Study examines pros and cons of file sharing

The Dutch Ministries of Economic Affairs, Justice and Culture have just released a new study into the positive and negative effects of filesharing. Over the past year 4.7 million Dutch consumers have downloaded music, movies and games over p2p-networks. The study concludes that in general, file sharing has a positive effect on culture and prosperity in the Netherlands, because it enables more consumers to access music, movies and games. The study also concludes that downloading has a negative effect on the content industry.

With regards to the effects of file sharing on the content industry the researchers differentiate between music, movies and games. According to the researchers the music industry could actually benefit from file sharing because their products reach a bigger audience through file sharing. This bigger audience is more likely to buy additional music from the same artist and spend more money on concerts and merchandising.  

For the movie industry the picture is bleaker. Given the fact that in general movies are only viewed once, downloading movies does indeed hurt the industry. While the industry is still growing, file sharing is likely to threaten the sector to an increasing extent.

More or less the same reasoning applies to games, but since games are closely integrated with their respective platforms (i.e. the consoles), the problem is a lot less acute for the games industry.

The study can be downloaded through our knowledge base (in Dutch only).