Re: [Sheflug] Panorama - Are the Net Police Coming for You ?

[Bob Mottram <fuzzgun@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 16 March 2010 14:08, Diana Maynard <d.maynard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Not necessarily. The fact that the illegal downloaders buy more music that
> those who don't  doesn't imply that people are spending more money on the
> music industry as a result of illegal downloading. It just implies that the
> illegal downloaders are the people who spend most on music generally, ie
> they have bigger music collections than other people. So there is a case
> that illegal downloading is harming the industry. If they weren't illegally
> downloading, they'd probably be spending even more on buying it than they do
> now. The fact that illegal downloaders buy more music than those who don't
> also doesn't imply that people (in general) are spending more money on
> music.


So this is a complicated argument that music fans who already buy more
music than average could potentially buy even more music if copyright
violation became in one way or another an infeasible option.  This
might be because the most hardcore music fans may have made a lot of
small speculative purchases in the pre-internet era, since this was
one of the principle means of discovering new music.

It might also be that there is a trend away from buying music
generally, since there are increasingly other ways in which the young
can spend their money - for example on consoles/games/phone apps.

I don't think any of the above was made clear, and a more insightful
report, maybe comparing pre-2000 music purchasing against post 2000,
would have been helpful in order to clarify exactly what's happening
to the music industry.

_______________________________________________
Sheffield Linux User's Group
http://sheflug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/sheflug_sheflug.org.uk
FAQ at: http://www.sheflug.org.uk/mailfaq.html

GNU - The Choice of a Complete Generation