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One of the things that make blogs particularly interesting are series. In this blog, for example, Phil features a series on “microcredit myths“. The “series” series recommends series at related blogs. This time I introduce the series “How Evil is File-sharing?” at the German research blog “musikwirtschaftsforschung“.
Peter Tschmuck, founder of “musikwirtschaftsforschung” (“music industry research”), is an economist by training, who is situated at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. In his works he pursues a holistic approach in researching how technological and regulatory changes affect the music industry. Unsurprisingly, new practices such as online file-sharing (see also: “Internet Piracy: A Perfect Excuse?“) play an important role in his research as well as on his blog, where he started a series titled “How Evil is File-sharing?”. We feature this series not only because it gives a great overview – regrettably only available in German -, but also because it is the main topic of the upcoming “Vienna Music Business Research Days” (English PDF), June 9-10, 2010.
After having reviewed 17 studies on file-sharing in the course of the series (see list of studies below), in post #18 Peter Tschmuck groups the extant literature into three categories (number of studies in brackets):
- Formal approaches (4): Due to the very unrealistic assumptions of these either microeconomic (e.g. Liebowitz 2006) or game theoretical (e.g. Curien & Moreau 2005) models, Tschmuck summarizes their implications as ranging from “no usable information” to “interesting but still empirically unfeasible insights”.
- Survey-based approaches (7): With one exception (Huygen et al. 2009), all available surveys lack representative samples, thus making generalizations difficult. Interestingly, Huygen et al.’s study, which is representative at least for the Netherlands, finds no connection between the decline in CD sales and file-sharing activities.
- Econometric approaches (6): Among the econometric approaches, Tschmuck highlights the two Harvard-studies of Oberholzer-Gee & Strumpf (2007) and Blackburn (2004) as being particularly reliable.
In what follows, Tschmuck delineates propositions for further research on the issue. For the supply side he mentions the following three characteristics: The music industry resembles (1) oligopolistic market structures, labels in general and major labels in particular (2) seek to maximize market share and due to copyright regulation we find (3) monopolistic competition.
On the demand side, in turn, he acknowledges the existence of (1) a substitution effect of file-sharing and record sales, which is however balanced by something Tschmuck calls (2) “network effect” in form of new music discovered via file-sharing. The latter lies at the heart of market development and market segmentation.
As a conclusion, Tschmuck offers the following (translation L.D.):
Anyone who wants to belong to future winners has to abandon traditional business models and harvest new opportunities for making profit. The battle against music file-sharing networks is thereby definitly not a sensible way to pursue. One should rather consider how these new forms of using music can be economically capitalized, which brings us to the discussions on music flat-rates and new types of copyright.
Which, in turn, brings us back to posts on this blog such as, for example, “Extending Private Copying Levies: Approaching a Culture Flat-rate?” regarding the former and “Competition for Copyright Collectives: New Market Logics” regarding the latter.
(leonhard)
Appendix: Studies reviewed in the series “How Evil is File-sharing?”: Read the rest of this entry »
While conventional discourse on global governance in general and copyright regulation in particular mainly discusses complementary or conflicting ways of regulation, abolitionist positions are only rarely mentioned. This blog is no exception to this rule, at least it was not until now.
The following reflection on the role – the potential virtues and deficiencies – of abolitionist reasoning is inspired by a recent blog post by Stephan Kinsella. In his article the self-described “Austro-Anarchist Libertarian” and author of the book “Against Intellectual Property” (2008, Mises Institute, PDF) features works by the cartoonist Nina Paley (see her video “All Creative Work Is Derivative” below). In an email to Kinsella, Paley describes herself as follows:
“I’m now artist-in-residence at QuestionCopyright.org, and do what I can to promote alternatives to copyright. (Actually I’m a copyright abolitionist, but many find that identification unpalatable.)”
Why is being a copyright abolitionist so “unpalatable” that even outspokenly critical individuals such as Paley feel the need to hide it? Is it the threat they embody by proposing such a seemingly radical position? Or is it rather the lacking connectivity for further debate, which leads to awkward moments and the self-perception of being unpalatable in the eyes of others? Read the rest of this entry »
On January 23rd 2010 US China labor exchange met for the 6th time. The China Labor Exchange group has been meeting for 2 ½ years now. It is a meeting between some US labor union members and individuals with close ties to the Chinese labor movement. But despite the absence of official Chinese union representatives, these meetings present an important opportunity for exchange and mutual learning about the labor movement in the US and China, as well as for discussing potentials for future collaboration. This is of particular importance in a context, where high level union talks between the AFL-CIO (American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations) and the ACFTU (All-China Federation of Trade Unions) are not yet taking place.
What do Chinese and American workers have in common? Where are potentials for cooperation? Before summarizing the meeting, I first give some background information about the US labor movement and China to make clear why such a meeting is rather unusual for the US context.
governancexborders.com 