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Video and Software Downloads Overtaking Music
Trigun writes "The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is reporting that movie and software downloads have outpaced music downloads. Music accounted for 48.6 percent of files shared online, compared with 62.5 percent in 2002, according to a report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The article says that 1 in 4 internet users have downloaded at least one movie, and attributes the proliferation to access to broadband. Maybe we've just downloaded all the good music already?"
Sigs cause cancer.
They probably calculated it by megabytes.
its faster and easier for me to DL a movie off of IRC than to haul my ass to the movie theatre, stand in line, and sit cramped in a shitty chair with no elbow room next to some annoying little kids. i just dl from irc, burn on a cdrw (vcd/svcd) pop it in the vcd player and watch it.
Investing forum
Sure if you include Quicktime trailers, and short films. But I seriously doubt 1 in 4 have downloaded a feature film... cause guess what, no where near 1 in 4 users has broadband
Great. I'm sure RIAA will see this as vindication of their sue the customer policies. "See, they've moved on to other media since we started..."
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
What the RIAA is doing is having a chilling effect on online music trading, like it or not. I don't think the MPAA will have any recourse but to pursue the same tactics, but with much larger penalties.
It would be nice to see the full stats, though, to see if music has plateaued (as would be expected) while movies climb as broadband proliferates.
br. -Adam
infringing on our rights as citizens
Downloading stuff is not a right. It's a privilege.
*sigh* So, one in four internet users worldwide have downloaded movies online.
oh wait, no it was only in Eight Countires...
oh, and only broadband users were polled.
ooh! and I almost forgot, of those that answered, one in four said they had downloaded at least one (YES, ONE) movie...
nothing to see here... just FUD and paranoia...
From the article:
Well, isn't that a defining feature of file swaps? Swapping copyrighted files (as opposed to just downloading them, which can be legal or illegal) has always been illegal.
Video accounted for 27 percent, up from 25.2 percent, the study will say.
So, movie downloads didn't really increase much.
The OECD report does not give separate numbers for pirated downloads and those that do not infringe copyright
I'm not even going to start on this one.
The biggest growth in downloading last year was in "other files" - neither music nor film - which almost doubled their share to about a quarter of all downloads. The category includes software and pornography, but the report gives no breakdown between the two.
Basically, they're saying they have a lot of data and it seems to indicate something, but they can't really say what, so they just threw out some numbers. Nice work, OECD.
With all of the various companies/qualities/methods to connect, I really wonder about the quality of such a survey. I would seem to me that these numbers seem rediculous. When I think of all the non-nerd (non-broadband) people I know, I don't think one of them has ever downloaded a movie.
Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein
Personally, I think it all can be attributed to a visible decline in society's moral standards. When music first became availible online, most people did not hesitate to download it because for the most part, it is guilt and worry free. Until there is some sort of legal safeguard put in place that will cause people to think about voliating copyrights, the numbers of people downloading will continue to rise. In real life, people will think twice before stealing from a store because there is a known punishment for being caught (and even this is happening more). Fileswapping doesn't have such rigid rules and regulations, or at least it's hard to enforce them online. Not to mention that industries trying to enforce them currently are going about the wrong way in the first place. Think about it though, my sister who is middle school is downloading movies. I think that it shows either lack of education about what can/cannot be done online legally, or simply not caring about those laws either way.
So many papers are 90% commercial press corps content that Slash and similar may as well differentiate and learn to link to Associated Press directly for these stories.
Reward the papers with more visitors when they have local unique content. More ad impressions might encourage them to start putting their focus on real reporting again.
Seriously. Because if they're measuring bytes transfered, I've downloaded much more legal software (Linux ISOs) from bittorrent than I've downloaded music from anywhere in quite a long time.
infringing on our rights as citizens
Downloading stuff is not a right. It's a privilege.
It's neither. It's a mechanism. The map is not the territory.
So I guess there must be a correlation between amount of downloads and the record takings at the box office recently? Quick, let's make Hollywood some more money!
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
It's just a matter of time that DVD capacities will reach the stratosphere, far more space than required by a movie. Therefore why not be able to buy a massive assortment of music all written on the same disk when you go to buy a movie? The store would have a computer where you select a movie or two as well as humungous music collection. You simply select what you want and a disk is created while you wait or for later pick up.
You save all the time you need to wait for downloading. You are assured of the quality. What more can you ask for?
When you consider all the box office records being smashed there's always going to be people buying movies. When they can also just pick up a few songs for a song, no one can lose.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
Broadband definitely makes it easier to download large amounts of data... but when I recall my own history, I was downloading a heluvalot more music in the days when 56 kbps modems first appeared. Back then it was an exploration of all the good music that's out there and that I had never heard before. Suddenly it all became available, waiting only 15 minutes or so for a download. For years I have felt that I have all the 'classics' in my private MP3 collection, and I don't often seek new music. When it comes to mainstream pop I certainly have 'heard it all before' and crave nothing.
So if "the industry" doesn't produce any new music that is worth craving, people don't download or buy it.
And many of these people likely still paid to see the movie in the theater at least once.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
I read a bit of this study and the one-in-four number is really misleading.
First, they only picked internet users who had broadband (that's less than 50% of US users right now) and second, they only interviewed those who professed to be avid movie viewers.
They did manage to get a good age distribution, 25% in each of four age brackets. I'm suprised they didn't just limit this to males, aged 18-24.
Well, I don't know about you, but if I had broadband and really liked movies, well sure I might download some. The remaining 75% of us probably downloaded considerably fewer movies.