A new study has found that almost 1 in 3 young people in Sweden has never bothered to engage in file sharing, mostly thanks to the increased availability of legal alternatives, such as Netflix and Spotify.
The research, conducted by the Cybernorms research group at Lund University, found that in 2013, 30.2% of young people in Sweden has never illegally share files online. This is up from 21.6% in 2009.
The study surveyed 4,000 individuals in Sweden, interestingly using data collected with the help of The Pirate Bay, also found that the number of users sharing files daily has dropped in the last two years. 32.8 percent of surveyed users downloaded daily in 2012, compared to only 29% in 2014.
The researchers credit the decrease in piracy to new and legal services that have become common in the last few years, including Spotify for music listening and Netflix for movies and TV.
While legal manoeuvres to shut down or block access to sites like The Pirate Bay has been the preferred course of action for rights holders, the study also showed that young people are becoming less concerned about the legal ramifications of downloading. With only 16.9% of those surveyed believing people should not share files due to the legal issues, compared to 24% from four years ago, it may be further proof that legal alternatives, not harsher laws, are the real reasons behind the decline in piracy.
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