Last week I wrote about how a poll revealed that Canadians pay for many of the songs they download, whether they come from a free or pay-style download site. Even if they don’t pay directly, they pay a levy on CD Recordable discs that go to the CRIA artists who are eligible to collect from that pot.
CBC Marketplace bloggers have highlighted the enlightening poll that shows P2P downloading is a minor factor in loss of CD revenue for the CRIA music industry giant. Michael Geist was called bad names by pollster Pollara, and he fired back with an indictment of their polling independence if they make pronouncements on the meaning of their polling data. Clearly Pollara was either trying to fix the P2P study, or was under pressure from the CRIA to get a result that showed P2P was destructive to the music industry even though it isn’t.
- I noticed this update at SkylarKD.
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Ian H. | 28-Mar-06 at 12:15 pm | Permalink
It cracks me up to read the CRIA referring to “illegal downloading” in Canada… Judge Finckenstein ruled in April 2004 that both downloading and uploading are legal in Canada. It’s been decided for two years! So there is in fact, no basis for the CRIA to term it illegal under present Canadian law.
Saskboy | 28-Mar-06 at 6:03 pm | Permalink
Quite right. The levy on CDs takes care of artist compensation too.
Abandoned Stuff by Saskboy » Blog Archive » Puretracks is pure nonsense | 21-May-06 at 6:17 pm | Permalink
[...] I got an email from Pollara Wednesday, the polling firm that gave a favourable slant on a poll conducted [Dec 29, 2005] for the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA). They’ve shown their bias before too, and aren’t ashamed they don’t appear independent of the corrupt music industry’s push to outlaw P2P music downloading. The email I got today was a coupon for a free music track download from the Puretracks website. [...]