The File Sharing Report

An anonymous reader writes "In July, Slashdot posted an article about the file sharing experiment, which was a database where users could report items they've purchased as a result of file sharing. The author has completed the experiment and written a report outlining the results. He offers the philosophy that file sharing is a result of the industry's failure to meet the business models demanded by today's consumer, and provides many suggestions to the various industries on how to take advantage of the market emerging from file sharing to generate revenue."

Comments

One more recent trend...

[datastalker]

...and the reason that I'd, uh, consider downloading a movie - ADS. I *HATE* going to the theatre, paying $10 to see a movie, and having to sit through three or four commercials before I can watch a movie. I just paid $10 to see the movie (which will be full of enough "product placement" as it is) - I don't want to see ADS too! It becomes so much more tempting to download since the movie industry is making it obvious that they're trying to squeeze out every last dime.

Re:One more recent trend...

[jakek101]

Actually, the first ads (besides trailers) were from the L.A. Times. What happened is that the L.A. Times said that the theaters either run ads or they'd stop listing them. This opened the flood gate.

The other side

[tverbeek]

Where is the database for us to report the stuff we probably would have bought, but didn't because we could get it online?

Without that side of the situation also investigated, this "research" is pretty much a bunch of useless self-selected self-reported anecdotes from people who - let's face it - have plenty of motivation to exaggerate how commerce-friendly their activities are.

Re:Files they've just taken and not bought or dele

[poptones]

What about all of the files that these people continue to listen to, but don't delete or buy legit copies of?

What about it? Unless they stole the CDs to get those rips, it costs no one a penny except the guy who bought the hard drive and the bandwidth.

How much of their music do they actually own?

Unless they are a music publisher, none of it. You think those CDs you bought means you "own" that music?

You bought a CD. You can sell the CD. The CD only happens to contain the music - scratch it so it doesn't play, then see how much you can get for it.

Now, where there is no tangible good, there is no "loss" and no ability to deprive others - and, therefore, no ownership. As someone who just lost about 40GB of music to the brain-dead mandrake partition manager, I can personally attest to this - the "loss" was entirely my own.

My friends like to tell me that they wouldn't have bought the CD anyway, so downloading it doesn't hurt anybody. This may be true in some cases, but I think most of the time people just decide that they wouldn't have bought it post download.

I'm sorry you missed this, because that's the whole freaking point!.

Think about that part again...

About purchases...

[poptones]

You know, since the ho-town crackdown on "internet reedom" I have resolved not to buy anything from them. This is in spite of the fact I left virtually all my music cds behind but I still have the sleeves and CD jackets - hey I wonder if they would just GIVE me the CDs since I already bought them?

I have avoided making purchases in spite of the fact I used to spend - literally - thousands of dollars a year on records, tapes, CDs and DVDs. Through most of my life, in fact, because I'm one of those "artsy" types who likes to have lots of the good stuff around. You think I don't miss my Smashing Pumpkins collection? My Alice Cooper discography? Sgt. Peppers?

You think it doesn't suck boycotting these motherfuckers? You really think none of us are making sacrifices? You think I can't tell the difference in sound between the MP3 rips available most places and the CD? I wish these motherfuckers would pull their heads out of their asses and get it together to the point I didn't feel like a traitor to my ethics (not to mention my Constitution) when I entertain the notion of giving them my money to replace the tangible items I have lost.

There are very few cases where it is sampling

[ShatteredDream]

Most of the time you can find 30 second clips on Amazon or CDUniverse, even for small bands. I can see downloading copies of songs from bands that you cannot find any legit means to sample, but stop using this bullshit excuse of "oh they're just sampling" to justify most peoples' use. They don't delete the music and they keep listening to it in most cases. One of those little inconvenient logical twists is that you can also argue that many people wouldn't have bought the album anyway, because with Kazaa, et al. they don't have to.

The reaction of the people I lived with at my dorm when they saw that my music collection was not only legit, but that I had almost as many MP3s from my used CDs as they had taken off of AudioGalaxy was just... shock. I'm not rich, by any stretch of the imagination.

And you know what the irony of it is? Many of these "kids who couldn't buy them anyway" were driving much nicer cars than my 11 year old Honda Accord. It's nothing more than a bunch of rich brats who don't want to spend $10-$15 on a CD so that they can upgrade their beamer, at least around here. I just got Draconian Times by Paradise Lost in the mail today from Amazon's used products market. It cost me $5 before shipping and handling for a total of ~$7.50.

I have even more contempt for the RIAA than most of my geek peers because unlike them, I actually own all of my music that the RIAA wants to control. I didn't get it off of a file sharing network, I bought it either from a store or from the iTMS. That is also why when I bitch about those bastards that older people will actually listen to me. File sharers are free loaders, people like me have paid our dues to the RIAA and are getting shafted anyway.