Fewer People Downloading Music Illegally

Apparently, consumers are downloading less music illegally... unless you’re a teenager.

Recently Entertainment Media Research conducted a survey with 1,500 UK residents and discovered that the number of music fans downloading music illegally actually dropped to 39 percent, a whopping 4 percent difference from last year’s statistics. Three-quarters of those people even admitted that they would cease downloading the files if contacted by their ISPs.

"It is quite evident that an ISP-led strategy has bite because illegal downloaders are fairly convinced that ISPs are currently monitoring their activities and are more likely to act against them than the courts," said Russell Hart, chief executive of EMR.

And he could be right. According to an article on the Telegraph.co.uk, six of Britain’s leading ISPs teamed up with the British Phonographic Industry to identify and contact internet users actually downloading illegal music. The intent is to inform those downloading consumers that their activity is currently being monitored. This route bypasses the court entirely, however the British Government is considering a proposal to force those ISPs to hand over the information without a court order.

That said, it’s hard to imagine anyone openly admitting to downloading music illegally to anyone other than the immediate family, much less a survey. However, teenagers seem to have no problem admitting to their carefree access to illegal music. Roughly 58 percent of the teenagers questioned said they would not pay to download music ; that’s quite a jump compared to the 41 percent claiming the same thing in 2006.

There’s no question that music fans feel the heat from companies, ISPs and the government regarding accessing illegal music. However, if there’s any factor that help reduce pirating music, it’s the availability of DRM-free music on retail sites. P2P networks also bring trouble, whether they’re monitored by organizations like the RIAA or littered with nasty viruses. Time Warner Cable even shut down its Newsgroup servers because it was impossible to monitor every file passing through the network. North American ISPs are even threatening to place bandwidth caps, thus reducing the load of files downloaded each month.

But are ISPs actually monitoring their users ? That’s a good question, and as long as that thought remains in the minds of its subscribers, illegal downloading of music just may begin to decline. Still, one must we wary of surveys and statistics. After all, who would actually admit to illegal activities ?