File Sharing and Sales
Letters/Op-Ed
NYTimes, Published: April 12, 2004
To the Editor:
While the Recording Industry Association of America pursues its
heavy-handed offensive against music downloading and file sharing
(Business Day, April 5), other owners of cultural content have found ways
to live (and flourish) with emerging technologies.
I have operated a small family-owned historical film archives for 20
years. Several years ago, we digitized the most sought-after images in our
collection and placed them online for free downloading and nearly
unrestricted reuse.
Our experience may seem counterintuitive, but it has been overwhelmingly
positive: the more we give away, the more we actually sell.
File sharing and free downloading have increased the ubiquity and
prominence of our collection and have given it ample publicity at very
little cost, resulting in increased income.
Might there be a lesson here for the music industry?
RICK PRELINGER
San Francisco, April 5, 2004
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more:
Rebel Archivist
Stay Free! talks to film historian Rick Prelinger
http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/archives/20/prelinger.html
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Summing up:
File Sharing and Sales
Published: April 12, 2004
NYTimes/Op-Ed [Letters]
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/12/opinion/L12FILE.html
Music Sales Strong Despite Digital Piracy
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: April 12, 2004; Filed at 9:54 a.m. ET
NYTimes/AP
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-Music-Industry.html
LOS ANGELES (AP) – Online file-sharing and other digital piracy persist,
but a gradual turnaround in U.S. music sales that began last fall picked
up in the first quarter of this year, resulting in the industry's best
domestic sales in years.
Valenti Fades to Black as Movie Booster
By TODD S. PURDUM
Published: April 11, 2004
NYTimes/Movies
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/11/movies/11VALE.html
It's My Music and I'll Buy if I Want to . . .(2 Letters)
Published: April 8, 2004
NYTimes/Op-Ed [Letters]
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/08/opinion/L08FILE.html
BUSINESS/FINANCIAL DESK | April 5, 2004, Monday
A Heretical View of File Sharing
By JOHN SCHWARTZ (NYT) 1399 words
Late Edition - Final , Section C , Page 1 , Column 2
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?reso0813F83A5D0C768CDDAD0894DC404482
ABSTRACT - Music industry, which leads drive against Internet file sharing
of copyrighted work on premise that downloading hurts sales, reacts with
flustered consternation to study by economists Felix Oberholzer-Gee and
Koleman S Strumpf that found downloading has no impact on CD sales; study
compared direct data of music downloaders with music purchases during same
period; found spikes in downloading had almost no discernible effect on
sales; Oberholzer-Gee says previous research wrongly assumed that every
download could be thought of as lost sale, while most downloaders would
not have paid for music, interview; graphs of recording releases, sales
and downloading (M)