A new Pew study reports that 50% fewer Americans reported that they are engaged in P2P file-sharing, and a lot of people are claiming that this is some kind of victory for the recording industry's campaign of indiscriminate lawsuits against their customers.
Lemme offer an alternative interpretation, which comes out of some discussions that we've been having at EFF:
* For starters, it's not hard to imagine why someone might be reluctant to tell a survey-taker that he is file-sharing in a climate where the RIAA is confiscating the life's-savings of little girls who download cartoon themesongs.
* And even with that chilling effect, the Pew study still has one in seven American Internet users file-sharing — in other words, file-sharing is still solidly mainstream and nowhere near being "driven underground."
* It's ironic that this survey comes out right after a court has said that the RIAA's lawsuit campaign relied on an abuse of federal subpoena powers that put the privacy of all American internet users in jeopardy. Other fallout: developers are reluctant to ship new P2P apps, investors are reluctant to invest in them, and broadband growth is stalled.
* Pew's numbers suggest that roughly 18 million Americans stopped downloading in the last three months. But iTunes probably would be lucky to have a million total customers. Where did the rest go? Has the recording industry acquired any new customers, or just alienated a bunch of die-hard fans?
* There's a better way — why can't the American music fan get the same deal that radio stations get? Pay a reasonable blanket fee, and play whatever music they like on whatever equipment suits them? That's the way that live performance, cover music and radio all work: the recording industry could be flexing its might and creating a blanket license regime that would leverage the fastest-adopted technology in the history of the world, P2P file-sharing.
