The music industry made much of research a couple of months ago suggesting there had been a marked decrease in the number of people downloading songs, and citing this as evidence of the effects of their ongoing legal battles against the evil downloaders.

“But some experts and users say that file sharers are only being more secretive, and that file swapping is actually increasing. At least two research firms say more than 150 million songs are being downloaded free every month. “

It’s being suggested that the downloaders have just moved underground – they don’t own up when surveyed. Which makes a lot of sense.

Perhaps the final comments should be from a 26 year old financial planner in Boston, who says the lawsuit publicity has stopped he and his friends sharing, but not downloading:

“No matter what they do, it’s not going to work,” Spurr said. “To me the lawsuits are useless because the Internet is about sharing.”