Filesharing Traffic Drops After RIAA Threats

bryan writes "According to CNN, facing the threat of lawsuits from a music industry trade group, fewer people are using online filesharing applications to swap songs. Internet audience measurement service Nielsen Net Ratings said traffic on Kazaa, the leading filesharing platform, fell 15 percent in the week ended July 6 from the previous week. It was during that prior week, on June 25, that the Recording Industry Association of America said it would track down the heaviest users of "peer-to-peer" services like Kazaa and sue them for damages of up to $150,000 per copyright violation." This follows earlier reports, from the filesharing companies themselves, that traffic was actually increasing.

Comments

Correction

[sulli]

According to CNN

According to RIAA member AOL Time Warner

Re:Correction

[qslack]

Actually, it's according to Nielsen Net Ratings via Reuters. CNN did not write the article. It's a syndicated article. Still, you have a good point that is worth noting in most cases; this, however, is not one of them.

Wow who would have guessed

[missing000]

I assumed that everyone just stayed at home and downloaded mp3's on the 4th of July.

I can't belive that many people really had something better to do than surf the web on a holiday.

Truly anonymous is the only way to go.

[caluml]

That's why truly anonymous P2P apps are the only way.

Please mod me up - we need help with this project. Please get in touch if you can code, or have ideas, or comments.

Unreliable stats

[l810c]

They didn't take into account 4th of July weekend here in the States. A lot of people wnet out of town. 15% decrease with a 3 day weekend is Not a trend or a result of the threat.

Re:Unreliable stats

[Genjurosan]

BINGO! You hit the nail on the HEAD.

AAA Predicted that 37.4 million Americans planned to travel over the holiday. --With the US population roughly at 291 million, that's about 13%..

For backup of my stats:

US Population Clock:

http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html

Travel States: (search for July 4th on this google cached page)

http://216.239.37.104/search?q=cache:vb3Zo5s2UHo J: www.tia.org/Travel/tiupdate_current.asp+july+4th+t ravel+statistics&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

How were the measurements made.

[expro]

Since these services are peer to peer with no centralized servers, it would be interesting to know how the measurements were made.

If they are merely asking people if they used P2P, it seems like fewer people would openly admit it.

No problem!

[GuyMannDude]

According to CNN, facing the threat of lawsuits from a music industry trade group, fewer people are using online filesharing applications to swap songs.

Fine, whatever. Just as long as the number of people sharing porn videos doesn't drop!

GMD

Distinction with a difference

[Fux the Pengiun]

Doh! Read the links...the RIAA is talking about song-swapping going down, while the p2p perveyors are talking about traffic going up. That's a distinction...people are swapping fewer songs, but more other stuff.

My guess: Since they're all Pirates, they're downloading that new Johnny Depp movie. ARRRR!!!

easy: school's out

[hazem]

This can be easily explained. Most universities in the country were finished in mid June and sent the kids home. The kids don't normally have access to that sweet T-3 when they are at home. So of course file-sharing went down.

I doubt it has little to do with the RIAA threat.

In other news, truancy drops by 90% after mid June.

MC Hammer-"Can't touch this"

[Anonymous Coward]

"How many of you have slowed or stopped your file sharing???"

We at 65.42.25.3 are still going strong.

no recent change in stats

[Arslan ibn Da'ud]

Slyck keeps weekly stats on
filesharing usage...here's the usage statistics today:

FastTrack 3,525,734
iMesh 1,175,244
eDonkey 770,032
Overnet 458,752
MP2P 199,214

These stats have actually remained fairly constant for a couple of
weeks now. Back in May there was a lot of fluctuation on the EDonkey
vs Overnet, and FastTrack was around 4.5M. I suppose it dropped
because college students went home for the summer.

At any rate, Slyck's stats have noted no increase or decrease in
filesharing in the last two weeks. So the media hype (both ways)
seems to be just that...hype.

Move along; nothing to see here.

Re:who isnt sharing?

[joe_bruin]

well, let's ask, who is sharing?
a lot of those who are sharing are college students. the riaa made the "we're suing everyone" claim just as most college students go on spring break. many people that were sharing over their dorm's high speed internet connection are home now, stuck with their parents' dialup accounts. file sharing does historically decline in the (northern hemisphere) summer months, so a decline in file sharing would not be at all unexpected.

Re:Pretty common scenario

[Anonymous Coward]

How about this?

The eye has always elicited awe from anyone who has studied its structure carefully. The clear tissue of the cornea curves just the right amount, the iris expands and contracts to modulate the amount of light entering, the lens adjusts to distance, so that the optimal quantity of light focuses exactly on the surface of the retina, etc. It seems to be so carefully crafted that it is hard to imagine how its design could be improved upon. In the 19th century this conviction reached its zenith in William Paley's Natural Theology (1802), which took the eye as the basis for an argument for the existence of an all-wise, all-powerful Intelligent Designer. A closer look at the vertebrate eye, however, may lead one to a different conclusion. Blood vessels and nerves traverse the inside of the retina, and then dive through an opening in the retinal wall on their way to the optic nerve. This creates a blind spot at their point of exit, and some distortion as photons have to make their way through the tangle of blood vessels and nerves before striking the retinal wall. It may not be a large distortion, but the vertebrate eye is clearly not designed as well as it could be. This arrangement also fails to anchor the retina securely to the inside of the eye, so that retinal detachment sometimes occurs (e.g., in boxers). The "backwards" wiring of vertebrate eyes is a good example of (i) bad luck and (ii) historical constraints. Hundreds of millions of years ago the layer of cells that happened to become light sensitive in our ancestors was positioned "incorrectly," but because it provided a selective advantage, it was retained and evolved into the modern backwards-wired vertebrate eye. Even though a better design existed in an abstract "morphospace" (i.e., the space of biologically possible forms), once evolution of the eye started down a certain path, backing up (i.e., going back to a relatively less advantageous form) and starting over, became impossible. Squid eyes, on the other hand, are designed more sensibly, with nerves running on the outside, reducing distortion and securing the retina so that it cannot detach. Were squid to take up boxing, one would see far fewer prematurely terminated careers due to detached retinae.

A simple google search turned up this paper
I'll leave it as an exercise for the readers to find a reference for marsupial pouches.