Slashdot Mirror
Domain: ipi.org
Stories and comments across the archive that link to ipi.org.
Stories · 1
-
Latest Music Piracy Study Overstates Effect of P2P
Blackbeard writes "A new study from pro-business think tank Institute for Policy Innovation claims that music piracy accounts for $12.5 billion in lost output to the US economy. That includes 71,060 lost jobs and $422 million in lost tax revenues... if the figures are accurate. Ars Technica's write-up points out a number of flaws in the IPI's reasoning. 'The study makes for some alarming reading, but it suffers from a few significant flaws. First and foremost, it appears to fall into the "illicit downloads = lost sales" fallacy, the view that each song obtained over a P2P network is a lost purchase.' There's more: 'The IPI study also assesses the increased demand for music if piracy didn't exist and assumes the market would remain as "intensely competitive" as it is today. The problem is that music fans are largely disenchanted with the market. By and large, music fans think that music is too expensive, and that much of what is available isn't very good.'"