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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." 
tags: File-Sharing | Record Industry | New Research |