Ed Felten proposes a grand unified theory of file sharing
The Grand Unified Theory explains the study results by breaking down the users of filesharing into two subpopulations, which I will call Free-riders and Samplers.
Free-riders are generally young. They have few if any moral qualms about filesharing, and they tend to assume that others feel the same way. They use filesharing to accumulate libraries of music, as an alternative to buying CDs.
Samplers are generally older and more risk-averse. They are highly engaged with cultural products of all sorts. They are morally conflicted about filesharing, and use it mostly to download songs that either aren’t for sale, or that they don’t value enough to pay for. They buy music that they really like, and filesharing causes them to find more music they like, so it tends to increase their CD purchases.
Samplers only use the P2P file sharing networks for sampling, because they do not have the time to spend searching determinedly for what they want. Because they have sufficient money to buy the albums they want, the samplers use the most time-efficient method of acquiring music.
Free-riders use the file sharing as a substitute for purchasing albums because they have more time than money. While they can not afford to purchase vast libraries of albums, they do have the time and persistence to find what they want by file sharing.
What happens when the file sharing networks get significantly quicker and easier to use? As the time investment required to use P2P goes down, a number of samplers will become free riders. The less the time investment and the greater selection that is available on P2P, won’t more samplers become free riders?
When the number of free riders becomes larger than the number of samplers, then the music industry will feel negative effects. To stop this, the major labels need to both offer a nearly frictionless alternative to p2p. Except for the limited catalog and DRM restrictions, iTunes is close. Through lawsuits, the RIAA is trying to create more transaction friction in P2P. By making file sharing more difficult, whether eliminating centralized systems like Napster or making file sharers face the threat of lawsuit, the major labels are attempting to maintain the status quo by cutting down the number of freeloaders.
Ernest Miller: Felten, Boorstin and Filesharing
while Felten’s generational distinction is an important one, I’m not sure his theory fully explains what is going on. The main problem I see is that Eric Boorstin’s thesis (Music Sales in the Age of File Sharing), which found that internet access correlates with increased music purchases for older people but decreased music purchases by younger people, isn’t really about file sharing per se. The disconnect here is that there is no data for the correlation between filesharing and internet access.
AP: RIAA Singing the Same Old Song
Overall U.S. music sales — CDs, legal downloads, DVDs, etc. — rose 9.1 percent in the first three months of the year over the same period in 2003, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
