Despite two huge court losses for file-sharing firms, unauthorized online song and movie swapping is at an all-time peak, says Internet measurement company BigChampagne.
"File sharing has never been more popular than it is now," says BigChampagne CEO Eric Garland. "People have heard all the legal threats and admonitions, but that's not enough. They don't believe it."
He says about 9.6 million people were logged onto sharing networks at any one time in August, up from 6.8 million the year before.
The recording industry has filed 14,000 copyright infringement lawsuits against song swappers in the last two years, at a time when more than 1 billion songs have been offered for trading each month on services such as Kazaa and eDonkey. The industry has also looked to the courts for relief.
On Monday, an Australian federal court judge ruled that Sharman Networks, Kazaa's parent firm, must install filters to prevent its software from being used for unauthorized sharing.
The ruling followed a U.S. Supreme Court decision in June that said software firms Grokster and StreamCast Networks, which operates the Morpheus service, could be held liable for their users' actions.
The Supreme Court decision hasn't curbed online swapping, and neither will the Australian court ruling, says Phil Leigh, an analyst at research firm Inside Digital Media. "A lot of college students still don't feel vulnerable at all," Leigh says.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks