Fact Sheet - Internet Piracy: The Facts

The scope of the problem and the effects on the music industry

• Internet file-sharing involves 700 million unauthorised music files at any one time (800 million on the internet overall)
  
  
• US research shows about 75% of all the illegal files are coming from 15% of the people (source: NPD Music, May 2003).
  
  
• All major surveys say that illegal file-sharing makes people buy less - the latest is Forrester showing 36% of downloaders buy less music as a result.
  
  
• Illegal file-sharing is a major factor in the fall in world music sales, down 7% in 2003, and down 14% in three years.
  
  
• 15% of industry sales on average go into developing new artists. In France, 27% of turnover is invested in A&R and 2 700 new albums are released per year. This has decreased by 22% in the last year.

Individual country examples*
*(request individual country factsheets for further details)

• Germany sales figures are down 50% in six years; France down 15% in 2003 and 22% 1st half 2004.
  
  
• The value of music sales in Denmark has fallen by 16% per year for the past three years. The market is worth less than 60% of what it was in 2000.
  
  
• In Italy, between 2001 and 2003 music sales fell by 50 million euro - an 8% drop.
  
  
• In the UK, between 2001 and 2003 music sales fell by £55 million - a 4.5% drop.
  
  
• Between 2001 and 2003 music sales in France fell by 134 million euros - an 11% drop.

The industry response and its impact on illegal file-sharing

• Infringing music files on the Internet overall (peer-to-peer and other) are down nearly 30% between June 2003 and June 2004 (1.1 billion to 800 million)
  
  
• There has been a drop in 20% of users on the most popular peer-to-peer service (FastTrack, which includes KaZaA) since January 2004, i.e. since before the start of international legal action (3 million to 2.4 million)
  
  
• There has been a drop of 40% of users on the most popular peer-to-peer service (FastTrack, which includes KaZaA) since June 2004, i.e. since before all US and international legal action (4.2 million to 2.4 million)
  
  
• FastTrack/KaZaA is losing its clientele which are migrating to smaller, more complicated and niche networks such as eDonkey/eMule, Gnutella (Bearshare), WinMx, OpenNap, [BitTorrent] and DirectConnect.

Awareness and attitudes towards file sharing (IFPI data, 2004)

• 0n average 7 out of 10 people in Europe are aware that unauthorised file-swapping is illegal. This is even higher than the corresponding levels of awareness in the US (64%) in December 2003, after three waves of US lawsuits against individuals.
  
  
• More than half the people surveyed in four European countries support the industry's legal actions against major internet infringers.
  
  
• Litigation has played a critical role internationally in improving the public's awareness that file-swapping is illegal. Awareness of illegality of file-swapping is higher among people who have heard that the industry has taken legal actions against file-swapping services and users (59%). In the US awareness rose from 37% to 64% in one year (from April 2003 to April 2004).
  
  
• Half of all respondents in four European countries (53%) think that the prospect of legal action by music copyright holders would make illegal file-swappers stop or reduce their activities.