A recently published study on the DVD movie copying habits of consumers in the U.S. and U.K. finds that roughly one third of the survey respondents admit to copying commercial DVDs within the last six months. The survey was conducted by Futuresource Consulting and was sponsored by Macrovision--a company that has a vested financial stake in convincing DVD distributors that they are losing revenue by people making copies of discs.
The demographic group that is most likely be a DVD copier is 18 to 24-year old males. Curiously, 36 percent of U.K. respondents admitted to copying DVDs, while only 32 percent of U.S. respondents 'fessed up. Either the Brits believe stronger in their right to copy or perhaps they are just a more honest lot. Unfortunately, the public version of the study does not discuss how reliable the respondents' answers were.
The U.K. group copied mostly movies (76 percent), but the frequency of TV shows they've copied in 2008 (61 percent) increased significantly since 2007 (up from 42 percent). U.S. respondents admitted to copying an average of 11.9 titles in the last six months; while the U.K. group copied of average of 12.8 titles.
