An intellectual property thinktank reckons between 44 and 79 percent of global internet traffic is file-sharing, with the problem worse in eastern Europe than the USA. The Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property‘s (SABIP) Copycats? paper warns: “The scale of the problem is huge and growing.”
But it says the availability of legal free services like Skype and Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Maps may have encouraged people toward a free-at-all-costs mindset: “The vast availability of this kind of free content changes existing perceptions of ownership and utility.” SABIP’s paper is a review of previous research and literature, rather than newly-commissioned data, but is a wide-ranging look at the online copyright problem.
Another place where the problem’s worsening is Spain, where 81 percent of net users under 24 download copyright content via P2P, according to the IFPI’s Recording Industry In Numbers 2009 report (via Billboard). There, only 11 percent of music is from online and mobile, compared with the international average of 21 percent. April physical music sales were half of last year’s. Spanish music body Promusicae: “This means the percentage of digital sales in Spain is still ridiculous.”
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