A study commissioned by NBC Universal--before it became NBCUniversal--has found that almost one quarter of all global Internet traffic infringes on copyrights. And this excludes pornography, the report developed by Envisional concluded.
Not surprisingly, the highest incidence of copyright infringement came when users were downloading pirated material. The report also lambasted BitTorrent, which it concluded accounts for 17.9 percent of all Internet traffic and "nearly two-thirds of this traffic is estimated to be non-pornographic copyright content shared illegitimately such as films, television episodes, music, and computer games and software." This, the report said, accounts for about 11.4 percent of all Internet traffic.
On a positive note, perhaps, the report concluded that video streaming, the fastest growing area of the Internet, is not heavily impacted by copyright infringement since "the vast majority of video streaming is legitimate" and only "5.3 percent is copyrighted content and streamed illegitimately," a relatively insignificant 1.4 percent of all Internet traffic." That should hearten the folks at the new NBCUniversal and its parent company, Comcast (Nasdaq: CMCSA).
For more:
- see this study (PDF)
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