Report Claims 95% of Music Downloads Are Illegal
Found on Slashdot on Friday, 16 January 2009
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) press release claims that 95% of music file downloads in 2008, an estimated 40 billion files, were illegal.
Collating separate studies in 16 countries over a three-year period, IFPI estimates over 40 billion files were illegally file-shared in 2008, giving a piracy rate of around 95 per cent.
I hope nobody missed that one word: estimates. So, in other words, they guessed it. An honestly, if you have to pick a percentage which will be used to support your reasoning for knee-shooting customers legally, then you will make sure to pick a good number. So, you have to take this little report with more than just a grain of salt. Update: The IFPI says that 18% of the Internet users share music. So the remaining 82% buy the 5% music that's not shared and the 18% share 95% of the music? Oh please, if you make up numbers, at least try to be plausible.