Science And Canada Call Downloaders Justifications/Industry Complaints Into Question

In the wake of the OiNK bust and the meta-commentary that followed, the defense sounded again and again by P2P and BitTorrent users was an echo of what people have been claiming since Napster: “File sharing actually helps the record industry by allowing users to preview records before buying.” Two professors at University of London, working at the behest of the Canadian government, think that assertion is, if not total bunk, a little overstated. On the other hand, they also think the industry’s howling over illegal downloading is pretty much bunk, too.

“We are unable to find direct evidence that P2P file-sharing either increases or decreases CD purchases in Canada,” the report stated. “That is, in our analysis of the whole Canadian population we are unable to find any relationship between the number of P2P music tracks that were downloaded and the number CD purchases.”

However, the report also dismissed some long held connections between P2P sharing and purchasing of music. For example, the report said it could not find a link between people who contended they were only using P2P to preview music and actual CD purchases

The two professors “queried 2,100 Canadians 15 years and older, of which 1,005 respondents who declared that they were peer to-peer downloaders and 1,095 that declared not to have engaged in the activity.” And even though some of those 1,095 were obviously lying, we finally some serious scientifical evidence that people can point to when they need to note that everyone involved in this debate is full of shit to one degree or another. It was in an official study, after all.

Report: No Connection Between File-Sharing, CD Sales [Billboard]