Features
Song Trading Good?
With the defunct LimeWire sued once again, this time by trade group Merlin that claims the peer-to-peer music trading network reneged on a deal to give 12,000 indie labels a cut of its profits, the question is how dangerous music file sharing is anyway.
In June, 250 police and other officers raided streaming video links portal Kino.to, which allegedly distributed copies of films online. The raid’s magnitude was said to dwarf that of Pirate Bay. But is file-sharing bad?
A study by Society for Consumer Research reportedly shows that users of pirate sites tend to buy more DVDs, spend more at the box office and go to more movies, treating the download as a preview. An anonymous source from SCR told Telepolis the findings were so unpleasant that the company that commissioned it locked the findings away “in the poison cupboard.”
But what of music? Apparently the same story, according to none other than the annual Digital Music Report of the music industry lobby group IFPI. The report states that European file-sharers buy fewer physical CDs than the average buyer, but the story changes for digital numbers.
Specifically, file-sharers are 31 percent more likely to buy single tracks online, 33 percent more likely to buy music albums online, 100 percent more likely to pay for music subscription services and 60 percent more likely to pay for music on mobile phones.