Digital generation averse to paying for online content

A study by the European Commission revealed that one third of the young Europeans would never pay for online access to music or movies. The digital generation –people under 24 who have grown up with the Internet- "seems reluctant to pay to download or view online content like videos or music," the Commission says in the report. "Thirty-three per cent say they are not willing to pay anything at all, which is twice the EU average".

This causes concern about the rise of online piracy and damages to the EU economy, says EU spokesman Martin Selmayr. Over the coming years, two million jobs could be created in the EU if online business is promoted. However, this can only be achieved if the EU succeeds in creating a comprehensive legal framework that facilitates the creation and legal distribution of content, promoting the rights of content providers as well as consumers.

The prospects, then, are certainly somewhat bleak when one looks at the study’s findings. In the last three months, only ten per cent of the digital generation paid for access to online content. The number of people downloading content for free (including free legal downloads) was six times as high. Only one in five respondents said to be willing to pay if this would mean access to more or better content.

The report draws on surveys conducted by Eurostat, the EU’s bureau of statistics and provides some interesting statistics of downloading behaviour in member states.

In Germany, for example, file-sharing accounts for 70 per cent of total Internet bandwidth usage. In Spain, for every one legal online purchase, eight hundred songs were illegally downloaded. In France, movie sharing outnumbered cinema tickets sold in May 2008.