May 5, 2004
Liebowitz Critiques Strumpf and Olberhozer
Everyone’s been talking about the Strumpf and Olberhozer study that says file-sharing does not impact CD sales. Prof Felten summarizes and analyzes it and many other studies nicely. Don’t have much to add, but here’re a couple things missing from the various posts:
First, Prof Liebowitz, who has a contradictory economic analysis, already has posted a lengthy critique. Apparently, Strumpf and Olberhozer won’t be providing their data to the public in the near term. They had some back-and-forth at the Future of Music Summit (see Sivers’ notes), where Strumpf explains why they won’t provide data – somewhat unclear to me. Liebowitz also mentions the Boorstein study and offers a brief criticism; he will be reviewing Boorstein’s data, apparently. On all counts, I have no idea, certainly not enough economic expertise, to say who’s right. All it does is confirm that nobody really knows what’s happening.
What I’m left with is my intuition that, in the long run, it’s reasonable to believe that easy access to free, fairly high quality music files will do more severe harm to the industry. It’s also reasonable to think that, all other things being equal, the long run will bring easier access, as more people have broadband, P2P evolves, etc. Does that justify the RIAA’s panic? I don’t think so, and I obviously disagree as to what should be done about the potential harm of P2P. But I also cannot dismiss their overall reasoning easily.
Second, some people tend to think of the surveys on file-sharing as all opposed to Strumpf and Olberhozer. But see slide 7 in this InsideDigitalMedia interview as well as this article on a Jupiter study. That data is contradictory too – just as confusing.
Filed by Derek Slater at 2:39 pm under General news
Comments Off on Liebowitz Critiques Strumpf and Olberhozer
