P2p Population Nearly Doubles And Is Here To Stay

Slyck: It seems that everywhere we turn in the mainstream media (MSM), we keep hearing unquantified propoganda from the major labels that the flurry of lawsuits against the men, women, students and children who share music with each other online are helping to curb the File sharing phenomenon. Supposedly, more and more people are turning to the legitimate online music sites like iTunes, Napster and Rhapsody (and now Walmart) as a result of the scare tactics. However, the exact opposite is true, as many studies have clearly demonstrated. Many feel that the 'Anti-P2P campaigns' will never win the battle  (or the war) and are having the undesired effect of pushing potential online music customers over to the P2P networks.  Couldn't all those legal fees be put to better use to produce better music? Sources at the RIAA have admitted to me that the musicians who were allegedly infringed upon have never seen one cent of all the money collected so far on their behalf in all of the out of court settlements...

Yesterday, Slyck released a new report that you probably won't see in the MSM that shows interest in file sharing is at an all time high. They averaged 2 years worth of monthly statistics for eDonkey2000, DirectConnect, FastTrack, Gnutella and Overnet and were kind enough to "share" this information with the world - for everyone's benefit. On the first graph "it is interesting to note as FastTrack becomes narrower, eDonkey2000 and Gnutella both become considerably wider." Looking at the second graph, you can see that the P2P population has almost doubled since January 2003. Since the cat is out of the bag and previous monopolistic control will never be the same, I suggest that the copyright holders stop chasing their own tails and look for newer ways to make money, rather than pursuing legal ventures that have little return on investment...