Movie piracy has become a rampant and flourishing business for a large number of people. And even the general masses accept the evil as it is helping them to save a lot of money. The easy availability and pocket friendly street price tags have made the music piracy and movie piracy industry a million dollar industry throughout the world.

The movie piracy industry has become so widespread that it is causing great loss for the film producers and as well as the distributors who invest a huge sum of money for the making of each film. Movie piracy alone has cost the United States economy $20.5 billion per year in loss of business, jobs, wages and taxes, according to a recent market study.

The film industry for years has fought a war against movie piracy. The scenario has reached such an alarming stage that illegal copies of new films are easily available through street DVD sales or Internet download within days, or in some cases, before a movie's hall release. The recent study also shows that a growing number of illegal sites are offering new movies for a free download. Though the authenticity of these downloadable movies is surely questionable, the movie buffs and those who want free entertainment are profusely downloading these movies from such illegal sites.

Many organizations all around the world had tried different ways to tackle movie piracy but nothing effective could be done till now. In the United States of America the organization named Motion Picture Association of America warned against a growing global epidemic of movie piracy. The organization also conducted a study on the Internet where it showed that nearly one fourth of the Internet users have illegally downloaded movies from the Internet.

It is quite an astonishing and disturbing fact that most of the people who buy pirated DVDs or CDs or download pirated movies from the Internet do not know that they are committing a crime or an offence. They are also unaware of the fact that they are the cause for the loss of jobs to a lot of people.

The study was conducted by an organization that queried three thousand and six hundred Internet users in eight countries about online movie piracy. The study was performed in France, Germany, Australia, Italy, Korea, Japan, the U.K., and the USA. The survey showed that online movie piracy is growing too fast and most of the users are not even aware of the offence.

The increasing simplicity of downloading movies through a fast and efficient broadband connection, and the invention of compression technologies and extensive availability of new releases as well as the old classics online, are some of the main factors which attract consumers to download without giving it a second thought. The very high movie ticket prices also tempt people to buy pirated DVDs from the street shops.