Well, this is cool. When they pull a feed from a site both Bloglines and YahooFeedSeeker report how many folks are subscribing to the feed.
Jeremy Zawodny shows a sample here.
Now, all we need is an easy way to read this stuff from the log file and manipulate the data. My current method is kind of cumbersome: download archive file, unzip and then parse with Notepad.
The impact, though, is very small and in some cases positive:
This estimated effect is statistically indistinguishable from zero despite a narrow standard error. The economic effect is also small. Even in the most pessimistic specification, five thousand downloads are needed to displace a single album sale. We also find that file sharing has a differential impact across sales categories. For example, high selling albums actually benefit from file
sharing.
So, as has been recently mentioned here the content providers and in particular the RIAA might want to take another look at their business models. Perhaps the artists should consider whether they really want to be involved with the RIAA members.
On the other hand Newmark’s Door links to this study which argues that there is a significant impact. I hope Craig does take a closer look at the two studies and write something on their comparative validity from a technical perspective.
Initial link to the Strumpf Oberholzer-gee study via Boing Boing.
Read along with Lawrence Solum a he discusses Free Culture:
This is the first of eight posts on Lessig’s book–a sort of blogospheric book club. You are invited to read along, and to send your comments on the book, my posts, or on the comments of other readers.
The class reading schedule may be a bit agressive if you are not an academic (faculty or student) but if you are at all interested in intellectual property issues and the internet you will be well served to join in.
Via Lawrenc Lessig.
Update: Lawrence Lessig discusses the rationale for the free offering.
Update (3/31): Tech Law Advisor notes that a Wiki of Free Culture has been created.