Legal copying of video, music files on the wane

The volume of annual private copying of video and music files by people aged between 15 and 79 in 2020 was about 258 to 276 million, said the Ministry of Education and Culture in a press release, referring to a study findings.

The total number (258 million files) includes only the legal private copying as defined in the Copyright Act.

In the 2019 survey, the corresponding estimate of private copying was 275–297 million files. Similar information was gathered by Taloustutkimus in 2019. In 2020, children aged between 12 and 14 were also included in the study alongside people aged between 15 and 79.

In 2020 music covered by legal private copying was copied by 203,000 people and video materials by over 757,000 Finns between 15 and 79 years of age.

There were all in all over 900,000 copiers of music and video materials. The number of people making copies has been in decline for the last couple of years. In 2014, there were still more than 1.6 million people making private copies.

The 2020 study also investigated copying by 12-14 year-old children. When copies made by them were added, the amount of private legal copying in 2020 among 12 to79-year-olds is 259 to 278 million files (400–451 million files in 2016).

The most often used sources for copying music are streaming services (offline saving), freely downloadable files from the Internet (e.g., artists’ own web pages) and original CD discs. Of these, only the music copied from original CDs is included in the figures of private copying. Copies of videos are most often copies of TV programmes.

More than half of those who had copied music would have acquired the copied materials from some other source, if the possibility of copying did not exist. Almost a third of those who copied music would have used chargeable sources for acquiring the music. The share of those who used a chargeable source was slightly lower than that in the 2019 study. Over a third of those who had copied video files would have acquired the copied video material in some other way, if the possibility of copying did not exist. Chargeable sources for acquiring video files would have been used by almost a fifth of the respondents. Regarding video files, the shares are at the same level as in the 2019 study.

Three out of four of the Finns have saved, photocopied, or scanned graphic material or printed them for private use last year.