HBO, Amazon Prime, and Hulu.

At public schools, fewer students have access to these paid streaming services. However, they are more frequent YouTube users, which is free.

The research also found the known gender effect. That is, men are more likely to pirate than women. However, the differences between private and public university students remain intact. In fact, female students at the private university downloaded more than men at the private one.

Legal Options Help to Curb Piracy

Finally, while piracy remains common at universities, there’s also some positive news for copyright holders. As it turns out, legal viewing options do help to lower the piracy rates.

“Nearly half of respondents indicated they have to some degree stopped pirating movies due to the availability of inexpensive streaming services compared to only approximately 17% who was relatively not affected.”

It’s worth noting that the data come from two universities, so the results should not be generalized to the entire population without caution.

The survey data also can’t explain the difference in piracy habits, which is something follow up research may be able to delve into. However, it does confirm that piracy is more complex than most people assume. It’s certainly not just about money.

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The paper titled: “A comparison of a public and private university of the effects of low-cost streaming services and income on movie piracy” is available here

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.