He uses the total revenue metric because that is what the industry has been using in its lobbying and PR efforts for many years. The industry has claimed that the decrease in total revenue it has experienced is being driven entirely (or almost entirely) by piracy. If this were true, then the piracy reduction in France would lead to higher total revenue.
Since that has not been the case, the link between piracy and total revenue seems to have been overstated by the industry.
The author then suggests that the drop in total revenue has been caused by new, less profitable formats, which is exactly what you pointed out (with evidence), rather than piracy.
I agree that the headline and some of the language are a bit sensationalist, but the point of the article is valid and in agreement with your points.
In UK digital sales grew by 27% in 2011 alone, and they have no similar laws.[1]
The truth is that the digital sales are increasing drastically all over the world, not just in France. This does not have anything to do with any reduction in piracy, but is due to a wider selection of products and more accessible market.
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc [1] http://www.bpi.co.uk/assets/files/music%20sales%20slip%20in%...
Actually, we do, primarily under the controversial Digital Economy Act that was pushed through just before the last general election.
The laws aren't widely applied yet in the way that they apparently have been in France, but there has been some fairly high profile threatening going on all the same.
In other words, while I'm certainly not equating the situation in the two countries and the seriousness or otherwise of the threat to pirates right now, it's probably not fair to totally discount the effect of anti-piracy rules in the UK either.
Buy hey, let's take my country (Sweden) as an example then. Digital sales went up a whopping 65% in 2011[0], and I can promise you that although we've have had some digital rights laws (like IPRED) no pirates here are actually afraid of getting caught, and the Pirate Party are still going strong. Actually, the only country with a sizable reduction in piracy (France) seem to be the one with the least increase in digital sales.
My guess is that the large increase in digital sales in Sweden is mainly due to the popularity of Spotify.
[0] http://www.ifpi.se/wp/wp-content/uploads/GLF-f%C3%B6rs%C3%A4... (in swedish)
Unfortunately we're going to hear two diametrically opposite views, both "based on the numbers", neither shedding light on the subject.
http://www.freakonomics.com/2012/01/12/how-much-do-music-and...
'In 2010, the Government Accountability Office released a report noting that these figures “cannot be substantiated or traced back to an underlying data source or methodology,” which is polite government-speak for “these figures were made up out of thin air.”'
I find it _very_ hard to find any sympathy for the music or film industries having numbers and statistics bent or misused against them. These people have been getting laws enacted based on numbers they've just made up - with _clearly_ no possible basis in fact. So this article has turned the tables. About time, in my opinion.
See also: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110903/00070515801/mpaas-... http://blog.ted.com/2012/03/20/the-numbers-behind-the-copyri...
Plus, they are only tracking bittorrent - which means that half of the piracy could've shifted to other methods, as soon as they learned about the P2P monitoring program.
The reason that the overall statistics show a drop is because of physical media being included and that has fallen a huge amount:
> Internet music growth was insufficient to offset falling sales of music on physical supports, down 11.5 percent to EUR 412 million, with the overall recorded music market falling by 3.9 percent in 2011.
If you ONLY consider the digital side:
> Download revenues grew by 18.4 percent compared to 2010. Streaming and subscriptions grew by 73 percent to EUR 39 million. Subscriptions services such as those from Spotify and Deezer grew by 89 percent to EUR 26 million.
http://www.telecompaper.com/news/french-online-music-worth-e...
So when the author says:
> So if piracy is down massively in France, one would expect that the revenues are soaring, right?
He is being deceitful. Revenues are soaring..., they're up almost 20% on 2010. If the aim of the three strike rule was to stop digital piracy and increase digital sales that is exactly what it has achieved, they've dropped piracy 50% and increased sales 20%. You can't include the physical media sales in the latter to make a point...