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Europeans downloaded euro10 billion worth of pirated music, film, television shows and software from the Web in 2008,
Thereby creating big loss to industry of music , movies etc all aroung the world .
The International Chamber of Commerce said its report showed that digital piracy could escalate and cost media and entertainment industries euro240 billion in retail revenue and 1.2 million jobs by 2015.
"For us, file sharing is another word for theft," Agnete Haaland, the head of the International Actors Federation told reporters.
Teens frequently pass music and movies to their friends without realizing that they are illegally sharing copyrighted material, said William Maunier, who leads the UNI trade union representing media company workers.
"You have to educate young people," he said.
Industry representatives did not say how they thought growing Internet piracy should be tackled, saying they just want people to see the extent of the problem.
They said they also wanted to show the costs to the European Parliament which last year tried unsuccessfully to challenge France's tough measures against illegal downloaders.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy had advocated a "three strikes and you're out" rule, under which Internet use would be tracked and users caught downloading would be warned twice before their Internet access would be cut off for a year.
Britain is also considering similar rules.
The report written by Tera Consultants said that more than 14 million people in the European Union work in creative industries such as television, publishing and radio.
It claims that over 185,000 jobs were lost because of digital piracy in 2008.
It's also interesting to note that illegal file sharers actually contribute far more to music industry coffers than their law-abiding peers. One survey conducted by Davos showed that 42 per cent of illegal downloaders were actually listening to their ill-gotten tunes with a view to buying the real deal, and that P2P pirates spent £77 a year on average on properly-acquired music compared to just £44 shelled out by those who comply with copyright laws.
Post Title → European Web downloads cost 10 billion euros
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