Almost half of Australians consume illegal content online

According to the survey, 48 per cent of survey respondents consumed movies illegally (their wording) at least once in the last three months; 37 per cent consumed music illegally, another 33 per cent consumed TV programs illegally, while video games came in at 22 per cent.

After Mashable Australia approached the Department of Communications for comment on the matter, it said it had amended page 75 of the report to remove the terms “legally” and “illegal”, calling it an “error”.

With the site-blocking bill already passed and a “three-strikes” anti-copyright infringement proposal on the table, you’d hope the Australian government reads its own report, because Aussies are making ideal sense. However concerns remain about the effectiveness of such measures, which are easily bypassed by minimal tech savvy.

That was closely followed by content an individual wanted to access being available (38 per cent) and content being released at the same time as it is elsewhere (36 per cent).

The new study however found that only 21 per cent would be encouraged to stop infringing if they received a letter from their ISP saying their account would be suspended.

That’s also supported by spending habits: “those who consumed a mix of legal and illegal content spent more money… than those who consumed 100 per cent of their content legally”. After a user’s third infringement, ISPs will have to share the user’s contact information with rights holders.

While there remains a solid core of pirates who will never change, with 5 percent of survey respondents saying nothing would make them stop pirating, nearly 40 percent of those surveyed said they would be encouraged to stop if two key factors were addressed: pricing and availability. Introduced in April and set to be implemented by September, the code would see ISPs issue pirates with warning notices about infringing activity at the behest of rights holders in a bid to educate and ultimately crack down on the behaviour.

Pirates offer a range of justifications for their actions. CHOICE believes this is concerning, given it resembles the notice scheme being pursued in Australia.

“Progress has been made, that’s undeniable”, he said.

“The rate of piracy in Australia is disappointingly high, far exceeding that in the United Kingdom, which makes you wonder why piracy is more acceptable in our culture”, Mr Maiden said. Alongside the arrival of major player Netflix into the Australian market, other contenders such as Stan and Presto have stepped up to the plate, while Presto part-owner Foxtel dropped the price of its pay TV packages as the competition started to heat up.

However, the survey also found that the majority of spending on music and movies was not on the content items themselves.

That is roughly the price of most streaming services, but users need to subscribe to multiple services to gain access to all movies.

Interestingly, 43 per cent of users “stated that they were not confident of what is legal online content”; presumably those that ‘fessed up to watching “illegal” content knew what they were doing.