Fewer and fewer private copies on personal devices and clouds, and little awareness of what the private copy fee actually is. This is what emerges from a statistical survey conducted in May 2024 by Synallagma - a consulting firm of the international consumer protection group, Euroconsumers - commissioned by Anitec-Assinform, the Confindustria association that groups ICT companies in Italy, - with the aim of studying the ways in which Italian consumers enjoy original audiovisual content. The survey involved 1,198 people, aged between 14 and 74, representative of the Italian population by age, gender, geographic area and level of education. The results show a clear trend toward an increase in the use of streaming over the past three years, accompanied by a decrease in private copies of audio and video content from original media. About one-fifth of the sample says, in fact, that they have decreased their frequency of copying, while half say they have never used this mode of enjoyment in the past three years. This trend demonstrates, once again, the trend toward increasingly accessible, inexpensive modes of content enjoyment that are detached from physical copies. While the use of private copying is declining, the use of personal cloud services for storing digital content is steadily increasing. 68% of respondents use the cloud, mainly to save photos, personal videos and documents, and 30% store original audio or video content there. In addition, the survey revealed that 70% of Italians have never heard of the private copying fee and only 21% of those who have knowledge of it are able to correctly answer 6 out of 11 specific questions on the topic.
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