Corporation sue-a-thon doesn’t scare us!
A new survey – conducted by Entertainment Media Research – concludes that more and more people are getting their music free from P2P file sharing sites.Despite apparent attempts by the ‘big 4′ music cartel sue everyone who utters the words ‘P2P’ or ‘file sharing’ (and even some who don’t, it turns out), more of us are turning to the Internet as our favored source of new listening material. While Apple’s iTunes is seemingly doing well from its customers downloading – and paying for – music from their site, its market share is miniscule: unsubstantiated claims of two billion downloaded tracks since 2003 are utterly dwarfed by the statistic that one billion tracks are shared online every single month.
The vast bulk of downloads, then, are coming from P2P networks and independent music and download sites.
The Entertainment Media Research questioned 1700 people across the UK; its summary of the results was quoted in the UK paper The Telegraph:
“Illegal music downloads have reached an all time high just as the growth of online social networking has shifted the epicenter of the music industry away from the major record labels …â€
it continues: “the popularity of social networking websites such as MySpace and BeBo is helping to ‘democratize’ the music industry as more young people discover new music online instead of via the radio or music televisionâ€.
Any logical reasoning on the matter will conclude that young people are going to be attracted to free music – especially when the alternative is overpriced, can ignore your privacy rights, and is occasionally difficult to get hold of. It is also clear, though, that the music industry ignored the P2P and file sharing communities for too long: it has now missed the boat and continues its suing crusade not because it thinks it can win, but to punish those who capitalized on the obvious gap in the market. The music industry completely refuses to acknowledge P2P as the distribution vehicle of the twenty first digital century, and this is one of its major mistakes.
An online survey run by p2pnet was answered by 1100 respondents. “Have the RIAA sue ‘em all lawsuits persuaded you to stop sharing?†the survey asked. No, replied an impressive majority of 94.1%. This is the problem that the Big 4 Cartel faces in bring P2P file sharers to ‘justice’ – they’ll have to arrest the whole world for it to work.
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[...] record companies are now legally entitled to track P2P users sharing more than 50 files within a 24 hour period, and, according to the country’s Council of State, [...]