About 79 percent of people in the Netherlands last year said they no longer download free content such as music, films, series, games or software, according to Telecompaper's annual Consumer Insights survey. The number shows an increase of 5 percentage points compared to the year before. Lack of time is increasingly mentioned as a reason why people download free content less often. Also,
10 percent more women no longer do free downloads, compared to men.

People who do download free content say it is now easier to find what they are looking for. The people say there were less blocks in 2018 of download (torrent) sites by providers than the year before. This could be due to the fact that many providers were forced to block torrent sites such as Pirate Bay in 2017. Peer-to-peer, such as torrent sites, is still by far the most commonly used for downloading free content.

Peer-to-peer download frequency increases

Still, the group of people that do download free content via peer-to-peer services such as torrent sites did so much more frequently in 2018 than the year before. The number of people who download many times per week increased sixfold. The number of users downloading something for free several times per month doubled. On the other hand, the number of consumers who download only a few times a year more than halved.