A study by Arbor Networks has found that P2P traffic is decreasing dramatically worldwide, from 40 percent of all traffic two years ago to 18 percent today.

"Why the change? For the most part, the file-sharing that took place on networks like Limewire and Napster back in the late 90's and early 2000's has now been largely replaced by streaming video thanks to to sites like YouTube, Hulu, and Netflix," writes ReadWriteWeb's Sarah Perez. "Given easier and less technical ways of accessing media, consumers have begun to shift away from the headache of P2P to these new and often free or ad-supported sites."

"For years, commentators predicted that it'd be the growth of legitimate services that would bring an end to piracy, rather than legislation and lawsuits from content providers," writes Pocket-lint's Duncan Geere. "This data seems to support that conclusion, though correlation is not causation, so it's difficult to say whether that's true or not -- more studies will be required."

More here from The Industry Standard ... more here from TechSpot ... more here from InformationWeek ... more here from Wired ... and the press release is here.