New study shows that many pirates would buy movies if they couldn't pirate

piracystudy

An interesting study (PDF) carried out by an organization called Futuresource Consulting (and sponsored by Macrovision, for you tin foil hat types) just showed up in our inbox claiming that consumers love to pirate stuff, sorta. The study looked at folks in the United States and United Kingdom, and found that one-third of respondents admitted to the horrible crime of copying a DVD in the last six months. “Copying” includes using DVD copying hardware, which I’d wager few people use, and software-based copying on a computer. Mac the Ripper, etc.

It seems the whole point of the study was to prove, in some fashion, that movie studios and the like do lose money as a result of copying. The numbers show that 63 percent of those in the UK and 77 percent of those in the U.S. would have purchased the DVD in question if they hadn’t been able to copy it. (Presumably, these people are copying DVDs their friends give them, or they get at BlockBuster or something.)

Oh, and the most likely people to copy a DVD are guys aged 25-34, which is a little surprising. I would have thought the high school crowd would be heavy into piracy.