The Economics of P2P File-Sharing
brajesh writes "Does P2P file-sharing really affect music sales and in what ways? According to a blog entry at "The Long Tail", a paper from David Blackburn[.pdf], a Harvard PhD student, on the economics of P2P file-sharing concludes that it does indeed depress music sales overall. But the effect is not felt evenly. The hits at the top of the charts lose sales, but the niche artists further down the popularity curve actually benefit from file-trading. Form the paper - "Artists who are unknown, and thus most helped by file sharing, are those artists who sell relatively few albums, whereas artists who are harmed by file sharing and thus gain from its removal, the popular ones, are the artists whose sales are relatively high." But then "File sharing is reducing the probability that any act is able to sell millions of records, and if the success of the mega-star artists is what drives the investment in new acts, it might reduce the incentive to invest in new talent. This is, at its heart, an empirical question which is left to future work." There is also another compilation of studies on economics of P2P."
The hits at the top of the charts lose sales, but the niche artists further down the popularity curve actually benefit from file-trading.
From each according to his abilities; to each according to his need. Lighten up--it's a joke!
P2P file sharing is the right thing to do...it's socialist.
Yeah, but he had formulas, data, charts and stuff. Even used those funny greek symbols and had partial differential equations. It must be right. :)
Hm. I always thought using Britney Spears to sell CD's was kind of like putting porn pictures in a crappy poetry book to make it a best seller.
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
It is pure, unadulterated greed. So much greed that it completely clouds any sensibility they might have.
Welcome to the USA. And it's only getting better.
It's been a few years since I read Les Miserables (a translation - my French isn't good enough for the original), but I seem to remember that the line you quoted was said by the leader of the revolution a couple of days before he and all of his friends were killed...
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Now the funniest part of "Hell, why don't you answer your own question instead of simply leaving it as an assumed suggestion that your second option is the only possible answer?" is probably that you make the same thing. That's what we call rhetorical questioning... want a drawing or you're bright enough to understand?
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