Well here’s an interesting statistic. According to a study funded by Macrovision, nearly one third of consumers pirate commercial DVDs. This study was based on a polling of 3613 DVD users in the US and 1718 users in the UK and was released by Futuresource Consulting. The study showed the following:

  • Commercial DVD piracy has increased in the last year
  • Copying has become easier than ever before thanks to PC software
  • Men between 18 to 24 years of age are the “biggest offenders”

Adding fuel to the fire – nearly 2/3rds of the offenders would have purchased some of the titles had they not been able to copy the DVD.

So yes – a report such as this will further press Hollywood to come up with ways to circumvent DVD copying – whether through technology or through legal means. Personally – I hate these kinds of studies simply because we don’t know a thing about the respondents. What are the age ranges of the polled users? What part of the country are they from? How does the age range affect the frequency of copying (although we do know that people between 18 to 24 copy the most). Without this information, this study is effectively useless and will only be used as propaganda for increasing and furthering copy protection laws.

I’ll say this much – Most of my friends do NOT know how to copy DVDs nor do they actually spend the time in front of their computers to do so.

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