According to a survey from British Music Rights, 80% of kids are willing to pay for a legal P2P system. The group surveyed U.K. youths aged 14-22 about their music habits–from uploading their own original songs, illegal downloads, and how they feel about digital music.

Young people today are already using P2P to get their music, so it makes sense that they are comfortable with using a legal P2P system. About 63% of respondents said that they download music using P2P file-sharing networks.

Unfortunately, there is no legal, pay P2P system available now. So kids are doing what they know: downloading lots of music illegally with P2P. The survey found that respondents had an average of 1770 tracks, of which half were downloaded illegally. They also share music by trading CDs, or copying music from their friends’ hard drives. Seems pretty hard for the RIAA to stop this kind of piracy, isn’t it?

Music labels should take a long look at this study. It shows how kids’ habits about digital music are much different than adults, simply because they’ve grown up with things like P2P, social media and the decline of CD sales. If they don’t heed what kids are already doing today, how can they hope to stay relevant in the future? Labels need to start realizing that their old business models are changing rapidly and they need to adapt with different business models.

Interestingly, the study found that 60% of young people would still purchase CDs. even with a legal file-sharing service. Primarily, that’s because they want to own something physical.

Some highlights:

• 90% of respondents own an MP3 player
• 58% have copied music from a friend’s hard drive to their own
• 95% said that they copy music in some way
• 42% have allowed P2P users to upload music from their computer.
• Money spent on live music exceeds that spent on recorded music

Bonus: Press release from BMR here.

Bonus #2: Article from Ars Technica.

The Digital Media Association (DiMA), an industry group representing webcasters like AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo, has hired Greg Barnes as their legislative counsel and director of government affairs. Previously, Barnes was senior counsel to House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers.

Forbes has a story that says that Radiohead’s new album, which is priced at whatever fans want to pay, is popular on file-sharing networks like BitTorrent.

“On the first day that Radiohead’s latest became available, around 240,000 users downloaded the album from copyright-infringing peer-to-peer BitTorrent sources, according to Big Champagne, a Los-Angeles-based company that tracks illegal downloading on the Internet. Over the following days, the file was downloaded about 100,000 more times each day—adding up to more than 500,000 total illegal downloads.”

Reports say that legal downloads of Radiohead’s album are at 1.2 million now, but everyone is predicting that illegal downloads will surpass the legal ones. Why? Is it the illegality of BitTorrent? Is it easier to find illegal songs rather than look for where to get it legally?

That’s what some people are saying. Some people are already familiar with BitTorrent and LimeWire, but they don’t know where to go to get the album directly from Radiohead. (For the record, here is Radiohead’s site.)

Says Forbes:

“With popular album releases, illegal download volumes normally outstrip sales, says Garland. But more surprising is that fans chose to steal music they could legally download for any price they choose.”

Another answer is that fans may be turned off by having to register and offer their name and snail mail address to Radiohead.

Nevertheless, this pay-what-you-feel-like-paying gimmick is having a great effect on Radiohead’s awareness. Everyone’s talking about their album and the new pricing system. So even if they don’t make much money on this album, they’ve at least made a lot of noise.

It’s been a busy week for YouTube lawyers.

Viacom filed a $1 billion lawsuit against YouTube/Google and Mark Cuban (of HDNet and the Dallas Mavericks) filed a subpeona against them too.

Does this mean the end of YouTube? The folks at Between The Lines (ZDNet) seem to think so. They say it’s the beginning of the end. Perhaps Viacom’s lawsuit will open up the floodgates. And perhaps YouTube will have to take down much of its interesting content–stuff that’s from TV and movies that regular users post. But it still remains to be seen.

The beauty of YouTube is that you can usually count on it if you miss something on TV. Like something funny on The Daily Show or American Idol.

YouTube has even turned into a verb. As in: “Damn, I missed that awful singer from American Idol, but I’m going to YouTube it later.”

If Viacom’s lawsuit makes other content owners pull their videos, then all YouTube will be left with is Lonelygirl15 and other user generated media. I mean, who will ever go to Viacom’s web site to watch a video? I don’t care what media conglomerate owns a certain TV network or TV show. I just want one place to go and find it.

I just hope YouTube doesn’t end up looking like it’s from 1999.

Bonus: Read excerpts from Viacom’s lawsuit.

Remember Intertainer? The company launched in 1996 saying it would deliver Hollywood movies via the Internet. It gained investors like Microsoft, Sony, NBC and Comcast but ended up shutting down before launching much of anything.

In 2002 Intertainer shut down after filing a lawsuit alleging that its own investors—Sony, Time Warner, and NBC Universal–refused to license films and force Interntainer out of business.

Now, the NY Times is reporting that Intertainer has filed a patent suit in U.S. District Court in Marshall, Texas saying that Apple, Google and Napster infringe on their 2005 patent covering the “commercial distribution of audio and video over the Internet”.

Links via NY Times and DMW.