Blog Juice for Educational Technology

For economists and entertainers alike, it’s a tantalizing chicken-or-egg question: Is digital piracy killing the music industry, or is it a symptom of an industry that has been slowly killing itself?

Like its American counterpart, the Canadian Recording Industry Association has argued the former. And as evidence of its claim, the trade group has published a new report noting that its retail sales dropped by a whopping 41 percent since the advent of file swapping.

But that statistic demonstrates coincidence, not causation, according to a panel of law professors at the University of Ottawa. Echoing the work of professors Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Koleman Strumpf, the group argues that economic conditions and changes to the industry’s business model, not peer-to-peer networks, are responsible for the downturn. (Globe and Mail; The Guardian)