Canadian file sharing rebound
p2pnet.net News:- The music industry claims it’s sue ‘em all campaign against file sharers is working – even in Canada where Justice Konrad von Finckenstein recently ruled that under Canadian law, putting music into a computer directory that might be shared remotely by someone else doesn’t constitute copyright infringement.
But that’s not the case, says a new Canadian report.
In fact, “After a short-lived decline, free download activity in Canada has rebounded,” says the Solutions Research Group, based in Toronto and, “it’s all about file sharing,” study director Kaan Yigit told p2pnet.
“There’s no question of it.”
One-in-two Canadian teens 12-19 (51%) downloaded music files this spring on a ‘past month’ basis, says the study, going on:
“This is lower than the peak of 60% in Spring of 2003, but significantly higher than the post-RIAA-action level of 40% in Winter 2003.
“Among young adults 20-29, 28% downloaded music files in Spring 2004, down only marginally from a peak of 31% in early 2003.”
The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) “action” is ongoing. Under it, the Big Five record labels, of which only Warners Bros is actually in the US, are trying to sue people who share music online into buying music industry ‘product’.
The chances of a given individual being nailed for sharing files online is in the order of 61 million to one where 61 million is the estimated number of file sharers in the US alone.
So far, 3,429 men, women and children have been sued, although not one of them has ever been found guilty of anything. And that’s because not one of them has ever appeared before a judge. The RIAA makes victims an offer they can’t refuse: ‘Settle out of court and this will all go away.’.
The mainstream media, however, faithfully regurgitate every entertainment industry statement as though it were based on fact and thus, the RIAA’s efforts appear to be working.
Plastic Music
Nor are Canadians, at least, flocking to the Big Five supported and supplied plastic music sites, countering another music industry claim.
The media is full of iTunes, OD2, Napster II, Coke, all of which are offering identical Big Music product at more or less the same prices, depending on where in the world they are.
Apple recently bragged that its iTunes sold 800,000 songs in its first week in Europe. But that doesn’t even register in the real world where, at a conservative estimate, 4 million people are online at any given moment uploading, downloading or sharing one billion files every month.
Only 8% of Canadians have ever been on a paid download website and of those visits, four-in-five were “simply to browse as opposed to buy and download,” says Solutions Research.
Although RIAA action in the US and similar [failed] efforts in Canada haven’t had much effect on actual file sharing, they’re reflected in attitudes toward “unauthorized use of copyrighted material,” says the study.
Among teens and young adults 12-29, 42% agreed that “downloading songs off the Internet” is theft, up seven points from 35% in 2003. The level of disagreement dropped from 53% to 36% as the proportion of fence-sitters (”neither agree nor disagree”) increased from 11% to 21%.
“Many Canadians want to do the right thing but the value for money proposition for paid downloads at $0.99 per song is not perceived as attractive and for this reason, there are very few buyers,” says study director Kaan Yigit, adding:
“The market for ‘legal’ downloads appears very limited, except perhaps as a promotional tool to build traffic, as both McDonald’s and Future Shop have recently done.”
June 25th, 2004 at 8:52 pm
I’m blind, and if you try and navigate the site they say to go to in the commercial with a screen reader, you will quickly find that it is inposible.
I know it’s a minority we’re talking about, but you can bet your ass that if a sited person stuck in the middle heard this, they would use it as a excuse if you will, to continue download unprotected free music, and who can blame them? Nobody wants drm that calls home just so you can listen to the god dam song!
Also, I believe the numbers in that servey are fake, there’s no way that 74 percent of Canadians believe the indistry are right, lol, right, but it does make some good points like the price is to much, wich in total actuality, it is. They forgot about the contant factor, and the quality. Personaly, I try and dl mp3s, or ogg’s of high quality, usualy 192 or more when posible. The WMA’s downloadable from napster and the similar services are not that grate , they sound like a 96k mp3, and that sounds like crap through headphones. It sounds worse then most 64k windows media streams, lots of tinniness, if you know what I mean.