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Re:Pirate Bay Trial Day 8: Pirates Kill the Music Biz by jacoblyles on Wednesday February 25, 2009 @12:34PM (#494609)
>""Kennedy said that the reduction in sales in the music industry is directly attributable to illegal downloading." Again, PROVE IT."

Of course, it is impossible to "prove". But there is a strong correlation between the rise of downloading and the collapse of sales in the music industry. It would be sloppy reasoning to dismiss any causal relationship between the two a priori.

Re:Pirate Bay Trial Day 8: Pirates Kill the Music Biz by FalconNL on Wednesday February 25, 2009 @05:12PM (#495027)
There is also a strong correlation between global warming and the amount of pirates (http://www.seanbonner.com/blog/archives/001857.php). While I agree that dismissing it a priori is a bad idea, correlation still does not mean causation. Hence the request for proof instead of conjecture. If you're going to take someone to court you had better be able to prove your accusations.
Re:Pirate Bay Trial Day 8: Pirates Kill the Music Biz by jacoblyles on Thursday February 26, 2009 @01:59AM (#495584)
There is a very plausible line of causation in the downloads => music sales hypothesis that does not exist in the pirates => global warming hypothesis.

Please be courteous and refrain from using obvious straw men in your arguments. It makes the person you are responding to feel like you are not taking them seriously.

Re:Pirate Bay Trial Day 8: Pirates Kill the Music Biz by omouse on Wednesday February 25, 2009 @03:26PM (#494885)
Sure, we can admit that correlation but can you improve that it's only illegal downloads? But what about iTunes, Amazon, etc. and their DRM-free software? Don't those encourage supposedly illegal sharing?
Re:Pirate Bay Trial Day 8: Pirates Kill the Music Biz by Xichekolas on Wednesday February 25, 2009 @03:52PM (#494933)
Supposedly they started including legal downloads in their tallies around the time iTunes rose up to prominence, and the trend is still downward.

I have often wondered if people buy less music because they can try it first and realize it's not worth buying. I can't count the number of times I have been excited about a new album, downloaded it when it leaks online, and realized it sucks. Before, I would have been excited, bought the album when it came out, realized it sucked, and regretted my purchase. Now I can save myself the money.

Of course, the reason could be as simple as attention spans. People only have so much time to be entertained (at most 24 hours a day)... and there seem to be more movies, tv shows, songs, video games, websites, etc than ever. If people are spending more time watching movies and playing games, they are probably spending less time listening to music... and hence less money buying new music to fill that time.