To say that the music industry loses money from file-sharing applications is subject to assumption...
In the Napster years, the music industry actually grew considerably compared to what it did in the pre-napster days. It's true that the last year's stats show that sales were down...but it's also true that Napster was shut down during this same time frame.
Some may say that it's purely coincidence that the RIAA gained a considerable amount of revenue during Napster's prime years, and that it's drop after the end of Napster was also due to coincidence...but to say that is still an assumption, the same thing as saying that peer to peer applications hurt the music industry, as opposed to helping it.
It should be noted that Napster is/was not the only file-sharing application...but it most certainly was the most popular and successful. The ones available now aren't nearly as useful...(another opinion).
|