Advanced Television

Online piracy tracker says some blame is on studios

November 2, 2009

The head of a company that tracks online piracy has suggested that the motion picture industry’s own policies are at least partially to blame for the surge in illegal downloading — especially overseas, where films are often released weeks – sometimes months – after they are available in the US.

Eric Garland, the CEO of Big Champagne Media Measurement, said that piracy has spread from kids to their parents in European cities. “The reason I single out European cities,” he said, “is because that’s where people are forced to wait a long time to see content legally. In the digital world, we don’t want to wait three months, six months. We’re just not accepting that any more…we want it all, we want it right now and even (parents) are getting to the point where they say if it’s not on, let’s just fire up the computer and watch it. If they want me to wait six months, I’ve got other options. And people don’t really have a conscious or qualms about that.”

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