The Register

A new report suggests that Apple and Tesco, not P2P file sharers, should take the most blame for the woes of the British music industry.

The report, prepared privately by consultants Capgemini for the Value Recognition Strategy working group, set out to examine the “value gap”, the amount sound recordings revenue has fallen in the UK since 2004. The report remains confidential, but details are starting to emerge.

The consultants suggest that “format changes” and price pressure from discounted CDs on sale in supermarkets, are most to blame for this “value gap”.

However, the report gives lie [not “life”, as a typo suggested – ed.] to the idea that P2P file sharing stimulates demand for sales, or is even a neutral factor. This idea has given comfort to the powerful anti-copyright lobby, backed by internet users who want digital music for free – and find endless justifications to avoid paying for it.

Capgemini calculates that of £480m lost to the industry since 2004, £368m was the result of format changes: principally the unbundling of the CD into an “a la carte” selection of digital songs. Of the remainder, 18 per cent was lost to piracy.

Add this to the more recent news from p2pnet.net:

“It is a basic principle of economics that as price increases,
demand decreases. Customers who download music and movies for free
would not necessarily spend money to acquire the same product.”

p2pnet has been saying that for years,
pointing out RIAA and MPAA claims that files shared equal sales lost
are pure fiction dreamed up to enable corporate entertainment cartels
to attack their own customers in a bid to gain control of how, and by
whom, product is managed and distributed online.

Now, in a 16-page opinion, “District Judge James P. Jones, sitting
in the Western Disrict of Virginia, denied the RIAA’s request for
restitution, holding the RIAA’s reasoning to be unsound,” says Recording Industry vs The People.