Research continues to struggle to shed light on the issue of piracy. It is difficult to research because pirates don’t want to get caught and media owners don’t want to talk about how it’s affecting them, said Kantar’s Tom Ewing in a debate at the Media Research Group conference in Malta yesterday. The issue had been met, particularly in the music business, by “a weird mix of fear and complacency,” Ewing said.

Kantar has conducted work with communications regulator Ofcom on piracy but Ewing said people’s unwillingness to admit to illegal downloading in surveys, and the “enormous” variation in results between research modes, makes it a tough subject to get a handle on.

As a result many media businesses are fumbling in the dark when it comes to understanding who is copying their content illegally and how to deal with it.

James Myring of BDRC Continental reported on a piece of research looking at the nature and extent of piracy. The project used in-depth interviews with participants recruited through ‘snowball’ sampling, as well as a quantitative survey. Myring presented the findings with the caveat “I’m 100% confident [the figures] are significant underestimates of the true extent of piracy.”

The results showed different people exhibiting different types of pirating behaviour, ranging from ‘super pirates’ to those who receive illegally obtained material second-hand. Myring urged caution in the application of the ‘pirate’ label.

When he asked the audience of media researchers, agencies and owners how many of them had never downloaded anything illegally, under half raised their hands. When he asked how many had never been given anything by a friend who had downloaded it illegally, the number who were guiltless fell to zero.

Researchers are clearly making efforts to keep track of piracy but even Myring, who has reams of data on the topic at his disposal, declined to make a prediction on the crucial point of whether piracy is rising or on the wane. Research is helping media companies to feel their way, but they’re still operating in the dark.