London - Digital piracy, the scourge of the entertainment industries for more than a decade, is finally being conquered - in Norway at least.
In a sign that the age of pirated music and film may be ending, research carried out by research body Ipsos MMI in the country showed that music piracy has plummeted by 82.5 percent in the last four years. There has been a dramatic fall in the number of songs illegally copied, from 1.2 billion in 2008 to 210 million last year.
The number of films and television programmes downloaded illegally has also slumped by more than half. There were 260 million pirated movies and TV shows downloaded in 2008 but that figure has fallen to 120 million.
The decline in illegally copied files was ascribed to the rise of legal alternatives, which offer consumers a more reliable experience than peer-to-peer file-sharing sites.
The statistics demonstrated that tougher anti-piracy laws, demanded by music and film companies, were no longer required, web freedom campaigners argued, since the market was driving filesharing to the margins.
The Ipsos panel found that 47 percent (representing around 1.7 million people in Norway) said they use a streaming music service such as Spotify. Just over half said that they pay for the premium option, which is £10 (about R150) a month for unlimited, advert-free music in the UK.
While television piracy has reduced by half in four years, it actually peaked at the start of 2011 with 200 million shows copied without permission. But unauthorised copying is down more than 72 percent since then as subscription streaming services such as Netflix have become more prominent.
The Norwegian research echoed figures from music trade body IFPI, which revealed the first increase in global music industry revenues since 1999, fuelled by growth in digital sales.
The Official Charts Company has predicted 2013 will be the biggest year for single sales in UK chart history, thanks to tracks such as Daft Punk's Get Lucky, with download sales up 2.5 percent on last year. But the BPI believes that those signs of recovery will be choked off without continued action against piracy. In a landmark case, the High Court ordered ISPs to block The Pirate Bay, the website which helps internet users find content for download via peer-to-peer networks.
Another factor in the decline of piracy was the 2012 closure of Megaupload, one of the most popular file-sharing platforms. US prosecutors accused it of costing copyright holders more than $500m in lost revenue.
In Norway, the apparent victory over piracy was achieved with only token attempts to prosecute illegal file-sharers. New measures to force ISPs to block copyright infringing sites, which come into effect in the country this month, are now unneccesary, argued the website Torrentfreak.com.
“When you have a good, legitimate offer, the people will use it,” said Olav Torvund, former law professor at the University of Oslo. “There is no excuse for illegal copying, but when you get an offer that does not cost too much and is easy to use, it is less interesting to download illegally.” - The Independent