Ten percent of people visiting their marriage councillors have been blaming the internet for their marital problems. From online chat to too much porn surfing – the internet has become a compulsive activity for many people.
This news arises as the first online help is made available for people who are becoming addicted to the internet, and whose normal lives are falling apart due to their online fascination. The Relate group is now offering counselling and help for people in such situations, and they claim this is just the beginning of what will be a major problem in the future.
Countries which have successfully created the availability of DSL on a nationwide scale, like Germany, will develop problems like this quicker than others but the remaining nations will soon follow.
Also as a result of a great increase in the availability of the internet, today it was announced officially that the music industry is taking a huge loss as a result of file sharing (systems such as Morpheus and Kazza). It varies from country to country but the problem is now so big that the industry is saying it can"t continue with such a loss. The introduction of subscription-based download systems by many major record labels has been cited as too late, as it has been forecast that the use of these won"t be widespread for a long time.
The overall loss to the industry is five percent but some countries still go out and buy records. The UK and France haven"t seen such a marked decline, but the UK only has 40% of homes online, while Germany has seen a huge reduction in records bought in shops.