Fair Dealing by Giulia Forsythe (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/dRkXwP

Copyright

NPD Group Fails Basic Math: Data Shows P2P Users Spend Nearly 50% More on Music Than Non-P2P Users

File sharing of music has been part of the Internet landscape for well over a decade, but the debate over its economic impact continues to rage. The issue has come to fore once again in recent weeks after Columbia University’s American Assembly released an excerpt of a report that found that peer-to-peer users purchase 31 percent more downloads than non-P2P users. The NPD Group, which conducts industry analysis for the Recording Industry Association of America, quickly responded with data that purports to show that among music buyers, both P2P and non-P2P users spend about the same, though P2P users spend more on merchandise and concert tickets. The NPD Group dismisses the additional spending, arguing “it would be silly” to concluded the P2P promotes merchandise or ticket sales.

While there have since been responses from the American Assembly and further promotion of the NPD Group findings from the RIAA (along with coverage from CNET and TorrentFreak), no one seems to have picked up on the basic math error from NPD Group. The NPD Group post ironically starts with:

I often think you ought to have a license to publish data, especially these days, when misinterpreted statistics easily make their way to the blogosphere, and thus become truth.

Yet take a closer look at its own data in a chart that has been replicated throughout the blogosphere.

November 15, 2012 — 29 comments — News

Fair Dealing Consensus Emerges Within Canadian Educational Community

Four months after the Supreme Court of Canada issued its landmark series of copyright decisions, a consensus on the scope of fair dealing has begun to emerge within the education community. While Access Copyright has been sending threatening letters to institutions that seek to rely on fair dealing with claims that the decisions are being misinterpreted, roughly similar policies have now been developed by K-12 school boards, community colleges, and universities that plainly reject the views of the copyright collective.

As discussed in my post on the ACCC fair dealing policy, the breadth of fair dealing raises obvious questions about the necessity of an Access Copyright licence. All educational institutions already spend millions on licensed materials. Indeed, the Access Copyright study on K-12 institutions found that 88% of copying was permitted without the need for either an Access Copyright licence or reliance on fair dealing. Given the scope of fair dealing as articulated by the Supreme Court of Canada, many are concluding that the Access Copyright licence offers little additional value to Canadian educational institutions.

November 14, 2012 — 8 comments — News

What the New Copyright Law Means For You

More than a decade of debate over Canadian copyright reform came to a conclusion last week as Bill C-11, the fourth try at reform since 2005, formally took effect. While several elements of the bill still await further regulations, the biggest overhaul of Canadian copyright law in years is now largely complete.

My weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) notes the wholesale changes have left many Canadians wondering how the law will affect them, as they seek plain language about what they can do, what they can’t, and what consequences they could face should they run afoul of the law.

November 13, 2012 — 29 comments — Columns

What the New Copyright Law Means For You

Appeared in the Toronto Star on November 11, 2012 as What the New Copyright Law Means For You More than a decade of debate over Canadian copyright reform came to a conclusion last week as Bill C-11, the fourth try at reform since 2005, formally took effect. While several elements […]

November 13, 2012 — 7 comments — Columns Archive

Interview with Kempton Lam

I spoke to Kempton Lam after meeting the Calgary Chapter of Fair Copyright for Canada. I discussed Bill C-61, Access to Information legislation and the impact of the Internet on political processes. The entire interview can be viewed on YouTube as a playlist of seven clips.

November 9, 2012 — Comments are Disabled — Video