p2pnet.net News Special:- Remember P2P Unite? It organized a week-long boycott to let the entertainment cartels know we don’t depend on them.

They depend on us.

“The boycott generated 140,000+ visitors, and although none of us think that all of them actually participated the last week in April, 2005, we considered it a success nonetheless, as having DONE SOMETHING for once and actually receiving as much interest as we did,” says the site.

And that’s the way it goes. Critical mass.

Sooner or later just one more person climbs on board and then suddenly ……….

P2P Unite organized a p2p consumer/customer survey and according to the findings, “It turns out that we now have even stronger reason to believe that file-sharers do not cause financial loss to the entertainment industry.” And more.

But what’s the Bottom Line, since that’s the be-all and end-all for the cartels?

“The message to the **AA organisations is that file-sharers and customers are one and the same.”

Read on >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

P2P customer/consumer survey
P2PUnite

Why is this survey important? Why does it matter if file-sharers buy commercial products, too?

It is important because file-sharers are depicted as a threat to society in the propaganda issued by organisations like MPAA and RIAA. Such organisations justify the persecution of file-sharers by citing severe financial losses on behalf of the companies they represent. If we can show that file-sharing in fact does not entail financial loss to the commercial companies, it follows that the actions taken against file-sharers are, at best, misguided. The message to the **AA organisations is that the file-sharers and the customers are one and the same. It should be important to the organisations to make and stay friends with file-sharers, rather than infuriating them by heavy-handed legal actions.

That is not all we have to say, though. There are two other main conclusions to be drawn from the survey results:

1. The results from this survey suggest that the “harm” done to commercial companies is not so much in terms of financial loss, as in loss of control. Many of those that took part in the survey said that they had purchased products that they had first discovered through some file-sharing network. We can combine that piece of information with many comments found in posts on file-sharing forums, to reach a preliminary conclusion about the impact of file-sharing. File-sharing may challenge the power that commercial companies are used to wielding. File-sharing help people to discover products that are not heavily promoted by the entertainment industry. In this sense, it may be true that file-sharing is indeed a threat to the companies that the **AA organisations represent. In addition, file-sharing may become a means for artists to free themselves from their dependence on commercial companies.

2. So, the survey shows that it is far from certain that file-sharing causes financial loss to the entertainment industries that are behind the **AA organisations. What more is, it also suggests that file-sharing may in fact be behind increased financial gain. It seems that file-sharing can lead to people buying more fan-material, going to more concerts, and indeed buying more computer hardware and blank media (CDs and DVDs).

How the survey was conducted
File-sharing being what it is – criminalised and highly decentralised – makes it impossible to have the kind of control that one expects from a scientific study. This is by no means a scientific study. Our results are supported, though, by the The Leading Question-survey made by a market research firm. That study showed that P2P users are the ones most likely to buy music online.

We posted an invitation to take part in the survey at nine different file-sharing forums. People were encouraged to spread the invitation, so there is no telling how far it traveled in the P2P networks, nor where/how those that participated encountered it. The survey was open for a month, from July 4 to August 3 2005 , and a total of 1,122 unique users participated.

Multiple entries from the same IP-number have been deleted into containing only one (the first) response, in order to make sure that the results could not be manipulated by one user answering the survey many times. This also means that some “legitimate” double answers have been purged from the survey, though. Users that share the same connection have not been able to take part more than once per connection. This purging of IP-number does not mean that we can tell who the people that answered to the questions are. All we can tell is that a (user with a) certain IP-number has taken part.

Detailed comments on the survey results
The tallies would suggest that various businesses most likely make quite the revenue from P2P-activities, and that for many users file-sharing seems to be a way of economizing rather than simply saving money. File-sharing is used to choose where to spend the money – file-sharers do buy products.

We started up (question no 1) by asking just in what way file-sharing activities affected the personal economy. As can be seen, most are on the same level of “outcome”. Many, though, manage to save a little money and some even end up spending more than they used to.

We cannot say if the answers would have been the same, though, if we had placed this question at the end of the survey instead. If you start thinking about the cost for computers, (other) hardware, etc, you may find that you spend more money because of file-sharing than you are usually aware of.

Question no 2 displays purchases made after having found a product on a file-share network. Few – 11% only – claims to have never bought such a product. However, there is a discrepancy with the percentage in question no. 3 – where in all fairness it should be 11% as well, but sinks surprisingly to 8%.

This isn’t easy to explain, and a source for speculation by each and all. Perhaps question no. 2 is replied to “in principle” and question no. 3 “in reality”. If that is the true interpretation, there are obviously those out there that have no intention of spending money by principle or other reasons. But even if we calculate with the highest amount, 11%, it is a really LOW amount of users who never purchases products found and downloaded online. The answers to questions 2 and 3 quite contradict the kind of arguments made by the *AAs of the world. They show that you can not measure “money lost” by trying to measure the distribution of files on the P2P networks.

Since 49% of all file-sharers do purchase products “once in a while”, a rather high amount of the speculated loss of income from file-sharing can be detracted immediately. As many as 30% even claim to make purchases monthly, and even though there is no telling in this survey of how much the person downloads in comparison with how many products they purchase, the numbers are clear. This is one shopping-happy crowd.

One thing of real interest here, is that these answers show that file-sharing generally is not used in order to save money. Instead it is used both as a means to evaluate content before buying it, and to discover music and movies other than those you would find anyways. In this sense, we see file-sharing as a tool for making the world of art and entertainment more “democratic”. File-sharing networks give more power to the customers, who can not be fooled into buying products that turn out to disappoint them and they certainly give more power to artists, who no longer have to rely on large companies to help them find their audiences.

Question number 4 – about other purchases made – is interesting, because while the entertainment business cry “foul” there are other businesses out there who are probably very happy. The computer and electronic media businesses are probably smiling all the way to the bank.

“Other purchases” also include things related to music and movies, such as going to concerts and buying fan material. One must consider that many times customers feel that when they pay for a product the money end up in the wrong pockets. Often we read (in P2P forums) about how consumers don’t trust the music industry to pay their artists fairly and many support their idols by going to live concert and buy merchandise instead of buying the CD, which they choose to download instead. This is also contradictory to the general view that file-sharers have no wish to support the artists. When reading around it would seem that many file-sharers feel that that argument is quite the lie.

Going to the movies, well, this is something that the industry probably need not worry about. Almost half of the participants (46%) go to the movies – as a result from file-sharing. This is perhaps why one can hear spreading of laughter in the salon when the nowadays complimentary “do not participate in file-sharing” splashes across the scene. Often movies are discussed in P2P forums, both before and after they have been released in movie theatres.

At the P2P boards, one can also read about how parents download to check out a movie, to see if it’s something appropriate and worth taking the whole family to. Money is tight for most, and this sort of consumer control takes place all the time. Hardly anybody mistakes the movie-going experience with having checked a title out in a file-share network, there simply is no competition. However, the loss feared is suspected to be that people find out it’s a “dud” too soon and is perhaps one reason why the movie-industries problems are not often respected.

A no doubt surprisingly high amount of file-sharers knowingly avoid downloading in favour of a purchase (question no 5). Only 12% claims to have never done that.

Why would that be? Well, a good example of this is the kind of trust you have in the product release. The Lord of the Rings trilogy, for instance, rated highly on the trust-scale amongst file-sharers. The discussions around message-boards were plentiful, and arguments for why not downloading it were common. Most that downloaded claimed to do it in order to be able to see it again after having seen it in the movies, others because it wasn’t showing in their areas but they were going to see it in the cinema once available. If anybody were of the notion to NOT see it “properly” as it were it was uncommon and they were generally considered to be a bit cooky. Not saying they were, obviously, to each their own, but generally speaking – file-sharing networks contains a lot of discussions like this.

Another example would be releases of products that are released for charity. Usually very few users download such releases and many times people post their concerns about how a charity should be paid for, as it’s for a good cause. The file-sharers are quite simply not non-thinking, downloading zombies, but quite aware of the world, just as well as their personal finances. File-sharers are not immoral criminals who simply want something for nothing. In fact, people even download copies of files they already own (question no 6).

The entertainment business would rather have you buy several copies, that much is clear. But is that really what their customers want? And when is the customer’s interest cared for? And how big of a dent does this put in the speculated numbers displayed in terms of revenues lost? Is it REALLY that simple, that somebody is stealing – for wanting an extra copy of the CD in the car? There’s an obvious grey-area here, one can argue that when buying a product, you’re only allowed to use it in one location, but all in all it doesn’t quite cut it with consumers, generally speaking. When we buy, we own it too and want to use it as we choose. This is probably a question that everybody can relate to, being file-sharer or not. Just to what degree should a company be allowed to regulate what you purchased and now own.

Finally a spread of gender and ages of the participants in this survey (question no 7).

One should perhaps comment on the fact that those that participated in this survey no doubt are to be considered “hard core” to a degree. The vast majority of file-sharers most likely never visit P2P communities online. Those that have participated here, have in most cases been made aware of this survey through such a place.

This may explain the low number of female participants. It is more common that men participate at online boards, whereas women, although not being strangers to file-sharing, rarely do. It is also worth noting that, while a lot of file-sharers are indeed teenagers, file-sharing is an activity that people of all ages take part in. The majority of file-sharers in our survey are over twenty years of age. File-sharing does not merely concern youngsters with little or no money to buy music, as some newspaper articles would have us believe. File-sharing is for everybody, regardless of age, sex and nationality.

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(Is that you, Emma? : )

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This entry was posted on Friday, August 5th, 2005 at 2:54 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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