He who pirates buys more after

Wow,  I wasn’t expecting this: a recent study says people who pirate things online, especially music, then buy a lot more songs legally then people that behave nicely online. And by more I mean almost double. The cited study says a person (in UK) who downloads music illegally purchase an average of 126$ worth of songs per year, while someone who doesn’t use such methods to get some tunes spends around 72$ yearly.

This statistics makes me wonder if the same applies to movie downloads. I’m also sure it doesn’t fit with illegal software download, but none the less it seems that measures like cutting Internet access to pirates for life, as they intend to do in France if you’re caught three times, is not good for business, as you’re sending away your best customers.

Illegal file sharing

Of course, big music/software companies always say that they loose X millions from illegal use of their intellectual property, but forget to mention that they measure wrong: if I download music worth of 1000$ it doesn’t mean that I would buy it if I couldn’t download it for free (probably I would buy songs that cost 126$ a year, if this study is true).

The problem I see with illegal pirating is that it’s not really  stealing, nor correct, it’s something in between. I also hope things will come to a middle ground, where everyone will be happy, as it’s clear that stealing does no good to companies, nor does cutting access to those who steal (as they buy more that ‘normal’ users). If you have an idea I would like to hear it.

You might also be interested in what I wrote about online piracy.