Poland is the champion of Europe! Nobody has dealt with the scourge of piracy so well on the Internet

For decades, Poland has struggled with the problem of computer piracy. In the 90s, when the slogan “copyrights” didn’t tell us much (and the law on these rights itself was just emerging), trade in pirate music, films and software flourished at fairs and bazaars. Later, from the Dziesięciolecia Stadium, we moved to the Internet, where they reigned warez, torrents and other services, thanks to which we could use almost any content “for free”. Of course, at the expense of creators and artists.

At the beginning of 2014, Poland was one of the leaders of the world piracy rankings. PWC then published a report,

Over the last 5-6 years, however, the situation has changed by almost 180 degrees, and on the threshold of 2022, one can even say that the piracy epidemic in Poland has been overcome.

Piracy in the EU (2017-2020) Piracy in the EU (2017-2020)

Piracy in the European Union. Poland is the top student

The EU agenda analyzed the popularity of internet piracy in the Member States and Great Britain in 2017-2020. The authors of the report took into account 240 thousand the most popular pirate content aggregators (music, movies and series) and over 130 billion visits.

Conclusions? In the entire European Union, over the last 4 years there is a clear one decline in the popularity of pirated content. In the case of movies, this is it -68,1 proc, in the case of series, -40,4, and in the case of music, up to -80.6 percent. In total, piracy in the EU shrank by 55,8 proc.

Of course, the situation is still far from ideal. Statistics published by EUIPO show that the average EU citizen used pirated content in 2020 5.9 times a month. Most often they were illegally operating streaming services, much less often torrents if rippery.

Piracy in the EU EUIPO

Interestingly, the EUIPO data show that Poland is a true EU leader in terms of piracy. With just 3.8 visits per month per user we are last in the EU (that’s good!). They are also almost as good at dealing with the problem of piracy Germany (4 visits per user) and Finns (4.8 visits per user).

They are at the opposite extreme Latvianswho, with 13.9 visits per user, are the infamous EU record holders for piracy. The situation is also poor for two other Baltic states – Estonia (12.5 visits) and Lithuania (11.5 visits).

We pirate less because access to legal content is simpler and easier

The decline in the popularity of piracy in Poland coincided with the emergence of services on the market that offer legal, easy and relatively cheap access to content such as movies, music or games. It is worth remembering that – without excusing anyone – in the 90s of the twentieth century, but also later, we pirated to power also because legal access to many content was very expensive, and sometimes even impossible.

Today the situation is quite different. Streaming services are springing up like mushrooms. For a dozen or several dozen zlotys a month, we can get access to a catalog of hundreds of thousands of music albums, the greatest Hollywood hits or the most popular series.

The EUIPO data shows that in the years 2018-2020 the number of legally operating streaming services in Poland increased from 63 to 145, and we will soon have more premieres. Next year, we expect the debut of Disney + and HBO Max services.