Music Ally

Research commissioned by the International Chamber of Commerce claims that 1.2 million jobs across the EU are at risk in the next five years, due to online piracy.

It suggests that piracy could cost more than €240 billion of revenues from the music, film, TV, software and other creative industries by 2015.

The survey also indicates that the UK could be the worst hit, with a quarter of a million jobs at risk. BPI boss Geoff Taylor has backed the findings: “We’re approaching a tipping point where investment in our talent will dry up due to mass illegal downloading”.

There may be criticism of the research’s methodology if it turns out that the €240bn figure is based on the assumption that every illegal download is a lost sale, though.

The war of words between the music industry and certain UK ISPs shows no signs of thawing. With ISPs like TalkTalk and BT having predicted huge costs if they’re forced to introduce anti-piracy measures on their networks, the BPI has commissioned a report from technical consultancy Sweet Consulting that claims to disprove them.

It suggests that technology to identify and notify copyright infringers could cost just £13.85 million in the first year, £9 million in the second, and £3.45 million in the third – 24p per individual ISP subscriber in the third case. A separate report commissioned by the Creative Coalition Campaign has come up with estimated annual running costs of £8.5 million.

Expect a rebuttal from TalkTalk in 5…4…3…2…1…

One in three UK consumers are still downloading music illegally, according to a survey conducted for the BPI by Harris Interactive.

What’s more, it’s not just P2P any more – the survey says that while P2P downloading remained steady this year, illegal downloads from other sources – unlicensed overseas stores, newsgroups, MP3 search engines and Rapidshare-style cyberlockers – grew. BPI boss Geoff Taylor says the findings make it more important than ever that the UK government must bring its anti-piracy measures “into force as quickly as possible”.

Back in October 2008 when we were writing about the increasing popularity of cyberlockers, industry bodies said that P2P was their overwhelming priority. It looks like that’s changing now.

Chinese hackers have cracked the codes used for iTunes Store vouchers using key-generators, and as a result are selling $200 voucher codes for as little as $2.60 online. That’s according to a report on the blog of Chinese music industry consultancy Outdustry.

It points out that thousands of these hacked vouchers are for sale on Chinese online shopping site Taobao, where users are paying the hackers to generate codes for them to sell.

Apparently six months ago, a $200 card went for around 320 RMB (roughly $47), but the price has since plummeted to around 18 RMB ($2.60) as more sellers pile in. “But we make more money as the amount of customers is growing rapidly,” one tells Outdustry.

As Apple reportedly prepares to launch its iPhone in China, the news is sure to cause concern within the company – especially if these hacked voucher codes start being sold in the West too.