• by Paul Gough , January 6, 2004

When the Recording Industry Association of America threatened and then filed lawsuits against alleged music pirates, some of the more cynical observers said that the action was too little, too late and ham-handed.

But, according to a survey of Web users by comScore Media Metrix and the Pew Internet & American Life Project, the RIAA's action might have done more to stop file sharing than first believed. Only 14 percent of the 1,358 Internet users surveyed in November and December copped to downloading music files, compared to 29 percent in the spring before the RIAA filed the lawsuits. Only about 1 percent downloaded files during an average day in the fall, compared to 4 percent in the spring.

Data from comScore Media Metrix's consumer panels find that peer-to-peer file sharing using KaZaa, WinMX, BearShare and Grokster dove in November compared to a year ago, with 15 percent fewer people using KaZaa and 59 percent fewer people using Grokster.

The chill in peer-to-peer file sharing - which as recently as a year ago seemed to be unstoppable - has helped boost the fortunes of paid online music services, which we've written about before. More than 3 million in November visited Napster.com - the legal version - and iTunes' newly expanded service got 2.7 million visitors.

-- Paul J. Gough