Piracy increases as recession takes hold

Thousands of Australians are now accessing sites that provide access to copyrighted material in an attempt to save some extra money during the downturn, new Nielsen figures reveal.

The total number of Australians who visited sites including Mininova, The Pirate Bay, and TorrentReactor jumped from 785,000 in April 2008 to well over one million this April, an increase of 33.6%.

But paying customers are still doing their part, with the Motion Pictures Distributors Association of Australia saying that box office sales increased 6% to $946 million in 2008 – the highest ever.

The Australian Recording Industry Association claimed that while CD sales dipped 12% last year, legal digital music downloads are up 35%.

Simon Bush, chief executive of the Australian Visual Software Distributors Association, told The Age that DVD and Blu-ray sales were still healthy.

“It doesn’t surprise me that Australians are using BitTorrent sites to get access to content – previous industry research has shown that Australians are per capita one of the world’s biggest users [of illegal download sites],” Bush said.

“It’s incumbent upon the industry to provide legal alternatives for the Australian consumer and I believe we are doing that. At the end of the day, you can’t compete with free.”