Is Piracy really that bad?

Is Piracy as wide spread as people think? Is it really the greatest threat of the internet generation? What do people use to do this illegal act, if they even know how? This section aims to answer these questions.

Interestingly only 8 of 12 (75%) knew how to download music illegally, from within the post Consumption of Music the graph of how people 'acquire' their music shows us that 5 of those 8 use illegal downloading as their main source. So even though downloading music illegally no longer requires such skill, especially due to programs such as Limewire making it exceedingly quick and easy, it is very surprising that not everyone knows how to download and use it let alone use it as their main source of acquiring music.

The graph above is a question more relating to my Media investigation than Audience Research. There are quite few methods to how you can go about downloading music illegally. The 4 above are the main 4 and any other method is generally derived from one of them or a cheap knock off such as Frostwire instead of Limewire.


I was surprised on how many within the group I asked use torrents because of the technical ability needed is far higher for them than either of the Limewire or Rapidshare users. Likewise those using Youtube would need to have a specific ‘Ripping’ program or an Audio recorder which most cost money.

I am a firm believer that Anti-Piracy laws will never be enough, or in reality work, so I was very surprised when just under half of those I asked felt that they were enough. I expected more comments along the lines of "piracy laws don’t stop anyone from downloading music" or "They still haven't managed to prevent it at all" where as I got comments as "There's enough advertising to put me off".

To conclude piracy may not be in the utmost thoughts of many of the public, but it should be for those in the media industry. With this many people knowing how to download music it clearly is too easy to do so. Even with my own opinion of the law never being able to fully stop it, the ones currently in place put very few people off, even the advertising campaign is more something we chuckle at that take seriously.

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