Dutch study says that file sharing is good for the economy - no argument here
Posted by Scout on February 6, 2009
Torrent users should find this research interesting. The Netherlands government commissioned a study of the social and economic effects of peer-to-peer downloading. The results were published in Ars Technica.
These are some of their findings:
- downloaders buy as much paid content as nondownloaders; for games, downloaders shell out even more
- for music, unpaid downloads can be thought of as “samples” - the downloaders might eventually purchase a song or album if they like what they hear
- sampling doesn’t work as well for movies, as once they have been watched, people are unlikely to want a repeat viewing
- buying rates for previously downloaded content are low for music, movies, and games; unpaid downloads do not translate into lost sales in anything close to a one-to-one ratio
- still, the study concludes that the effects are strongly positive because consumers get to enjoy desirable content and also get to keep their cash to buy other things; because the consumers save much more money than the producers lose, the net economic effects are positive
- the report makes a number of recommendations like supporting the development of new economic models for rights holders, not criminalizing file sharing for personal use, and others
Personal Thoughts
In developing countries, software piracy is probably the most beneficial to its citizens (I’m sure Microsoft and the OMDB would beg to differ). Students in particular, get the chance to use otherwise expensive programs and learn skills that would make them competitive in the job market. These kids nor their parents can’t afford a licensed Windows OS worth hundreds of dollars - they’d sooner buy rice and pay the bills. Knowing how to use Photoshop is a great thing, but the package costs thousands of dollars, enough to buy a used car.
Of course, open-source alternatives exist, and I hope they grow in popularity here in the country and around the world. Their features, stability and user-friendliness are starting to rival paid applications. Once user adoption picks up, maybe the big software companies will think twice about their hefty price tags.
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That leaves private sharing for p2p networks and services like http://www.myotherdrive.com as the only way to share files privately.
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