The Death Of File Sharing Is Greatly Exaggerated

from the i-think-i'll-go-for-a-walk dept

There have been a few reports lately claiming that file sharing is decreasing. Often, the "explanation" is that more people are switching to streaming services. But that doesn't seem to make much sense, given that the streaming services are still greatly limited and have their own share of problems. And, indeed, it looks like at least some of these reports are being misinterpreted. The most recent story that got a bunch of headlines claiming that P2P was "dying"? Turns out that it's all relative. What the report actually said was that P2P file sharing is growing less fast. So it has a smaller overall marketshare -- but in terms of absolute numbers? It's still growing. However, given the size of the "market," that's not too surprising. It's pretty saturated.
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Filed Under: file sharing


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  1. icon
    ChurchHatesTucker (profile), 21 Oct 2009 @ 5:58pm

    Yeah... about that

    How are they measuring? Port traffic? Heh.

    What I mean to say is, they're totally right. P2P is dead. Move along, nothing to see here.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. icon
    TattoozNTech (profile), 21 Oct 2009 @ 6:10pm

    Re: Yeah... about that

    HAHAHAH! funny comment FTW! nice one dude! lol

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 21 Oct 2009 @ 6:16pm

    uh... i'm NOT downloading songs while NOT listening to some streaming service

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. icon
    thublihnk (profile), 21 Oct 2009 @ 6:38pm

    That might have something to do with the fact that a whole litany of .torrent trackers are going down/being neutered recently.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 21 Oct 2009 @ 6:59pm

    The article says that this is a measure of all traffic, not just the various means by which creative content is acquired/used. All that really means is that there's more stuff to do with the Internet. Also, people can (and do!) use more than one protocol at a time. Also, there are more uses of peer-to-peer connections than just creative content transfers. Really, I'm not sure where the conclusion that any particular use of the Internet is declining comes from. But maybe people who can't tell the difference between losing money and simply not making it will draw the same conclusion and back off a little.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  6. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 21 Oct 2009 @ 8:25pm

    Or more people are finding ways to hide their use of P2P.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  7. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 21 Oct 2009 @ 9:43pm

    So I read the story, looked at the numbers that NY times shows:

    P2P was 40% of traffic 2 years ago. Now it is 18% of traffic.

    Internet traffic has increased 35% per year for 2 years.

    So, if 2 years ago was 100 (traffic number), today that number is 182.25 (35% increase each of 2 years).

    40% of 100 = 40. 18% of 182.25 = 32.805. In real terms (actual traffic) is down almost 20%.

    Someone want to check my numbers?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  8. identicon
    AJ, 22 Oct 2009 @ 4:12am

    Hide and Seek

    Perhaps they are using private networks, making it harder to track?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  9. icon
    www.eZee.se (profile), 22 Oct 2009 @ 6:17am

    No! No! Its true, p2p is dying....
    now, why do we need those anti piracy scumbags?

    Good job anti piracy people, heres a pat on the back... now f*ck off and die.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  10. identicon
    TheStupidOne, 22 Oct 2009 @ 8:02am

    Re:

    maybe they were only looking at those sites, and now since they are gone they said it is dead. However everyone just moved on to something new. I personally use google.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  11. icon
    chris (profile), 22 Oct 2009 @ 9:40am

    understandable

    i moved to a new house and i haven't finished cabling it, so my servers have been offline for a couple of weeks.

    hopefully i can get all my gear lit up in a week or two and those file sharing numbers will be back to normal.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  12. identicon
    cmac, 22 Oct 2009 @ 12:00pm

    pirac

    I haven't pirated anything since I started using netflix on demand and hulu.

    link to this | view in thread ]


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