Well, I'm glad we have moved to independent academic studies about whether piracy causes harm . ( File sharing is a euphemism, similar to "ehnic cleansing" as a euphemism for "genocide") . But there are a lot of academic independent studies now. Whats the consensus?
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The academic consensus is that online piracy has had a significant negative effect on music sales. I listed a number of major studies on the issue in a previous post here. Olberholzer-Gee and Strumpf provide a similar table of major academic studies on the effect of online piracy in their paper File-sharing and Copyright (Table 5). Studies since then reveal similar findings; for example, Choi and Kim found that piracy has a negative effect on online music sales in Korea in a 2010 study.3 While a handful of studies have argued that online piracy has no effect, or even a positive effect, on music sales — most notably an earlier study by Olberholzer-Gee and Strumpf — these studies are in the minority.
The effect of online piracy on music sales around the world is easy to see. Countries which have improved legal responses to online piracy in the past few years, like South Korea and Sweden, have seen music sales rise. In contrast, countries like Spain and Brazil, where copyright laws are lax or ineffective against digital infringement, have seen music sales fall at a rate above the global average
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Teleread and the MPIAA can cherry pick the studies that they like . But overall, a large majority of independent studies now conclude that onlinne piracy causes harm.
What do the courts say?
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Courts, which are in the business of judging evidentiary claims, recognize the harms of online piracy. For example, the court in A&M Records v. Napster was convinced that “Napster use is likely to reduce CD purchases by college students.” Napster’s expert did not “provide credible evidence that music file-sharing on Napster stimulates more CD sales than it displaces.” Napster also tried to argue that the “sampling” of music its service provided (try-before-you-buy) stimulates retail music sales. The court was still not persuaded, calling the evidence used to support this argument “unreliable” and accepting “that the activity defendant calls sampling actually decreases retail sales of their music.”6
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The courts since then have uniformly held that piracy causes harm and juries have returned substantial damage verdicts.
What does the US government say?;
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The broader takeaway of the GAO report reflects the consensus: piracy has significant negative effects, but it’s difficult to nail down a specific number or dollar figure on the harm caused.
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Seems that the weight of evidence shows that piracy causes harm.
Well, does piracy has possible beneficial effects?
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Is it possible that piracy has positive benefits? The GAO report considered this question, as have several other studies. Maybe network effects increase the value of copyrighted works. Maybe the “sampling” of digital files that file-sharing allows lead to more purchases.
Again, the consensus among researchers is that any possible positive benefits of piracy are far outweighed by the negative effects
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Looks like game, set and match : piracy causes substantial harm. This appears to be the consensus conclusion, although it can't be ( and can never be) proved beyond all doubt. (Neither can most things). I expect most here will resist this conclusion. But they should understand that the evidence is now strongly against the "pricay causes no harm" argument.