BitTorrent at 8.2 million users and rising: legal cases acting like publicity
For all of the music and film industry’s lawsuits, threats and indictments, BitTorrent use is still on the increase. Huzzah!
In fact, every one of these high profile cases just makes things worse as more and more of the public are awoken to the possibilities of P2P and torrent downloading. Each time these stories hit the press, the traffic to BitTorrent sites spike before coming back down again.
“Look, I don’t think there’s any question that some of the public may not be aware of these sites and there’s going to be curiosity and some people end up staying there,” said Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) worldwide director of antipiracy operations John Malcolm. “The alternative is to do nothing and hope that they don’t discover The Pirate Bays of the world, and that’s not realistic.”
Isn’t it?
Well sure, people are going to find out about the wonders of illegal downloading soon but isn’t it time these overpaid big-wigs embraced the future? How about found a new way to structure their industry rather than chucking the same amount of money they could be using to be creative about the issue at anti-piracy and legal task forces, which are fighting a very long, expensive and unpopular battle?
What’s more, according to online media measurement agency, BigChampagne, after each of the high profile cases and subsequent spikes, the traffic returns to a higher base-rate showing that more people are sticking with illegal downloading.
Before the Christmas spike an approximate 6.6 million people were using BitTorrent. In January the base-rate returned to 8.2 million.
The harder the MPAA and RIAA push, the higher the bar is raised. I wonder what it’ll take for them to finally give in?
(via ars technica)
Related posts: We Brits are a bunch of pirates | Microsoft’s innocence: teens won’t download illegally
