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Business News Digital Labels & Publishers
Piracy amongst British web users up, according to OfCom report
By Chris Cooke | Published on Wednesday 29 May 2013
The number of British web users accessing pirated content rose slightly in the quarter up to 31 Jan, according to a copyright infringement report published by media regulator OfCom.
The report reckons that 18% of UK web-users streamed or downloaded unlicensed digital media content – which for OfCom’s purposes includes music, film TV, ebooks, games and other software – at least once in the three months up to the end of January, with 386 million unlicensed files accessed overall.
That is up from 16% in the previous quarter, though OfCom notes that the number of web users accessing digital media content in general was also up in the same period. Of those web users who routinely access digital media content, about a third were accessing downloads or streams from unlicensed sources, the report adds, while about 5% relied more or less exclusively on illegal services.
Music is by far the most pirated kind of content, the OfCom document adds, estimating that it accounted for around 280 million of the 386 million files pirated.
