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Study: MP3 Sharing Not Serious Threat To CD Sales
pkaral writes "The two distinguished gentlemen Strumpf and Oberholzer-Gee have most likely made RIAA executives choke on their lunches. Those two economists at Harvard and UNC-Chapel Hill have done the research and the math on how much CD sales are actually hurt by P2P sharing. The answer: A whopping one CD per 5,000 files downloaded. Needless to say, RIAA are already trying to discredit the study."
I feel the best thing about P2P is that you learn about other music that you don't hear on the radio. This is what scares the RIAA the most, not a loss of sales but of a loss of control on what you listen to. If people start listening to independent artists they will no longer just listen to britney spears or limp bizkit or whatever crap the RIAA forces down peoples radio.
I was looking at my old portable stereo with two tape decks, and realized that the 2nd deck didn't even have a play button. All it had was record, to record from the first tape deck
So, let's think about this -- in the early 80's Sony was making devices whose sole purpose was to record music from other mediums. I will tell you 99% of the time I used that deck to record a tape I had borrowed
The music industry managed to survive a time when they were making devices to copy music (and I'll tell you right now, 10th generation analog copies did not bother me).
A 5th or so generation tape introduced me to what became one of my favourite bands for a long time ... The Violent Femmes. I ended up buying every one of their tapes, then their CD's hen it turned into that.
Nothing has changed in the last 25 years, other than the fact that the recording industry is trying to find excuses to generate revenue through a blanket tax.
In the case of Copyright, it grants the holder thereof a time limited (though it's an insanely long one, all the same) monopoly on the production and the initial distribution thereof for a given piece of literary or artistic work. To duplicate or distribute duplicates is to infringe upon that government granted monopoly. Hence, the term infringement. If I take, say a DVD, and sell it to you, it's not infringement, per rights of "first sale", meaning that Copyright distribution rights only extend to the first sale of the media that a work is placed upon.
You see, contrary to what all the business people have been saying about "intellectual" property, it's not property per se- it's not a tangible thing. Making copies doesn't take the original item away from the owner. It does lower the amount of money they might see, but it does not directly take money out of their hands, nor does it deprive the holder of the so-called property.
Stealing is the taking of something in a manner that directly deprives someone of the thing taken. There's legal terms for this- theft and larceny come immediately to mind.
Infringement is not stealing in any legal sense of the concept- you can apply less than common dictionary definitions for the term or moral arguments to the mix, but you'd still be wrong because there IS a distinction for the whole thing all the same.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Bullshit. TiVO has only "proven" that people will watch particularly appealing ads. once or twice.
But that misses the point--as anybody who knows anything about advertising will tell you, the "coolness" factor of an ad often is only a minor role in its effectiveness. i could probably watch that doritos commercial with that girl at the laundromat all day, but i still don't buy doritos. rather, factors such as repitition and subconscious awareness building are more important.
You make the classic slashdot mistake though: ignoring issues of scale. Beause people watch commercials without TiVo, and because some people watch some commercials without TiVo, then tivo has no effect on commercials. Bullshit. With TiVo and the 30 second skip feature, fewer commercials are seen. Right, wrong, or indifferent, that's the truth.
Seriously, thye may genuinely not believe the report, in which case, they should simply say that, but they seem to be a lot more aggressive than that with their refusals.
What if the record companies actually considered for a second, that there was a possibility that this report was actually right! Then the only possible result could be to increase their profits! By just dismissing it as rubbish, they're harming themselves more than anyone else.
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