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Wednesday 8th February 2006

File-sharing continues to climb despite legal threat 12:13PM, Wednesday 8th February 2006

Despite the best efforts of the major record companies the level of p2p activity continues to rise, according to monitoring firm Big Champagne.

The company recorded an average of 6.98 million sharers online throughout January, up 14 per cent on January 2005 and close to double the level two years ago.

Music industry sources have attributed the continuing rise to the increase in the number of broadband Internet connections and believe that it would be even higher were it not for the combination of lawsuits against alleged shares and a concerted media campaign. Nonetheless John Kennedy, CEO of the IFPI, the industry's international body, claimed last month that sharing is in decline.

'We are now seeing real evidence that people are increasingly put off by illegal file-sharing and turning to legal ways of enjoying music online,' said John Kennedy, IFPI CEO.

Pro-file sharing website p2p.net disagrees.

'The desperate Big Four Organized Music Goliaths say their p2p file scaring tactics are either significantly reducing the numbers of people using the p2p networks, or the numbers are static,' it says.

'However, the real story is: the numbers of file sharers in the US and around the world continues to rise.'

Simon Aughton

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