OECD Steps Into Online Music Sharing Debate
Earlier this week, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) released its study on the worldwide digital music industry.
The report is quite interesting in the context of litigation by the music recording industry against individuals who download and share music using P2P (peer-to-peer) network technology.
According to the OECD study, "(T)he use of P2P networks to exchange unauthorised copyright-protected content presents a significant challenge to the music industry and to the enforcement of intellectual property rights. There is currently a considerable volume of copyright infringement that is taking place among users of peer-to-peer networking software. This unfair competition puts pressure on legitimate online music and other content services and may have slowed commercial services that offer access to content online. Nevertheless, it is very difficult to establish a basis to prove a causal relationship between the size of the drop in music sales and the rise of file sharing. Sales of CDs, as well as the success of licensed on-line music services are likely to have been affected to some degree by a variety of other factors, for example physical piracy and CD burning, competition from other, newer entertainment products and faltering consumer spending in some markets."
Other studies on the issue:
The report is quite interesting in the context of litigation by the music recording industry against individuals who download and share music using P2P (peer-to-peer) network technology.
According to the OECD study, "(T)he use of P2P networks to exchange unauthorised copyright-protected content presents a significant challenge to the music industry and to the enforcement of intellectual property rights. There is currently a considerable volume of copyright infringement that is taking place among users of peer-to-peer networking software. This unfair competition puts pressure on legitimate online music and other content services and may have slowed commercial services that offer access to content online. Nevertheless, it is very difficult to establish a basis to prove a causal relationship between the size of the drop in music sales and the rise of file sharing. Sales of CDs, as well as the success of licensed on-line music services are likely to have been affected to some degree by a variety of other factors, for example physical piracy and CD burning, competition from other, newer entertainment products and faltering consumer spending in some markets."
Other studies on the issue:
- Piercing the peer-to-peer myths: An examination of the Canadian experience (Michael Geist, University of Ottawa)
- The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis (Felix Oberholzer, Harvard Business School, and Koleman Strumpf, UNC Chapel Hill)
- File-Sharing: Creative Destruction or just Plain Destruction? (Stan J. Liebowitz, University of Texas at Dallas)
- Measuring the Effect of Music Downloads on Music Purchases (Alejandro Zentner, University of Chicago)
- Does file sharing reduce music CD sales? - A case of Japan (Tatsuo Tanaka, Keio University)
- Piracy on the High C's: Music Downloading, Sales Displacement, and Social Welfare in a Sample of College Students (Rafael Rob and Joel Waldfogel, National Bureau of Economic Research NBER Working Paper No. 10874 - for purchase)
- A Grand Unified Theory of Filesharing (Ed Felten, Princeton University, blog entry comparing studies)
Labels: copyright, cultural industries
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