Internet downloading increasing in Australia

The Age reports that the use of Interent downloading of movies, TV, music etc. in Australia is on the increase, and the economic downturn seems to be a factor. Note the quote from Sony Entertainment, which points to the prevalence of "two cultures" in the entertainment media industry about the Internet and the future of providing content to audiences.

Hundreds of thousands more Australians have turned to illegal download sites in the past year to save money on movies, music, software and TV shows during the economic downturn, new figures show.

Total visits by Australians to BitTorrent websites including Mininova, The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, TorrentReactor and Torrentz grew from 785,000 in April last year to 1,049,000 in April this year, Nielsen says. This is a year-on-year increase of 33.6 per cent.

The figures, which do not include peer-to-peer software such as Limewire, are in line with a Newspoll survey of 700 Australians in April, which found almost two-thirds of respondents said they were more tempted to buy or obtain pirated products in tough financial times.

The movie and music industries are battling revenue declines because legal downloads are not yet making up for the drop in physical disc sales. They have ramped up the pressure on governments and internet providers around the world to do more to prevent online piracy.

"I'm a guy who doesn't see anything good having come from the internet. Period," Sony Pictures Entertainment chief executive officer Michael Lynton said this month.

Lynton complained the internet had "created this notion that anyone can have whatever they want at any given time ... and if you don't give it to them for free, they'll steal it".

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