Even though there has been some research finding that file sharing has either a little or a possitive effect on music sales, according to a recent study by Jupiter Research, around 15% of consumers use file sharing services to obtain music without purchase, where as only 5% of consumers use legal download services. The statistics get worse for the younger generation with 34% of those aged from 15 to 24 using file sharing services to obtain music without paying for it.
As P2P file sharing technology is only a couple of years old, so far it is mainly the youth who are using them, however as these consumers grow older, they will likely keep up their habits which will affect the recording industry over the long term. Jupiter research also compares trying to stop illegal file sharing in the same way as trying to stop virus writers, even though both are considered a crime. So no matter how much legal pressure the record labels put on illegal file sharing, it will always remain.
While most of the young generation are well aware of the legal issues of file sharing, apparently their main reason for continuing to download illegally is due to it being much simpler than actually buying the music. If one wants to purchase it on CD, they must either physically go out to buy it or order it online and wait for it to arrive. While legal download services overcome this, most still require a credit card and most teenagers don't have one of these, never mind the process of going out buying vouchers to buy music online, such as for Napster.
|
The study, done in Europe, showed consumers are three times more likely to go for the illegal downloads instead of the paid ones with about 15% going for the peer-to-peer downloads and 5% digging the legal stuff. Also not surprising are teenagers doing the p2p downloads more. 34% of the 15-24 age group admitted to sharing music online without paying for it. Not good for record companies. Mark Mulligan, an analyst from Jupiter said, "The digital youth of today are being brought up on a near limitless diet of free and disposable music from file-sharing networks. |
While casual CD copying piracy is still another issue,
consumers have copied music all the way back to the early days of cassette
recorders. In fact, copying tapes was so straight forward that pretty much
anyone who could play a tape could also copy one with a dual-cassette
recorder. With CDs, this is not that straight forward for novice PC users,
not to mention creating custom compilation CDs.
However, as the record labels are now trying to put all sorts of anti-piracy measures on their CDs, they are effectively making matters worse when it comes to file sharing. If one decides to buy CDs instead of downloading their music, they lose flexibility and those with iPods are unable to carry their music with them, which they could do with downloaded music. Sony's use of XCP showed what a clear example of what happens when anti-piracy measures go too far.
Feel free to discuss about file sharing and related legal issues on our Music Download, Peer to Peer (P2P) & Legal Issues forum.
Source: SecurityProNews
