Nearly a quarter of Dutch people consume pirated content

Nearly a quarter of Dutch people have illegally downloaded video content over the past year, according to market research company Telecompaper.

But Telecompaper said that this was a shift of nearly 20 percent down from 2013, where 41 percent of Dutch people engaged in illegal downloading.

On top of this, the use of peer-to-peer download methods has fallen sharply, with only 6 percent of Dutch people using the method in the past year, compared to 18 percent in 2013.

According to Telecompaper, this drop can be attributed to streaming video and music services such as Netflix and Spotify offering affordable alternatives for high-quality content.

It said that there are “enough people who want to pay for an alternative, provided that it is easier to use and offers good quality”.

However, Telecompaper noted that this drop was also caused by anti-piracy organisations like BREIN, and European court precedent, which has made it harder to find illegal content online.

Last year, BREIN secured a ruling at the Court of Justice of the EU that forced Dutch internet service providers Ziggo and XS4All to temporarily block access to prolific piracy website The Pirate Bay.

Telecompaper said that 8 percent of Dutch people indicated that they illegally downloaded less because the content was harder to find.

Available research from Telecompaper did not mention circumvention methods, such as piracy through virtual private networks (VPNs), which have gone largely undocumented.