One Out of Three Rips DVD
By Mark Fleischmann July 14, 2008 — The movie industry's longtime claims of home piracy may have some basis in fact. According to a study by Futuresource Consulting, one out of three American and British consumers surveyed admitted to copying DVDs. The news comes as revenues from DVD sales have moved from a long period of steady increase to the start of a decline.

Futuresource performed the survey in May 2008 and presented its findings in June at the Consumer Home Piracy Industry Briefing in London. Using a sample of 3613 U.S. consumers and 1718 from the U.K., the study found about one-third admitted to copying prerecorded DVDs in the previous six months, up from just over a quarter in 2007. The figure was 38 percent for the U.K. and 32 percent for the U.S. Males 18-24 are most likely to copy, suggesting that the DVD sales decline has deep demographic roots and thus will only accelerate.

What are they copying? Movies are the answer in 67 percent of cases, though that's actually down from 76 percent in the previous year. TV-show copying is on the increase, from 42 percent in 2007 to 61 percent in 2008. Special-interest programming fell from 35 to 31 percent. The numbers do not add up to 100, so obviously people are copying more than one type of programming. Please keep in mind that in the U.S., time-shift copying of broadcast TV shows was sanctioned in 1984 by the Supreme Court's landmark Betamax Decision.

For details see the Futuresource website and the study (PDF).