The Controversy over how the Journal of Political Economy treated papers on Downloading Music
I have covered the controversy here. Stan Liebowitz has a follow up piece on the who debate here. His abstract notes:
Through a stroke of luck, a referee report in the review process at the JPE has been positively identified as the Oberholzer-Gee/Strumpf (O/S) response to my earlier comment. Regardless of the response's provenance, what counts is whether it solidly refuted my comment. This 'sequel' analyzes the O/S response. The O/S response only deals with four of the nine points discussed in my comment, leaving the five remaining critiques unchallenged. The conclusion of my review is that the O/S response fails as a defense of these four points and contains many of the same types of errors that marred their original paper. This sequel also discusses the history of this dispute including O/S' various reasons for not making their data available. Finally, this sequel provides full documentation on the JPE's decision not to publish the comment.
Labels: Research, SteveLevitt
posted by John Lott at 3:01 AM
1 Comments:
Of course, it is silly to try to claim that P2P sharing networks haven't hurt CD sales. However CD sales would still be on the decline even without P2P networks and CD burners. Technology marches on and flash memory and hard drives in MP3 players are replacing CD as the primary music storage media. This situation is no different than vinyl records replacing wax cylinders.
Unfortunately, the record companies didn't get what was going on. Back in 1999, when the Rio, one of the first MP3 players to hit the streets, the record companies responded by suing to try to stop the product. They lost of course and almost ten years later are still bumbling along trying to figure out how to deal with this thing called the Internet.
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