Across the globe 432 million people attempted to access copyrighted content via pirate sites in January, according to research from NetNames. There was a 10% increase in the number of people from North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific accessing the sites in just 15 months. In these regions more than one in four internet users explicitly tried to access pirated content, the company found.
"The practise of infringement is tenacious and persistent. Despite some discrete instances of success in limiting infringement, the piracy universe not only persists in attracting more users year on year but hungrily consumes increasing amounts of bandwidth," the report read. "The free and simple availability of copyrighted content through piracy ecosystems continues to drive the popularity of hundreds of web sites, the actions of hundreds of millions of internet users worldwide, and the consumption of thousands of petabytes of internet bandwidth."
The size of piracy traffic is laid bare in the NetNames report, titled An Estimate of Infringing Use of the Internet, which was commissioned by NBCUniversal. In January close to 14 billion page views were recorded on websites focused on piracy in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific - up almost 10% from November 2011. In 2010 Parliament passed the Digital Economy Act which attempted to crack down on online internet piracy, but there have been delays in implementing the new powers.
In June 2012 the communications regulator Ofcom published measures designed to crack down on copyright infringement, including making broadband providers send warning letters to customers found accessing pirate sites. An Ofcom spokesman said regulators would consult on the proposals and said they hoped the regime will be in place in early 2014.
Source: The Telegraph
