Spain sees a 6% Fall in Piracy Rates

• In Spain, piracy rates fall by 6% in 2017 when compared to 2016.
• Mostly users in Spain are busy pirating movies, followed by TV shows, ebooks, music, video games, and football. 
• Many users state that they pirate content because of unavailability of affordable alternatives. However, other believe that piracy is okay as it isn't followed by any repercussions. 

The Coalition of Creators and Content Industries which represents the leading entertainment companies in Spain has just released their latest Piracy Observatory and Digital Content Consumption Habits report which sees a decrease in piracy habits in the country.

According to the report, people accessed pirated digital contents around four billion times in 2017 which roughly makes around a loss of 21.9 billion euros for the industries. Even though this is a significantly large figure, the numbers have dropped by around 6% when compared to that of 2016, and by an accumulated 9% decrease in comparison to 2015.

The report also cites that most of the users - 34% to be exact - were busy consuming pirated movies. TV shows took second place with around 30% users engaged in this kind of piracy. eBook took a surprising third place with 24% of users, whereas 22% users did pirated music consumption. Lastly, around 11% of users were downloading pirated video games, and roughly 10% were busy with football.

There was also some research done on why pirates are engaged in this habit. It turns out 51% stated that original content is too expensive and 43% said illegally gaining access is faster and easier. Another portion of users is of the opinion that paying for an internet connection makes them entitled to free content. By and large, most of the pirates are of the opinion that they aren’t doing anything wrong, because there aren’t any repercussion to these activities.

So now the question comes, how can we reduce piracy rates to even lower levels? Well the report proposes a solution - “The most efficient measures against piracy would be, according to the internet users’ own view, blocking access to the website offering content (78%) and penalizing internet providers (73%) [...] Following these two, the best measure to reduce infringements would be, according to consumers, to promote social awareness campaigns against piracy (61%). This suggests that increased collaboration between the content sector and the ISPs (Internet Service Providers) could count on consumers’ support and positive assessment.”

Finally, consumers in Spain are now becoming aware of legal alternatives to their favorite content made available at affordable prices. The country’s awareness level for Netflix is at 91%, that of Spotify is 81%, HBO is at 68% and Movistar+ accounts for around 80%. Hence, these will be great alternatives for people who have cited that piracy is a consequence of lack of affordability and accessibility.

As of now, around a million users in Spain have subscribed to Netflix, and around six million Spanish households had access to other Pay-TV services.