Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - December 9th, ’23

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December 9th, 2023




Frontier Must Reveal User Data in Movie-Pirating Litigation
Christopher Brown

• Data was necessary for movie-companies’ copyright claims
• Internet Service Providers facing content-pirating case surge

Movie-company claimants can require telecommunications company Frontier Communications Corp. to reveal the personal information of its subscribers who allegedly infringed the movie companies’ copyrights, a federal bankruptcy court said.

The companies were able to make a prima facie case that their copyrights had been infringed, and to show that the information they sought was necessary to advancing their claims of secondary infringement against Frontier, Judge Martin Glenn of the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York said Dec. 1.

The case is part of a surge in recent litigation by copyright holders against ISPs.
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/litiga...ing-litigation





Cable Lobby to FCC: Please don’t Look too Closely at the Prices We Charge

ISPs are scared about the FCC's plan to measure broadband affordability.
Jon Brodkin

The US broadband industry is protesting a Federal Communications Commission plan to measure the affordability of Internet service.

The FCC has been evaluating US-wide broadband deployment progress on a near-annual basis for almost three decades but hasn't factored affordability into these regular reviews. The broadband industry is afraid that a thorough examination of prices will lead to more regulation of ISPs.

An FCC Notice of Inquiry issued on November 1 proposes to analyze the affordability of Internet service in the agency's next congressionally required review of broadband deployment. That could include examining not just monthly prices but also data overage charges and various other fees.

"To truly close the connectivity gap and ensure that all Americans have access to advanced telecommunications capability, broadband services must be affordable," the Notice of Inquiry said.

The FCC is collecting pricing data in other contexts. But the proposed review could create an affordability benchmark—similar to a speed benchmark—and use that to determine whether ISPs are doing enough to make broadband universally available.

Cable lobby: Price analysis “inappropriate”

Cable industry lobby group NCTA-The Internet & Television Association complained in a filing released Monday that the Notice of Inquiry's "undue focus on affordability—or pricing—is particularly inappropriate." The group, which represents cable providers such as Comcast and Charter, said that setting an affordability benchmark could lead to rate regulation:

While the Commission has reiterated that it has no interest in any kind of rate regulation, the proposal to make a traditional deployment analysis contingent on whether the Commission determines that broadband pricing is sufficiently affordable suggests that rate regulation in some form is potentially on the table.

The Notice of Inquiry seeks comment on how to measure affordability, for example by asking whether the FCC should "examine prices for broadband services and compare them against a selected benchmark to determine affordability." An affordability benchmark could vary by geographic location.

The FCC review would also analyze consumer adoption of broadband, which is heavily influenced by what the service costs. The FCC collects subscriber data through its Form 477 program but is seeking comment on how to use that data and on other sources of adoption data it could examine.

The Notice of Inquiry pertains to the FCC's obligations under Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act. The 1996 law requires the FCC to determine whether broadband is being deployed "on a reasonable and timely basis" to all Americans. If the answer is no, the US law says the FCC must "take immediate action to accelerate deployment of such capability by removing barriers to infrastructure investment and by promoting competition in the telecommunications market."

Analyzing affordability and adoption of Internet service could give the FCC more data to justify a determination that the broadband industry is failing to make reasonable efforts to provide service to all Americans. The FCC's Democratic majority is separately moving forward with a plan to reinstate common-carrier regulation of broadband using its Title II authority. The FCC is primarily using Title II to bring back net neutrality rules repealed during the Trump era but could use Title II for additional regulations.

The NCTA argued that "the language of Section 706 does not in any way reflect a congressional directive for the Commission to address [adoption and affordability] in what is for all intents and purposes an inquiry and report on the state of broadband deployment."

FCC proposes speed increase, too

The FCC Notice of Inquiry also proposes to raise the speed of its benchmark for determining whether a broadband service counts as "advanced telecommunications capability." People often refer to this as the FCC's broadband definition. The benchmark was last updated in January 2015 and remains at 25Mbps downstream and 3Mbps upstream.

Trump-era FCC Chairman Ajit Pai kept the 25Mbps/3Mbps standard throughout his term. The new Notice of Inquiry prepared by Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel proposes raising the standard to 100Mbps on the download side and 20Mbps for uploads. The notice also proposes "a long-term fixed broadband speed goal" of 1Gbps download speeds and 500Mbps upload speeds.

USTelecom, which represents fiber and DSL providers such as AT&T and Verizon, supported the 100Mbps/20Mbps benchmark but objected to the long-term goal of 1Gbps/500Mbps. The trade group argued that the 500Mbps upload benchmark would shut out all non-fiber networks.

"Today, the only deployed technology capable of providing 1Gbps/500Mbps is fiber," USTelecom wrote. The group claimed that the FCC should ditch this long-term goal because "there are locations where deployment of fiber is not practicable now and may never be. In order to serve all Americans, speed benchmarks must be technology-neutral so that providers have the flexibility to choose the technology that will best suit each build."

USTelecom joined the NCTA in objecting to the FCC analyzing prices and adoption. USTelecom said the FCC should "limit its inquiry to the progress of broadband deployment, or availability, and eschew questions related to adoption, affordability, competition, and equitable access, which are the focus of other statutory provisions and programs."

ISPs have history of objecting

ISPs previously objected to the collection of pricing data in other contexts, such as when the FCC proposed rules prohibiting discrimination in access to broadband services. The FCC approved those rules despite broadband lobby groups and Republicans objecting to a requirement that prices charged to consumers be non-discriminatory.

In yet another proceeding, ISPs complained about a rule requiring them to list all their monthly fees in a format modeled on nutrition labels. The FCC rejected their complaints and issued the rule.

The FCC also collects pricing data as part of the Affordable Connectivity Program that offers discounts to people with low incomes. USTelecom pointed to those other data collections while arguing that Section 706 doesn't authorize any examination of prices:

Not only are price and affordability outside the scope of the Commission's Section 706 inquiry into the progress of deployment, but the Commission is already collecting pricing data as part of the Affordable Connectivity Program ("ACP") data collection and the forthcoming Consumer Broadband Labels. In the Infrastructure Act, Congress specifically required the Commission to establish these data collections to obtain pricing information from broadband providers, and the Commission lacks authority to duplicate such information collection as part of its Section 706 inquiry.

Nor should the Commission further pursue its questions on rate benchmarks that can only be seen as a form of rate regulation. There is no reason to require providers or the agency to devote time and resources to such efforts that are either duplicative of other programs or wholly new efforts without any mooring to statutory authority.

USTelecom is further opposed to an examination of the reasons why some consumers do not purchase broadband service, which may reveal how many people go without broadband because it's too expensive.

"Even where broadband is available, individuals may not adopt it for myriad reasons, including relevance, lack of access to devices, or lack of digital skills, to name a few," USTelecom told the FCC. "Adoption is not the same as availability, which is the Congressionally mandated focus of Section 706, and the Commission should not conflate these two concepts, nor incorporate adoption into its evaluation of reasonable and timely deployment."

Electric co-ops want focus on prices, faster speeds

The FCC did hear from some groups that support price and adoption analyses. The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) urged the FCC "to focus on and undertake efforts to address affordability of broadband service."

Many electric co-ops provide broadband in places where private ISPs have not built modern networks. The NRECA said its members "are keenly aware of the many affordability challenges for their customers, particularly considering they collectively serve 92 percent of the persistent poverty counties identified by the US Census Bureau."

"NRECA co-ops have successfully won and relied on federal broadband grant funding to build out into some of the most remote areas of the country. But consumers still must be able to afford the service for the digital divide to be truly closed," the group said.

The NRECA also urged the FCC to adopt even faster broadband speed benchmarks. The agency should "implement a 100Mbps symmetrical standard, and a long-term goal of symmetrical 1Gbps standard," the group said.

“Cost remains one of the biggest barriers”

In support of a pricing analysis, New America's Open Technology Institute said that "if the cost of broadband service is higher than millions of people can afford, service cannot be said to be available."

"Cost remains one of the biggest barriers to broadband adoption for Americans, and the Commission will soon have access to information on service cost through the broadband nutrition labels mandated by the Infrastructure Act," the group said. "The Commission must analyze the effects of cost on broadband availability and adoption to truly understand whether broadband is being deployed in a reasonable and timely manner, and use data from the nutrition labels to set benchmarks around pricing."

The advocacy group said the FCC could combine data from different programs to uncover violations of the agency's new anti-discrimination rules. "Comparing broadband deployment data collected for Section 706 and pricing data collected in broadband nutrition labels to existing federal data on demographics and income could reveal discriminatory policies and practices by Internet service providers, which are prohibited under the new digital discrimination order," the Open Technology Institute said.

The Benton Institute for Broadband & Society advocated for a "systematic approach to tracking broadband affordability" that would include measuring the prices paid by consumers in different income categories for both wireline and wireless services. Benton also wants this analysis to include the speeds that households in each income tier subscribe to.

"Consumer behavior is part of the picture: we cannot reach our universal broadband goals without widespread adoption and we cannot achieve universal broadband adoption if service is not affordable," the group said.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...ces-we-charge/





Zombie TV Has Come for Cable

Many of the most popular channels have largely ditched original dramas and comedies, morphing into vessels for endless reruns.
John Koblin

In 2015, the USA cable network was a force in original programming. Dramas like “Suits,” “Mr. Robot” and “Royal Pains” either won awards or attracted big audiences.

What a difference a few years make.

Viewership is way down, and USA’s original programming department is gone. The channel has had just one original scripted show this year, and it is not exclusive to the network — it also airs on another channel. During one 46-hour stretch last week, USA showed repeats of NBC’s “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” for all but two hours, when it showed reruns of CBS’s “NCIS” and “NCIS: Los Angeles.”

Instead of standing out among its peers, USA is emblematic of cable television’s transformation. Many of the most popular channels — TBS, Comedy Central, MTV — have quickly morphed into zombie versions of their former selves.

Networks that were once rich with original scripted programming are now vessels for endless marathons of reruns, along with occasional reality shows and live sports. While the network call letters and logos are the same as before, that is effectively where the overlap stops.

The transformation could accelerate even more, remaking the cable landscape. Advertisers have begun to pull money from cable at high rates, analysts say, and leaders at cable providers have started to question what their consumers are paying for. In a dispute with Disney this year, executives who oversee the Spectrum cable service said media companies were letting their cable “programming house burn to the ground.”

“It’s kind of like when you drive by a store and you can see they’re not keeping it up, and it looks kind of sad,” said Linda Ong, a consultant who works with many entertainment companies and used to run marketing at the Oxygen cable network. “It feels like they don’t have the attention. And they don’t — they’re being stripped for parts.”

The media companies that own the channels are in a bind. The so-called cable bundle was enormously profitable for media companies, and more than 100 million households subscribed at the peak. But subscribers are rapidly declining as people migrate toward streaming.

Now roughly 70 million households subscribe to cable. As a result, most media companies are pulling resources from their individual cable networks and directing investment toward their streaming services. Peacock, which is owned by NBCUniversal, the same parent of USA, has begun making more and more original scripted shows over the last three years.

However, most streaming services are hemorrhaging cash. (An NBCUniversal executive said this week that Peacock would lose $2.8 billion this year.) Cable, though it is getting smaller, remains profitable.

Now, some industry insiders and analysts are questioning whether executives shifted too quickly and are limiting future revenue from distributors and advertisers.

“Unfortunately, they’re killing the golden goose,” Michael Nathanson, a media analyst, said of entertainment companies and the cable bundle. “Yes, maybe this demise was inevitable. But by putting more and more content in streaming, there’s literally nothing on cable.”

In 2015, there were at least 214 original scripted programs on premium and basic cable, according to programming records analyzed by The New York Times. By last year, that figure had fallen 39 percent, and it has fallen even more this year — partly, perhaps, because of the monthslong writers’ and actors’ strikes.

In 2015, TBS and TNT aired 17 scripted shows. This year, it has a total of three series, according to the records. Cable networks like Comedy Central, Freeform, A&E, History, MTV and Lifetime also air far fewer scripted programs.

Reruns are filling the hole. On a recent weekday, TBS played shows like “Friends,” “The Big Bang Theory,” “Modern Family” and “Young Sheldon.” Over at Comedy Central, there were “The Office” and “Seinfeld.” MTV had 20 consecutive hours of “Catfish: The TV Show.”

Cable executives say they have made programming moves that fit better in a diminished cable landscape — and, in many cases, cost less to produce.

A spokeswoman for NBCUniversal said USA had moved investment from scripted programming toward unscripted programming, library rights and sports. The channel’s live sports coverage includes the Premier League, NASCAR and Olympic events. Professional wrestling remains a backbone of the network, as it has been for many years.

Ratings in prime time are enough to keep USA as the No. 3 cable entertainment network, the spokeswoman said. She also noted that NBCUniversal did not sell advertising exclusively for USA but across many of the company’s brands.

A spokeswoman for TBS and TNT, two other top cable channels, pointed to the release of the second season of a British drama, “The Lazarus Project.” She said TBS and TNT offered various other scripted options for viewers, noting hits that were originally made for other channels, like “The Big Bang Theory,” “Friends” and “Modern Family.”

There are some exceptions among cable channels. Bravo, another NBCUniversal property and the home of the “Housewives” franchise, “Vanderpump Rules” and “Below Deck,” remains a culturally relevant force that has spawned a popular in-person annual convention: BravoCon. The Hallmark Channel has laid claim to the holiday season, spitting out one Christmas movie after the next, and has scored strong ratings. (Hallmark and Bravo shows also appear on Peacock.) The Paramount cable network was able to release a bona fide hit in recent years with “Yellowstone.”

But more common are the lineups at channels like USA. The original nonsports programming comes largely in the form of reality shows. This year’s programs include a celebrity bar-themed game show, “Barmageddon,” and a competition show, “Race to Survive: Alaska.”

It’s quite a departure from the upbeat, procedural programming that once defined the network — and the brand. Series like “Monk” and “Suits” were part of a strategy that included as many as 10 original scripted shows per year. (“Suits” has since found new life, setting streaming records this year on Netflix.)

Ms. Ong, the consultant and chief executive of Cultique, which advises entertainment companies, said she had recently visited the USA website. There was no mention of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” or “9-1-1” or “Shark Tank” or other network repeats that populate the network’s lineup day to day. There were, however, banners for some of the reality shows on USA, programs on Peacock and NBC, and other shows from cable networks like CNBC and Telemundo. The mishmash was reflective of the current state of the network.

“USA doesn’t have value beyond a television set right now,” Ms. Ong said. “There are some brands that have value beyond their existence as a linear network — Bravo has that. USA doesn’t.”

Mr. Nathanson, the media analyst, said that could spell trouble. Even as cord-cutting accelerated in recent years, advertisers mostly stuck with the cable networks. But last year, he said, was finally a “tipping point” — when advertisers began to look askance at nonsports cable programming.

Cable advertising revenue has decreased by double-digit percentages for five consecutive financial quarters, Mr. Nathanson said. He said he had never seen that outside a recession.

“Advertisers are starting to realize that there’s really nothing on here and they shouldn’t pay for it,” he said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/08/b...-networks.html





The Race to 5G is Over — Now it’s Time to Pay the Bill

Networks spent years telling us that 5G would change everything. But the flashiest use cases are nowhere to be found — and the race to deploy the tech was costly in more ways than one.
Allison Johnson

At CES in 2021, 5G was just about everywhere you looked. It was the future of mobile communications that would propel autonomous vehicles, remote surgery, and AR into reality. The low latency! The capacity! It’ll change everything, we were told. Verizon and AT&T wrote massive checks for new spectrum licenses, and T-Mobile swallowed another network whole because it was very important to make the 5G future happen as quickly as possible and win the race.

CES 2024 is just around the corner, and while telecom executives were eager to shout about 5G to the rafters just a few years ago, you’ll probably be lucky to hear so much as a whisper about it this time around. While it’s true that 5G has actually arrived, the fantastic use cases we heard about years ago haven’t materialized. Instead, we have happy Swifties streaming concert footage and a new way to get internet to your home router. These aren’t bad things! But deploying 5G at the breakneck speeds required to win an imaginary race resulted in one fewer major wireless carrier to choose from and lots of debt to repay. Now, network operators are looking high and low for every bit of profit they can drum up — including our wallets.

If there’s a poster child for the whole 5G situation in the US, it’s Verizon: the loudest and biggest spender in the room. The company committed $45.5 billion to new spectrum in 2021’s FCC license auction — almost twice as much as AT&T. And we don’t have to guess whether investors are asking questions about when they’ll see a return — they asked point blank in the company’s most recent earnings call. CEO Hans Vestberg fielded the question, balancing the phrases “having the right offers for our customers” and “generating the bottom line for ourselves,” while nodding to “price adjustments” that also “included new value” for customers. It was a show of verbal gymnastics that meant precisely nothing.

Verizon in particular has cried 5G wolf more than once

But in an indirect way, the whole rest of Verizon’s earnings update gives us a good picture of exactly how 5G is going for the carrier. There’s no talk of robot surgery or fleets of autonomous cars. As it turns out, you need a standalone 5G network to deploy a lot of those things — something carriers are still building out gradually. Verizon in particular is guilty of crying 5G wolf more than once. First, it tried to tell us that mmWave was the real 5G, which is fast but way too range-limited for any of those use cases. Then, it tried to sell us on low-band 5G, which actually turned out to be slower than 4G in some cases. The company is now slowly converting its existing network into standalone 5G as it lights up mid-band spectrum, but that’s a yearslong effort.

On that earnings call, Vestberg did point to a pillar of Verizon’s current 5G strategy that doesn’t require a complete overhaul of the company’s nationwide network: selling private networks, or secure, high-bandwidth networks, for industrial and manufacturing businesses. But as another investor on the recent earnings call notes, it was hardly mentioned outside of some passing remarks about its potential. What gives?

Vestberg says that this is coming along slowly. One problem standing in the company’s way, RCR Wireless News editor-in-chief Sean Kinney explains to The Verge, is that carriers aren’t really set up to sell their services to specific industries. “If you’re going to sell 5G and edge computing services to a hospital, you need a sales organization that understands healthcare. That knows exactly how hospitals run, knows what their problems are. You need that for every vertical industry — for transportation, logistics, healthcare, and manufacturing and hospitality. And that’s just a hard thing to do.”

Bringing 5G to sectors like manufacturing isn’t exactly a snap of the fingers, either. Not every kind of manufacturer even needs or wants 5G, for starters. Kinney says there’s potential in certain kinds of manufacturing like automotive, but lots of factories tend to be, well, old and don’t lend themselves well to fast upgrades. “How do I put a SIM card in a robotic arm that I bought in 1982? You can do it, but was it worth it? Did it actually deliver?”

Instead, there’s one 5G use case where the big three networks are finding traction, and it comes up over and over again in their earnings reports: fixed wireless access, or FWA. If you’re keeping score at home, that’s internet that comes to your house over radio waves rather than a cable. T-Mobile and Verizon have aggressively expanded their FWA offerings over the past couple of years, and even “fiber is everything” AT&T is getting in on the action with Internet Air. It’s nice for people to have more than one option for high-speed internet, but it’s hardly robot surgery — it’s not even necessarily the best way to improve the dismal state of home broadband.

If there’s a real, transformative benefit to 5G, it will likely be a combination of network advances and changes in behavior. People will start to see 5G working in situations where they wouldn’t expect to have a reliable data connection — just ask any of the Taylor Swift fans who moved a collective 29 terabytes of data on AT&T’s network in a single day on her Arlington, Texas, Eras Tour stop. Those kinds of crowded stadium events are where 5G’s extra capacity really outshines LTE.

AT&T spokesperson Jim Greer points out that the company has also seen a 30 percent annual increase in traffic on its network overall and said in an emailed statement to The Verge that “the 5G network is the ‘killer app’ that will change how we live and work.” Maybe 5G wasn’t a destination, it was a journey, etc. There’s something to that — when you realize you actually can stream video from a packed stadium or that you don’t have to wait until you’re at home on Wi-Fi to download something, your thinking changes about what you can expect from your connection.

Jeff Fieldhack, a director at Counterpoint Research, also sees real potential in network slicing, where carriers can give priority to certain kinds of network traffic. That’s important for safety-critical applications, like autonomous cars. Fieldhack says that slicing would allow networks to “prioritize the car going in through the intersection and not the YouTuber in the backseat.” Right now, they can’t distinguish between the two. There’s just one catch: as mentioned previously, you need a standalone 5G network to make that work. That’s something that only T-Mobile has achieved on a nationwide scale. AT&T’s and Verizon’s 5G networks still rely largely on 4G cores, and the switch to standalone 5G is a slow, yearslong project that is ongoing.

Even if 5G isn’t all smoke and mirrors, networks have backed themselves into a corner

Maybe 5G isn’t entirely smoke and mirrors. But by rolling it out with a breakneck “race,” networks backed themselves into a corner. They took on piles of debt; on that recent earnings call, a Verizon exec talked about the company’s desire to return to pre-spectrum-auction levels of debt. In the meantime, there are few returns to show for those investments — not helped by the fact that interest levels are high and smartphone sales are down. The networks thought they had a golden goose with 5G, but so far, it’s just laying regular old eggs — expensively, at that. And while they’re waiting for their efforts to bear fruit, they’re looking for other ways to boost their bottom line.

The simplest way to make more money is what Verizon calls “pricing actions.” That’s a nice way of saying “charging customers more.” The company boasted about implementing “over one billion dollars of annualized pricing actions in 2023” and pats itself on the back for keeping churn — that would be customers ditching Verizon — low in spite of it.

Maybe that’s because switching carriers is a chore that most people don’t want to undertake or that we’re all just numb to inflation-related price increases. But it probably doesn’t help that most of us have just two other networks to choose from even if we were determined to jump ship. And that’s one more piece of the 5G puzzle that’s missing: the fourth wireless carrier that was supposed to materialize from T-Mobile’s Sprint acquisition deal.

We know the story: T-Mobile was allowed to gobble up Sprint by selling Boost to Dish Network, which would use it as a springboard to become the country’s fourth wireless carrier while building its own standalone 5G network from scratch. One in, one out. How’s that going? Well, Dish has hit the coverage requirements set by the FCC as part of the deal. But it’s not as simple as “if you build it, they will come.” When it was sold to Dish, Boost had 9 million subscribers; now it has 7.5 million. And according to founder Charlie Ergen on the company’s last earnings call, of those 7.5 million people, the “vast majority” don’t have a phone that works on Dish’s own network. Instead, they run on the networks of AT&T or T-Mobile, which Dish contracts with as an MVNO.

More phones are starting to support Dish’s network bands, including the iPhone 15. But according to Ergen, the timing of T-Mobile’s shutdown of Sprint’s legacy CDMA network meant that Dish had to hurry up and replace a lot of phones for customers at a time when most new phones didn’t support the new network. Those customers likely aren’t ready to replace their phones just yet. Dish will next face its steepest challenge yet: covering 70 percent — and 75 percent, in some cases — of the population in each economic area where it holds certain spectrum licenses. In its Q3 earnings filings, the company said it “may need to make significant additional investments or partner with others” to hit that target. Doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.

5G will improve as time marches on as it tends to, particularly when the networks have fully deployed standalone 5G. But we can probably stop holding our breath for that killer app and make peace with the fact that technological progress is often slow and boring — moving forward cell tower by cell tower, not by leaps and bounds. In the short term, its greatest effect might be a more consolidated, more expensive wireless broadband market. If it’s any consolation, you can take some comfort in the fact that we probably won’t be seeing commercials for 6G anytime soon.
https://www.theverge.com/23991136/5g...st-competition





Spotify to Lay off 17% of Workforce

CEO Daniel Ek says the company's costs remain too high.
Daniel Thomas,

Spotify will axe almost a fifth of its workforce after warning that economic growth had slowed dramatically and it needed to cut costs as the music streaming giant seeks to turn subscriber growth into consistent profitability.

In a memo to staff on Monday, chief executive Daniel Ek said Spotify would cut about 17 percent of its global workforce, about 1,500 people. Spotify employs more than 9,000 people worldwide.

“I recognize this will impact a number of individuals who have made valuable contributions,” Ek said. “To be blunt, many smart, talented, and hard-working people will be departing us.”

Spotify has so far defied the slowdown in subscribers that has hit video streaming groups such as Netflix, but has struggled to make a consistent profit in recent years.

The announcement comes just over a month after Spotify’s efforts to curb costs showed some signs of paying off. In October, the New York-listed company pointed to cost cuts and price rises for helping it report its first quarterly profit for more than a year.

Ek acknowledged that the size of the job cuts would be a surprise given the recent recovery in earnings. He said the group had debated making smaller cuts next year and in 2025, but opted for a bigger restructuring now. Staff at risk of losing their jobs will be told on Monday morning.

“Considering the gap between our financial goal state and our current operational costs, I decided that a substantial action to rightsize our costs was the best option to accomplish our objectives,” Ek said.

Spotify’s financial results had benefited from an earlier round of cost cutting after unwinding an expensive bet on podcasts and audiobooks, which included axing about 600 jobs at the start of 2023 and a further 200 in the summer.

However on Monday, Ek said Spotify was facing new realities, including a higher cost of capital, and that the group needed to become more efficient.

In Spotify’s early days “our ingenuity and creativity were what set us apart,” said Ek. “As we’ve grown, we’ve moved too far away from this core principle of resourcefulness.”

Over the past year, it has canceled a number of its original podcast shows, including several true crime series. The group spent heavily on exclusive podcasts from celebrities such as Michelle and Barack Obama, with a deal between the Duke and Duchess of Sussex reported to have cost $25 million for just 12 episodes.

Activist investor ValueAct in February acquired a stake in Spotify and raised concerns that its expenses had “exploded.”

Ek admitted that the company had taken advantage of the opportunity presented by lower-cost capital to significantly invest in its teams, content, marketing, and new business areas.

He said these investments “generally worked, contributing to Spotify’s increased output and the platform’s robust growth” but admitted that its cost structure had become too big as a result.

“By most metrics, we were more productive but less efficient,” he said. “We need to be both... In two words, we have to become relentlessly resourceful.”

Ek set out a plan to return Spotify to the start-up mentality of its early days, when limited resources were used efficiently and resourcefully to grind out “hard-won” success.
https://www.ft.com/content/9d6935d4-...b-4f76ab08b9b6





The First Affordable Headphones with MEMS Drivers don't Disappoint

Creative's Aurvana Ace line brings the new speaker technology to the mainstream
James Trew

The headphone industry isn’t known for its rapid evolution. There are developments like spatial sound and steady advances in Bluetooth audio fidelity, but for the most part, the industry counts advances in decades rather than years. That makes the arrival of the Aurvana Ace headphones — the first wireless buds with MEMS drivers — quite the rare event. I recently wrote about what exactly MEMS technology is and why it matters, but Creative is the first consumer brand to sell a product that uses it.

Creative unveiled two models, the Aurvana Ace ($130) and the Aurvana Ace 2 ($150) in tandem. Both feature MEMS drivers, the main difference is that the Ace model supports high-resolution aptX Adaptive while the Ace 2 has top-of-the-line aptX Lossless (sometimes marketed as “CD quality”). The Ace 2 is the model we’ll be referring to from here on.

In fairness to Creative, just the inclusion of MEMS drivers alone would be a unique selling point, but the aforementioned aptX support adds another layer of HiFi credentials to the mix. Then there’s adaptive ANC and other details like wireless charging that give the Ace 2 a strong spec-sheet for the price. Some obvious omissions include small quality of life features like pausing playback if you remove a bud and audio personalization. Those could have been two easy wins that would make both models fairly hard to beat for the price in terms of features if nothing else.

When I tested the first ever xMEMS-powered in-ear monitors, the Singularity Oni, the extra detail in the high end was instantly obvious, especially in genres like metal and drum & bass. The lower frequencies were more of a challenge, with xMEMS, the company behind the drivers in both the Oni and the Aurvana, conceding that a hybrid setup with a conventional bass driver might be the preferred option until its own speakers can handle more bass. That’s exactly what we have here in the Aurvana Ace 2.

The key difference between the Aurvana Ace 2 and the Oni though is more important than a good low end thump (if that’s even possible). MEMS-based headphones need a small amount of “bias” power to work, this doesn’t impact battery life, but Singularity used a dedicated DAC with a specific xMEMS “mode.” Creative uses a specific amp “chip” that demonstrates, for the first time, consumer MEMS headphones in a wireless configuration. The popularity of true wireless (TWS) headphones these days means that if MEMS is to catch on, it has to be compatible.

The good news is that even without the expensive iFi DAC that the Singularity Oni IEMs required to work, the Aurvana Ace 2 bring extra clarity in the higher frequencies than rival products at this price. That’s to say, even with improved bass, the MEMS drivers clearly favor the mid- to high-end frequencies. The result is a sound that strikes a good balance between detail and body.

Listening to “Master of Puppets” the iconic chords had better presence and “crunch” than on a $250 pair of on-ear headphones I tried. Likewise, the aggressive snares in System of a Down’s “Chop Suey!” pop right through just as you’d hope. When I listened to the same song on the $200 Grell Audio TWS/1 with personalized audio activated the sounds were actually comparable. Just Creative’s sounded like that out of the box, but the Grell buds have slightly better dynamic range over all and more emphasis on the vocals.

For more electronic genres the Aurvana Ace’s hybrid setup really comes into play. Listening to Dead Prez’s “Hip-Hop” really shows off the bass capabilities, with more oomph here than both the Grell and a pair of $160 House of Marley Redemption 2 ANC — but it never felt overdone or fuzzy/loose.

Despite besting other headphones on specific like-for-like comparisons, as a whole the nuances and differences between the headphones is harder to quantify. The only set I tested that sounded consistently better, to me, was the Denon Perl Pro (formerly known as the NuraTrue Pro) but at $349 those are also the most expensive.

It would be remiss of me not to point out that there were also many songs and tests where differences between the various sets of earbuds were much harder to discern. With two iPhones, one Spotify account and a lot of swapping between headphones during the same song it’s possible to tease out small preferences between different sets, but the form factor, consumer preference and price point dictate that, to some extent, they all broadly overlap sonically.

The promise of MEMS drivers isn’t just about fidelity though. The claim is that the lack of moving parts and their semiconductor-like fabrication process ensures a higher level of consistency with less need for calibration and tuning. The end result being a more reliable production process which should mean lower cost. In turn this could translate into better value for money or at least a potentially more durable product. If the companies choose to pass that saving on of course.

For now, we’ll have to wait and see if other companies explore using MEMS drivers in their own products or whether it might remain an alternative option alongside technology like planar magnetic drivers and electrostatic headphones as specialist options for enthusiasts. One thing’s for sure: Creative’s Aurvana Ace series offers a great audio experience alongside premium features like wireless charging and aptX Lossless for a reasonable price — what’s not to like about that?
https://www.engadget.com/the-first-a...161536317.html





‘Tens of Thousands Down the Drain’: CT Officials Aim for First-in-the-Nation Action to Address eBook Costs

EBooks are an important resource for readers, but have been draining library budgets due to licensing contract terms, Connecticut librarians say.
Alison Cross

Connecticut libraries spend millions of taxpayer dollars a year leasing audio and eBooks for digital collections. But unlike the physical books that stay on the shelves, most digital titles, librarians say, will disappear after two years. They want that changed.

At a panel discussion in Hartford Tuesday, librarians called on state lawmakers to reignite efforts to regulate and improve licensing agreements between libraries and publishers.

The panel focused on two pressing issues for the state’s 1,000 libraries — book bans and eBook licensing. The latter, librarians say, trap local and school libraries in an unsustainable cycle of cost, lease and loss that drains resources and limits digital access.

“This has been an issue facing librarians for more than a decade, and quite frankly, it gets worse every year,” said Ellen Paul, the executive director of the Connecticut Library Consortium. “Connecticut libraries, they just can’t keep up. The wait lists for our eBooks are over six months long, our budgets are strained because we have to keep re-renting Harry Potter at the same exorbitant prices over and over again.”

With print books, Paul said libraries negotiate discounted contracts that provide titles at less than 50% of what the average consumer would pay.

“When you talk about eBooks, it’s just a completely different story,” Paul said.

Libraries in Connecticut and across the country are locked in to fixed eBook pricing that is up to 10 times higher than consumer costs with no ability to negotiate or shop around for cheaper options. Paul said the majority of eBooks are also metered, disappearing after two years or 26 borrows, unless they are renewed.

“We know that when a library buys an eBook, at six times more than a general consumer, that the author does not get paid six times more, they get the same amount regardless of who purchases that eBook,” Paul said. “There is no reason why libraries need to pay six to 10 times more than general consumers. This is taking advantage of libraries and it’s taking advantage of taxpayers.”

Paul said librarians want the state to regulate eBook contracts. They’re asking for reasonable prices, the option to purchase licenses rather than rent, and the ability to loan out eBooks to other libraries.

Paul said that after 20 years of attempting to bring publishers to the negotiation table, librarians are once again calling on the state for help.

“We can’t do this on our own,” she said.

To Paul and other librarians, eBooks are essential to accessibility and equal access. Patrons with dyslexia or vision problems can enlarge text size and change font styles or listen to audio books. Folks who can’t get to the library due to a lack of transportation, mobility issues or overseas deployments can also access books online. Additionally, digital formats offer an extra layer of privacy to readers struggling with mental health challenges, addiction, or domestic violence.

Rebecca Harlow, a librarian at Case Memorial Library in Orange, serves as the chair of eBook Committee for Libraries Online, a consortium of 30 member organizations who pool resources to extend their eBook budgets.

Each month, LION spends $20,000 on eBooks — a budget that she said is limited. Harlow said LION leases fewer than 60 eBooks for children and teens combined.

In her most recent order, Harlow said LION paid $8,460 to lease 170 eBooks — nearly $50 a copy. The same order on Harlow’s personal Amazon account cost just $2,769. But she said “Unlike the consumer purchase, the majority of the 170 books will be gone in 12 months.”

This was not always the case. In 2007 when Lion began leasing eBooks, Harlow said titles cost less than $20 and followed a one copy, one user model that did not expire. That all changed, Harlow said in 2011 after Amazon entered the market and licensing agreements started adopting a metered lending model that capped the number of checkouts per title.

Since that time, costs per eBook have also gone up 145%, Harlow said.

“In 2012, 17% of the books we leased were metered, most expired after two years. Now in 2023, over 83% of the books we lease are metered, typically expiring in 12 months because we can no longer afford the 24 month model,” Harlow said. “We’re now spending almost 20% of our budget replacing expired titles, and we can only afford to replace the ones that already have a six month long wait list. … We have completely lost the ability to build a library collection.”

Harlow said this model isn’t just a detriment to libraries, but taxpayers.

“By the end of this year, the LION Consortium will have spent over 2 million taxpayer dollars leasing digital books through Overdrive, not including the $50,000 annual hosting fee we pay. By the end of this year, we will have lost access to about $1 million worth of content,” Harlow said. “If we stopped leasing digital books today, by 2025 we would have access to only 14,600 unique titles to show for a $2 million taxpayer investment.”

Rep. Christine Palm, who organized Tuesday’s panel alongside Paul, said she was struck by the “enormity of the wasted taxpayer” funds.

“At the Capitol we talk a lot about taxpayer money and government waste and being more efficient. And we are literally asking and allowing and forcing our libraries to dump tens of thousands down the drain because of a monopoly on the part of some publishers,” Palm said. “That was an eye opener for me. That was a big revelation, I think, for a lot of us.”

Palm said when the legislature convenes in February, addressing eBook licensing will be a priority for herself and colleagues.

Last session a bill prohibiting certain contract agreements between libraries and publishers as unfair trade practices sought to benefit libraries and remedy the current eBook licensing structure. It passed out of the Government Administration and Elections Committee and the Judiciary Committee with bipartisan support, but died on the House floor.

Rep. Eleni Kavros DeGraw said passage stalled on the final day of the 2023 session when an unrelated amendment concerning campaign contributions “was slapped on” to the bill, leading to a passed temporarily designation — a measure that effectively kills legislation without a vote.

DegGraw said she, Sen. Tony Hwang and Rep. Matt Blumenthal are committed to bringing the bill back in 2024.

“The publishers do not want to come to the table on this. They have no interest in negotiating whatsoever,” Kavros DeGraw said.

As a small state, she said it is a challenge for Connecticut to act as first in the country to push this legislation forward. But she added that “We absolutely have to be the ones at the forefront of this to the extent that we can, because it is taxpayer dollars.”

“(The publishers) are concerned because they certainly don’t want to have to keep negotiating with every state. But it’s unconscionable that we continue to do this,” Kavros DeGraw said.

In written testimony, the Independent Book Publishers Association, Authors Guild, Copyright Alliance and Association of American Publishers opposed the measure, saying the proposed legislation would hurt publishers, authors and creators and violate federal copyright law and the Constitution, among other criticisms.

Senior Vice President of Government Affairs for the Association of American Publishers Shelley Husband said that an “artificially capped system of government rates” would “directly devalue the intellectual property of authors and therefore their right to seek market compensation.”

Husband argued that the aggregate cost of library eBooks is nowhere near per-reader rates.

She said balance in this area is critical.

“Authors, publishers, and bookstores would not survive if every consumer could instead immediately ‘borrow’ a digital version of every book that they might otherwise decide to purchase,” Husband wrote. “The success of authors depends on the success of publishing houses and the incredibly important commercial markets they support. HB 6829 seeks to unconstitutionally intervene in this market and disrupt the balance between art and commerce that it has so carefully struck.”

CEO Andrea Fleck-Nisbet and Kurt Brackob of the Independent Book Publishers Association said that the bill would “ultimately compel publishers to accept licenses they might otherwise choose to object or, tragically, may not offer their works to libraries at all.”

They underscored their belief that Congress holds sole jurisdiction over eBook price and licensing regulations via copyright law and the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution.

“The supposed misconduct the state law aims to remedy is no more than the perception by the state that the licensee negotiated an unfavorable deal,” Fleck-Nisbet and Brackob wrote. “HB6829 would represent a fundamental, unprecedented intrusion into the free exercise of copyright by both authors and publishers by restricting certain licensing terms for digital materials under the guise of unfair and deceptive trade practices.”

On Tuesday, Sen. Tony Hwang said the proposal is in no way an attempt to minimize copyright protections.

Looking at lease terms, digital versus physical books costs and the impact to municipal budgets, Hwang said library eBook licensing boils down to a consumer protection issue.

“That cost differential is staggering,” Hwang said. “This is a state contract law. We are looking at consumer protection, and we’re going that angle.”

Kyle Courtney, a lawyer and librarian who serves as the director of copyright and information policy for Harvard Library and the co-founder and board chair of Library Futures, said he believes Connecticut can change eBook licenses by harnessing current state law.

“Connecticut has a robust consumer protection statute. It has state contract law. It has contract preemption under the uniform commercial code, which allows us the ability to regulate state contracts and would equally allow us to regulate eBook contracts in the same way,” Courtney said.

Courtney said current eBook agreements “are unfair deceptive acts and practices against the library mission.” He is hopeful state interest in regulation “might change the tenor of those contracts.”

Courtney said new legislation would foster more equitable contracts between libraries and publishers, giving eBooks the same utility as their print counterparts without impacting copyright protections or authors.

“What this does is it puts the coercive power of the state behind the libraries,” Courtney said. “My goal for this law is not that litigation ensues. The goal for the law is that the libraries go, ‘All right, the state is standing behind us when we come to the negotiation table.’ ”
https://www.courant.com/2023/12/09/t...s-ebook-costs/





Piracy Is Back: Piracy Statistics for 2023
Damjan Jugovic Spajic

For years, consumers griped about cable bundling and having to pay high prices for hundreds of channels they never watched in order to get the handful they enjoyed. Despite the growing availability of legal streaming options since then, piracy statistics show that infringement has remained a real concern.

Internet piracy isn’t ethically justifiable, but it is convenient. If you want to legally watch and rewatch The Crown, Game of Thrones, and The Handmaid’s Tale, you’ll have to pay for three separate streaming services: Netflix, HBO, and Hulu. Before you know it, your monthly expenses will have skyrocketed.

But do you know what’s free? Illegally downloaded movies and TV shows. You can almost hear the whispers of temptation in the air: “Go on – piracy isn’t that bad.”

But before you ditch the streaming services for an illegal torrent, take a look at the alarming piracy statistics we’ve compiled. They’ll show you that piracy is making a comeback, but they’ll also warn you against falling into this bad habit.

Piracy Stats – Key Findings

• Pirated video material gets over 230 billion views a year.

• More than 80% of global online piracy can be attributed to illegal streaming services.

• Digital video piracy is costing the US economy between $29.2 and $71 billion each year.

• 126.7 billion viewings worth of US-produced TV episodes are pirated every year.

• 70,000 jobs a year are lost in the United States due to music piracy.

• Annual global revenue losses from digital piracy are between $40 and $97.1 billion in the movie industry.

• Illegal downloading of copyrighted materials takes up 24% of the global bandwidth.

Number of Visits to Pirate Sites Per Country

What is piracy, and what are its consequences to society? MUSO is a company that deals with these questions every day. It also tracks piracy trends across various media categories and analyzes the most interesting of them. In its 2018 report, the company found there were over 190 billion visits to pirate sites in 2018 alone. See the following list:

Visits Per Country
# Country Billion visits
1 United States 17.380
2 Russia 14.468
3 India 9.589
4 France 7.339
5 Turkey 7.335
6 Ukraine 6.126
7 Indonesia 6.075
8 United Kingdom 5.750
9 Germany 5.356

Recent online piracy statistics show that over 50% of these recorded visits went to streaming sites, which remain the go-to tool for most users. However, torrent and direct-download portals are also popular.

It’s interesting to note that the UK secured a spot among the top 10, despite a range of restrictions on pirate sites and public outcry against these practices. The United States took the win with nearly 28 billion pirate downloads, followed by India and Brazil.

However, there is one major player missing: China. The world’s most populous country is often portrayed as a place where pirated downloads dominate the market. However, China has recorded a relatively low total of 4.6 billion visits so far in 2019, which is not enough to move it up from 18th place.

Rampant Music Piracy Rates

In 2017, users of pirate sites made 73.9 billion visits to illegally access music and 53.2 billion visits to download or stream movies.

(Muso)

Many people thought the rise in popularity of on-demand services had solved piracy, but statistics on media piracy from the past couple of years show that theory simply doesn’t stack up. An increase in demand for music downloads indicates that more music downloads are taking place illegally now than people would expect, given the rise of streaming services like

FireStick and Spotify.

Mobile piracy is on the rise; more than 87% of those looking to download music now use their mobile devices to do so.

(MUSO)

While desktop devices used to be the preferred machines for illegally downloading music, more people are now accessing pirated TV and music content via mobile devices.

According to MUSO’s music piracy statistics, desktops were still preferred among movie pirates as recently as 2018. However, with significant advances in mobile technology since then, it’s now more convenient for pirates to visit illegal music downloading sites or stream movies on their phones.

More than a third of music consumers still pirate music.

(IFPI)

In April 2018, IFPI conducted a global study into the way consumers engage with and pirate music. To verify their suspicions, researchers looked into thousands of licensed and unlicensed services.

The resulting statistics on media piracy show that a little over 38% of consumers still access their favorite music via copyright infringement.
32% of music piracy takes place via stream-ripping.

(Music Consumer Insight Report)

Stream-ripping is exactly what it sounds like. It involves illegally downloading a file that is being played on any streaming platform, including Spotify and YouTube. Music piracy statistics show that it’s the hottest trend in music piracy right now. Indeed, there are dozens of stream-ripping websites and tools that anybody can find with a simple Google search.

Using this music piracy method, consumers avoid paying premium subscription fees for platforms that let them listen to music while they’re offline.
Stream ripping services saw a 1390% surge in popularity in the UK between 2016 and 2019.

(PRS for Music)

A study conducted by the licensing body PRS for Music found that this massive surge eclipses all other illegal online music activity. Over 80% of the top 50 music piracy websites are now sites specializing in stream-ripping, and the trend doesn’t show any signs of slowing down.

In 2016, 57 million Americans were still pirating music in one form or another.

(MusicWatch)

According to MusicWatch, an estimated 57 million Americans engaged in stream-ripping or pirating music just a few years ago. The same report pointed out that 35% of American music buyers have acquired at least one song from a pirated source.

The average teen’s iPod had 800 pirated songs in 2008.

(The Times)

Back in 2008, online statistics on music piracy pointed out that people aged between 14 and 25 had an average of 800 pirated songs on their iPod. Almost half of them said they were willing to share their digital music with others, enabling others to copy hundreds or even thousands of music files at a time.

Nowadays, few people still use old-school iPods, but the habit of illegally downloading and sharing music lives on.

83% of UK adults who have pirated music say they did so because of a lack of paid options.

(MUSO)

Is it illegal to download music from YouTube? One of the recent MUSO surveys asked this question – and more – to over 1,000 UK adults. More than half of the correspondents said they had illegally downloaded music at some point. Over 83% of them said they tried to find the content in question by legal methods first.

In response to the question “Is it illegal to download music?” respondents listed the following reasons to justify why they had obtained content illegally:

• 35.2% did so because it was free.
• 34.9% blamed the lack of music availability on subscription channels.
• 34.7% said some music is not available where they live.

More than 70,000 jobs per year in the US alone are lost because of the lost revenues that came from music piracy.

(RIAA)

Music industry piracy statistics highlight the costs of music piracy and the immense consequences on the American economy. Music theft costs American workers significant losses in jobs and earnings as well as costing the US government substantial lost tax revenues.

Movie Piracy Rates: A Huge Comeback in the Streaming Age

Pirated video material gets over 230 billion views a year.

(Forbes & Statista)

The US accounts for around 15 billion of that total, 12.8 billion of which are TV shows and 2.2 billion movies. In other parts of the world, the numbers show similar preferences: 215 billion views for TV shows and 44.7 billion for movies.

TV shows remain most popular among pirates, with 106.9 billion visits to TV-pirating sites in 2017.

(MUSO)

Piracy is not just about music and movies; the constant demand for popular TV shows is stronger than ever. TV shows remain the most popular among pirates, with 106.9 billion visits to pirated movie sites in 2017.

Is streaming movies illegal in the USA? This remains a blurry subject for lawmakers in the country.

However, since streaming services offer quite limited content and only show a selection of popular TV shows currently on the market, it’s no wonder pirated movie websites and streaming services are booming in the United States.

In total, 126.7 billion episodes worth of US-produced TV series are illegally downloaded or streamed every year.

(National Economic Research Associates)

This study investigated the impacts of digital video piracy on the US economy. According to the study’s movie piracy statistics, the number of TV episodes pirated digitally in the US has reached an all-time high.

This number surely affects the US economy in terms of lost movie industry revenue as well as lost jobs and tax revenue.

More than 80% of global online piracy is attributable to illegal streaming services.

(GIPC, NERA Economic Consulting)

According to research conducted by NERA Economic Consulting and the US Chamber of Commerce’s Global Innovation and Policy Center, over four-fifths of all online piracy-related activities are linked to illegal streaming websites. This trend is especially prominent in the TV and movie industry.

Digital video piracy is costing US content and distribution sectors between $29.2 and $71.0 billion each year.

(GIPC, NERA Economic Consulting)

Digital piracy stats reveal that the impact on the American content production industry may be anywhere between 11% and 24% in revenue losses, diminishing the benefits that the streaming service industry brought to the table.

The global movie industry’s revenue losses from digital piracy are between $40 and $97.1 billion per year.

(GIPC, NERA Economic Consulting)

To be able to calculate how much exactly is lost to digital piracy, this study took into account a minimum replacement rate of 14% and a maximum rate of 34%. This calculation was derived on the assumption that 66% to 86% of digital piracy doesn’t actually replace paid consumption.

Statistics for film piracy then showed the total value of pirated content and revenue lost due to widespread piracy. Between $40 and $97.1 billion in movie industry revenue is lost, while that range is $39.3 to $95.4 billion for the television industry.

Illegally uploading or downloading copyrighted materials takes up nearly 24% of the bandwidth used in North America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific.

(Creative Future)

Global internet piracy is growing rapidly in spite of stricter piracy laws in the US and the potential for harsh penalties. In three key regions – North America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific – 23.8% of internet bandwidth is used for piracy.

The same study found that, in those three regions, 178.7 million unique internet users turned to BitTorrent for digital piracy.

More than 50% of torrent and streaming pirates use desktop devices.

(MUSO)

Movie piracy statistics from 2017 show that almost exactly half of the consumers were still watching pirated movies using their desktop devices.

Just a few years later, it’s easier than ever to pirate movies, videos, and music using mobile devices. Desktop computers are still the most popular tool for online torrenting, but that might not be the case for long.

Consumers who make pirate downloads are 28 times more likely to get their device infected with malware.

(Digital Citizens Alliance)

Even if you never illegally download, you probably know people who do. It’s not surprising that many pirate websites offer files that are infected with malware.

Statistics for film piracy gathered across a range of studies point out that the device you use for pirating could get infected with malware, which can compromise your personal information within seconds and put you at risk of falling victim to identity theft. When you consider all that, your free pirate movie no longer seems such a good idea.

If you do pirate content, you’re 28 times more likely to get infected than those who don’t.

Software Piracy: A Widespread Epidemic

57% of computer users in the Asia Pacific and Central/Eastern Europe regions confess to having pirated software at least once.

(BSA: The Software Alliance)

BSA surveyed over 15,000 consumers from 33 countries and asked a rather direct question: “How often do you acquire pirated software or software that is not fully licensed?”

Their software piracy statistics results showed that 57% of correspondents confessed to pirating software, but not one of them was caught for illegal downloading.

Between 2015 and 2017, the software industry lost $46.3 billion to piracy theft.

(BSA: The Software Alliance)

The software industry loses tens of billions of dollars to software piracy every year.

According to this BSA survey, the reason for such an increase in the amount of stolen software between 2015 and 2017 was a rise in PC shipments sent to countries with emerging economies. Statistics on high software piracy rates show that people in poorer countries are much more likely to pirate software, and this is where the software industry loses the most.

Software piracy rates worldwide dropped to 37% in 2017, down by 2% from the previous two years.

(BSA: The Software Alliance)

This survey looked into PC software piracy only. Even though these digital piracy statistics suggest a slight decline in the number of unlicensed software, it’s important to note that piracy itself, especially software piracy, remains widespread.

Most countries still have unlicensed software rates of 50% or higher.

(BSA: The Software Alliance)

Every time someone downloads software from one of the many pirated sites out there, the copyright holder misses out on profits. Moreover, software piracy is considered a federal crime, and some cases can result in the perpetrator paying federal statutory damages.

Still, statistics on digital piracy for people who understand the risks – like those living in the US – remain lower. Countries that turn a blind eye to software theft typically have pirated software rates of 50% or higher.

In the United States, only 16% of software is used without permission.

(BSA)

It seems corporations and individuals in America are aware of the previously mentioned pirating facts and of the dire consequences of pirating software.

From a business perspective, it makes sense not to use pirated programs. Not only are they illegal, but they also come with massive security risks. Companies that purchase software legally not only avoid being a part of notorious piracy statistics, but they can also protect themselves from unnecessary risks.

83% of unlicensed users in mature markets don’t want to break the law and are willing to pay for software once they realize their mistake.

(Revulytics)

The good news here is that most pirates are opportunistic rather than malicious. Most of these users aren’t even aware they’re using pirated software. Once they realize they’ve installed an unlicensed program, they’re not averse to paying for the licensed version of the product.

Globally, two in five copies of software products in distribution are unpaid.

(Revulytics)

Statistics on software piracy show that two in five copies of software programs around the world haven’t been paid for. Unfortunately, in the software industry, there’s an unspoken rule:

The more expensive and valuable your software product is, the more likely it is that people will be downloading pirate versions of the product.

On average, a malware attack takes 243 days to detect, costs $2.4 million, and takes 50 days to resolve.

(BSA: The Software Alliance)

Organizations have a one in three chance of encountering malware when they obtain or install an unlicensed software product. Of all the digital piracy statistics we’ve compiled, this is perhaps the most compelling reason to avoid downloading unlicensed software and, in the process, risking a malware attack.

Improving software compliance is now an economic and security imperative for many companies in their fight against online piracy.
A 20% increase in software compliance can improve a company’s profits by 11%.

(BSA: The Software Alliance)

Organizations that obey piracy laws and take proactive steps in increasing software compliance profit in the long run.

When companies take pragmatic steps to boost their bottom line, they can expect an average increase in profits of 11%, according to the latest piracy statistics. This requires some software asset management to ensure the programs that are currently running on the network are fully licensed.

76% of employees would not report the illegal use of software at their company.

(Revulytics)

Is pirating illegal? Of course, but it seems over three-quarters of employees would turn a blind eye to this malpractice at the office.

Of those, 13% said they would ignore it to secure their position in the company, 22% wouldn’t want a ‘whistleblower’ reputation, and 46% simply don’t care.

Demographic Profile of Pirates

Back in 2004, the average pirate was between 16 and 24 years old, male, and lived in an urban area.

(MPA)

Here’s a retro stat for you: According to media piracy statistics from an MPA study conducted way back in 2004, the 16-24 age group had by far the highest rate of internet piracy. The study looked into every country’s piracy rates and found that more than 58% of pirates were in this age category.

The numbers in the US were even higher; more than 71% of illegal downloaders were in the 16-24 age group in the mid-2000s. More than 15 years later, piracy is much more mainstream.

These days anyone can be a pirate, regardless of age, gender, or location.

In 2018, piracy was much more evenly spread across age groups, with those aged 25 to 34 the most likely to pirate content in the UK.

(University of Amsterdam Institute for Information Law)

How things have changed! More than half the pirates in 2004 were teenage boys or young men, but by 2018, that stereotype was no longer representative. According to these piracy stats, 43% of pirates in the UK are women, and 36% are over the age of 35. It’s fair to say piracy is now so mainstream that basically anyone can get their hands on pirated content.

More than any other generation, millennials are normalizing piracy.

(Red Points Solutions)

The majority of millennials download torrents online, so it’s no surprise that this age group is pushing for more mainstream acceptance of piracy. From the latest internet piracy statistics, it seems this generation is taking piracy to new levels of popularity.

There are a number of factors influencing millennials’ pro-sharing attitude. Some of these include their immersion in technology and the lack of a deeper moral understanding of why is watching movies online illegal.

Among kids aged between 12 and 17 in Australia, piracy has nearly doubled in recent years.

(Red Points Solutions)

Some of the more current piracy statistics show that 31% of minors in Australia are pirating movies or enjoying illegal music downloads. This has resulted in great public concern in the Land Down Under.

Those in the 30-44 age category are most likely to pirate books.

(Statista)

Over the past couple of years, a new piracy market has emerged: books. In 2017, there were more than 16.5 million illegal book downloaders in the United States alone.

Entertainment piracy statistics show that music and movie piracy has remained most popular among younger people. Still, when it comes to downloading books, the typical internet pirate falls into the 30-44 age bracket.

44.44% of male college-age students see online music piracy as positive, while only 14.62% of female students think the same.

University of Southern Mississippi)

While both genders regularly pirate music and TV shows, it seems men have a higher tendency to think of this behavior in a positive light.

Final Thoughts

For a while there, it seemed like we’d beaten digital piracy. At the very least, piracy statistics were looking more positive. How wrong we were!

Convenience is a key reason for people taking the illegal route when hunting their favorite shows or movies. Most pirates say they don’t really want to visit the best pirate movie sites, but the fragmentation of content across competing streaming services forces them to. If you love both Game of Thrones and The Grand Tour, for example, you’ll need to sign up for multiple services. That’s annoying, but more importantly, it can get expensive.

Andy Chatterley’s advice is perhaps the wisest. The CEO of MUSO says we have to stop thinking of this audience as the traditional internet pirate in our imagination. The reality is completely different from the fantasy. There’s a large demand, which streaming companies have spent years ignoring.

According to Chatterley, the statistics on media piracy show that companies will lose their long-term battle with pirates if they fail to adapt:

“It’s important that the content industries embrace the trends emerging from this data, not only in strategic content protection, but also in understanding the profile of the piracy ‘consumer’ for better business insight and monetizing these audiences,” said MUSO CEO Andy Chatterley.
https://dataprot.net/statistics/piracy-statistics/
















Until next week,

- js.



















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