Piercing the peer-to-peer myths

The Canadian government has been the target of intense lobbying for stronger copyright legislation in recent months. Led by the music industry, which claims that it has experienced significant financial losses due to music downloading, the campaign culminated in November 2004 with a lobby day on Parliament Hill.

Just weeks before the lobby day, CRIA General Counsel Richard Pfohl told a university audience that the figure was actually C$450 million per year since 1999, totaling roughly C$2 billion over the past five years.

Using CRIA's own numbers and 1999 as a benchmark, the cumulative decline in CD sales revenue in Canada is C$431.7 million. Given that total CD sales revenues during the period totaled C$3.7 billion, the percentage decline is a relatively modest 8.6 percent.

Although the music industry seems loath to discuss the matter publicly, according to an October 2004 Economist article, an internal music label study found that between 2/3 and 3/4 of recent sales declines had nothing to do with Internet music downloads.

The evidence suggests that Canadian artists have scarcely been harmed by the reduced sales from 1999 to 2004 since royalty losses are fully compensated through the private copying levy.

Following years of lobbying by CRIA, a new reality is only now coming to light - music downloading is not responsible for the ills of the music industry and Canadian artists have not been harmed by the sales declines that have occurred over the past five years.