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20 Dec 2009
Illegal file sharing levels are still not declining, despite a recent crackdown by the government, according to new research from the British Phonographic Industry (BPI).
The trade body interviewed over 3,000 UK respondents aged 16 to 54, and found that 1,012 were downloading or filesharing music on peer-to-peer networks or from other web sources.
While levels of illegal file sharing remained pretty much the same throughout 2009, the BPI warned of an increase in the use of web-based or "non-P2P" methods during the past six months.
The biggest increases in use came from overseas unlicensed MP3 pay sites (47 per cent), newsgroups (42 per cent), MP3 search engines (28 per cent) and forum, blog and board links to cyberlockers (18 per cent).
"There are now more than 35 legal digital music services in the UK, offering music fans a great choice of ways to get music legally," said BPI chief executive Geoff Taylor.
"It's disappointing that levels of illegal P2P use remain high despite this and the publicity surrounding imminent measures to address the problem. It's vital that those measures come into force as quickly as possible.
"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."
When questioned on their future plans, current users of unauthorised services reported that they intended to increase their illegal activities in the coming six months.
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Do you agree?
Misplaced ideas and fatcats
The people involved in these industries are no longer owed their big cars and holidays. They must work for their dividends. The prevalance of piracy is a clear message that the current business models do not work. These companies should be spending investing money in updating their business models and reconnecting with their customers rather than funding an archaic and pointless witch hunt. No number of heads on pikes will change things, they must adapt or die.
Posted by: Dave Yell 21 Dec 2009
Likely....
Let me guess, this requires 'tougher regulation'. Youd think theyd be happy tapping up mandelson but no, they want to stick to the smae tried and failed methods that havent worked for a decade, but MORE of them. Filesharing could be wiped out tomorrow by cheaper downloads but a loss of revenue is a step too far apparently. Far better to use collective punishment of every internet user, snoop programs to monitor what EVERYONE downloads than cut short term profits for long term gain.
Posted by: Pete Tong 21 Dec 2009
Spotify
The argument for downloading music illegally to try it out no longer holds up. With services such as the brillian Spotify, you can listen to anything you want, for free, as many times as you want. You have the further choice to then buy the music if you want too and advertising revenuw from free usage means people are still getting paid.
Posted by: Chris 21 Dec 2009
Keep up with the times.
The BPI seem to be under the illusion that every illegal download is a lost sale. Most of these downloaders do so because it's easy and free so they can download that artist they heard five minutes ago, something they wouldn't do on the pay sites at £10 a pop. If they (BPI) wish to make an impact they need to allow for the 'try before you buy' mentality that kids have nowadays and promote sites like spotify and stop removing music videos from Youtube.
Posted by: Matty 21 Dec 2009
non-p2p illegal downloads?
Perhaps we could get a reference to where in the Copyright Act it's illegal to make a copy for personal use (ie. download) because by my reading, it's uploading/exporting/sharing that's the illegal bit and downloading isn't covered at all (unless you are a business)
Posted by: Anna Colton 21 Dec 2009
Why do it illegally?
I can't understand why people would download music illegally when it is available for free, legally from sites such as We7.com - people are nuts!
Posted by: Sean Duffy 21 Dec 2009
Something needs to be done...
Admittedly, I used P2P filesharing networks to download music in the past. Due to the increasing amount of viruses spreading on these networks I stopped and sourced my music elsewhere. However, the genre of music I listen to makes it extremely difficult to source a single music track and have on a single occasion turned to a 'commercial' foreign music download site. The use of P2P networks is easy and free. The software that allows this is also free. Perhaps targeting the software makers might make an impact.
Posted by: Mark 21 Dec 2009
All is not as it seems
First off, I would have to say that you have done a pretty good job of citing the BPI press release without any investigation of what is behind the figures, which I think is fairly normal for journalism these days. I have long held the belief that statistics produced by the recording industry are complete (to use a slightly more clean word than the one I was thinking of) bunk! Figures regarding the number of users on file sharing networks, the numbers of files downloaded and the lost income from those downloads cannot be calculated because there is no central counter of all the files and the number of times each has been downloaded. Despite this, the recording industry continues to present headline-grabbing numbers in the billions as proof that it is being harmed by this and that something must be done. In the last week or so, I went looking for information about the levels of counterfeiting of music CDs and found that the figures there are exactly the same. One figure that keeps coming up is that illegal copying is causing the loss of 750,000 jobs. Someone did manage to track this number back close to its source, a member of the Reagan government who quoted the figure out of thin air during a press interview to discuss an upcoming copyright bill. That number grew slightly to the one we see today, but it has never changed since and is still being quoted. There is also a figure of $200bn which is often seen, but again, there appears to be no way to determine the origin of this number. The website for the EU has information about counterfeiting which has been collected from across the community which shows that this type of activity is alive and thriving. The question is, why? If illegal downloading is having the effect that it is supposed to be having on the recording industry because the content is being shared for free, then surely the counterfeiters should be suffering as well. Unfortunately, they are not, which means that something else is wrong. There is a basic assumption that these surveys are correct and are unbiased. Industry analysts often find exactly what their clients want them to find, the same could be considered true of surveys. Ask the question in the right way and you get the answers you want. There is also incentive to lie. If I were to have been questioned in this survey, I would have lied simply to contribute to the industry's paranoia over this issue. File sharing is being used as a scapegoat for the recording industries inability to cope with a changing world. It was unable to comprehend what Napster was or what it offered despite the fact that the management of that company offered them a $20bn a year revenue stream, therefore it shut them down and all the companies that followed that they took a dislike to. The file sharing software and the networks were pushed into public ownership which meant that anyone could set up a server or alter and improve the code. When that happened, it became unstoppable and they had lost their chance to exercise some control over it. The recording industry needs to get its head out of its own backside and change its business model. Its issues are down to the fact that it is producing derivative, uninteresting content that a smaller proportion of the population wants to hear let alone buy at the prices the industry wants to charge. Instead it wants to blame someone else for their troubles just as Idi Amin with the Indian shopkeepers in Uganda, or Robert Mugabe has done with the white farmers in Zimbabwe. It will criminalise a whole swathe of people in the country, guilty or not, in the same way as the RIAA has done in the USA, but it will ultimately be futile. Within the two to three years that our dear friend Mandy cites for cleaning up file sharing, they will have evolved, first making use of heavy encryption, then finally into the realm of darknets. When every file sharing network becomes a darknet, everyone becomes anonymous and untraceable, and Mandy's nice new law becomes moot.
Posted by: Ian 21 Dec 2009
P2P IS OK
This year EMI made massive profits inspite of rececion an file sharing ,Today file sharing is helping an not hindering music as songs downloaded are giving a tast of the music an encourage file sharers to buy the albums (recent study found file sharers spend more on music than non file sharers)one final thing ,yo catch file sharers the service providers would need to spy on what we are all downloading (in case we down load somthing we shouldnt !)this is in breach of forth coming data protection laws from europe.
Posted by: Dan 20 Dec 2009
Duh.
Government attempts to ban something. Fails. Makes it more popular and harder to stop in the process. Eventually taxes it. Repeat until end of time.
Posted by: Mark 20 Dec 2009
P2P is evil....
oh woe is me, let bash P2P users cos that all we us it for is downloading music. WRONG! it has other uses, for example a lot of linux distros are downloaded via p2p
Posted by: spg 20 Dec 2009