A new law on copyrights, which came into effect in Finland at the beginning of the year, has done little to cut down illegal downloading of music. Only just over ten per cent of respondents to a fresh survey published on Wednesday reported that they had reduced illegal downloading from file sharing networks. About one out of twenty said they had stopped using the peer-to-peer networks altogether.
According to composer Tuomas Kallio’s Masters degree dissertation, the amendment to the copyright law is well known, and it has had a certain effect on the activities of the respondents. Nevertheless, this effect hardly qualifies as a major change in attitudes.
“At this stage, the use of file sharing networks is more common than downloading from legal sources”, Kallio analyses the results of his study. “Half of the respondents announced they used peer-to-peer networks, and that is a lot.”
Executive director Antti Kotilainen of the Anti-Piracy Centre in Finland, CIAPC, admits that illegal downloading from the Internet continues to be a problem.
“The problem is substantial. There are around 150,000 active users of peer-to-peer networks in Finland.”
Related
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- SURVEY: Illegal music downloading by youth drops 40%
- UK record industry warns illegal filesharers – stop or risk court action
- Belgian ISP Says it Cant Stop Illegal File-Sharing
