Latest Studies Say RIAA May Have Declared Victory Too Soon

from the whoops dept

Just last week the recording industry was high-fiving each other following reports that file sharing was down. However, not everyone agreed with those findings - with many pointing out that it was based on a phone survey, where people are likely to lie about being involved in an activity they could get sued for. Now, other studies are coming out suggesting that it might be a bit early for the industry to declare victory. The latest study from NPD shows that after dropping for a few months, file trading is back on the upswing. Meanwhile, Business Week talks to two companies that actively monitor file sharing (both of whom work with the recording industry), and they indicate that file sharing isn't going away. BayTSP says that file sharing has only decreased about 10% from last summer (much less than other reports), and also notes that many people are simply ditching Kazaa for more advanced file sharing systems. Meanwhile, BigChampagne claims that file sharing is actually up in 2003, as compared to 2002. Now, both of these companies are dependent on file sharing continuing - as their money comes from monitoring those networks for the record labels - so there might be some bias. However, it seems pretty clear that the early victory dance coming from the RIAA may be a bit premature.

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