Tue, March 30, 2004
Time for the RIAA to start defaming Richard Clarke—10:32 AM
Study: File-Sharing No Threat to Music Sales [WP]
"From a statistical point of view [...] there is no effect between downloading and sales"
(WP requires registration, but feel free to use mine: wp@ph7media.com, password ph7media) It turns out that, as I've been screaming all along, those who download music aren't necessarily those who would ever have bought the same song for money in the first place, so all of RIAA's plaintive wailing about how music sharing is killing the recording industry is hogwash. I've never downloaded music illegally, but my friend who has says that he usually downloads songs he wouldn't want if they weren't free, or uses music sharing to preview songs that he later buys on CD. Take THAT, music industry!
This quote is particularly priceless, from the head of a media research firm that claimed in an earlier study that music sharing was destroying record sales. (All they did was compare sales over the period when file sharing was becoming popular, which is an absurd post hoc ergo procter hoc argument and ignores the fact that the major labels have just been making poorer music over the same period. It should come as no surprise that their study was commissioned by "a music industry trade publication.") Anyway, he defends the position that the Internet has negatively affected record sales by saying, "It's had an effect on everything else in life, why wouldn't it have an effect on this?" This is the sort of rhetorical misdirection that tells you somebody's argument lacks factual support. First, the Harvard/UNC study doesn't say that the Internet has had no effect on record sales; they say that its net negative effect has been statistically negligible. Plus, to say that the Internet has had an effect on everything in life is absurd (the Internet has had no effect on toothpaste) and, even if it had, that's no reason to assume it will affect the next thing. Plus, even if you're going to follow that weak thread, you still can't assume that since the Internet has had an effect on something else, it must have had a negative effect on record sales. The lesson is: If you need something researched, don't hire Edison Media Research!
But read the article. It's good.
