The Cambridge-based Envisional, which helps organisations detect and guard against the threat of internet copyright infringement (piracy), reports that "illegal" film piracy by broadband ISP customers in the UK has grown 30% over the past five years. In addition the top five box office movies were pirated in the UK a total of 1.4 million times during 2010.


The study found that piracy of the top five most popular TV shows was also on the increase, recording a total of 1.24 million downloads in the UK during 2010 (33% up on the 2006 figures, when broadband was somewhat slower than today).

Interestingly Dr David Price has suggests that the most effective way of combating piracy would be for Rights Holders to release their content "as easily and as quickly and as cheaply as possible". Easier said than done, especially when doing so for films could mean the end of traditional Cinemas'.

Meanwhile the film industry claims to be losing £170m every year to piracy, which is also putting thousands of jobs at risk. However it's unclear whether clamping down on casual piracy would cause sales to rise, especially since somebody who downloads 100 movies would probably never have brought that many in the first place.

The UK government, Rights Holders and ISPs are currently still trying to find a universally agreeable solution to all of this. So far most of the measures have focused on punishment (website blocking, ISP disconnection, service restrictions etc.), with only a small effort going into the development of more effective business models.