NEWS > BUSINESS > U.K. FILE SHARING CLOSING IN ON THE $20 BILLION MARK

U.K. FILE SHARING INDUSTRY CLOSING IN ON $20 BILLION MARK

June 6 2009

London, U.K. – With every change in technology there is an accompanying change in morality and ethics. The introduction of the firearm, for example, fundamentally changed the ways in which laws were broken and enforced. The nature of armed conflict changed with the new weapons as killing became much easier and more
impersonal. Similar cases can be made for the invention of the printing press, vaccines, and the internet. Of course those moral and ethical changes don’t work in lock step with the changes and in every movement there are those who protest any kind of change.

In recent years there has been no debate as vociferous as the one surrounding file sharing. From the early battle over Napster to the modern day fight with The Pirate Bay, the last decade has seen a shift not only in the nature of copyright and proprietorial rights, but in the ethics of theft and ownership. As time goes and file sharing becomes more and more prevalent the debate continues to rage. While some countries have been slow to catch onto the file sharing bandwagon some, like The U.K., have been blazing a trail and put them in the driver’s seat for the future of the industry.

“On one peer-to-peer network we found that at midday on a weekday there were 1.3 million users, sharing content. If each “peer” from this network (not the largest) downloaded one file per day the resulting number of downloads (music, film, television, e-books, software and games were all available) would be 473 million items per year,” read a report from the U.K. “If the figure for each individual is closer to five or more items per day, the lowest estimate of downloaded material is just under 2.4 billion files.”

The United Kingdom is currently ranked as one of the largest downloading nations in the world. The United States falls on the low end in the western world, a reality which many in the U.K. take as a source of pride.

“There are few other countries that can claim this kind of revenue from file sharing.
Eastern Europe has extremely high figures and that is going to set them up well in the coming years, but all in all the U.K. is in a very good spot to exploit this market and set a standard for the entire industry,” said Scrape TV Technology analyst Ken Kevins. “The British have benefited from very competitive ISP’s and a healthy penetration of broadband connections throughout the country. Many children have grown up with file sharing as a standard and very shortly that it going to result in adults who are very adept even before they enter into the working world. The U.S. on the other hand has long lagged behind the rest of the western world in respect to internet usage and broadband penetration. True they invented a lot of technologies that are now currently in use, but those restrictions have put them at a significant disadvantage.”

South Korea, Canada, Sweden, and Norway are also cited as major players in the file sharing industry. All those countries have also had the benefit of long time access to broadband internet connections.

“The United States has a lot of momentum behind them when they get going but they are really far behind in this particular field. Other countries are taking such a huge portion of the file sharing dollars and have so many years of experience that it may be difficult for them to catch up in any meaningful way in the short time. Of course one truth about file sharing is that there is an almost limitless amount of money available for download so the upward potential is huge,” continued Kevins. “Clearly downloading and file sharing is a business of the future and with the industry only getting stronger in the U.K. and throughout the rest of the rest of the E.U. they are definitely in a good position going forward.”

The file sharing industry currently has no sound economic structure so much of the dollars being earned are currently paper earnings only.   

William Ashford, Business Correspondent

NEWS > BUSINESS > U.K. FILE SHARING CLOSING IN ON THE $20 BILLION MARK