Musicmetric Data Claims ISP Blocking of Piracy Sites Has Limited Impact

Analyst firm Musicmetric has published new data to show that court ordered website blocks (censorship) imposed by broadband ISPs in the United Kingdom against internet piracy websites (e.g. The Pirate Bay) have had “little impact” on “illegal” BitTorrent based file sharing (P2P) activity.

The news follows on from yesterday’s confirmation that the High Court in London had handed down additional court orders to some of the country’s largest broadband ISPs, which requires them to block customers from accessing three further websites – Fenopy, H33t and Kickass Torrents (here). But will it help?

In fact global file sharing appears to be increasing, although there is some evidence in Musicmetric’s latest Digital Music Index (DMI) report to suggest that legal music streaming services like iTunes and Spotify are helping to reduce piracy in the UK and US.

It is interesting to note that of the Top 10 fastest growing markets on BitTorrent, only France has access to the music streaming service Spotify, whereas in the top 10 fastest shrinking countries, Spotify is available in 5 the markets (including the Top 2). Musicmetric sees this as implying that legal alternatives are taking a bite out of piracy (not conclusive proof).

Gregory Mead, CEO of Semetric (Musicmetric’s owners), said:

“While our data does show a decrease in BitTorrent downloads in the U.S. last year, it also shows that it is increasing significantly in emerging markets such as Brazil and India and is on track to pass the US in the near future.

Data around the blocking of Pirate Bay in the UK last April showed little negative impact on file sharing, which would have been due to the slew of copy-cat sites set up on proxy servers. Blocking websites isn’t as simple as shutting down a market stall selling copied videos or CDs, and web pirates can be very slippery.

We will be carefully monitoring this latest event to measure the effect. However, the strong wording in yesterday’s [court] judgment could help the entertainment industry take stronger action against copyright theft although what is clear is that making legal services available can really help.”

The data shows that P2P traffic was broadly at the same global level at the end of 2012 as it was a year earlier, with noticeable dips occurring around the time that TPB and Newzbin2 were being blocked across several countries. But the level of traffic soon recovered as those whom actively seek such content began to find ways around the skin deep ISP restrictions (proxy servers, VPN etc.).

BitTorrent trends show albums make up 78% of official releases being shared with singles numbering just 22%. This will be due to the fact that procuring an album is only marginally more time consuming than finding a single, “leading downloaders to take as much as they can”, said the report.