The Death Of File Sharing Is Greatly Exaggerated

from the i-think-i'll-go-for-a-walk dept

There have been a few reports lately claiming that file sharing is decreasing. Often, the “explanation” is that more people are switching to streaming services. But that doesn’t seem to make much sense, given that the streaming services are still greatly limited and have their own share of problems. And, indeed, it looks like at least some of these reports are being misinterpreted. The most recent story that got a bunch of headlines claiming that P2P was “dying”? Turns out that it’s all relative. What the report actually said was that P2P file sharing is growing less fast. So it has a smaller overall marketshare — but in terms of absolute numbers? It’s still growing. However, given the size of the “market,” that’s not too surprising. It’s pretty saturated.

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Comments on “The Death Of File Sharing Is Greatly Exaggerated”

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12 Comments
Anonymous Coward says:

The article says that this is a measure of all traffic, not just the various means by which creative content is acquired/used. All that really means is that there’s more stuff to do with the Internet. Also, people can (and do!) use more than one protocol at a time. Also, there are more uses of peer-to-peer connections than just creative content transfers. Really, I’m not sure where the conclusion that any particular use of the Internet is declining comes from. But maybe people who can’t tell the difference between losing money and simply not making it will draw the same conclusion and back off a little.

Anonymous Coward says:

So I read the story, looked at the numbers that NY times shows:

P2P was 40% of traffic 2 years ago. Now it is 18% of traffic.

Internet traffic has increased 35% per year for 2 years.

So, if 2 years ago was 100 (traffic number), today that number is 182.25 (35% increase each of 2 years).

40% of 100 = 40. 18% of 182.25 = 32.805. In real terms (actual traffic) is down almost 20%.

Someone want to check my numbers?

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