While rather naieve politicians in the Netherlands blindly follow propaganda of the media industry about file-sharing, while the UK is no different, some researchers from Harvard Univiversity have tackled the real hard question: does file-sharing stifle content creation?
The authors show that the first two arguments do not hold: the loss of some revenue of direct sales is offsett by higher fees for concert tickets.
As they rightly state, copyright laws have never been designed to protect an industry, their purpose is to foster and reward creativity for the benefit of us all.
Ars Technica has an excellent analysis of the report (work in progress).
The authors construct a bit of a causal chain between file sharing and the intent of copyright law to foster creative works. First, you'd need to know that file sharing was harming music sales, and that the music industry wasn't finding alternative ways of generating income. Then you'd need to show that the loss of income provided a disincentive to musical creativity.
If the first two links in the chain are tenuous, the last one pretty much gets demolished. There's essentially no indication that the more challenging economics are slowing down creative content production. In the five years prior to 2007, film production is up 30 percent, album releases have doubled, and book releases are up by two-thirds.
Although the paper could be improved and is not yet been scrutinized by the community, it is al least a solid evidence based approach to the issue. Something which cannot be said for most others.
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