Large-scale illegal downloading from internet

21 out of 100 adult New Zealanders say they have illegally downloaded content from the internet at some time when they know they should have paid for it.

That’s the equivalent of 676,600 people.

In the past week 222,300 adults overall have illegally downloaded knowing they should have paid.

Nearly 9 out of 100 aren’t sure whether they have ever downloaded content from the internet illegally or not.  35 out 100 say they download legally by paying for content. 

A new independent survey from Horizon Research finds

• 16.3% of adults say they have used a file sharing service to download content like music, movies, television shows, videos, books or other content from the internet illegally without paying when they know they should have.
• 18.6% say they have illegally downloaded in other ways without paying when they know they should have.

File sharing

Of the 519,900 adults who say they’ve illegally downloaded using a file sharing service, 30.8% (152,700) say they have done so in the past week.  31% (161,500) say they last did this more than a year ago.

Of the 595,800 adults who say they have illegally downloaded content in other ways knowing they should have paid, 33% (217,800) say they have done this in the past week and 23% (139,600) say they last did this more than a year ago.

In contrast

• 35.3% (the equivalent of 1,1,129,600 adults)  say they have downloaded legally by paying, 6.5% of all, adults (207,700) say they have downloaded legally in the past week

Some 5.8% say they have used a “virtual tunnel”, disguising their geographical location in order to buy content from overseas content providers, like Netflix, in the past week. This is the equivalent of 185,500 adults.

48% of them, equivalent to 89,550 adults, said they had used a “virtual tunnel” in the past week.

The results, from a survey of 2,688 adults nationwide conducted between March 20 and April 3, 2014, indicate the scale of illegal downloading facing content owners.

By age group, 18-24 year-olds have the largest number knowingly illegally downloading content (34.0%) compared with just 4.5% and 2.1% respectively for those aged 65-74 years and 75 years or older.

Illegal downloading generally increases as education level increases.

These are product rankings for content ever downloaded by adults (either legally or illegally):

• Music (50.3% of adults have downloaded them at some time)
• Videos 30.9%
• TV programmes 28.6%
• Books 26.9%

Results are weighted to ensure the respondent group represents the New Zealand adult population. At a 95% confidence level, the maximum margin of error is +/- 1.9%.

A detailed study on New Zealanders’ internet downloading behaviour is available from Horizon Research.

Contact Grant McInman, Manager, Horizon Research

E-mail gmcinman@horizonresearch.co.nz

Telephone: +64 21 076 2040