TV and porn dominate piracy statistics

With the launch of Apple Music and a number of high-profile artists withdrawing their music from streaming services, piracy has been in the headlines of late.

But a new infographic from application security company Arxan reveals that piracy of music is only a small part of the overall problem.

Between 2012 and 2014 the average number of pirated assets 1.6 million per year, that’s expected to increase to 1.96 million this year. However, only 12 percent of pirated material is music. Television on 24 percent and adult material on 23 percent make up the bulk of pirated assets, movies account for 14 percent and even ebooks and magazines (also on 14 percent) account for more than music.

In monetary terms, out of $109 billion worth of pirated assets in 2014 the vast majority ($73 billion) was accounted for by movies, $18 billion by TV and $12 billion by music. Adult content, despite its high percentage of total content, was worth only $6 billion dollars -- sex, it seems, is cheap.

More detail including the distribution model for pirated material and the amount of bandwidth it takes up is in the infographic below or you can access the full report on the Arxan website.

Image Credit: Marcos Mesa Sam Wordley / Shutterstock