File sharing: zero effect on downloads
p2pnet.net news:- Almost exactly two years ago, Felix Oberholzer and Koleman Strumpf seriously upset the the Big 4 Organized Music cartel anti-p2p propaganda applecart when they released The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis.
In it, they concluded, “Downloads have an effect on sales which is statistically indistinguishable from zero, despite rather precise estimates,” and their research has been echoing loudly ever since.
Now, in a paper just published in the Journal of Political Economy, 2007, they’ve done it once more.
Oberholzer, from Harvard University Business School, and Strumpf, from University of Kansas, School of Business, have just released the 2007 follow-up, also called The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis, and it it, they again state unequivocally:
“Downloads have an effect on sales that is statistically indistinguishable from zero.”
This time around, they also say, “Our estimates are inconsistent with claims that file sharing is the primary reason for the decline in music sales during our study period.”
Go here for a .pdf download of the first paper.
For the moment, “this is a modified version of the paper which you’d written about earlier,” Strumpf told p2pnet.
“The key difference is not so much in the analysis and conclusion (which is similar to the earlier draft), but rather that it’s now gone through the peer-review process and is being published in what is arguably one of the three top journals in academic economics (and a journal which is closely associated with the University of Chicago economics department).
“No other paper on the topic of file sharing has appeared in a top-ranked journal before.”
He and Oberholzer are also working on an analysis which takes in file sharing and the movies.
Says the Journal of Political Economy abstract for the new paper:
For industries ranging from software to pharmaceuticals and entertainment, there is an intense debate about the appropriate level of protection for intellectual property. The Internet provides a natural crucible to assess the implications of reduced protection because it drastically lowers the cost of copying information. In this paper, we analyze whether file sharing has reduced the legal sales of music.
While this question is receiving considerable attention in academia, industry, and Congress, we are the first to study the phenomenon employing data on actual downloads of music files.
We match an extensive sample of downloads to U.S. sales data for a large number of albums. To establish causality, we instrument for downloads using data on international school holidays.
Downloads have an effect on sales that is statistically indistinguishable from zero. Our estimates are inconsistent with claims that file sharing is the primary reason for the decline in music sales during our study period.
When we ran our first post on the original paper, we kicked it off with:
Oh what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive!
- Sir Walter Scott (1771? – 1832)
Stay tuned.
Also See:
first post – File swapping has ‘zero effect’, March 30, 2004
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February 12th, 2007 at 9:23 pm
This will not change anything. The cartels will still believe file sharing hurts sales and the people will still share fiules beliving the truth.. that it does not. Nothing changes.
February 12th, 2007 at 9:23 pm
Jon…PLEASE DO SOMETHING ABOUT THAT STUPID VALIDATION BOX! Get rid of it! kr5Xp
February 13th, 2007 at 2:28 pm
Not surprised here with the results of the study.
We knew all along that sales of recorded music rose when massive sharing started, fiert though blank cassettes and then blank cds
What I would really like to see is a scientific study (to my knowledges and incredibly, never done) to prove or disprove that music copyrights actually benefit the people (fisrt) and then the creators, or is it only for the benefit of copyright holders, such a publishers and record companies) who scam the creators.
The bet is on tha copyrights only hurt the people and the creators, who mostly toll in slaverey like condition for the sake of the scammers.
February 13th, 2007 at 2:57 pm
That validation box is needed. If he does away with it all of his time and some of ours will be spent reading SPAM!!!! If more people used SpammerSkewer,
http://spammerskewer.sourceforge.net , spam necessitating this validation box may become a thing of the past.
February 13th, 2007 at 3:23 pm
Sorry, but I think that is BULLSHIT! The validation box is NOT NEEDED and only makes posting a pain, period!
February 13th, 2007 at 10:27 pm
Someone who wants the validation box to go away so badly just may have some OTHER reason to make it go away , methinks.
June 5th, 2007 at 3:44 pm
“Some OTHER reasons to make it go away, methinks”
No, douchebag, you DON’T “thinks”, or you wouldn’t automatically leap to that conclusion. Validation boxes are fucking worthless by definition, primarily because they damage the ability for those who can’t SEE the fuckin’ things, to post on forums and blogs. Visually-impaired persons (and the blind), have been saying that for years.
IF you’re going to include a “validation box”, you need to also put in some sort of audio version, so that those who can’t see the fuckin’ thing can still post here.
Somebody oughta kick you in the face twenty or thirty times, you fuckin’ douchebag.
September 7th, 2007 at 7:29 am
[...] Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG say files shared equal sales lost, but this claim has again been proven to be disingenuous in an authoritative paper from two American researchers in The Effect of File Sharing on Record [...]
October 8th, 2007 at 2:29 pm
Hi guys, I tried to download the .pdf of the 2007 work but it was not there, so I find the autors website, you can download it from there, here is the link:
http://www.unc.edu/~cigar/
and the .pdf you referred as (2007) is from 12-12-2006
here is that link, too:
http://www.unc.edu/~cigar/papers/JPE%2031618%20FileSharing%202006-12-12.pdf
I hope everybody can read it, regards.