Dutch Study Says Filesharing Has Positive Economic Effects

An anonymous reader writes "In a study conducted by TNO for the Dutch government the economic effects of filesharing are found to be positive. According to the 146 page report (available for download, but in Dutch) filesharing is good for the prosperity of the Dutch: with filesharing more media are available, even though this costs the media industry some profit. One of the most noticeable conclusions is that downloading and buying are not mutually exclusive: downloaders on average buy just as much music as non-downloaders, but they buy more DVDs and games then people who don't download. They also tend to visit more concerts and buy more merchandise."

Comments

Re: report available for download

[gravos]

We should also point out the frequently cited possibility that downloaders' propensity to purchase is positively correlated with downloading (the so-called sampling effect). Google around for this and you will find at least 10 papers that discuss it.

Example: http://www.rufuspollock.org/economics/p2p_summary.html

Re:Filesharing

[tverbeek]

So what they've discovered here is that people who are really interested in music (i.e. they download a lot of it) tend to buy more music than people who are not that into it (i.e. they download very little). This is not surprising ("obvious" would be a better word), nor does it say anything definitive about the effect of downloading on sales, because (all together now) correlation does not equal causation.

Re: report available for download

[dryeo]

What worries the various *AA's is the opposite effect. When someone downloads the next big thing and discovers it's crap so they don't but it.
They would rather just have you buy everything sight unseen. It's not like you can take it back.