Downloading: Yet Another Reason to Search? PDF Print E-mail
Written by Wilton D. Alston   
Thursday, 24 July 2008 09:17

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

iPodIn 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.
 



Last Updated ( Thursday, 24 July 2008 15:06 )
 
Comments (5)
It's Very Easy
5 Monday, 28 July 2008 22:32
Programmer #A-5
MP3 has various forms of metadata, and this metadata can transmit data back to a mainframe somewhere, something we in the computer industry call "phoning home". To get away from this, use Apple only, as Windows, in all forms since Windows 95, constantly phones home. Just take a look at an idle Windows computers in sleep or blank-screen mode and notice that that the hard drive is whirring and that brief streams of data are calling out via the broadband connection that is around. Using a phone modem or just turning the damned machine off can stop this from happening, till the computer is used again. Apples don't do this at all when sitting idle, so it is a Windows problem. And that's why searches now actually have to be conducted, because iPods are made by Apple, and the iPhone, also by Apple, doesn't phone home. But find out about Steve Jobs actually personal beliefs, and you'll find out why in the 1970s/1980s he told the NSA to go to Hell while Bill Gates happily accepted their help and installed the problems we have today with no privacy on computers. Also, just type NSA Microsoft connection in google.com to research further.
Ant no way no where no how !
4 Friday, 25 July 2008 17:33
Marty Zacharias
There is no way of any government agency that is able to detect an illegal download, this is a line of bull-crap and don't believe it. Music files of any sort.. wav, mp3's can be owned by someone in all sorts of different file formats and that is legal.
There is no way anyone can point a finger at you unless you are duplicating for sale to others then you are breaking copywrite laws. Period...they are more interested in the local terrorist than to give a hoot about music anyways.
Downloading
3 Friday, 25 July 2008 13:40
Leland W Fortner Jr
I understand the reason the government wants to snoop into my Ipod, Control. If I go to your garage sale or to your flea market and purchase a viny,cd,or tape recording of an lp, the royalties have already been payed once and no one is getting any more because of my $1.00 purchase. What's the difference if I download off the internet?
Starts at the top
2 Friday, 25 July 2008 13:17
Paul Luckey
The truth is that big corporations and Bankers have an agenda for one world government. To achieve this they are enslaving people with debt created for them by their own governments. Debt means no money for the common folk. No money means no sales. So they know the system is lying to them and is stacked against them. So they will take what they have a right to. They would purchase these items as free sovereign beings if the system was actually working for them. But alas, there are those bent on world domination and slaves don't make good consumers. So they take however they can. I believe it is a collective subconscious move to exercise freedom inherent in all sentient beings. I have a right to whatever I desire. No one has any right to stop me. Corruption in the hearts of the system makers will breed corruption in whatever it creates. The pot is calling the kettle black. These are attempts to gain more control. Morality starts with the leaders. If they don't have it. Then they can't judge those under their control. Wake up and smell the Kontrol before it's too late. In a proper system there is no want for anything, for we act as a community and understand that the health and well being of each member is attributed to the whole. We take pride in the high ratio of joy and happiness to pain and suffering. It is embarrassing to a leader to have an unhappy community under his jurisdiction. How far we are from this.
sales do not justify stealing
1 Friday, 25 July 2008 10:59
Bryan Turner
wither or not sales are effected is irrelevant to the fact that one got something they did not pay for, ie stole.

Does that justify what the govt is suggesting? NO! However, if we want to be free, we must be moral and self governing.

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