A nice article by a Canadian law professor on the myths surrounding P2P.
Although the music industry seems loath to discuss the matter publicly, according to an October 2004 Economist article, an internal music label study found that between 2/3 and 3/4 of recent sales declines had nothing to do with Internet music downloads. That finding was echoed in a Ministry of Canadian Heritage commissioned report which concluded that
“[t]he assumption by the recording industry that demand for CDs is fundamentally strong and that Internet piracy is to blame for falling sales is a simplistic reaction to a complex problem … to place the burden wholly or partly on illegal downloads from the Internet is to ignore a host of other reasons.”
The “other reasons” include the growth of DVD sales, which accounted for zero revenue in 1999, but generated over C$170 million in new revenue from 2000–2004. The popularity of DVDs is surely related to the decline in CD sales and the shrinking shelf space allocated to CDs by music retailers.
Moreover, U.S. census data actually indicates that the number of hours people spend listening to music is declining. Its data suggests that people now spend increasing amounts of time talking on cellphones, playing videogames, watching movies and using the Internet.
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