"Using detailed records of transfers of digital music files, we find that file sharing has had no statistically significant effect on purchases of the average album in our sample," the study reports. "Even our most negative point estimate implies that a one-standard-deviation increase in file sharing reduces an album's weekly sales by a mere 368 copies, an effect that is too small to be statistically distinguishable from zero."

The study reports that 803 million CDs were sold in 2002, which was a decrease of about 80 million from the previous year. The RIAA has blamed the majority of the decrease on piracy, and has maintained that argument in recent years as music sales have faltered. Yet according to the study, the impact from file sharing could not have been more than 6 million albums total in 2002, leaving 74 million unsold CDs without an excuse for sitting on shelves.
Trouvé via:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070212-8813.html
http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/003706.shtml

Le texte de l'article est disponible (payant) en plusieurs formats:
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JPE/journal/contents/v115n1(...)