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:
