The Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs released a new report this week that examined the effects of peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing and downloading. Its findings recognized the wide amount of unauthorized downloading that’s going on but disputed the negative effect of those downloads.
First, the bad news: The report indicated that for every song sold legally in the Netherlands, 7.5 songs are downloaded for free. Approximately 35 percent of Dutch citizens has downloaded music without paying for it.
But the purported “positive” effects of file-sharing emerged later in the study, which reported that when it came to video-games, “freeloaders” bought more legal content than those who didn’t download free content.
Later the report added more evidence to the idea that file-sharing is a good thing, pointing toward a two-pronged “sampling” effect: One, consumers got to sample content before they bought it, and two, consumers got to save their money to spend on other goods.
But the study also offered evidence that will come as no surprise to adult industry professionals who decry file-sharing. Apparently the “sampling” effect doesn’t apply to movies. According to the report, even when consumers downloaded a movie they liked, they usually only watched it once. If that one viewing resulted from a free download, they never bought the film.
