The G8 governments are considering implementation of a plan to search iPods, mobile phones, and laptop computers for illegally downloaded content.

In an apparent effort to make air travel even more of a pleasant experience, G8 governments recently announced that they are considering beginning to search iPods, mobile phones, and laptops for illegal downloads which are subject to strict new counterfeiting measures. According to Aislinn Simpson, writing for the Telegraph:

Illegal downloading and piracy represents the biggest single problem faced by the music, film and publishing industries, and many have been lobbying governments to introduce tough new rules to help stamp out the practice.

What Simpson does not divulge however, is why illegal downloading is such a big problem. While I admit to having drunken rather deeply of Stephan Kinsella’s intellectual-property-is-garbage Kool-Aid, I’m still puzzled by the over-arching premise that downloading is a problem. Why? (I’m glad you asked!) Downloading does not negatively affect record sales. That is, at least according to a very thorough paper – maybe the most thorough paper available – on the subject of file sharing. If file sharing – downloading “illegal” content by any other name – doesn’t negatively affect record sales, then it doesn’t matter how one views intellectual property (IP). From the paper’s abstract we have:

For industries ranging from software to pharmaceuticals and entertainment, there is an intense debate about the level of protection for intellectual property that is necessary to ensure innovation. In the case of digital information goods, web-based technologies provide a natural crucible to assess the implications of reduced protection because these technologies have drastically lowered the cost of copying information. In this paper, we study the impact of file-sharing technologies on the music industry. In particular, we analyze if file sharing has reduced the legal sales of music. While this question is receiving considerable attention in academia, industry and in Congress, we are the first to study the phenomenon employing data on actual downloads of music files. We match 0.01% of the world’s downloads to U.S. sales data for a large number of albums. To establish causality, we instrument for downloads using data on international school holidays and technical features related to file sharing. Downloads have an effect on sales which is statistically indistinguishable from zero. Moreover, our estimates are of moderate economic significance and are inconsistent with claims that file sharing can explain the decline in music sales during our study period. [Emphasis ours.]

While the authors of the paper are not radical libertarians and stop short of suggesting that IP is flawed as a concept, they state, in no uncertain terms, that the favorite boogie-man of the record industry – lagging sales – are not an effect of file sharing, i.e., the downloading of supposedly IP-protected content. Now, I admit that the paper is from 2005, and is based upon research conducted in the years previous to that, so maybe the conclusions and methodology need some updating. I rather doubt it though.

Instead, we get what we almost always get: an industry looking for help from the government and lobbying successfully to get it. And we’ll get yet another reason to enjoy a trip to the airport. Did I mention the best part? We’ll be paying the guys to confiscate our iPods while the guys who lobbied them to make it happen make money either way. Such Fascism would warm the heart of old Il Duce.

Wilton D. Alston is a principal research scientist working in the field of transportation safety, specifically with regard to trains and transit. A libertarian activist and writer, Mr. Alston’s columns have appeared in such places as LewRockwell.com, Strike-the-Root.com and around the Internet blogosphere.