Despite of a huge coverage of anti filesharing plans of Government, the number of illegal peer to peer downloads has increased to an extent.

According to the findings of a latest research conducted by the music industry body, BPI, the levels of peer to peer (P2P) filesharing has been increased on the last six months. The pirates have made plans to enhance their downloading into 2010. A study was conducted which involved around 3,442 Brits aged 16 to 54. Out of 3,442 Brits, more than 1,000 Brits admitted that they downloaded music in illegal way. It was also found by the study that the number of people taking help of non- P2P methods for downloading music illegally online in 2009 has increased to some extent. For sharing files online, many new methods have been introduced including newsgroups, MP3 search engines and forum, MP3 pay sites, blog and board links to online digital storage sites which are commonly called as cyberlockers.

Geoff Taylor, BPI chief executive, said, “There are now more than thirty-five legal digital music services in the UK, offering music fans a great choice of ways to get music legally. It’s disappointing that levels of illegal P2P use remain high despite this and the publicity surrounding imminent measures to address the problem. It’s vital that those measures come into force as quickly as possible.

He further added “The growth in other, non-P2P methods of downloading music illegally is a concern, and highlights the importance of including a mechanism in the Digital Economy Bill to deal with threats other than P2P,” .

P2P has still maintained its popularity despite of rise in alternative downloading methods. An average of nine songs has been downloaded by the users per month followed by half of the people who download music illegally in this way once a week. A third of respondents stated that they download music by using P2P networks regularly.

A large number of warning letters has been issued by the Government  to illegal downloaders. Not only this, the Government has also warned  to disconnect repeat offenders in case levels of piracy will continue.
Although, the broadband providers are not in the favour of these measures. They think that the steps employed for identifying pirates will bring innocent users at risk of disconnection, and that the cost of policing the net might raise subscriptions by around £25 per year.
Michael Phillips, Broadbandchoices.co.uk product director, said: “Research earlier this year by think tank Demos showed that illegal downloaders could be tempted away from their P2P networks by the right kind of service. 47% of people said that they were interested in legal, paid-for music downloads – a figure that interestingly rose to 72% among illegal downloaders, who were also shown to spend the most money on legal music.
“So what is needed is legal music downloads at the right price – the Demos study found that music sales could be doubled if the price of each track was reduced to 45p – compared to 69p, 79p and 99p, which are still common prices on some websites.”