P2P Unite
 

We started up by initiating a boycott that to us was a success. 142,000+ visitors, and although most likely not every single one in support of the boycott, it was still so impressive we figured we'd take this to a new level. We're two weeks into this reform and it's about time to try to spread this cause around.

We aim to inform and provide P2P users with the tools necessary to fight back - and also to provide for a resource for anybody curious about the P2P community and what it really means to be a part of it. The tools so far being argumentation and research material, comments, opinions, valuable and helpful links and not to mention our quest to find news agencies that believes in journalism, i.e. actually doing research. In short, P2P Unite will be whatever the P2P Community makes of it. This is, after all, all about sharing.

Please visit the site and check it out, contact us if you have anything to contribute or just to comment, suggest links or if P2P Unite simply have seemed to missed something important. In short - whatever you feel like communicating to us - and ultimately the whole P2P community.

We're on the look-out specifically for those of you who would like to interpret P2P articles and debates in non-english speaking countries, or making reports on the P2P climate regionally. Also, if anybody has a good insight on how to go about legal issues in their region of the world, it would be greatly appreciated. Ideas for actions to make, how to speak to local politicians and so on. Well - you got the drift!

Join in this quest for P2P resources, why don't you! Spread the link around, and if you don't want to write something yourself, ask the lawyer you happen to live next door with to jot something down, or anybody close to you that you know would have something valuable tucked away in their minds out of reach for the rest of us!

We might not have billions of dollars in resources, but between all of us we have a knowledge-base that should not, will not if we have anything to do with it, be ignored.

We have put up a survey that we would like to invite you all to participate in.

result of the p2p unite survey
 

P2P Unite have conducted a survey amongst file-sharers regarding their purchase habits. This is a unique survey, since it is carried out from within the P2P community.

Why is this survey important? Why does it matter if file-sharers buy commercial products, too?

It is important because file-sharers are depicted as a threat to society in the propaganda issued by organisations like MPAA and RIAA. Such organisations justify the persecution of file-sharers by citing severe financial losses on behalf of the companies they represent. If we can show that file-sharing in fact does not entail financial loss to the commercial companies, it follows that the actions taken against file-sharers are, at best, misguided.

The message to the **AA organisations is that file-sharers and customers are one and the same.

The survey concerns how file-sharing affects personal expenses, and focuses on the relationship between downloading files and purchasing products.

The results from this survey suggest that the “harm” done to commercial companies is not so much in terms of financial loss, as in loss of control. Many file-sharers purchase products that they have first discovered through some file-sharing network. We can combine that piece of information with many comments found in posts on file-sharing forums, to reach a preliminary conclusion about the impact of file-sharing. File-sharing may challenge the power that commercial companies are used to wielding. File-sharing help people to discover products that are not heavily promoted by the entertainment industry. In this sense, it may be true that file-sharing is indeed a threat to the companies that the **AA organisations represent. In addition, file-sharing may become a means for artists to free themselves from their dependence on commercial companies.

Please visit the P2P unite site to read the analysis of this survey, in which 1,122 file-sharers participated during the month the survey was up. The sources for the analysis is available for download and examination.

I knew when I took the survey that it was well thought out and having read the analsys I'm very impressed. The results, of course, did not surprise me. There may be some die hard p2p users that have replaced their entertainment purchases with downloads, but the vast majority of users simply use p2p to compliment their normal buying habbits. Good job you guys. :tu: