Official Ares Free Download

p2pnet news view Politics | P2P | Music:- Levels of illegal filesharing “are not declining, despite significant media coverage on the issue,” and the use of “non-P2P methods to acquire music illegally have grown significantly in last six months, and are expected to keep growing”.

The quotes come not from a p2pnet post, but from Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music’s BPI (British Phonographic Industry).

Moreover, “P2P still remains most important source for illegal downloads in the UK,” it admits.

The statements arrive in a BPI survey organised to support renewed efforts by Vivendi Universal (France), Sony (Japan), Warner Music (US) and EMI (Britain) and the major Hollywood studios to have the UK version of their Three Strikes and you’re Off The Net business plan implemented as law.

“The growth in other, non-P2P methods of downloading music illegally is a concern, and highlights the importance of including a mechanism in the Digital Economy Bill to deal with threats other than P2P,” says the BPI’s Geoff Taylor,  pictured on the right demonstrating one  of the association’s new voice recording instruments.

He is of course referring to the practice of simply passing (and mailing) discs around, to WASTE, through trusted friend-to-friend bulletin boards, FreeWAN cells, Freenet-type sites, physical and WiFi sneaker nets of various kinds, sticks, hidden and disguised sites, and so on.

Good luck with that, Geoff.

P2P file sharing in the UK has remained steady during 2009, “but usage of web-based, non-P2P methods of downloading music illegally — such as from overseas MP3 pay sites and from newsgroups, blogs and forums linking to cyberlockers — are growing considerably,” says the report.

Last month, 1,012 people aged between 16 and 54 who said they were downloading or filesharing music on P2P networks “or from other web sources” were among .3,442 UK respondents,  says the BPI, going on >>>

The survey showed a net increase in the use of web-based or “non-P2P” methods during the last six months, with the biggest increases in use coming from overseas unlicensed MP3 pay sites (47%) and newsgroups (42%).  Other significant rises included MP3 search engines (28%) and forum, blog and board links to cyberlockers (18%).

Other findings highlighted that nearly half (47%) of users of P2P sites and software used them as a source for acquiring music on at least a weekly basis, with a third (31%) of respondents who obtain music illegally doing so on a daily basis.  Whilst some other sources – such as overseas MP3 pay sites (72%), newsgroups (70%) and forums / blogs (54%) – are used more frequently, P2P accounts for a much higher volume of illegal downloading with an average of nine tracks per month, compared to 4.9 for overseas MP3 pay sites, 5.3 for newsgroups and 6.0 for forums / blogs.

When questioned on their future plans, current users of unauthorised services reported that they actually intended to increase their illegal activities in the coming six months.  Use of P2P sites and software showed a modest predicted net increase of 5%, but this paled compared to a significant upswing across the board in the future usage of alternatives to P2P, with overseas MP3 pay sites (+40% net) and newsgroups (+32% net) showing the highest increases of all.

Expect to see the ’survey’ quoted as fact by the lamescream UK press corpse, and by politicians fronting for Hollywood and Big Music.

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

BPI – Growing Threat From Illegal Web Downloads, December 18, 2009
and so on – DarkNets: not tomorrow, but here and now, April 2, 2009

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