Film piracy surges during lockdown
The largest increase was seen in Italy, one of the first countries to go into lockdown, where it surged 66%
Film piracy sites have seen a surge of users from all over the world during th elockdown period.
A piracy-monitoring company Muso said, it reflects the "unprecedented gains" that media sites are gaining across the world.
The largest increase was seen in Italy, one of the first countries to go into lockdown, where it surged 66%, reports BBC.
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In UK, the amount is upto upto 43%.
In contradict with the rise of film and software piracy, pirated TV numbers have dropped because of a lack of live sport.
Muso's data suggests in the UK pirated television has fallen by nearly 5%, which includes a fall of more than 50% in live sports streams.
Increase in film piracy
Visitation rate was compared between the last seven days of March to the same period in February.
Muso's chief executive, Andy Chatterly, these statistics are closely linked with a similar boost for streaming service websites."So, just as
Netflix has seen large subscriber gains, we have seen a significant spike in visits to film piracy sites," he said.
Software piracy is also up - by about 29% in both the UK and the United States and more than 41% in Italy.
Muso says it has the world's largest piracy dataset, tracking illicit streaming, web downloads and torrents on more than 19,000 websites so media companies and rights owners can "see the bigger picture around how their content is being consumed".
And Ernesto van der Sar, editor of piracy news site TorrentFreak, said Muso's figures "match what we would expect".
"We have been following the effects of the pandemic closely and in many countries, there's a sharp increase coinciding with the various lockdown measures," he said.
