ipwars.com

Felix Oberholzer-Gee at Harvard and Koleman Strauss at Uni. of Kansas take an empirical look at the effect of file sharing on copyright industries.

They accept that file sharing has weakened copyright protection (although they are quite sceptical about the studies trying to prove this). They argue this is only part of the question, however, for policy-makers. They contend that, if the role of copyright is to provide incentives to create new works, it is necessary to look rather more widely.

For example, they note:

• the publishing of new books increased by 66%
• the number of new albums released more than doubled;
• the number of feature films produced has increased by 30%,

in the early years of the 21st century.

They also note that revenues from concert sales and merchandising and the like has also increased.

Exploring this, their tentative conclusion for policymakers:

The role of complements makes it necessary to adopt a broad view of markets when considering the impact of file sharing on the creative industries. Unfortunately, the popular press – and a good number of policy experts – often evaluate file sharing looking at a single product market. Analyzing trends in CD sales, for example, they conclude that piracy has wrecked havoc on the music business. This view confuses value creation and value capture. Record companies may find it more difficult to profitably sell CDs, but the broader industry is in a far better position. In fact, it is easy to make an argument that the business has grown considerably.

Download the pdf here.

Lid dip Joshua Gans

Indications are that Universal Music is now making “tens of millions of dollars” from the use of its music on YouTube.

Slightly different outcome to the apparently stalled Viacom approach to social networking sites?

Concurrently, there are newspaper reports that the RIAA, famously suing grandparents and 12 years olds, may be changing its litigation strategy.

Howard Knopf worries that this might be because “sweet heart” deals are being reached with ISPs. Anyone want to sue, say, iiNet?

with apologies to Chief Vitalstatistix:

ARIA’s half year figures for 2008 show that sales of recorded music are still falling – down 4% on the corresponding period last year.

But guess what, the decline in sales of physical copies is almost all set off by the rise in digital sales: 12 million digital tracks up from 8 million for the 6 month period last year.  

According to ARIA:

“… figures which demonstrate the beginning of a remarkable transition to a whole new economy that is still only in its infancy.”

Perhaps in a sign of gloom for music industry executives, a lot of these downloads were single tracks rather than albums, but digital albums still increased by 55%.

ARIA press release here; full stats here.