[johnny33]

Not trying to be snippy, but read the article, it explains their methodology. It's pretty clever, actually.

No it isn't, since p2p is often the starting point of piracy. What about students that d/l music and then share it with their friends? How do you determine how many of those students would have bought the album? You wouldn't even know how many students there were that recieved a copy. To call a study like this empirical is silly. This is just a couple of Europeans trying to defend piracy.

[Terabitten]

I would imagine that simple polling would find a decent number for how much downloaded music is shared amongst friends. That number might not be 100% accurate, but it's a start point if nothing else.

[steve-b]

What about students that d/l music and then share it with their friends?

It is equally easy for someone to buy the CD and make copies for their friends, so it shows up on both sides of the equation and cancels out (as a factor in determining the effect of downloading on CD sales).

[TommyDale]

I know a local college student who actually downloaded so much music that she had to buy an external hard drive to keep her laptop from crashing because of her hard drive being full.