Talking of illegal P2P networks, which we were, briefly, the latest stats from that BigChampagne company on P2P usage show that less people were using the file sharing networks in September than in August.
This is perhaps surprising, cos you'd be forgiven for thinking that September would be a month when everyone returns to their PCs and starts downloading music again. Or perhaps, because there's lots of top releases in September, people do more buying than sharing - suggesting people buy the music they really want, and share the stuff they are less excited about. Or perhaps all the file sharers are kids, who have less time on their hands once the schools go back. Or perhaps it's a statistical fluctuation that is covered by the margin of error on BigChampagne's figures.
Whatever - usage in the US was down from 6.87 million users in August to 6.75 million users, while on a global level there was a 3.5% drop from 9.82 million users to 9.62 users. Either way, that's still a dramatic 43.9% increase on September 2004, and a 133.3% increase on September 2003. So, despite the litigation, education and the fact P2P tends to fill your computer with horrible spyware, file sharing is still more popular than ever.