As far as the music industry is concerned, the message is clear: file sharing is killing it.
"Research clearly illustrates that the illegal use of music on the internet is damaging the entire UK music industry," said Peter Jamieson, the chairman of the British Phonographic Industry (BPI). Even Apple's chief executive, Steve Jobs, agrees.
"ITunes really competes with piracy, not the other services," he said at the iTunes Music Store Europe launch last month. "Piracy is the big enemy -- the market has shrunk in France and Germany and seen zero growth in the UK."
Yet despite the industry's belief that file sharing is anathema to record sales, a recent study has shown that it may not be so clear cut.
"Downloads have an effect on sales that is statistically indistinguishable from zero," the controversial report claims, even going so far as to suggest that for popular albums, "the impact of file sharing on sales is likely to be positive."
The study, by Felix Oberholzer-Gee, Associate Professor in the strategy unit at Harvard Business School, and Koleman Strumpf, Associate Professor in the economics department at the University of North Carolina, analyses sales and download data, and its conclusions contradict the established music industry line.
During the last quarter of 2002, the pair gathered data from two peer-to-peer file sharing servers on the OpenNap network and matched individual downloads to the weekly sales figures of 680 chart albums.
"Our hypothesis was that if downloads are killing music, then albums that are downloaded more intensively should sell less," says Strumpf. But, after adjusting for the effects of popularity, they discovered that file sharing has "no statistically significant effect" on sales.
An economist with a love of music, Strumpf has been interested in file sharing since the Napster trial in 2000, but was not impressed by the evidence presented in court.
"I read through the studies that were used during the trial, and they were really horrible," he says. Many of the surveys concluded, incorrectly according to Strumpf, that people who download more buy less.
"The fact that there's a correlation does not imply that downloading is the root cause of these people buying less. File sharing is done primarily by teenagers and college kids because they have a lot of time on their hands but they don't have a lot of money.
If we got rid of file sharing tomorrow, it doesn't necessarily mean these kids would be buying any more music."
Another problem is that asking someone about their illegal activities, particularly in the US where they risk prosecution, is unlikely to result in honest or accurate answers.
But Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf are not without critics.
"We consider it a very flawed study," says Matt Phillips, a BPI spokesperson.
Both the BPI and the International Federation for the Phonographic Industries (IFPI) have criticised the study for including the Christmas period when people are buying CDs as gifts.
"It's very straightforward to address these kinds of criticisms," says Strumpf. "We got rid of the Christmas season and just looked at the first half of our data. We still find the same effect."
So, if downloading hasn't caused the slump in sales, what has? There are several factors that could be involved, but the easiest explanation is the popularity of DVDs.
"Over the period 1999 to 2003, DVD prices fell by 25 percent and the price of players fell in the US from over US$1,000 to almost nothing," says Strumpf. "At the same time, CD prices went up by 10 percent. Combined DVD and VHS tape sales went up by 500 million, while CD sales fell by 200 million, so a possible explanation is that people were spending on DVDs instead of CDs."
It is clear that more work needs to be done before the market effect of downloading is fully understood, but Strumpf was unsure whether they would be able to conduct further work.
"The problem is getting hold of sales figures. Getting data on file sharing is hard, but it's possible. However, I imagine it's going to be difficult for us to get sales data in the future because of the views of the record industry towards us," Strumpf said.
Prior to Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf's report, there were no empirical studies based on actual file sharing behaviour, and the music industries in the US and the UK have based their policies on, at best, incomplete research. At worst, the surveys and analyses they quote are misleading and inaccurate.
Yet still the RIAA has sued its customers -- an action Strumpf calls "one of the stupidest things in the world to do." The BPI has stated it is "prepared to go that route if forced."
Some even question whether the fall in sales the RIAA quotes is real, or a product of a creative redefinition of the word "sale." Even if it is real, there is one final fly in the ointment that can't easily be explained away: during the past nine months, CD sales in America have increased by 7 percent, despite continued growth in file sharing.
As Strumpf says: "If file sharing is killing record sales, why are records starting to sell better?"
ENDEAVOR MANTA: The ship is programmed to automatically return to its designated home port and would self-destruct if seized by another party The Endeavor Manta, Taiwan’s first military-specification uncrewed surface vehicle (USV) tailor-made to operate in the Taiwan Strait in a bid to bolster the nation’s asymmetric combat capabilities made its first appearance at Kaohsiung’s Singda Harbor yesterday. Taking inspiration from Ukraine’s navy, which is using USVs to force Russia’s Black Sea fleet to take shelter within its own ports, CSBC Taiwan (台灣國際造船) established a research and development unit on USVs last year, CSBC chairman Huang Cheng-hung (黃正弘) said. With the exception of the satellite guidance system and the outboard motors — which were purchased from foreign companies that were not affiliated with Chinese-funded
PERMIT REVOKED: The influencer at a news conference said the National Immigration Agency was infringing on human rights and persecuting Chinese spouses Chinese influencer “Yaya in Taiwan” (亞亞在台灣) yesterday evening voluntarily left Taiwan, despite saying yesterday morning that she had “no intention” of leaving after her residence permit was revoked over her comments on Taiwan being “unified” with China by military force. The Ministry of the Interior yesterday had said that it could forcibly deport the influencer at midnight, but was considering taking a more flexible approach and beginning procedures this morning. The influencer, whose given name is Liu Zhenya (劉振亞), departed on a 8:45pm flight from Taipei International Airport (Songshan airport) to Fuzhou, China. Liu held a news conference at the airport at 7pm,
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
Taiwan was ranked the fourth-safest country in the world with a score of 82.9, trailing only Andorra, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Numbeo’s Safety Index by Country report. Taiwan’s score improved by 0.1 points compared with last year’s mid-year report, which had Taiwan fourth with a score of 82.8. However, both scores were lower than in last year’s first review, when Taiwan scored 83.3, and are a long way from when Taiwan was named the second-safest country in the world in 2021, scoring 84.8. Taiwan ranked higher than Singapore in ninth with a score of 77.4 and Japan in 10th with
RSS