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An online survey conducted by Newspoll for Australia's Intellectual Property Awareness Foundation (IPAF) has found that 10% of people who used to pirate movies and TV shows have stopped doing so recently, with the majority of them saying that new legal options have persuaded them to do so.

Surveying 1654 Australians in April, the poll found that only 27% were either casual downloaders or persistent downloaders of pirate content, with 63% saying they've never downloaded anything illegal. Of the 27%, 10% admitted to downloading films and TV shows regularly. Out of this group, 72% say they did it because the content they want is not available legally online.

In what could be interpreted as good news for the film industry, 10% of respondents said they've stopped their pirating ways. Of these people, 65% says that the availability of more legal options such as iTunes, catch-up services and subscription streaming services was one of the reasons they've stopped. A similar number of people also said that the risk of getting computer viruses was another factor in their decision to seek legal alternatives.

Recent data suggests that, at least in the US, legal services such as Netflix is much more popular than piracy options such as BitTorrent downloads - 5 times as popular in the evenings according to bandwidth usage. Catch-up services are also proving to be extremely popular. Similar legal options are very limited in Australia though, and this suggest that more legal options could further reduce the piracy rate.

It also appears recent high profile court cases which has set back the movie industry's attempts to catch web pirates have not encouraged more to pirate.

The IPAF sponsored survey also showed that nearly 1 in 4 of those who say that pirated a film or TV show were still willing to buy or rent the same content legally.