According to a results of a survey out today, translated by Martyn Williams, the numbers of internet users in Japan sharing music, movies and software has increased dramatically to reach an all-time high.
The survey – carried out online and financed and operated by a trio of industry organizations, similar to their well-known US counterparts – RIAJ (music), the Japanese MPAA and ACC (software) – concluded that the number of internet users sharing authorized media climbed from 3.5 per cent in June 2006, to 9.6 per cent by September 2007, a near 180% increase.
The numbers of files downloaded increased by a large amount too. June 2006 saw an average of 194 files downloaded per user which increased to 481 by September this year. Audio files topped the download charts with 211 per user with video coming in next with 183. People downloaded an average of 43 images, 33 documents and 14 pieces of software.
The survey found that the favorite P2P sharing application in Japan is still Winny with 27 percent. LimeWire, which is very popular in the West took 18.8 per cent of the vote with WinMX sitting at 15 per cent.
BitTorrent, which is incredibly popular all over the world with tens of millions of users, ranked just 6th with 7.4 per cent.
Japan hit the file-sharing news headlines earlier this year when a bizarre virus on the Winny network attacked files and displayed strange messages.
TorrentFreak looks forward to being able to report a dramatic growth in Japanese BitTorrent users next year.
