Filesharers buy more music than others

Lawsuits: Lacuna Coil

An independent survey says those who illegally share music online actually spend more on legal purchases than others – meaning record labels are upsetting their best customers when they take legal action against downloaders.

The American Assembly report suggests that peer-to-peer (P2P) users buy 30% more music than people who aren’t involved in online sharing.

And the non-partisan public policy forum adds that filesharing is a drop in the ocean compared to more traditional offline copying such as burning CDs.

Researchers carried out thousands of telephone interviews with people all over the USA and Germany.

Joe Karaganis of the American Assembly says: “P2P users have larger music collection than non-P2P users – roughly 37% more. Most of the difference comes from higher levels of downloading for free and copying from friends.

“But some of it also comes from significantly higher legal purchases of digital music: around 30% higher among P2P users.

“Our data is quite clear on this point and lines up with other studies: the biggest music pirates are also the biggest spenders.”

TorrentFreak say US industry body the RIAA is already aware of these facts – and they also know online piracy isn’t the biggest source of illegal music sharing. They cite a leaked report where the body’s own figures state that while 65% of all music is obtained for free in the US, only a third is obtained online.

Meanwhile, Century Media’s attempt to sue 943 Lacuna Coil fans for downloading the band’s album Dark Adrenaline has been thrown out of court by a US judge.

The label was told that, instead of attempting to take action against a large number of people for individual offences, “there must be a connection beyond the copyrighted work – namely that defendants were involved in the same transaction with the same downloader at the same time.”

All but one of the “John Doe” subpoenas were dismissed, meaning the Lacuna Coil fan who was top of the list will be the only one to face legal action from Century, who initiated 7500 lawsuits last month.