According to the recent research, file-sharers also love going to the cinema and paying to watch films. It turned out that people who illegally download films are more likely to be wealthier and do not worry much about being caught infringing like their music counterparts. Besides, movie pirates are also more likely to slow down pirating when they feel they are harming the industry, while people who illegally download music don’t.

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Over 6,000 people aged 7 to 84 in Finland took part in the survey to study the attitudes of people who illegally download films and music online. The study found out that movie pirates are more likely to live in big cities and seem to be “early adopters” of new technology. Perhaps, this is due to fact that downloading and file-sharing movies is much more technologically demanding, as it requires better broadband speeds and digital storage capabilities, along with access to a wider range of devices for playback than pirating music, which has now become relatively simple, fast and cheap.

As expected, the most prolific pirates of both films and music are younger men with skills, motivation and equipment enabling them to steal large volumes of music and movies. The research found out that the participants had illegally downloaded about 2,900 songs and 90 movies each, on average.

According to the previous studies, people who pirate entertaining content also tend to purchase it legally in contrast to those who don’t pirate, often being greater consumers of media. For example, pirates from the United States and Germany purchase 30% more music than people who didn’t share music illegally.

The file-sharers explained that they pirate because it saved money and allowed access to copyrighted content not on general release or before the release. In addition, they pointed out that in doing so people could help creators bypass record companies or movie studios. As for those who don’t pirate, they listed fear of downloading viruses or malware, that the material didn’t match the description or was of poor quality, or that it was too difficult to find.

The industry observers believe that the findings of the study are important, because they prove that campaigns emphasizing the harmful effects of piracy on the movie industry will be more effective than on the music industry. The estimated cost of piracy in the United States alone is $12.5bn to the music industry and $20.5bn to the movie industry.