P2P File-Sharing Volume Increases In November

P2P file-sharing levels continued to climb in November, both on a month-to-month and year-over-year basis. According to data supplied by DCIA industry data resource BigChampagne, the average number of simultaneous P2P users reached 6.86 million in the US, and 9.47 million globally.

In the US, that represents a 4.78 percent increase over October figures, and a 20.6 percent jump over the same period in 2004. Globally, the numbers represent a 3.14 percent increase month-over-month, and a 21.3 percent increase year-over-year. Both totals are close to recorded highs for BigChampagne.

The increases are rather pronounced, and are part of a growing P2P poplation. BigChampagne tracks average simultaneous users, instead of total files, to help normalize against network debris like spoofed and incomplete files.

But most P2P users grab a fair amount of tracks per session, generating billions of monthly swaps.

Meanwhile, the BigChampagne data does not track non-P2P, direct person-to-person swapping, which occurs over protocols like instant messenger, e-mail, or simply by trading removable hard drives or burned CDs. That may be the biggest area of new growth, though it remains incredibly difficult to measure.