Does it pay to pirate?
Piracy is blamed by movie houses, software companies and music labels for billions in losses each year. The BSA recently said that the value of software theft in 2009 totaled a staggering $51.4 billion while the RIAA, the recording association in the US, estimates their losses due to piracy at $12.5 billion per year.
In South Africa high bandwidth costs can be seen as a natural piracy protection agent. With per-GB prices of around R200 on 3G/HSDPA – the most popular broadband connection technology in the country – it is hardly profitable to download an 8GB high definition movie.
Even just watching a few music videos or funny video clips on YouTube can cost you a pretty penny on a mobile connection, but ADSL subscribers have far more freedom when it comes to bandwidth hungry applications.
Uncapped ADSL accounts and low per-GB rates mean that many ADSL users in the country are now using their broadband connection to gain access to movies, TV series or music – often using services like BitTorrent or News servers.
Apart from the convenience of ‘pirating’ content (like the immediate availability and no DRM restrictions), the cost saving often persuades users to rather download audio-video content than purchase a CD or DVD in a shop.
This begs the question whether local consumers actually save money when pirating content.
The following table provides an overview of some of the costs involved in pirating content in SA. It should however be noted that the cost of ADSL data excludes the cost of the line rentals (analogue and ADSL) while only 4 Mbps accounts were considered for this pricing comparisons.
| Mobile | Capped | Uncapped – R500 | ||||||
| Media Type | Typical Size | R0.19/MB | R15/GB |
50GB
(R10/GB)
|
100GB | 200GB | Rent | Buy |
| Song | 4MB | R 0.76 | R 0.06 | R 0.04 | R 0.02 | R 0.01 | – | R 8.00 |
| Album | 60MB | R 11.40 | R 0.88 | R 0.59 | R 0.29 | R 0.15 | – | R 140.00 |
| Episode – 25 min | 175MB | R 33.25 | R 2.56 | R 1.71 | R 0.85 | R 0.43 | – | – |
| Episode – 45 min | 350MB | R 66.50 | R 5.13 | R 3.42 | R 1.71 | R 0.85 | – | – |
| Season (23×45 min) | 8050MB | R 1 529.50 | R 117.92 | R 78.61 | R 39.31 | R 19.65 | R 27.00 | R 300.00 |
| Movie – DVD rip | 700MB | R 133.00 | R 10.25 | R 6.84 | R 3.42 | R 1.71 | R 27.00 | R 150.00 |
| HD Movie | 4GB | R 778.24 | R 60.00 | R 40.00 | R 20.00 | R 10.00 | R 27.00 | R 300.00 |
It’s interesting to see that South Africans are able to download ripped DVDs via ADSL for less than it costs to rent one. This is due to the dramatic price reductions in per-gigabyte bandwidth, as well as the introduction of uncapped ADSL.
These costs don’t only apply to piracy – which is illegal and should obviously be discouraged – but also to music and movie downloads through legal content distribution networks like iTunes, Amazon and local Internet music stores.
Cost of piracy to consumers << comments and views
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