Homeowners who posses home insurance have been warned by Virgin Money this week that stolen DVDs and CDs that are stolen may not be covered unless they are an official copy.

Downloaded versions captured from the internet are very unlikely to be covered on many insurance policies despite them very much being a part of home contents.
An estimated 200 million legal music downloads have been sold in the UK since 2004.

Grant Bather, spokesman at Virgin Money, said: "More people are choosing to download music and films and as such, their computer will have a lot of information on it that if stolen, could be lost forever.

"A number of artists including Bloc Party, Marillion and Radiohead have all released their music online and it is clear that over the coming years artists will be exploiting the internet as a way to release their tracks.

He concluded,” As such, fans need to make sure that should their computer get damaged, lost or stolen, that the tracks or feature films can be restored."