Digital Piracy Helps Society
By Anna Johnson on June 25th, 2009Two economists – Felix Oberholzer-Gee of Harvard University and Koleman Strumpf of the University of Kansas – contend that file sharing and weaker copyright protections generally benefit societies more than they hurt them.
Research by Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf indicates that file sharing has not deterred the production of books, music, and films, and that society benefits from weaker copyright, as long as it doesn’t “lessen the incentives of artists and entertainment companies to produce new works.”
Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf reviewed a number of studies related to file sharing and digital piracy, and uncovered some misconceptions about file sharing. For example, they argue that, contrary to the common view, people do not illegally acquire music they would otherwise buy.
In fact, people tend not to listen to all the music they acquire, which means the mere acquisition of such content doesn’t equate to lost sales. Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf point to a study of 5,600 iPod users who only listened to 64 percent of songs they downloaded.
The economists also argue that consumers tend to buy both digital music players and digital music because of the availability of freely available, pirated music.
In one study they looked at, 65 percent of consumers said they chose not to buy a CD because they had downloaded a free copy. On the other hand, 80 percent of the same group said they bought a CD because they had sampled it by way of music they had (unlawfully) acquired.
While Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Koleman Strumpf argue that the advent of digital piracy has not dissuaded creators from creating music, books, films, etc, they specifically did not focus their research on the harm piracy has caused media companies.
By all accounts the music industry is suffering, but while industry players may object to some of Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf’s conclusions, they can at least take heart that there is still plenty of content being created to publish, produce, distribute, etc!
The music industry does, however, need to adopt a different business model – one that takes into account unauthorized file sharing and content distribution.
