For some considerable time there has been considerable moaning and several law suits by the Music Industry regarding the online sharing of music in peer-to-peer networks. They point to declining sales of CDs as evidence of the problem.

Research by Felix Oberholzer-Gee of Harvard Business School and Koleman Strumpf of University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill points to a different reason for the declining sales. Namely that the music is crap and noone wants to buy it. They say:

While downloads occur on a vast scale, most users are likely individuals who, when hearing it, realise that their old BeeGees and ABBA CDs aren't that bad afterall

RIAA spokeswoman Amy Weiss does not agree. She claims that the BeeGees and ABBA were just as crap as the current musicians.

For a final word on the subject we turn to University of Texas at Dallas professor Stan Liebowitz

My conclusions, in a nutshell, are that MP3 downloading does appear to be causing harm, particularly in the aethetics of the nerds who are downloading it.

Read what they actually said in Wired.