Japan Doesn’t Even Pirate Things Like the Rest of the World

Vending machines selling girl’s pants. Hentai. Takeshi’s Castle. If you know anything about anything, the likelihood is you’ll know that our Japanese friends don’t tend to do anything in the same way as us Westerners ‘“ and it turns out that includes piracy.

In a recent survey of 1,000 young Japanese internet users, it was discovered that not only do only 11% pirate content (compared to around 16% in the UK, if recent figures are to be believed), but also that the most popular place to procure illegal CDs, games and movies is from brick and mortar shops, followed reasonably closely by auction sites and street stalls ‘“ with peer to peer (P2P) file sharing taking fourth place.

Arguably, this would indicate that Japanese pirates are happy to pay for their entertainment but are not willing to pay the prices in the shops; a different attitude to Western pirates, who more often than not are perfectly happy to simply procure it for free from P2P networks.

The results of the survey showed that the items pirated the most were CDs, followed by DVD/Blu-Rays, followed by computer software ‘“ with game software and flashcards coming 6th, only 13% admitting to using pirates games.