[x-pubpol] Billboard: New Study Debunks Data Showing File-Sharing Helps CD Sales

[Joly MacFie]

http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/industry/digital-and-mobile/business-matters-new-study-debunks-data-1007873552.story


August 22, 2012   |    By Glenn Peoples

An influential 2007 academic
paper<http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/ippd-dppi.nsf/eng/h_ip01456.html>
that
found a positive link between file sharing and CD purchases has been
debunked after a professor from Australia has taken the same data set and
come to an opposite conclusion.

As blogger and lawyer Barry Sookman
explains,<http://www.barrysookman.com/2012/08/20/the-andersen-p2p-file-sharing-study-on-the-purchase-of-music-cds-in-canada/>
Professor
George Barker of the College Of Law, Australian National University took
the same data, corrected for "two fundamental errors" and found a "negative
association between P2P downloading and CD demand." In terms of damages
done, Barker estimates a 10% increase in P2P demand reduced CD demand
around 0.4%.


The original 2007 paper's author, Danish academic Birgette Andersen, issued
a revision in 2010 that claimed file sharing is not to blame for the drop
in CD sales.

Barkers' study <http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2128054>
will
probably fall on many deaf ears. Both P2P supporters and opponents
selectively tune into those academic studies that match their views on
public policy. Nevertheless, the correction is important. As Sookman
implies by noting the Anderson study's reference during Canada's
Legislative Summary of the Bill C-11 to amend to Copyright Act -- bad
research can result in bad policy.

And as for the policies of tomorrow, it appears they are likely to be
informed by academic research that shows a near consensus on the harm file
sharing has brought to the recording industry. The obvious answer has been
staring people in the face for over a decade. Now most of the research
agrees.


Barker's conclusion jibes with that of economist Stanley Liebowitz after he
looked at studied that predated even that of Andersen. "This conclusion,
preliminary though it might be, should not be much of a surprise,"
Liebowitz wrote in a 2006 paper. "Common sense is, or should be, the
handmaiden of economic analysis. When given the choice of free and
convenient high-quality copies versus purchased originals, is it really a
surprise that a significant number of individuals will choose to substitute
the free copy for the purchase?"

Case closed, right? Not exactly. By just about any measure piracy is as
popular as ever. Anti-piracy efforts continue in the U.S. and have been
codified into law in South Korea, New Zealand and - where the laws are now
under attack - France. All those anti-piracy efforts combat downloading
rather than streaming. Although legal streaming has taken off beautifully
in recent years (witness the growth of Vevo, Spotify, Deezer and Muve
Music), illegal streaming abounds, too. Soon-to-be old anti-piracy laws
will need to be updated and they'll need a new set of academic research on
the impacts of illegal streaming.


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