Ofcom Copyright Infringer Study Has Some Surprising Findings

LOS ANGELES—It’s been whispered for a long time that the dirty little secret of digital piracy is that the most active infringers are also the biggest fans, and at the end of the day the most lavish spenders. It’s a theory that many, but not all, content owners ridicule. But a just-released study conducted for British telcom regulator Ofcom that looked into the “complex relationship between general consumption, infringement, attitudes, and spend[ing] across six key content types” has resulted in some very interesting findings indeed, including one that found that the most active infringers spend far more money on legal content than do people who do not infringe at all. In fact, it wasn’t even close. The report, prepared for Ofcom by Kantar Media, involved a series of in-depth analyses using the combined data sets from the first two waves of the Online Copyright Infringement tracking study. The report produced the following key findings: • The top 10 percent of infringers accounted for just 1.6 percent of the internet user population over 12 years old, but were responsible for 79 percent of infringed content. The top 20 percent infringers, accounting for 3.2 percent of 12-years-plus internet users, were responsible for 88 percent of infringements. • Infringers were more male, 16 to 34 years old, and ABC1 than the general internet population. However, the Top 20 percent infringers were even more likely to be male and 16-34 than the bottom 80 percent. (The study used the top 20 percent of infringers rather than the top 10 percent of infringers as the larger sample size to make comparisons more robust.) • Despite their high levels of infringement, the top 20 percent of infringers also accounted for 11 percent of the legal content consumed. • The top 20 percent of infringers also spent significantly more across all content types on average than the bottom 80 percent of infringers. According to TorrentFreak, “Across all content types, the top 20 percent of infringers on average not only spend more than the remaining 80 percent of infringers, but also more than consumers who never infringe. The figures are impressive—the 20 percent worst infringers spent £168 over the six month monitoring period with the remaining 80 percent spending £105. Tailing in last place were the ‘honest’ consumers with just £54 spent, three times less than the prolific pirate group.” Pornographic content is not isolated in the report, so there no way to know if the findings hold true for adult content as they appear to do for more mainstream fare, but because the report was designed to explore the behavior of infringers, there is no reason to believe they would not. The 53-page report can be read here.