New research by Ipsos for the Italian anti-piracy group FAPAV shows that 43 percent of adults were involved in audiovisual piracy in 2021. Almost a 1/3 of these people used pirate IPTV. Even though things look bad, the good news is overall piracy is down 53%, according to a report in 2016. Still, FAPAV says Italy needs to do a lot better.
Italian anti-piracy group FAPAV has hired market research company Ipsos to do a study every year for the past few years.
The research aims to get an idea of how many adults consume pirated audiovisual content online, what kind of content they steal, how they do it, and how many laws they violate.
The news for 2021 is not all good. Overall, more people got content from pirate sources last year, but the amount of piracy seems to have gone down more than enough to make up for it.
Number of Pirates Increases
Even though there are more legal options than ever before, copyright owners in Italy might be a little disappointed to hear that 43% of the population was involved in multimedia piracy in 2021. That’s up from 37% in 2019 before the pandemic worsened the situation.
The breakdown in the Ipsos report is for adults. However, the percentage of piracy among Italy’s 10–14-year-olds is even higher at 51% in 2021, up from 39% in 2018.
In 2021, 29 percent of adults will still watch movies without permission. The number decreased from 31 percent in 2019 to 33 percent in 2018. Last year, 24 percent of people watched TV shows, slightly increasing from 23 percent in 2019 to 23 percent in 2018. (21 percent ).
In 2019, only 10 percent of adults watched live sports. By 2021, that number will be around 15 percent, more than double what it was in 2019.
IPTV Piracy Up Yet Again
People enjoy illegal audiovisual content on streaming sites and peer-to-peer protocols like BitTorrent. But, these methods are becoming less popular, especially when compared to pirate IPTV services. Even though there have been many raids, shutdowns, ISP blocks, and fines for operators and users, Italians can’t stop using their “pezzotto” devices.
In 2019, 10 percent of adults used IPTV devices to watch sports, movies, and live TV. This number doubled to 23 percent in 2021, about 11.7 million people.
The Ipsos study also tries to figure out how often people share their passwords, such as when Netflix users let other people use their Netflix accounts. In this study, people consuming content without paying for the subscription are considered pirates, and 41 percent of adults are said to have done this in 2021.
Not all bad news for people who own Copyrights
It’s not great for copyright holders that more adults and younger people are pirating. Still, the most important numbers may be about how much-pirated content people are consuming.
Ipsos thinks that there were around 315 million acts of infringement in 2021. This number may seem like a lot, but when you look at how far we’ve come in the past few years, it’s clear that we’re making progress.
In 2019, adults in Italy broke the law 414 million times. In 2018, that number was 578 million. Compared to 2016, the number of violations in Italy decreased by 53% in 2021. People with copyrights are still unhappy with the levels in place; that is clear.
Claimed Losses to Rightsholders and the Economy
Anti-piracy group FAPAV says that Italians’ use of illegal movie and TV sources may have cost the industry 673 million euros in 2021. Live sports may have lost 267 million euros in revenues because of pirate IPTV use. Last month, the CEO of Serie A claimed that IPTV piracy is responsible for costing football $300 million a year.
FAPAV says that piracy of movies, TV shows, and live sports costs all of Italy’s economic sectors more than 1.7 billion euros. As a result, 9,400 jobs are at risk and have an estimated effect of 716 million euros on Italy’s GDP. The Italian government’s tax collectors are assumed to have lost 319 million euros in VAT, income, and corporation tax.
We don’t know if these trends will continue, but Ipsos says Italians are becoming more aware of the issues. In 2019, only 28% of pirates knew the “seriousness of their behavior,” but by 2021, that number had risen to 50%.
