Torrenting copyrighted content is illegal, yet nearly half of US adults do it

A survey found that 47% of adults in the US use torrenting websites to access content that’s either unavailable in their country or hasn’t been released yet.

The online privacy and digital security company All About Cookies surveyed 1,000 US adults to determine whether they use torrenting websites.

Torrenting is the act of downloading and distributing files using the BitTorrent protocol, which allows people to share and download files from the internet. People usually torrent movies, TV series, and music.

The company asked 1000 Americans how familiar they are with torrenting pirated movies and TV shows and whether they’ve ever torrented before.

The majority of participants (66%) knew about torrenting, but this includes some people who may have never done it before. Only a third of people had never heard of torrenting.

However, 35% of people openly confessed to torrenting, with 20% of participants saying that they had downloaded this content in the past year.

Due to copyright laws, torrenting is illegal in various countries, including the UK, US, New Zealand, and most places in the European Union. Downloading certain content, like Hollywood blockbusters, is copyright infringement and is illegal in many countries.

So, why would you torrent a movie or TV show if it’s illegal? Well, people torrent pirated content for a variety of reasons.

One of the main reasons the people who were surveyed chose to torrent was to avoid paying for content. Almost half of the participants surveyed said they are motivated by the fact that torrenting is free.

Most people don’t want to pay for streaming services as well as buy or rent movies and TV shows.

Another reason is that people can find movies and TV shows they can’t access in their country – 43% said that content was unavailable anywhere else.

Forty percent of participants said they wanted to watch movies or TV shows before their official release.

Alongside these reasons, people torrent because they want to watch movies and TV shows ad-free, have lifetime access to the content, and avoid paying for unwanted content.

A portion of people said they didn’t want to pay for content they didn’t want to watch, which means they weren’t willing to subscribe to a streaming service.