it’s official: file sharing feels so good
According to TNO, file sharing makes us Dutch citizens feel better. But more importantly – for those on the numbers, our economy is a whopping €100 million better off every year because of it. So is this an official thank you to the f-word?
In its recently published report, TNO – Dutch public institution working for the applicability of scientific knowledge in government and industry circles – concluded the following: access to a wide range of cultural goods increases out well being, simply because most of us would never have bought our downloaded content.
File shares are financially unable – or plainly unwilling – to buy many of the things they’re enjoying via p2p networks. And getting stuff for free obviously makes us feel nicer than not getting the stuff at all.
But before we’re made to believe that companies should be losing their money for a public cause and an economic externality – even when both of them are nice side effects, the report’s researchers also found this: people who download music and film are buying no less than people who don’t.
Gaming company Electronic Arts admitted last year that ‘every Bittorrent download doesn’t represent a successful copy of a game, let alone a lost sale’. This report goes one step further: file sharers visit concerts and buy games more often than those who don’t.
And while the Netherlands’ entertainment industry continues to suffer losses in the order of €100 million per year, consumers are spending an estimated €200 million per year more because they have free access to not-so-free content.
So now its official: the industry’s arch nemesis is a very successful marketing tool. Yet, as the report will have it (of course), within the music industry it’s the lesser-known bands that profit the most from file sharing.
To me, another sure sign of a playing field in transition. While most big and established companies are slow to recognize that bygones should be bygones, the smaller, newer ones see opportunities in the web. Instead of whining about it, they’re discovering how they can monetize on the Internet as a non-exclusive distribution platform.
And let’s not forget about us consumers, and how this report will make us feel even better than we already did. As dxtr says in reply to Torrentfreak’s post on the subject: ‘Wow! I never knew that I had been contributing to the growth of my country’s economy since age 10! That is so cool!’
More
- Read the original Torrentfreak post on the report by clicking here.
- Read the full report (142 pages – and in Dutch), register and download it for free by clicking here.
- Read how EA’s view on piracy is changing – and how they’re trying to emphasize the non-piracy prone aspects of their games, by clicking here.
- Check dotbejamin’s ‘Failing Industry’ post, which accompanies the picture shown above (
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advertising, business development, business model, copyright, economics, electronic arts, entrepreneurship, film, free, gaming, innovation, marketing, music, p2p, piracy, strategy, TNO, torrentfreak