File Sharing: Creative Destruction or Just Plain Destruction?*

@article{Liebowitz2006FileSC,
  title={File Sharing: Creative Destruction or Just Plain Destruction?*},
  author={Stan J. Liebowitz},
  journal={The Journal of Law and Economics},
  year={2006},
  volume={49},
  pages={1 - 28}
}
  • S. Liebowitz
  • Published 1 April 2006
  • Economics
  • The Journal of Law and Economics
The sharing of sound recordings over the Internet is the newest controversy in a long-running battle between copyright owners and copying technologies. In order to provide some context, perspective, and background, this paper examines the short history of file sharing, the longer history of record sales, various explanations for the change in record sales, and some analysis of the economics of copying. Although file sharing has been imperfectly and inconsistently measured, it nevertheless… 
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345 Citations
Highly Influential Citations
27
Background Citations
141
Methods Citations
10
Results Citations
13

345 Citations

The effect of file sharing on record sales, revisited
Economists Examine File-Sharing and Music Sales
The decline in sales of music CDs and the recording industry’s attempts to reverse the decline have been much in the news over the last few years. Since this decline began at the same time that…
Plain Destruction or Creative Destruction? Copyright Erosion and the Evolution of the Record Industry
The record industry has become emblematic in debates on reforming copyright law. Economists have mainly studied the extent to which a surge in unauthorised copying is destroying the industry by…
When Your Recording Agency Turns into an Agency Problem: The True Nature of the Peer-to-Peer Debate
This article examines the music industry, and particularly its reaction to the file-sharing phenomenon, through the prism of the agent-principal problem. The file-sharing phenomenon shined a…
Legal, Economic and Cultural Aspects of File Sharing
TLDR
The proliferation of digital distribution networks combined with the availability of digital technology among consumers has broken the entertainment industries' control over the access to their products, and only part of the decline in music sales can be attributed to file sharing.
File sharing and its impact on business models in music
Industries involved in creating, producing, commercializing and distributing content find themselves facing major change because of digitization. These include the music and film sectors, and for…
Exploring the extent of private digital copying exception as a " friendlier " deterrent to illegal downloading : Evidence from four industries
Technological advances such as digitalisation, file sharing technologies and Internet broadband have increased the possibilities to copy and distribute copyrighted products. Substantial research has…
Profit Leak? Pre-Release File Sharing and the Music Industry
TLDR
The finding that file sharing is not harmful to individual artists is not inconsistent with the well-documented fact thatfile sharing is harmful to the music industry (the fallacy of composition).
Academic Studies on the Effect of File-Sharing on the Recorded Music Industry: A Literature Review
Is file-sharing responsible for the slump in recorded music sales or does it create demand? The empirical research literature is inconclusive. What has clearly emerged is that there are a number of…
File-Sharing and Film Revenues: An Empirical Analysis
This study examines the impact of peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing on the Australian theatrical film industry. Using a large data set of torrent downloads observed on three popular P2P networks, we…
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References

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Testing File-Sharing's Impact by Examining Record Sales in Cities
Although previous forms of copying have been found to often have benign effects on copyright owners the rise in file-sharing has coincided with a steep decline in the sale of sound recordings. This…
The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis
For industries ranging from software to pharmaceuticals and entertainment, there is an intense debate about the appropriate level of protection for intellectual property. The Internet provides a…
Pitfalls in Measuring the Impact of File -sharing on the Sound Recording Market
TLDR
The evidence strongly suggests that file-sharing harms the sound recording industry, with the finding that the effect of ‘sampling’ of copyrighted materials can be expected to have a negative impact on copyright owners.
Pitfalls in Measuring the Impact of File-Sharing
This paper surveys the extant literature on the impact of file-sharing. It begins by examining the theory behind the impact of file-sharing. One novelty from this analysis is the finding that the…
Measuring the Effect of File Sharing on Music Purchases*
File sharing may substantially undermine the intellectual property rights of digital goods. This paper concentrates on the music industry. I estimate the effect of music downloads on the probability…
The Impact of Reprography on the Copyright System
This is a report performed for the Canadian government in 1981 on the impact of copying (photocopying) on copyright holders. As far as I know, it was the first theoretical claim that copying might…
File Sharing and International Sales of Copyrighted Music: An Empirical Analysis with a Panel of Countries
Global music sales have substantially fallen in the last four years. This paper uses a panel of country-level data to investigate the extent to which this is a consequence of file sharing. I find…
Measuring the Effect of Music Downloads on Music Purchases
File sharing may substantially undermine intellectual property rights of digital goods. This paper concentrates on the music industry. I estimate the effect of music downloads on music sales using…
Copying and Indirect Appropriability: Photocopying of Journals
  • S. Liebowitz
  • Computer Science
    Journal of Political Economy
  • 1985
TLDR
It is shown that the unauthorized copying of intellectual properties need not be harmful and actually may be beneficial and that photocopying has not harmed journal publishers.
Do Artists Benefit from Online Music Sharing?
Music is an information good, and more specifically, an experience good, whose true value is realized only after its consumption. At its fundamental form, artists create (or produce) the music that…
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