A new Pew study says that music file sharing is way down and paid online music services are way up. While this is clearly good news for the paid services in particular and the recording industry in general, it was entirely predictable that the RIAA's lawsuit campaign against sharers would decrease usage, at least for a time - how could it not? A huge wrinkle in the results of the study is that it was completed on December 14 and, in Pew's own words:

on December 19, the previous Verizon ruling regarding the ISP subpoena process was overturned. The D.C. Circuit Court dismissed the previously issued subpoenas, arguing that they are not authorized under the language of the DMCA because Verizon was not storing infringing material on its network. The new ruling will impact the way the recording industry and other copyright owners pursue Internet users suspected of copyright infringement, forcing them to file lawsuits against anonymous "John Doe" defendants and acquire subpoenas from a judge in order to learn the names and addresses of file sharers.

More from the study:

The percentage of online Americans downloading music files on the Internet has dropped by half and the numbers who are downloading files on any given day have plunged since the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) began filing suits in September against those suspected of copyright infringement. Furthermore, a fifth of those who say they continue to download or share files online say they are doing so less often because of the suits.

A new nationwide phone survey of 1,358 Internet users from November 18-December 14 by the Pew Internet and American Life Project showed that the percentage of music file downloaders had fallen to 14% (about 18 million users) from 29% (about 35 million) when the Project last reported on downloading from a survey conducted during March 12-19 and April 29-May 20. On an average day during the spring survey, 4% of Internet users said they downloaded files. In the November-December survey just 1% said they were downloading files on any given day during the survey period.

Furthermore, data from comScore Media Metrix, based on the company's continuously measured consumer panel, show significant declines in the number of people with peer-to-peer file sharing applications running on their computers. In fact, comScore found that usage of each of the four applications sampled - KaZaa, WinMX, BearShare and Grokster - dropped in November versus one year ago. The declines in the user base of each of these applications from November 2002 to November 2003 were: 15% for KaZaa, 25% for WinMX, 9% for BearShare, and 59% for Grokster.

page 1 | 2