Government advisory body calls for greater study into illegal offline file-sharing

The Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property – a Government advisory body – has called for urgent investigations into consumers’ attitudes and behaviour in relation to offline copyright infringement. It says that too much focus has been placed on looking into online peer-to-peer file-sharing. However, it is concerned that physical copying by swapping hard drives and memory sticks has been overlooked and may pose a greater threat of piracy than online copying. Sabip says that there is a lot of offline copying taking place but the extent of it is unclear. Sabip’s research, which had been conducted by BOP Consulting, shows that consumers were more interested in price, quality and availability of material than whether it was legal or illegal. The implication is if legal material happens to be better quality than unlawful copies, that could influence consumers to buy legally.