Next time you visit one of those "click here to steal this copyrighted work" download sites you should know that you're not just taking food from the tables of entertainment industry workers, you're also stiffing carriers with quite a tab.
Apparently, carriers spent over $4 BILLION dollars as a result of consumers' use of peer to peer (P2P) networking, and according to
research just released by MultiMedia Intelligence, that massive number is DOWN slightly down from the $4.2 billion spent in 2006.
On top of the capital expenditure (CAPEX), carriers also dropped about $700 million in operational expenses (OPEX) as a result of P2P networking.
Rick Sizemore of MultiMedia Intelligence said, "Our research uniquely quantifies the impact that P2P has on broadband operators. Since the majority of P2P traffic is unlicensed content, our research demonstrates that piracy costs are not only impacting content owners, but broadband providers as well."
According to the release announcing the findings:
· The value of unlicensed (in some cases known as pirated) music trafficked on P2P networks in 2007 was US$69 billion.
· Not all P2P content is unlicensed. The growth rate for licensed content files distributed over P2P networks is much higher than unlicensed, although it is fair to note that we are starting from a much smaller base.
· P2P Internet traffic, despite having grown at a torrid pace for years, will grow almost 400% over the next 5 years. Growing from a level of 1.6 petabytes of Internet traffic per month in 2007 to almost 8 petabytes per month by 2012.
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