March 14, 2009
Piracy Has Become Mainstream, Studies Show
While the entertainment industries push for harsher copyright laws, public opinion steers in the opposite direction. Two recent studies from Canada and Spain found that half of the Internet users use p2p networks to download music, software and films. Less than 5% of the respondents believe that people who download copyrighted content are engaging in criminal behavior. TorrentFrea reports.
In recent years many studies have shown that a large chunk of Internet users share copyrighted files on P2P networks, and this number is rapidly increasing every year. The results of a Canadian study published Friday show that 45% of all those surveyed use file-sharing networks to download movies and music. Also, this behavior is widely accepted since only 3% of the people who participated in the study said that file-sharers should be punished by law.
These results are not unique to Canada either. A few weeks ago a Spanish survey found pretty much the same results (pdf). Of the thousands of Internet users questioned, more than half admitted using file-sharing software regularly. In fact, 28% said they use it every day. Only 1% of the respondents saw downloading copyrighted files as criminal behavior, while 43% said that the development of P2P networks should be promoted.
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