Post Tagged with: "P2P"

CRIA Continues Fight Against Industry Canada Sponsored P2P Study

Ever since Industry Canada released an independent study it sponsored on the impact of peer-to-peer file sharing in late 2007, the Canadian Recording Industry Association has worked overtime to try to discredit it. The independent study, completed by two European economists, reached the following two key conclusions:

  • When assessing the P2P downloading population, there was “a strong positive relationship between P2P file sharing and CD purchasing.  That is, among Canadians actually engaged in it, P2P file sharing increases CD purchases.” The study estimated that 12 additional P2P downloads per month increases music purchasing by 0.44 CDs per year.
  • When viewed in the aggregate (ie. the entire Canadian population), there is no direct relationship between P2P file sharing and CD purchases in Canada.  According to the study authors, “the analysis of the entire Canadian population does not uncover either a positive or negative relationship between the number of files downloaded from P2P networks and CDs purchased. That is, we find no direct evidence to suggest that the net effect of P2P file sharing on CD purchasing is either positive or negative for Canada as a whole.”

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February 28, 2011 22 comments News

Dutch Artists Groups Propose Full Legalization of P2P

Two Dutch artists groups have proposed full legalization of peer-to-peer activity in return for an expansion of their private copying levy from CDs and DVDs to devices that can play and record movies and music.

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November 25, 2010 6 comments News

Swiss Supreme Court Orders Company To Stop Snooping on File Sharers

The Swiss Supreme Court has ordered Logistep AG to stop collecting personal information on users of file-sharing networks and selling it to film and music companies.  The court says the information is covered by data protection laws.

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September 14, 2010 Comments are Disabled News

U.S. Judge Drops “Shocking” File Sharing Damage Award By 97%

A U.S. judge has reduced the damage award in a Minnesota file sharing case from $80,000 per song to $2,250.  The 97% reduction comes as the judge found the original jury award shocking and concluded that statutory damages must bear some relationship to actual damages.

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January 25, 2010 2 comments News

Pollara Changes Its Tune On Music Downloading

Several years ago, Pollara was the lead polling company for CRIA and it regularly produced reports consistent with its client's view of the world.  In fact, longtime readers may recall that it in March 2006, I posted on a Pollara study that contradicted CRIA's claims.  Then Pollara President Duncan McKie (now President of the Canadian Independent Record Production Association) posted a response calling me impertinent and presumptuous, concluding "all the data that we have collected on this topic over the past 3 years point to a strong negative relationship between downloading and music purchases."

What a difference a few years (and a change in client) makes.  CRIA and Pollara parted ways soon afterward and current Pollara Executive Vice-President Robert Hutton offers a decidedly different take on the issue.  In this comment on Zeropaid, Hutton notes that relying on 2006 research is "dubious at best."  Of course, it is 2006 Pollara data that served as the basis for the Conference Board of Canada's press release on file sharing last year.  He then continues:

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January 6, 2010 85 comments News