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DVD piracy has increased since last year, according to a new study.
Did you make that copy of those Netflix movies you borrowed yet? Who me? Yeah, probably, according to recent report by the Consumer Home Piracy Research Findings.
The second annual report, prepared by Futuresource Consulting and sponsored by Macrovision, details that about one third of all respondents in the United States and U.K. (with a combined sample size of more than 5,600) said they’d made copies of pre-recorded DVDs in the last six months. That’s up from a little over a quarter in 2007.
Surprisingly enough, the demographic most likely to be copiers are 18-24-year-old males, who live in dorms or their parents’ basements (OK, that last part wasn’t in the report).
While the majority of the copied content in the U.S. and U.K. (62% and 49%, respectively) is legitimately owned purchased DVD, 38% in the U.S. and 30% in the U.K. is from copying rented movies of the new release variety. The numbers dip a little on the older catalog titles, with 30% in the U.S. and just 12% in the U.K. for rented flicks (58% and 54%, respectively, of copied purchased catalog titles).
In the last sixth months, those surveyed said they copied about 12 and 13 DVDs, respectively, in the U.S. and U.K.
So how many DVDs do you copy? And what method do you use?
I’ll occasionally rip one of my own DVDs to take with me when I travel, but as far as copying a rental DVD, it doesn’t really make financial sense for me.
Here’s a quick formula to determine if it’s worth it to copy a DVD—
1. Take your hourly pay rate and multiply that by the amount of time you take to burn that copy
2. Add the cost of the blank DVD
3. Add the rental cost of the DVD. For a Netflix subscription, divide your subscription fee by the number of discs you get monthly.
If the number you come up with is more than the cost of the retail DVD, you’re spending more than you’re saving by copying it.
I COPY EVERY MOVIE I CAN GET MY HANDS ON. SOME RE-BURN ONTO DVDS, THE ONES THAT DON’T GET STUCK ON A PORTABLE HDD FOR TRAVEL USE. DEMO GRAPHIC IS A LITTLE OFF. I’M 40 AND HAVE OVER 600 PURCHASED (LEGAL) DVDS. OVER 1500 VHS (YEAH, THEY’RE OLD). ABOUT 20% OF MY HOME COLLECTION IS COPIED DVDS FROM NETFLIX. THANKS GUYS!!
ssA
i use Mac the Ripper to copy my own DVDs for backups to play on my MacBook when i travel. i also send the analog outs from my HD cable box into a miniDV cam(as a convertor) to record movies, shows & concerts, into iMovie, which i burn &/or convert to play on my 8GB iPod Nano. that little thing can hold a good bit of video & when i use my component out cable to an HD monitor it looks pretty good, considering the file size/pixel count.
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It is a bit of a drive for me to rent movies, 20 min each way to be exact. So yes I rip every movie I rent. Take into consideration the price of gas and the fact I have 2 young kids and a job who can change your evening plans in a hearbeat. So I rent 6 video’s at once, burn them, then whatch them when I can (home, work trip, cottage), sometimes twice or even three times. I sometimes go a month or so without watching one, but then may watch 4 in one week. I do not sell them and very rarely lend them out. Other then the part about lending them out, I do not see how this can be considered Illegal.