File Sharing und die Musikindustrie

A longstanding economic question is the appropriate level of protection for intellectual property. The Internet has drastically lowered the cost of copying information goods and provides a natural crucible to assess the implications of reduced protection. We consider the specific case of file sharing and its effect on the legal sales of music.
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Downloads have an effect on sales which is statistically indistinguishable from zero, despite rather precise estimates. Moreover, these estimates are of moderate economic significance and are inconsistent with claims that file sharing is the primary reason for the recent decline in music sales.

Das ist das Abstract der Studie The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales – An Empirical Analysis (PDF, 51 Seiten, 364 KB) von Felix Oberholzer (Harvard Business School) und Koleman Strumpf (UNC Chapel Hill) über den Einfluss von File Sharing auf die CD-Verkäufe der Musikindustrie.

Eines der Ergebnisse: File Sharing erhöht die Anzahl der verkauften CDs:

For the top quartile, downloads have a relatively large positive effect (150 downloads increase sales by one copy) though this is estimated rather imprecisely. These results are also inconsistent with the argument that file sharing is reducing sales of commercially important albums.