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Originally Posted by Belfaborac
As far as I'm aware (which admittedly might not be that far), all independent research on music piracy carried out to date has concluded that piracy either has no discernible effect on music sales, or does in fact have a positive effect. To a lesser extent this also applies to software piracy, where such has been lumped in with music piracy in some studies.
Probably the first ever independent study was carried out by University of North Carolina, by Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf. The best known study was carried out by the University of London, Industry Canada, and Decima Research in 2006.
A 2009 study funded by Virgin Media again found that pirates buy more music than non-pirates, echoing a similar study from the same year by the BI Norwegian School of Management which found that pirates bought up to ten times the amount of music compared to people who never used file sharing, torrent services or similar.
In any case it seems to me to be a consistent trend here, in that every new piece of independent research on the subject of piracy continues to come up with data negating the message spread by the MPAA, IFPI et al. While I don't think that necessarily makes piracy A-OK or that there's nothing more to debate, I do wish that the debate was grounded in the empirical knowledge that's available, rather than gut feeling and self interest. |
I have difficulty believing all these independent studies because you are relying on the honesty of the respondents. If a downloader is questioned about his possibly unlawful behavior, human tendency is to offer an excuse to justify it. And telling the interviewer that you purchase "ten times" more content than non-downloaders is what everyone wants to believe.