The report, titled “A profile of current and future audiovisual audience”, draws its conclusions based on a survey of 4,608 respondents between the ages of 4 and 50 scattered across Europe. The participants were taken from a representative sample of ten different countries including France, Germany and the UK.

One of the main findings is that up to 97% percent of all Europeans are film viewers, but that the majority don’t pay for the films they watch over the Internet.

“Nearly 70% of Europeans download or stream films for free, whether legally or illegally,” the European Commission reports.

The study does not distinguish between legal and illegal downloads, but half of all respondents said they downloaded or streamed films because cinema tickets and DVDs are too expensive. This suggests that the films they watch come from “pirate” sources.

More than two-third (68%) of film viewers said they downloaded movies without paying, and half of this group did so on a weekly basis. Streaming free movies is slightly less popular with 56% of the total, but it’s still something half of the population has experience with.

Downloading and streaming is most common among Europeans in the 16-25 age group. In addition, there is a small difference between men and women, with the former downloading and streaming slightly more.

One of the main questions is why so many people prefer free copies over paid alternatives. It may come as no surprise that price is an important factor here.

The chart below shows that the price of cinema tickets, video on demand services and DVDs is a key motivation. Half of all people say they prefer free films because the legal alternatives are too expensive.

The fact that some films are not available yet also plays an important role, and is mentioned by 30% of the respondents.

The report also offers some further insight into regional differences in motivations. For example, the high price of legal films is mentioned by only 39% of Romanians, but by 64% of the French.

A lack of legal alternatives is often mentioned as a key motivation in Romania, Croatia and Poland, with around 35% in these countries. In France, the UK and Lithuania, availability was least mentioned with little over 20%.

According to the European Commission these high download and streaming numbers are no surprise, and it suggests that the film industry itself holds the key to lowering high piracy rates.

“The study finds that this is not surprising because, while the public takes a lot of interest in films as a whole, the nearest cinema is often some distance from them and the choice on screen is frequently rather limited,” the European Commission writes.

“It suggests that the European film industry can increase revenues by exploiting different types of profit-making online platforms to increase the availability of films and reach new audiences,” the Commission notes.

While the report signals some key trends, the movie industry is likely to disagree with the conclusion that it’s up to them to make a change.

Instead, Hollywood is likely interpret the findings as an affirmation that pirates are cheapskates out to save money, and therefore tougher anti-piracy measures are required.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

At the time the Internet looked entirely different from how it does today and as a result many lawmakers believe that significant reforms are needed to bring legislation into line with present reality.

Last year several Members of the European Parliament sent a letter to the President of the European Commission to take up this issue.

“People all over the EU are increasingly concerned that the copyright system is no longer for them, and that many aspects of copyright law as it is currently applied, managed and interpreted by courts in the member states is not satisfactory or relevant,” the letter read.

However, thus far the Commission has not followed this up, which has prompted the MEPs to take more concrete action themselves. This coming Tuesday European Parliament Members Amelia Andersdotter, Marietje Schaake and Pawel Zalewski will host an event to highlight the lack of progress and the need for change.

Talking to TorrentFreak, hostess and Pirate Party MEP Amelia Andersdotter explains that the current copyright directive is heavily outdated. It restricts people’s ability to enjoy and share culture, as they constantly have to worry about the legal ramifications.

“Infosoc has created a horrible licensing nightmare that no one is able to penetrate. Those who make use of culture – filesharers, DJs, libraries, schools – live in a constant state of uncertainty,” Andersdotter tells TorrentFreak.

“It’s really difficult to find out what the freedoms and rights are of those who use culture. What is permitted and not permitted? When is someone at risk of getting sued? The law really needs to make that more clear.”

Decriminalization of file-sharing is one of the issues that’s on the agenda. This directly affects over hundred million Europeans and will facilitate the development of new business models.

But, while the file-sharing issue is good for grabbing headlines, the changes called for by Andersdotter and her colleagues are much broader.

Information in general should be more readily available across Europe, without complex copyright limitations and restrictions.

“We want a reform of the copyright framework to enable greater legal certainty for those who make use of cultural works. Considerably more flexibilities should be worked into the system to enable better access to culture for libraries, online archives, research, visually impaired people and educators,” Andersdotter says.

“Decriminalizing file-sharing should of course be included in such a reform. That would decrease a lot of the negative pressure on new business models online, and on non-commercial uses of works.”

This coming Tuesday these and other issues will be discussed during “The Case of Text and Data Mining” event. This event has been setup to encourage a more coordinated effort among MEPs of various parties to get the copyright reform ball rolling.

“My hopes are that this event will be the first step towards a longer-term platform for collaboration between like-minded members of Parliament who keep the interests of the European public at heart,” Andersdotter says.

“Starting next year, we have a new parliament and a new Commission, so I have a strong feeling that we need to coordinate early how to ensure that better legal certainty, and more freedom to use culture is established as a norm. More than any other time in Internet history, it’s important to build common and shared platforms of cultural exchange and dialogue,” she concludes.

For those who are interested, tickets for the event – which will also be streamed live – are still available.

Update: a recorded version of the stream is available here.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

It turns out that Fox’s assumption is right. We decided to look into the download locations of one of the most popular Prison Break torrents and found that, based on a sample of more than 250,000 downloads, most downloaders are located in Europe.

In our sample, which represents approximately 10% of the total downloads this week, the show was most downloaded in Poland (12%). UK and France were in second and third place respectively, followed by Canada and The Netherlands. The US was sixth in the list with only 4% of the total downloads, and Greece, Spain, Australia and Brazil complete the top 10.

As we have said before, availability seems to the key issue why people turn to BitTorrent. Non-US Prison Break fans sometimes have to wait for weeks or even months before the show airs on TV in their country, and many of them are not that patient, or willing to torture themselves. Until this problem is addressed, we’re not likely to see a decrease in TV-show downloads from BitTorrent.

The 4% US downloaders that preferred to get the show via BitTorrent instead of streaming it online probably did so because they wanted to watch it on their TV or get a higher quality copy – streaming isn’t all that. Both Fox and Hulu, the two sites that offer Prison Break streams have not published any numbers, so it’s hard to compare the number of US downloaders (~100.000) with the US streamers.

We do have a new TV-torrent download chart, with plenty of newcomers. So, let’s take a look at the 10 most downloaded shows this week. The data for the weekly download chart is collected by TorrentFreak from a representative sample of BitTorrent sites and is for informational and educational reference only.

Top Downloads August 31 – September 07

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The European Court of Justice agreed with Telefonica in its dispute with the Spanish music rights holders association Promusicae. In order to start civil proceedings, Promusicae had asked for the names of Telefonica subscribers, who allegedly infringed copyrighted material by using KaZaA.

The court said that: “Community law does not require the member states, in order to ensure the effective protection of copyright, to lay down an obligation to disclose personal data in the context of civil proceedings.”

This ruling is a huge victory for EU filesharers, whose privacy is now backed by a ruling from the European Court. For ISPs this should be a huge relief as well, and they can finally put their time and effort in working for their customers, instead of against them.

The tide is changing for European filesharers. Last week we reported that the data protection commissioner in Switzerland criticized the infamous anti-piracy tracking outfit Logistep for helping to breach the privacy of filesharers. A few days before that decision, Greens EFA, a coalition of two political parties that currently have 42 seats in the European parliament, launched a pro-filesharing campaign named “I Wouldn’t Steal”.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The ‘Eurobarometer’ study covers many aspects of electronic communication used by kids between the ages of 9 and 14 but of course, we’re interested in the internet section and in particular, file-sharing.

When asked how they ‘learned’ how to use the internet, many of the children said they couldn’t remember – an indication of how early in a child’s life computers are introduced these days and summed up nicely by a 9-10 year old boys group from the Netherlands: “There is nothing to learn” and from a group of German boys: “It is in my blood. I am a computer freak.”

Most say that they were shown the basics but went on to teach themselves and other people, including their parents: “My parents do not teach me, I teach them!” (Boys group, 12-14 years, Ireland)

In respect of file-sharing, the 9-10 year old groups didn’t show much interest, the complete opposite of the 12-14 year olds, especially the boys who really enjoyed downloading new games.

It’s obvious from the samples given in the report that those kids questioned in the older groups had some grasp of the law relating to file-sharing. However, the bad news for those planning on enforcing copyright law on them when they become adults is that they don’t really care about it. Right across the European countries questioned, for the kids, awareness of the law didn’t really translate into a concern for operating within it.

Amongst the kids there was generally an attitude of “everyone is doing it, so i’ll do it too”. Add this to the fact that many kids watch their parents file-sharing: “Dad does it all the time” (Girls group, 12-14 years old from Norway), there’s a real challenge for the media companies in trying to get these kids to stop or change habits in the future.

A group of 9-10 year old Belgian girls share the opinions of millions of file-sharers world-wide when they said: “But I do not understand that it is illegal”.

The older boys group (12-14 years) from Denmark said: “It’s illegal, but it does not look like it is illegal” while the girls from the same age group in Belgium proclaimed: “It is wrong but not our fault”.

Almost nailing current perception of European copyright law, the 12-14 year old boys group in Finland claimed “Downloading is illegal, it is not punishable whereas sharing the files is punishable”. It’s generally felt that downloading is not an offense in Europe, where uploading probably is.

The French boys get it totally right when they said: “People download, but if is just for themselves, it is less serious than downloading for burning and reselling”. Indeed, selling copyright material is generally a criminal offense whereas file-sharing is nearly always a civil issue in Europe.

The older boys from the UK could be forgiven for coming to the conclusion they came to: “I don’t really feel guilty. It wouldn’t be on the Internet if it was like really illegal, they wouldn’t have it there”.

The older Czech boys felt that paying for stuff wasn’t necessary: “They have a lot of money ! They don’t need my money”, an opinion shared by the Italians: “I really don’t care, it’s not my problem. Singers and actors are rich enough”.

Having paid their ISP for their internet connection, the 12-14 year old boys from Portugal feel they have done their part: “We pay because we are spending megabits!”

Most of the children when questioned said they intend to carry on downloading and nothing is likely to stop them, however something that continually crops up in the internet part of the report is the concern the children have for downloading a virus. Indeed this is their major concern, although a 9-10 year old boys group from Slovakia had a solution:

“… Just download anti-virus software.”

The report can be downloaded here.

Thanks to Chris Pirillo for the great artwork

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Kokott, top legal adviser to the European Union’s highest Court said that while it is a requirement for ISP’s to divulge personal details in criminal cases, the law does not have the power to force them to disclose the same in a civil case. In Europe, the personal, non-commerical sharing of copyright works is a civil issue.

The statement was issued to help judges come to a decision in the case involving Promusicae – a Spanish music industry organisation – and Telefonica, Spain’s biggest ISP. Promusicae sued Telefonica after they refused to reveal the identities of some of its customers who were accused of swapping copyright music using the file-sharing software, KaZaA. If it had been successful, Promusicae would have used the information to take legal action against those it accuses of sharing music to which it holds the rights.

Telefonica appears to have successfully argued that the law only required it to reveal the identities of those accused of a criminal offense and that sharing of music was a civil issue.

Juliane Kokott’s advice will be reviewed by the judges and a ruling will be issued later on in the year. According to a report, the judges ‘follow their advisers opinions about 80% of the time.’

Earlier this year, UK law firm Davenport Lyons successfully obtained the identities of hundreds of people it claimed had infringed its client’s copyrights by sharing the game Dream Pinball. It remains to be seen if today’s legal advice will affect those who have already had their details handed over.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.