Professors Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf now appear to offer a nuanced view of the impact of illegal downloading on sales. Six years ago, with great fanfare but since discredited (see here), the academics concluded that the illegal downloading of music had no impact on the sales of music. The professors now apparently allow for the fact that, yes, illegal downloading may undercut sales. From their most recent paper (page 16), “The majority of studies find that file sharing reduces sales, with estimated displacement rates ranging 3.5% for movies (Rob and Waldfogel, 2007) to rates as high as 30% for music (Zentner, 2006).”
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