+ This was Slashdotted. A completely sane and rational refutation of the Canadian music industry’s claim that p2p file-sharing has caused incredible loss of sales:
Written by Michael Geist who is a law professor at the University of Ottawa where he hold the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law. He publishes a wide range of articles, newsletters, and reports and is involved in a several interesting Internet policy projects. His weekly column on law and technology appears in several media outlets including the Toronto Star, Ottawa Citizen, and Canada.com .

Canada is in the midst of a contentious copyright reform with advocates for stronger copyright protection maintaining that the Internet has led to widespread infringement that has harmed the economic interests of Canadian artists. The Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) has emerged as the leading proponent of copyright reform, claiming that peer-to-peer file sharing has led to billions in lost sales in Canada.

This article examines CRIA’s claims by conducting an analysis of industry figures. It concludes that loss claims have been greatly exaggerated and challenges the contention that recent sales declines are primarily attributable to file-sharing activities. Moreover, the article assesses the financial impact of declining sales on Canadian artists, concluding that revenue collected through a private copying levy system already adequately compensates Canadian artists for the private copying that occurs on peer-to-peer networks.