9% Of Users Use P2P [Broadband Reports]
Research firm NPD Group has released some new data regarding usage of P2P in the United States. Over the past three years, the percentage of users in the U.S. that use P2P has dropped from 16% down to 9%.
In a similar report last fall from Cisco, a similar decrease was found, though Cisco determined 25% of all usage was P2P traffic, down from 38%.
It should be noted that this percentage of usage isn’t a direct reflection of online piracy. P2P does include some legitimate forms of data transfer. P2P has been a target of antipiracy efforts due to the high percentage of pirated content being shared via P2P.
The studios and some networks might not like this, but I think they have Hulu and Netflix to thank. Younger-aged people do the majority of illegal downloading... college kids especially do it because they don't have money to buy the product. With Hulu/Netflix being free/cheap it gives them entertainment options, they don't have to do illegally download content for entertainment. Drop Hulu/Netflix and I'd bet this number would increase overnight.
Posted by: Nate Hiatt | Friday, March 25, 2011 at 12:12 PM