India tops in content piracy
By siliconindia   |   Friday, 13 May 2011, 22:08 IST
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India tops in content piracy
Bangalore: Customer behavior has always occupied an interesting study as it builds the psychology for marketing for the vendors. They are always making several decisions, such as 'To buy or not to buy?' 'What to buy?'And 'Where, when, and how much to buy?' A survey conducted by Gartner, a research firm, revealed that Indian consumers spent the least in content. The survey showed that Indians spent a little over $6 in the January-March 2011 quarter, 20 times lower than Italians who spend the most, at $122, on buying both digital content on their mobile phones as well as physical content such as books and magazines. Globally Indians consumers spends the lowest on videos games, music and books as the same can be easily accessed in pirated version. Gartner conducted a survey across 11 markets to understand consumer behavior and preferences for devices, content and services. Although it was predicted that India will see a huge explosion in digital content, the findings revealed that people spent three times more on offline content than on digital content due to the easy accessibility to pirated content. The mobile users in India registered the lowest in adoption of social networking with only about 17 percent of it opting for this facility, whereas South Korea recorded 98 percent usage, 71 percent in Japan, 65 percent in China, 75 percent in Australia and 75 percent in UK and U.S. The vast usage of pirated content has triggered major steps from different companies. Microsoft has started to disable PC's with pirated content. Soon iTunes will block pirated contents from iPods. In a revived legislation the U.S. government will go after "rogue Web sites" that contain infringing content. The new act called The Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property (PROTECT IP) will allow the government to get court orders that would require search engines, ad networks, and online payment processors to stop supporting sites with pirated content. This is the first of its kind step by U.S. government to stop online piracy and sale of counterfeit goods. This comes as a big blow to those who offer movies, video games, TV shows and other copyrighted or trademarked content illegally instead of properly licensing content. Mobile gaming was the most popular service among the Indian consumers, followed by social networking; however, content sharing and mobile video telephony grabbed the last position in India's list of favorites. But with the increasing awareness among the people, companies, and governments gearing up to implement stiff legislation and anti piracy measures, content piracy is expected to come down in near years. Strict patrolling of the websites are the only means to bring down the malicious industry of piracy. In the era of smartphones and tablets everybody wants to be upgraded with the latest video games, apps and music,but which is affordable at a much cheaper rate. The hunt for products with same functioning at a less price, prevailing in the market ultimately leads to piracy. Though India has come out with new rules on internet usage, and it already Intellectual Property Rights guaranteed to its people, it still needs to come with stricter framework for piracy.

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