A recent study conducted by British Music Rights and researchers at The University of Hertfordshire showed that four out of five people would pay to use P2P-services, while they currently don't. A total of 773 people were asked if they would mind to pay for download and sharing services to compensate the copyright holders. Eighty percent of the respondents said they wouldn't mind. Although the survey was done with only 773 people, some say it offers some degree of hope.

If it would be possible to offer P2P-networks a license for all ever recorded music we could see some happy creatives, but many "would constitute further loss of control by The Powers That Were," says Van Buskirk at the Listening Post.

"This survey (.pdf) suggests that offering an access-based approach that enables people to trial, swap, and recommend, music for a range of tariffs would be successful. 80 percent of those who admit to illegally file-sharing are prepared to engage with a legal file-sharing service, and place a considerable monetary value on it," say researchers.