New Research Disputes Record Industry's File-Sharing Claims

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on March 30, 2004 - 4:00am.

London -- Researchers from the Harvard Business School and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill published a report this week that contradicts the music industry's claim that Internet file sharing has had a major impact on global CD sales. According to Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Koleman Strumpf, file sharing has had only a limited effect of global sales. "The economic effect is also small," the report said. "Even in the most pessimistic specification, five thousand downloads are needed to displace a single album sale." Little surprise, the Recording Industry Association of America rejected the researchers' findings, saying in a statement: "Countless well-respected groups and analysts -- including Edison Research, Forrester and the University of Texas, among others -- have all determined that illegal file sharing has adversely impacted the sales of CDs."
http://makeashorterlink.com/?H2D8621E7
http://www.unc.edu/~cigar/papers/FileSharing_March2004.pdf
http://news.com.com/2100-1027-5181562.html