Legal Music Downloads At 35%, Soon To Pass Piracy
bonch writes “Entertainment Media Research released a study stating that 35% of music listeners are using legal download services, and that the percentage will soon surpass illegal downloads, currently at 40%. Slashdot has also previously reported on services like iTunes gaining in popularity over P2P services. “The findings indicate that the music industry is approaching a strategic milestone with the population of legal downloaders close to exceeding that of pirates,” said Entertainment Media Research chief executive Russell Hart.'”
via Slashdot
This is probably one of the dumbest claims I’ve ever read.
For one thing, of course you have to get statistics on who actually “pirates” stuff. And while you can trace a couple of thousand/million/etc. of them, everyone knows that isn’t at all near the actual numbers.
If you can really “trace” all pirates (which should be the case since the study claims to represent piracy and legal downloading as a whole), then there wouldn’t even be a need for all this pay-for-download crap, since piracy wouldn’t exist in the first place.
At best I’m guessing the article has a very limited scope. Or that the article is applicable to US alone (or some other nation which takes piracy as seriously as they do).