Piracy Statistics By Media Sector Share, Streaming Industry, Password Sharing and Facts

Introduction

Piracy Statistics: Piracy is one of the leading issues faced in 2024, and it affects markets like entertainment, software, and publishing. Even though people have tried to impose restrictions on illegal downloading, streaming, or sharing of files, it is still a widespread problem because there is a lot of free content that is easily available on the internet.

As per the piracy statistics 2024, vast encroachment by digital technologies fast broadband internet, coupled with the appetite for digital content, has caused monumental losses for companies across the globe.

Editor’s Choice

• Piracy statistics reveal that In 2023, mobile applications accounted for 36% of all pirated software, while desktop software piracy was slightly lower at 30%.
• The year 2021 saw the United States at the apex with an estimated 13.5 billion visits to piracy websites, which included a total of 182 billion ounces of global visits.
• Between January 2017 and November 2023, visits to software piracy websites amounted to nearly 84.77 billion.
• In 2023 alone, these websites received 15.2 billion visits across the globe, growing from 8.75 billion visits during the first eight months of 2022.
• In the year 2022, 38% of the population in the UK acknowledged practicing software piracy.
• In 2023, Russia contributed to over 8.5% of the total software piracy in the world.
• For the first eight months of 2022, the U.S. had a staggering 15.47 billion visits to the piracy pages.
• However, in 2023, as many as 40% of software vendors sustained losses due to software piracy, an increase from 17% the year before.
• It was also noted that 33% of the respondents in the IT firms said that they experienced losses subject to piracy in the range of 6-10%, while 8% of them indicated that their losses were more than 30%.
• According to piracy statistics, 67% of the data in the population consists of the countries of North America and Western Europe, where the majority of the pirate sites are situated.
• In the same year, reports published on the number of users of illegal software reported that China was at the forefront. In the year 2021, out of all the traffic driven by piracy, television piracy accounted for 50.3%.
• The U.S. music industry, on its own, reportedly loses $12.5 billion due to piracy every year.
• In 2020, companies like Amazon, Google, and Facebook, owned by the Technologies Society, paid tens of millions of dollars to pirate ship operators.
• In Central/Eastern Europe and Asia Pacific, 57% of computer users confessed to having once downloaded pirated software, whereas most countries had over 50% unlicensed software usage.
• The average cost incurred in a single attack of malware is estimated to be $2.4 million, and on average, it takes about 243 days to identify the malware, with an extra 50 days to do away with it.
• Piracy statistics indicate that The U.S. content and distribution industry experiences losses estimated to range between $29.2 billion and $71 million every year as a result of digital video piracy, with the online movie and television industry poised to lose $11.58 billion in the year 2022.
• Close to 127 billion episodes of U.S. television programs are vandalized through illegal download and streaming each year, whereby 230 billion people in the world pirate watched series and movies.
• In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, there were 12.5 billion pirate website visits in the United States.
• Piracy statistics show that in 2004, the average profile of a pirate belonged to a young male residing in cities who was between the ages of 16 and 24.
• These days, people from the age group 30 to 44 are the most common book pirates. In the year 2023, the most downloaded films on the pirate sites were “Spider-Man: No Way Home” with 21%, “The Batman” with 13%, and “Doctor Strange” with 10%.

Piracy Key Facts

• As a result, more viewers are attempting to find alternative mediums to access music or television even before they are released to the general public. This sometimes leads to finding ways to break the law to access the preferred films or series.
• Piracy rates in critics such as Egrit Yusoff’s case; however, in the United States, where 51% of the surveyed audience consumed pirated content.
• Media piracy extends to various genres, with video piracy being one of the most rampant.
• For instance, out of the people living in Spain and Canada, approximately one-third claimed to have watched pirated videos before.
• A prevalent cause of video-on-demand piracy has eternally been the yearning to see the latest releases in the comfort of one’s home without paying expensive cinema ticket prices or premium television subscriptions.
• The most commonly used piracy tactics are stream-ripping, effecting unauthorized downloading or streaming of, or some other illegal use of, any such content.
• In the wake of the advancements in technology and digitization, this, in turn, has led to a decline in the sales of physical albums.
• Whereby music absorption via streaming rather than physical copying also rose.
• Recent piracy statistics show that more than half of the individuals who use the internet and are in the age bracket of 16-24 years have engaged in music piracy, with the highest reported rates from Spain and Brazil.
• A new market for piracy purposes has developed due to the introduction of e-readers.
• It is estimated that in the US alone, 16.5 million people download books illegally, causing losses amounting to $315 million in sales.
• Although music piracy is rampant among the youth, book piracy is often observed more among individuals aged thirty to forty-four years, while older age cohorts record significantly lower rates.
• The ease and zero cost associated with illegal downloading are the main reasons for this, as some people are forced to download illegal eBooks because they cannot find the titles they want in the bookstores online.
• Hence, some sites such as 4shared.com and bookos.org still thrive as people look for less expensive and more convenient ways of obtaining the content they need.

Piracy Items On The Web

(Reference: techreport.com)

• According to Piracy statistics, in the year 2023, software was reported as the most pirated type of media, second to television shows, and therefore made up 26.2% of the total items that were pirated on the internet that year.
• Notably, before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the prevalence of software piracy, as reported in 2017, had gone down from 39% to 37%, only for it to rise again by about 20-30% during the pandemic.
• Muso further states that in the year 2023, the number of software piracy sites around the world exceeded 15.2 billion, which was a 14.1% increase compared to the 8.75 billion visits recorded within the first eight months of the year 2022.

Countries Ranking Highest In Visiting Software Piracy Websites

(Reference: statista.com)

• Piracy statistics indicate that from the first quarter of 2020 to the third quarter of 2021, the traffic directed to software piracy websites was the highest in China, Russia, and the United States.
• This last quarter registered a high record of 3.2 billion visits to these sites, of which close to 15% of the total visits came from China.

Piracy Statistics By Streaming Industry And Password Sharing

(Reference: proxy.parisjc.edu:8293)

• In the present day, the activity of video streaming has dramatically grown to become a multi-million corporation, and Netflix has been at the forefront of implementing changes in home entertainment.
• The increased participation in video streaming has also attracted the attention of big media players such as Disney, NBC Universal, and Warner Media, which are active in the market, along with Amazon and Apple, all of whom are fighting for a piece of the streaming money.
• Despite the positive projection one would have on the prospects of the streaming sector, there are lurking problems mostly associated with password sharing, which is a norm that causes billions of losses every year.
• Based on the information from Piracy statistics quoted by Bloomberg, it has been predicted that the U.S. pay-TV sector would incur a loss of $6.6 billion this year because of account sharing and piracy, and this figure will rise to $ 9 billion by the year 2024.
• In response, a coalition of companies, including Netflix and HBO, is reportedly preparing to take action against password sharing, exploring potential strategies to prevent subscribers from sharing their accounts with friends and family.
• Previously, Netflix adopted a more lenient approach to the issue; CEO Reed Hastings remarked that it was a practice “you have to learn to live with,” given the blurred lines between legitimate and illegitimate sharing.
• However, with escalating competition in the streaming sector, the company’s stance appears to be changing, much to the dismay of many users who enjoy free access to streaming content.

Media Sector Share Of Worldwide Visits To Piracy Websites

(Reference: proxy.parisjc.edu:8293)

• Recent Piracy statistics reveal that among all the piracy websites visited in 2022, 46% of the visits went to websites containing copyrighted TV content, while less than 13% of the visits went to websites displaying pirated movies.
• As shown in our graph, less than 15% of illegal online traffic is attributed to music and software piracy as compared to the other forms of online abuse.
• 28% of the worldwide illegal web traffic is derived from the publishing industry, which includes e-book piracy and the scanning of physical books.
• In the TV and film industry, Muso looks closely at the visits by country and states that the leading five are the USA (14 billion), India (9 billion), and Russia (8 billion).
• At the same time, China and the UK have the same number of visits, 4 billion each. 95% of all the traffic associated with television piracy and crimes related to viewing or downloading movies is generated from illegal streaming websites.
• Torrents have been a popular method of peer-to-peer file-sharing that has been rendered almost useless in today’s society as it now accounts for only a fraction of the overall piracy traffic.
• Piracy statistics indicate that in countries like Russia, where a large number of music and movie piracy websites are available, piracy statistics reported that over 215 billion visits to such websites occurred in 2022, an increase of 18% compared to that of the year before.
• The most important issue is the extent of harm caused by piracy, as different sources report significantly different rates of figures lost because of participant’s inability to pay.

Piracy Statistics By Country

(Source: dataprot.net)

• Recent Piracy statistics concerning digital content theft reveal that more than half (over 50%) of all recorded traffic is targeted streaming websites, which are still the favorite among a large number of users today.
• However, the advancement of torrents and direct download websites has not declined either. Interestingly, despite numerous restrictions on pirate websites and public disapproval of such practices, the UK was still one of the top 10 countries.
• The first, nearly 17.3 billion downloads, came from the United States, followed by Russia and India.
• Strangely, even though most narratives portray China as a country that heavily relies on pirated downloads, the country has surprisingly yet to appear in the rankings.
• It only managed to get 4.6 billion visits in 2019, which means it was in 18th place on the list, which is not great at all for the country with the largest population of 1.4 billion.

Danger Of Digital Piracy

• Digital Piracy includes risks such as being exposed to adult or inappropriate content, getting infected by malicious software, and falling victim to phishing tactics, or cyber crimes, among others.
• However, purchasing or using pirated materials may also affect you financially, as a few individuals may engage in fraud to obtain money from you.
• The Digital Citizens Alliance (DCA), a non-profit, has come up and stated that among people who used their credit cards for purchasing any piracy service in America, 72% of such people reported fraud issues in the end ees activity, while only 18% of people who did not engage in such site sand activity.
• Moreover, they are four times more at risk of falling prey to identity loss, which occurs in 44% of such individuals, as opposed to only 10% of users of legal content who are then the victim of these crimes.
• In light of these statistics, the DCA partnered with the Attorneys General of 19 US jurisdictions and Washington DC to produce and disseminate PSAs.
• These PSAs warn the viewers of certain risks, such as malware or credit card fraud and zip piracy.
• To sum up, the adverse effects of consuming pirated materials will oftentimes surpass the enjoyment derived after accessing the content.

Efforts To Combat Piracy

• Stricter actions against illegitimate practices such as piracy are being taken by many governments through organizing campaigns and working with relevant local technology companies.
• In the same year, for example, in 2024, the United States of America and the European Union made it compulsory to pay a penalty of $150,000 to any person caught engaging in the distribution of pirated works.
• The existence of easy and legitimate streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime has contributed positively to the fight against piracy by providing better options.
• Today, it is hard to find a consumer where illegal consumption contributes more than 25% of the total consumption of these services, which has grown at torrents turnaround global reach.
• Technological means such as digital rights management (DRM) solutions, isotopic watermarking, and artificial intelligence-based content monitoring systems are used to monitor the internet for illegal content uploads and deter them.
• However, in the year 2024, several of these measures are rendered ineffective by piracy-averse hackers; hence, piracy remains a concern.

Conclusion

Although measures have been put in place to deal with piracy and technology has improved, in 2024, piracy is still a grievous global challenge. Piracy statistics estimated that many industries lose billions of dollars on an annual basis because of this vice. Combatting piracy will require further joint efforts by governments, technology firms, and content providers to make realistic legal options available and punish offenders more harshly.

This may bring some hope, as the downward trend may even be affected by the statistics for those crimes in a few years with increasing awareness and measures to mitigate these crimes therein.

Maitrayee Dey

Maitrayee, after completing her graduation in Electrical Engineering, transitioned into the world of writing following a series of technical roles. She specializes in technology and Artificial Intelligence, bringing her experience as an Academic Research Analyst and Freelance Writer, with a focus on education and healthcare under the Australian system. From an early age, writing and painting have been her passions, leading her to pursue a full-time career in writing. In addition to her professional endeavors, Maitrayee also manages a YouTube channel dedicated to cooking.

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