14 DAY TRIAL // Studies have shown in the past that file sharers also make good customers for the media companies, not that it has changed anything in the way the big companies approach the issue. Still, one more can't hurt, so here's yet another study that has found that users that engage in file sharing also purchase more DVDs, more media devices and are generally more engaged with entertainment content.
The Frank N. Magid Associates research firm was hired by peer-to-peer company Vuze, maker of the popular Java-based bittorrent client Vuze, formerly known as Azureus, to see if and how its users differentiated from the average Internet ones. While ordered by a p2p company, Mike Vorhaus, president of Magid Advisors, assures us that the results are not biased in any way. The study used a random sample of Vuze users and compared it with another one made up of regular Internet users aged 18 to 44.
The result of the study, while going against everything Hollywood is claiming, isn't that surprising, considering the number of previous similar reports. It found that the p2p users went to 34 percent more movies than regular ones, bought 34 percent more DVDs and also rented 24 percent more movies. Could it be that the ones that use file sharing do so precisely because they are more interested in media and entertainment content and, as such, also end up buying more than the average users?
If you look at the fact that these users are also a lot more likely to own the devices needed to enjoy the content, this becomes even clearer. Peer-to-peer users are roughly five times as likely to own a TV with a larger than 20 inch diagonal and also three times more likely to own a media-center PC. In fact, these users are more likely to have just about every other kind of entertainment device.