The idea of the entertainment industry that pirates are the enemy took another drubbing after numerous surveys showed that file-sharers turn out to be the industry’s best customers. Recently, the American Assembly from Columbia University conducted a survey to find out how consumers were getting content and what their attitudes were towards copyright enforcement.

The respondents largely hated the use of web disconnection and rate-limiting as penalties for illegal file-sharing. In addition, the survey confirmed that P2P file-sharers buy 30% more legitimate content than others.

Over 80% believe that it is normal to share copyrighted material with family members, and 60% think the same about friends. Only 4% to 15% believe that it is reasonable to upload copyrighted material for public consumption, post links to illegal content on social networks, or sell pirated copies of copyrighted content.

Unsurprisingly enough, younger people are happier at file-sharing than older people. For instance, ¾ of Americans under 30 said it was reasonable to share material with friends, while only ½ of people over 65 think so. While only 13% of Americans use P2P file-sharing software overall, 20% of adults under 30 do so.

The survey in question was sponsored by Google, and the company might not like some of the findings. Over 50% of Americans think that search engines should be required to block links to illegal content online, while only 42% disagreed.

Overall, the survey supports the idea that file-sharing promotes, instead of hindering, legal content purchases. For instance, an average user on a P2P network has a music library of around 2,000 tracks. Of those, 760 were legally purchased. In the meanwhile, people who don’t use peer-to-peer, have an average library size of 1300 songs, 582 of which are legit. Music ripped from CDs or copied from others makes up the rest.

The survey was also conducted in Germany, and the results were similar, but more Germans thought it was fine for the entertainment industry to enforce copyright. Almost 60% of Germans think that illegal downloading of a music track or film should be punishable, while only 52% of Americans agree. In the meantime, over 70% opposed web monitoring in order to prevent infringement – more than Americans did.