HDTV/3D TV News
A study commissioned by Business Action to Stop Counterfeiting and Piracy (BASCAP) claims that illegal downloads will cost Europe, and particularly the UK, dearly in the near future.
With some hard hitting headline figures, the report says that by 2015, 1.2 million jobs will be lost across Europe due to piracy.
And a quarter of a million of these losses will happen in the UK alone. The total financial toll by 2015 is estimated at around £220 billion across Europe.
These figures were arrived at by assuming that current trends and policies stay much the same, and then extrapolating data from 2008, when almost 200,000 jobs were lost in Europe, due in the main to illegal file-sharing.
In the UK in 2008, of the near £70 million lost by television companies to piracy, 85% of this amount was due to online piracy, with only a small percentage accounted for by physical piracy (making copies of CDs and DVDs).
The UK will find itself harder hit because the creative industries account for 9% of its GDP, a higher percentage than other European countries. The creative industries as an average across Europe contribute 6.9% of GDP.
“14 million people work in the creative industries in Europe and at a time of economic and financial crisis it offers growth potential. We have a responsibility to ensure we safeguard jobs and stand up for this workforce,” commented Labour MEP Arlene McCarthy.
reminds me of Ciggies in olden days.
first they said it was good…made money out of it….then once they got everyone hooked, they leived redeculus tax…and made more money out of it!!!
sameway….this is all a trick to rip off people…dont u think…if a film is good…everyone wud like to watch it on big screen…n as a momento sort of keep a download copy…so they can watc it once the movie is long gone from cinemas!!!
The ppl involve made the money in the process… whn the movie was in cinemas!!!
this is jus an excuse for incompetent ppl in those industry to make some money…
boo booo you
No, it won’t. Simple as that.
The people downloading music and video would not have bought the majority of what they download in the first place. Claiming the each illegal download is a lost sale is just ridiculous.
Please tell me how the TV companies are losing out in all this due to piracy? They are funded by advertising or in the case of the BBC the licence fee, so if I download (or view on iplayer) something which was on tv last night, how is that costing them money? It’s not as if I can pop into town and buy a copy is it?
Besides, it’s hard to feel sympathy for the creative industries when you constantly see these people showing off their collection of expensive cars, multi-million pound houses, designer clothes, jewellery, exotic holidays etc. If all the supposedly threatened jobs were that important then these companies should distribute the money a bit better instead of lavishing it on the few “stars” and management people.
What would be nice is an _independent_ study. Most of these studies assume that all illegal downloads would result in a full price purchase. Whereas in reality most people wouldn’t buy it and it would be discounted.
There is also a huge amount of “try before you buy” – people listening to an album and then buying if they like it. Many studies have found that music pirates generally spend _more_ money than non-pirates. I wonder how much those same people would pay if they couldn’t try (and optionally buy).
For software let’s not forget that the companies pirating software are effectively saving money. Personally I have no problem with paying sensible price, however I object to being ripped off.
The fact that CDs have dropped in price from £15 to £10 due to piracy is something I’m very grateful for. However they still want to charge £10 for a downloaded album rather than £5.
Brendan Barber – he talk Nonse is full of waffle, let him prove it and how much money he has received from (BASCAP? This united corruption TUC payed to support(BASCAP)