The UK govt and music industry often state that 7 million people in that country regularly engage in illegal file-sharing, and thus there is a dire need to combat the problem in order to protect its creative content industries.

So a listener of BBC’s Radio 4 More or Less program e-mailed the show recently and asked them to look into whether the number is true or not being that so much is at stake. It turns out that not only is the figure bogus, but that the study that produced it was funded by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI).

The Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property, a govt advisory body, first published the figure back in May as part of a study it commissioned from a team of academics at the University College London, a team called Cyber.

Upon further inquiry the team at Cyber says they took the number from work done by Forrester, a private research organization. Unable to find the 7 million figure in the Forrester paper they cited, which they oddly did no less than 4 times by the way, More or Less then sought out one of the report’s authors, Mark Mulligan, to get to the bottom of things.

Here’s where it gets even more confusing.

Mulligan says the figure doesn’t come from the paper cited by Cyber, but rather a different one he produced called the Jupiter Industry Losses Project. That research was entirely privately funded by none other than the BPI. The govt is thus using figures entirely concocted by a private business interest and interpreting them as gospel.

“So what some news reports have taken to be a kind of official statistic actually comes from research paid for by a trade association which has been lobbying the govt to crackdown on illegal file-sharing,” says BBC investigative reporter Oliver Hawkins.

Hawkins managed to finally get some of the raw illegal file-sharing numbers from a “reluctant” BPI and the figures are even worse than one would imagine.

The estimated number of illegal file-sharers is actually 6.7 million, not 7 million (it was rounded up), and is based on a questionable proportion of the UK’s estimated online population.

In 2008 they carried out a survey of 1,176 households that were connected to the Internet, and in that survey 11.6% said they had used illegal file-sharing software. That number was then adjusted upwards to 16.3% to reflect the assumption that not everybody would give a truthful answer.

When asked about this adjustment Mulligan said it “wasn’t just pulled out of thin air,” and it was, he says, “based on evidence.”

Even if this percentage were taken to be factual, its estimated online population is still questionable, further reducing the number of illegal file-sharers as a percentage of the whole. For the UK’s Office for National Statistics estimates that when the study was conducted in 2008  there were some 33.9 million people online whereas the BPI-commissioned study estimated the online population was 40 million.

So even if you take the 16.3% at face value and correlate it with the ONS’ figures it means that there were only 5.6 million total file-sharers in the UK. That’s 1.1 million less than what they say it is.

Remove the adjustment for underreporting and you get just 3.9 million, or almost half of what the UK govt claims.

The fact that the number of UK file-sharers varies as widely as 2.8 million makes the need for any sort of P2P crackdown look even more ridiculous than it already does, especially when also considering the music industry’s own economist recently concluded that revenue is up 4.7% since 2007!.

Being that the UK govt, Lord Mandelson in particular, and others have used the 7 million figure as a principle reason for the need for “urgent action” to be taken against illegal file-sharers it’s now time that it revisits the facts before making any decisions.

Stay tuned.

jared@zeropaid.com

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Listen to the report in its entirety at BBC Radio 4’s “More or Less” (it’s about 7:45 in).

[Hat Tip]

Geoff Taylor, the head of the BPI recently suggested that he also regrets the industry not moving faster to sell music albums on the internet.

Still, he maintains that the websites since then still damaging the industry. There’s also the comment that suggests that he still believes that one download means one lost sale; though he didn’t say that specifically, only to say that there’s less money for music because of unauthorized downloading. Of course, he makes no mention of an earlier finding that points out how games and movies are more likely to be blamed for less money if there is a monetary loss in the market. Naturally, there isn’t a mention of how the industry plans on competing against such competing markets as a consequence.

Jim Killock of the Open Rights Group praised the fact that Taylor has realized this, but points out that there’s still a heavy push to get users disconnected in Britain as well. So really, this copyright war between the industry and it’s consumers is far from over. Back in April, one British minister shot down the three-strikes proposals calling them too draconian.

Who knows though? Maybe eventually the top music industry labels will eventually figure out how to tackle the internet and how it’s had such an effect on music. It just might take a while at this rate though.

Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

It’s been a multi-year battle between the recording industry and Britain, but today, consumer rights advocates was dealt with a major blow. The report comes from Music Week which says that culture secretary Andy Burnham announced during a UK music conference that he is going to support extending copyright term from 50 years to 70 years.

From the report:

Burnham’s announcement was immediately praised by BPI Chief Executive Geoff Taylor. He says, “Copyright is the lifeblood of our creative economy and we are delighted that the government is recognizing this by supporting an extension of copyright term for British musicians and labels. Copyright stimulates investment in musical talent and encourages innovation. Thousands of recording artists, hundreds of music companies and all British music fans will benefit from fairer copyright term”.

British Consumer Rights Advocates at Online Rights Group translated the announcement to “Screw the evidence, says Burnham, let’s extend copyright term anyway”

They further point the finger to the copyright lobby groups with the following, “the U-turn can probably be more accurately ascribed to the intense lobbying activities of record labels and collecting societies – the bodies likely to see the most benefit from extending term – ever since Gordon Brown accepted Gowers’ recommendations in full.”

The Gowers report was released back in 2006 and explained that, through careful study and weighing all the outcomes, the major copyright industry would only receive a scarce benefit from extending the copyright term while it severely hurt everyone else involved.

We here at ZeroPaid followed the British copyright term extension carefully. Early on this year, a petition to stop copyright term extension in Europe received a huge amount of support from concerned citizens. Shortly afterwards, a British MP objected to the copyright term extension bill which would increase the term of copyright to 70 years. It was a move that was hugely popular by consumer rights activists. A few months later, a top British legal adviser agreed that extending the copyright term would be a bad idea, another victory for consumers. Still, the Open Rights Group called on as many people as possible to keep up the pressure to stop the copyright term extension movement.

In spite of the incredible effort all year, it seems that the British Minister wants to rely on what many call “voodoo economics” instead of the facts behind the case and back the copyright term extension movement. Still, the war is far from over. The Open Rights Group says, “If it turns out the UK Government are unwilling to reject the Directive [to extend the copyright term], then it will be up to the European Parliament to see sense and vote it out when they come to consider it (likely next February). Which means it’s all the more important to write to your MEP if you object to the proposal to extend copyright term.”

[Hat tip: BoingBoing]

The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) says intellectual property crime should be “higher on the police’s agenda”.

A survey suggests CD piracy cost the industry £165m in lost revenue in 2005 – nearly 10% of total sales.

Car boot sales and markets accounted for over a third of pirated CDs, while a quarter were bought from friends, the survey found.

“We didn’t decide to ban the artist,” a spokesman for the BPI told the INQ. “Not only is it untrue that we made a decision to ban her from the campaign – she was never in the running in the first place.”

Rather, it would have been the girl’s record label that applied to be part of the initiative, said the spokeman, not the artist herself.

And, since Flowerburger Records has come out and said: “We think the public should be free from prosecution for downloading and sharing music,” a stance somewhat at odds with its own view, the BPI says it declined the application.

According to the Inquirer, Amy was selected as one of ten musicians to be showcased on a new British Phonographic Industry (BPI) chart called My Music that is to be targeted this fall to 1,400 grade schools in the UK. Alas, Amy did not sign with a major label. Instead she signed with an independent called Flowerburger Records who openly oppose the BPI’s lawsuits against file sharers. Amy supports this sentiment too. “All my friends do it. It just seems like the natural thing to do.” Because of this stance the BPI yanked Amy from this chart, muzzling her visibility to the little schoolchildren they are marketing to.

So Amy – or probably her publicity machine – went on the offensive. Banned from the chart, they culled together 50 or so kids from networking site Bebo and organized the protest, which featured balloons carrying the title of Amy’s latest single “Just Smile”.

The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) trade group wants Margaret Beckett to discuss the site with Russian President Vladimir Putin in St Petersburg.

The BPI is suing the website, claiming it is breaking UK law by selling music there without the necessary licence.

Allofmp3.com says it operates “in full compliance with all Russian laws”.

BPI Chairman Peter Jamieson said he had written to Mrs Beckett, asking her to “urge the Russian government to take action against the operators of the site by insisting that it is removed from the internet”.

His letter adds that “President Putin has clearly stated his commitment to protecting intellectual property rights”.

The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) trade group said on Monday it had “unequivocal” evidence about 17 of Tiscali’s customers and 42 from fellow telecoms company Cable & Wireless (CW.L) to support its claims.

Tiscali, an Italy-based company with about 1.2 million broadband customers in Britain, said it had received only extracts of a screenshot of one of its customers and nothing to support the allegations against the 16 others.

“Further, you have provided no evidence of downloading taking place nor have you provided evidence that the shared drive was connected by the relevant IP address at the relevant time,” Tiscali wrote to the BPI in a letter, portions of which were provided to Reuters.

Members of the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) want to prove the site, which offers downloads for as little as five pence, is illegal.

They were given the go-ahead to sue the company last week, and say proceedings will be issued in Russia this week.

The operators of allofmp3.com deny the recording industry’s claims that their site is not licensed to sell music.