According to a recent study from Harvard, file sharing and copyright as they stand at present, are beneficial to society.

The working paper “File sharing and Copyright” from economists at the Harvard Business School,  raised important issues including:

• File sharing has not discouraged creative production. Although album sales have fallen, the number of albums being created has grown dramatically. This trend can be seen across all creative industries.
• Downloaded songs can increase sales, with mashups potentially leading to increased sales and any such works leading to increased attention for an artist and therefore increased sales
• File sharing may not result in decreased creativity, as there may be increased sales on complementary services such as concerts/speaking tours etc.

Very interesting to see that its not all bad news for the publishers etc, who try so hard to increase copyright protections.  To do so in light of the data this study brings out, could seriously affect their bottom line and would seriously impact future creative production.

If you don’t want to read the full paper, Michael Geist has a good summary.