The recording industry is suffering as consumers continue to download free or low-cost music over the Internet, despite the legitimacy of peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing services being in doubt, recording industry officials said yesterday.
Two Taiwanese P2P operators, Ezpeer.com.tw and kuro.com.tw (
"I'm sorry to see that consumers still choose P2P to get music instead using legal avenues," said Robin Lee (
Last August IFPI's Taiwan office filed criminal charges against the two P2P operators, alleging copyright infringements.
According to IFPI statistics, sales in the country of legitimate recorded music fell from NT$5.92 billion in 2001 to NT$4.98 billion in 2002, and fell again to NT$4.47 billion last year.
Kuro, the nation's largest P2P file-sharing site, charges a monthly fee of NT$99 from its members for unlimited file swapping, and provides a one-month free trial for new members. Ezpeer has a similar fee structure.
Kuro spokesman Eric Yang (楊智謀) said yesterday the company has more than 500,000 subscribers.
Defending Kuro's legitimacy, Yang said a court in Canada ruled last month that uploading music files into the shared folders of P2P networks such as Kazaa is legal.
He cited a report last month from the Washington Post that cited a study conducted by Felix Oberholzer-Gee from Harvard Business School and Koleman Strumpf from the University of North Carolina that said Internet music piracy has no negative effect on sales of legitimate music.
Steven Yang (
"Consumers' who support swapping will eat their own bitter fruit when they find one day there are few quality music works available on the market," Yang said.
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