世論 What Japan Thinks

I’m back from holidays, so normal service will be resumed from today. To kick things off, here’s one from JR Tokai Express Research Inc and published by japan.internet.com looking into P2P (peer to peer) file-sharing software.

Demographics

On the 29th of July 2008 330 members of the JR Tokai Express Research monitor panel employed in public or private industry completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 73.6% of the sample were male, 8.8% in their twenties, 36.4% in their thirties, 41.2% in their forties, and 13.6% in their fifties. The Japanese text said in one place it was only those in private industry interviewed, but in another that it was both public and private; and in one place people from their twenties to sixties, but the percentage breakdown did not mention anything about people in their sixties…

In Q2, one category that is omitted is legitimate software, either shareware or Linux and other GPLed contents.

My fingers are still jet-lagged, so I cannot type too much extra comment tonight…

Research results

Of the original sample, 235 people, or 71.2%, had head of file-sharing software. Of these 235, 9.4%, or 22 people, admitted to currently using it, and 23.0%, or 54 people, said they were ex-users, making just under one in four of the original sample file-sharers. These 76 people where then asked the following questions.

Q1: Which P2P programs have you downloaded? (Sample size=76, multiple answer)

	Votes	Percentage
Winny	33	43.4%
Win MX	33	43.4%
Cabos	11	14.5%
Share	10	13.2%
Napster	9	11.8%
BitTorrent	6	7.9%
Don’t know	10	13.2%
Other	4	5.3%

Q2: What sorts of contents have you downloaded through P2P software? (Sample size=76, multiple answer)

	Votes	Percentage
Music	45	59.2%
Anime, movies, etc	38	50.0%
Images	16	21.1%
User-generated contents	10	13.2%
Games	9	11.8%
Other software, applications	8	10.5%
Other	2	2.6%

Q3: Have you ever caught a virus through filesharing? (Sample size=76)

Yes	14.5%
No	73.7%
Don’t know	11.8%