The only people surprised by this are the record companies, who have a myopic view of the world and refuse to believe something that they don't fully understand could possibly be worthwhile. One can only hope that they are tossed aside in favor of those who do have a larger view of the world, such as Apple with it's iTunes.
What If The Music Industry Is Wrong About Downloads? [NYT, 4.5.2004]
The recording industry has been fighting music downloads as piracy, saying that the recording business is being hurt by downloads. But "what if the industry is wrong, and file sharing is not hurting record sales? It might seem counterintuitive, but that is the conclusion reached by two economists who released a draft last week of the first study that makes a rigorous economic comparison of directly observed activity on file-sharing networks and music buying. 'Downloads have an effect on sales which is statistically indistinguishable from zero, despite rather precise estimates'."
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