[LINK] $60 million music piracy operation

[Dean Povey]

On Mon, 28 Apr 2003 10:52:23 +1000, "Chirgwin, Richard" wrote: 
>James - I go with TL on this one. $60 million of "what" is the question.
>It's the old "street value" question. If they're saying "these three people
>took orders worth $60 million" then the question begged is "why give money
>to these guys but not buy the stuff legit?"

Right. This spouting of "X millions of dollars lost due to MP3 downloads"
by the recording industry does not take into account the simple economic
effect of price on supply and demand.  It assumes that the people who
downloaded hundreds of songs for free, would have forked out money for them
if they had not been able to download them.

A similar, and even more incredulous lie is told when the recording
industry tells you that "piracy adds $X to the cost of the CD".  Again, the
simple economic fact is that competition generally works to decrease costs.
In theory, piracy (and P2P/Internet downloads in particular) should work
to keep the price of a CD down, by greatly decreasing the scarcity of the
resource.

If anyone is aware of some real analysis that economists have done on the
effect of piracy/P2P on price, then I'd be delighted to know.  If I'm right
about the economic effects above, and someone has bothered to validate it,
then it might make debunking this sort of vapid claim much easier.

Cheers.
Dean.