Gorging on P2P
Note: This post originall appeared at http://hollerif.blogspot.com . Market research cited in an article in Monday's New York Times says that users of peer-to-peer downloading networks—BitTorrent, LimeWire, and the like—downloaded ten times more songs than users of "legit" download services like iTunes. More than 5 billion songs were downloaded from P2P source in 2006, as opposed to 509 million legal downloads, said NPD Group, a market research firm. Those numbers didn't ring true to me. Here's my response: I would guess that 10:1 is seriously understated—I wouldn't be surprised if it's closer to 100:1. The article doesn't capture how these ratios work out when considering "officially released" content as opposed to "bootleg" content. For example, the torrent site Dimeadozen.org (capped at 100,000 free members) has a strict policy banning any material that is either in official release or likely to become officially released. ...