From the city of love, Paris, France comes news of illegal P2P downloading trends, sure to insult the music industry and send the MPAA into (another) tailspin. For the first time, video and 'non-audio' files are taking the lead in copyright abuses.
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Across the OECD's 30 industrialized member countries, music accounted for 48.6 percent of files shared online, compared with 62.5 percent in 2002, according to excerpts of the report seen by The Associated Press. Video accounted for 27 percent, up from 25.2 percent, the study will say. The findings will do little to reassure movie studios, which are worried that they will be the next victims of the ever speedier Internet connections and compression technologies on offer to consumers. Online piracy through sites like Kazaa, Grokster and Morpheus - which let computer users connect directly to one another to exchange files - has already been blamed for a five-year decline in CD sales that has hurt music labels. European countries are leading the way in movie downloading, the OECD report shows, with video accounting for 35.4 percent of files swapped by German users of Kazaa, compared to 23.7 percent by U.S. users. |
This is most interesting news. As it says in the report, folks over in Europe are really outpacing the US in movie downloads. According to the report, Internet users allegedly logged on in Italy, Belgium, France, Norway, Britain, Finland and Poland and proceeded to download a higher percentage of movies than even those illegally surfing for files in the United States.
I shall propose a theory that is two fold. One, everyone has taken everything they want from the so called music library of the file sharing world. There just isn't any more good music out there that people are wanting to download. This is due to a business strategy that no longer promotes art and innovation, rather just a sound that is similar to the last big hit. How many times can we listen to the same annoying pablum before we turn to other forms of entertainment?
Second, people are tired of this inane system of releasing a film in the US and then waiting weeks to release the same film overseas. It isn't right and makes no sense. Release the films worldwide at once and the majority of us will be happy to pay and see it. Don't dangle a temptation in front of your customer base then get upset when the product begins disritibution on it's own, it's just like asking for trouble.
What do you people think? Isn't it about time for a worldwide simultaneous release of films? Why can't this be accomplished? Does anyone know?
Source: My Way News (AP)
