Since the advent of digital piracy the question has arisen many times as to why people pirate. The abundant amount of articles, papers, and discussions on the matter has made one thing clear: there is no one absolute reason. Although, many people (myself included) are of the opinion that a large portion of piracy is due to the lack of legal alternatives available online. Piracydata.org is a new website, which launched earlier this month, with the sole purpose of shedding new light onto this argument.
Piracydata.org collects data from various wesbites on the internet on a weekly basis and uses that date to cumulate a list of the top ten pirated movies. Moreover, piracydata.org also checks whether the movies on the list are available online in some sort of digital form. For example, as of writing this article the second most pirated movie on the list is White House Down. The website shows clearly that White House Down is neither available online for streaming, digital purchase, nor digital rental.
Interestingly enough, the website claims that since its launch three weeks ago, more than half of the movies which have been torrented thus far were available online in some digital form. This may lead some people to think that the availability of legal alternatives has little to do with the rate of piracy. However, only about a fifth of the movies which have been torrented illegally have been available for either streaming or digital rental. This could be an indication that while digital purchase is a legal alternatives, the price which they are offered makes them an unrealistic alternative.
Source:
http://piracydata.org/
