I’ve never felt too sympathetic to the RIAA’s whining about lost revenue due to file sharing. It was hard to believe that a decrease in overall sales wasn’t due to more factors than just file sharing. In ‘Free Culture’, Lessig makes a point I hadn’t thought of before:
But let’s assume the RIAA is right, and all of the decline in CD sales is because of Internet sharing. Here’s the rub: In the same period that the RIAA estimates that 803 million CDs were sold, the RIAA estimates that 2.1 billion CDs were downloaded for free. Thus, although 2.6 times the total number of CDs sold were downloaded for free, sales revenue fell by just 6.7 percent.
Then a new study emerged, denying that file sharing leads to major losses in sales. I figured it would slip under the radar as one of the many writings about the file sharing phenomenon. Downhill Battle, being their usual provocative selves, said:
It’s crucial to remember that we aren’t here to convince the big 5 labels to reform their businesses; good people have tried and failed at that for decades. Instead, we’re here to finally break the major label monopoly, and filesharing is one of the most potent tools we have.
Then the The New York Times mentioned ‘A Heretical View of File Sharing‘. The banner is raised!
Kottke: “NY Times wonders if we (meaning the RIAA) have it all wrong on this whole file-sharing thing, coming to the same conclusion the rest of us arrived at 3 years ago.”
Carson McComas: “They have terrorized, threatened and intimidated their customers. They can’t go back on all that now, can they?”
Willabeast puts it best: “I want my napster back.”
I want my Napster back, you scare-mongering, technology-crippling, stupid fucks.
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