Studies Keep Showing That the Best Way To Stop Piracy Is To Offer Cheaper, Better Alternatives

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Study after study continues to show that the best approach to tackling internet piracy is to provide these would-be customers with high quality, low cost alternatives. That idea was again supported by a new study this week out of New Zealand first spotted by TorrentFreak. The study, paid for by telecom operator Vocus Group, surveyed a thousand New Zealanders last December, and found that while half of those polled say they've pirated content at some point in their lives, those numbers have dropped as legal streaming alternatives have flourished.

The study found that 11 percent of New Zealand consumers still obtain copyrighted content via illegal streams, and 10 percent download infringing content via BitTorrent or other platforms. But it also found that users are increasingly likely to obtain that same content via over the air antennas (75 percent) or legitimate streaming services like Netflix (55 percent). 'In short, the reason people are moving away from piracy is that it's simply more hassle than it's worth,' says Vocus Group NZ executive Taryn Hamilton said in a statement. 'The research confirms something many internet pundits have long instinctively believed to be true: piracy isn't driven by law-breakers, it's driven by people who can't easily or affordably get the content they want,' she said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.