The New York Times is reporting today that, according to NPD Group tracking research (announced May 24), video downloads are on the rise. Providing more fuel to Hollywood's inferno of anti-piracy battle, neither the Times nor NPD could specifically claim that illegal full-length motion pictures had increased since last year, only that the presence of such material had been found.
As yet another misleading representation of data, the short Times article serves no purpose other than to support Hollywood's propaganda countering digital media. There is no recognition of the fact NPD issued a press release last week stating legitimate music downloads from iTunes have reached a popularity higher than contraband files from peer-to-peer (P2P) network sharing. This should be more important to movie studios that still fear an authorized forum similar to iTunes for movies.
Additionally, the Times article claims that many of the tracked files are likely pirated television episodes, a fact downplayable by recent NPD data claiming TV-on-DVD sales continue to rise.
Article comments
1 - Aaman
Actually, it's not unbelievable, from what I see on various sites. The bigger question to me, is still why does the film/tv business persist in refusing to embrace these new forms of distribution, and give in to the inevitable - at the cost of a few suits, to be sure.