Ok so I was a little harsh in the last blog post, it seems some people are still catching on. So here's another graph I found which sums up the opportunity I've been spelling out across my blog for years.
Internet file sharers swapping music, movies and TV shows over peer-to-peer networks are killing media and technology companies, right?
Wrong.
According to a study conducted by Frank N. Magid Associates published in AdAge, “the P2P user attends 34% more movies in theaters, purchases 34% more DVDs and rents 24% more movies than the average Internet user.”
In almost every single one of those categories, I personally spend more money that most of my friends who don't use P2P or even on-demand services. I have own a HDTV for 2 years now, yes my screen is well over 20inches (40inch) but I didn't pay anywhere near 2000 dollars for it. Yes I do own a next gen game console (xbox360, and I use to own a Wii). Had a home cinema system for 14+ years now, but just recently upgraded it to 7.1. Wouldn't even consider buying anything but a smartphone since about 2001. No Bluray player, but yes to the Media centre PC (XBMC). Plus I would add that I spend more time in the cinema and buy more films that my non P2P friends. The Ad people should be gunning for people like myself, but instead they lump us in with dvd/cd street/market copiers and demonize us all collectively at the start of films as mass pirates.
Of course it gets worst because now the UK Government wants to choke P2P file sharers (bearing in mind P2P isn't against the law, it just depends on what you share). As pointed out by the open rights group, the market is coming back in to balance (even I end up buying 10+ songs a month from Audiojelly) and the government have overstepped the mark with this latest proposal.
Fact is that you can never stop such things, and calling all out war on piracy is not even funny, its actually childish and headline grabbing. Even Obama has stopped using the word war on terror, because they know how stupid the whole notion of a war on anything is. Britain needs people like myself (early adopters) who do slide in the grey areas of media because we inform whats possible for the masses in the near future. We spend more money, time, attention on media that the average person and we even share our experiences openly for all to learn from. The positive up shot of all this will go away quickly if such regulations come into play.
