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May 8, 2006 :: Volume 2, Issue 4
Next Issue: May 2007

A Heretical View of File Sharing

Posted by TimSlavin at April 6, 2004

"The music industry says it repeatedly, with passion and conviction: downloading hurts sales.

That statement is at the heart of the war on file sharing, both of music and movies, and underpins lawsuits against thousands of music fans, as well as legislation approved last week by a House Judiciary subcommittee that would create federal penalties for using what is known as peer-to-peer technology to download copyrighted works. It is also part of the reason that the Justice Department introduced an intellectual-property task force last week that plans to step up criminal prosecutions of copyright infringers.

But what if the industry is wrong, and file sharing is not hurting record sales?"

Good article from the NYTimes.com (free registration required). The real issue, however, is not so black and white. Copyright owners have a right to have their claims to fair compensation balanced against the claims of fair use of music buyers. The problem is that the music industry (and their lackeys in the US Congress) are hell bent on tilting the playing field in favor of copyright holders by using lawsuits to force payment from people who download music. We need a real debate and real legal decisions that weigh all sides.

Also, since the New York Times story has gone into their paid archives, you can read some of their research results from a Harvard News story that highlights one of the report authors. And the original report is worth a read, The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis (PDF, 52 pp).

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