The BBC Radio 4 show More or Less has revealed serious inaccuracies in the UK governments claim that 7m Brits have been involved in illegal online file sharing (P2P) activity. The show traced the research back through several government and analyst organisations until it found the real source - a privately commissioned Jupiter Research study by Mark Mulligan for the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), a music trade body.

It doesn't take a genius to work out that the government shouldn't be taking their "official statistics" from such obviously partisan sources. The BBC show continued on to note that the statistics themselves are also based on a few highly questionable assumptions.


The reality is that if the research had used the correct source statistics and not artificially inflated the file sharing totals then the actual figure would be closer to 3.9m and not 7m! In addition we would be inclined to say that most of the abuse comes from those with broadband connections, which stood at around 16m+ in 2008.