[LINK] File Sharing Has Become the "New Normal" for Most Online Canadians

[Tom Koltai]

I had an interesting philosophical conversation with Chris Gilbey today
where I opined that the baby boomers who grew up with the flower power
influences are less likely to act in a restrictive authoratarian manner
towards their own offspring resulting in a more honest environment in
the home.
This apparentely leads to the offspring - the (my favourite word)
milleniumites questioning all that they perceive unfair and unjust.

Has our generation opened a can of worms with the current crop -  or are
we establishing a world that votes on everything on facebook/myspace and
automatically rejects the unfair - sometimes without realising why.

An example - Canadians are speaking out about their real feelings
towards P2P.

http://www.exchangemagazine.com/morningpost/2009/week11/Friday/031303.ht
m

Few respondents support placing a levy on Internet Service Providers to
replace lost revenue.

TORONTO - While music industry executives huddle to come up with digital
media strategies during this week's Canadian Music Week conference, a
recent survey by Angus Reid Strategies indicates that they may face
significant headwinds in public opinion.

KEY FINDINGS
- 45% say people who use peer-to-peer file sharing services to download
music and movies are regular Internet users doing what people should be
able to do on the Internet
- Only 3% believe file-sharers are criminals who should be punished by
law
Full topline results are at the end of this release.
>From March 6 to March 9, 2009, Angus Reid Strategies conducted an online
survey among 1,395 randomly selected Canadian adults who are Angus Reid
Forum panelists. The margin of error-which measures sampling
variability-is +/- 2.6%, 19 times out of 20. The results have been
statistically weighted by age, gender and region according to Statistics
Canada's Canadian Internet Use Survey to ensure a sample representative
of the entire adult population of Canadian Internet users. Discrepancies
in or between totals are due to rounding.
A majority of Canadian Internet users see no major problems with
peer-to-peer file sharing, and most react negatively to the notion of a
levy on ISPs that would help to compensate musicians for the music they
create.
In the online survey of a representative national sample, nearly half of
respondents (45 per cent) say those who use peer-to-peer file sharing
services to download music and movies are "just regular Internet users
doing what people should be able to do on the Internet."
An additional 27 per cent admit these people are "doing something they
shouldn't be doing" but say "it's not a big deal."
In contrast, only three per cent agree with what has often been the
music industry's position that file sharers "are criminals who should be
punished by law." As for an appropriate remedy, one quarter of Canadians
(25 per cent) feel that "technology should be developed to stop this."
The survey also indicates that an attempt to recoup lost revenues by
imposing a levy on ISPs would meet stiff resistance. Nearly
three-quarters (73 per cent) of online Canadians believe such a levy
would represent "an inappropriate and/or unnecessary levy that would be
passed down to consumers."
The survey shows that peer-to-peer file sharing is prevalent in Canada.
Among Canadian Internet users, 23 per cent say they have downloaded free
digital music files from peer-to-peer file sharing sites in the past 30
days, while just 12 per cent have paid a fee to download digital music
files from an online music store such as iTunes.
A significant proportion of online Canadians have not bought into the
idea of paying for online music. Proponents of file sharing have long
held that the music industry is doing itself a disservice by attacking
its own fan base, noting that these consumers are often the most
voracious music enthusiasts. This survey supports that notion, as those
who downloaded an MP3 file from a free file-sharing service are
significantly more likely to say they will buy a CD in the next month
(41 per cent vs. 34 per cent for non-file sharers), and are more likely
to have gone to a concert in the past year (65 per cent vs. 52 per cent
for non-file sharers).



Tom


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