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According to the report by the EU Intellectual Property Office, the popularity of torrents is falling. However, this does not mean that users of illegal content are massively subscribing to resources.
According to the agency report, the level of piracy in the European Union is decreasing. Residents of countries with high per capita income visit pirate sites less frequently than citizens of poorer countries.
Where do Internet pirates go?
- Researchers studied the traffic of sites with pirated copies of TV shows, movies and music in euro zone countries (including the UK) in 2017-2020.
- data provided by the British counterfeit content investigation agency MUSO.
- The data collected was compared with the economic and social development indicators of the European countries provided by Eurostat.
Therefore, it was found that the volume of traffic on pirated sites is constantly decreasing. Between 2017 and 2020, the overall level of piracy was cut in half: access to illegal music by 81 percent, movies by 61 percent, and television content by 41 percent.
At the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, there was a temporary spike in interest in unlicensed copies of TV shows, movies, and series, but as early as April 2020, traffic continued to decline across all content categories.
The level of piracy depends on the economic development of the countries. It is strongly influenced by per capita income. For example, the level of movie piracy is highest in Greece, Bulgaria and Slovakia. The smallest is in Poland and Germany. Piracy is also on the decline in states with the most legal video and music sites.
Users stopped downloading torrents
Furthermore, the researchers found that
Hacked online cinemas get more traffic than torrent sites.
- Video streaming accounts for up to 80 percent of pirated traffic.
- There are exceptions: in Estonia, Hungary, Malta, Portugal, and Slovenia, torrents are still more popular than pirated streaming.
- The share of file and torrent downloads in 2020 equals 7 percent of hacked traffic. In 2017, this figure was 12 percent.
The days of torrent trackers dominating seem to be over.
