Troubles in Brussels

The often playful IPKat has a very serious and gloomy report on Bernt Hugenhotltz' open letter to Dr. Jose Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission.

Prof. Hugenholtz is understandably concerned that the Commission has ignored the work that it had commissioned from his exemplary institute, for example in the course of its controversial recommendation in July to extend the term of protection for sound recordings to 95 years. He states:

As you are certainly aware, one of the aims of the `Better Regulation' policy that is part of the Lisbon agenda is to increase the transparency of the EU legislative process. By wilfully ignoring scientific analysis and evidence that was made available to the Commission upon its own initiative, the Commission's recent Intellectual Property package does not live up to this ambition. Indeed, the Commission's obscuration of the IViR studies and its failure to confront the critical arguments made therein seem to reveal an intention to mislead the Council and the Parliament, as well as the citizens of the European Union.

The power of lobbyists to override the advice of professional public servants and academics of immense integrity and independence, such as Bernt Hugenholtz, is indeed very regrettable and is, regrettably, not restricted to Europe.

Prof. Hugenholtz is to be commended for standing up for the work of his colleagues and for matters of principle at a time when principled and professional analysis in IP by governments seems increasingly like a quaint memory.

HK

Industry Canada P2P Study Shows Posititve Effects on Music Biz and more...

A dynamite study just released from Industry Canada shows that P2P file sharing is good for the music business, and even more...

Here's part of the abstract:

Our review of existing econometric studies suggests that P2P file-sharing tends to decrease music purchasing. However, we find the opposite, namely that P2P filesharing tends to increase rather than decrease music purchasing.

Among Canadians who engage in P2P file-sharing, our results suggest that for every 12 P2P downloaded songs, music purchases increase by 0.44 CDs. That is, downloading the equivalent of approximately one CD increases purchasing by about half of a CD. We are unable to find evidence of any relationship between P2P filesharing and purchases of electronically-delivered music tracks (e.g., songs from iTunes). With respect to the other effects, roughly half of all P2P tracks were downloaded because individuals wanted to hear songs before buying them or because they wanted to avoid purchasing the whole bundle of songs on the associated CDs and roughly one quarter were downloaded because they were not available for purchase. Our results indicate that only the effect capturing songs downloaded because they were not available for purchase influenced music purchasing, a 1 percent increase in such downloads being associated with nearly a 4 percent increase in CD purchases.

We find evidence that purchases of other forms of entertainment such as cinema and concert tickets, and video games tend to increase with music purchases. It has been argued in the literature that the increase in the number of entertainment substitutes has led to a decline in music purchasing, but our results do not support this hypothesis. As expected, we find that reported interest in music is very strongly associated with music purchases. Finally, our results suggest that household income is not important in explaining music purchases.

(emphasis added)

The study was done by two researchers at the University of London, and can be found here.

It looks like music to our ears. I look forward to reading past the abstract...but I wanted to get this out fast...

It is entitled: The Impact of Music Downloads and P2P File-Sharing on the Purchase of Music: A Study for Industry Canada and was written by Birgitte Andersen and Marion Frenz.

PS - update - See Jack Kapica's analysis on the politics of this...

HK