The idea that it is file sharing that decimated the industry is still unsupported by any major study.  How much did I-tunes kill the album as an art form.  There are now no distribution costs for music.  All of these things cut into how much somebody can charge for a work of art.I believe it may have accelerated the process but as long as the marginal cost of every copy of anything is zero, then the price will approach zero.  The problem with music, television, and newspapers is their inherent belief that they should continue to make as much money as they have in the past.  Next up is E-books.  When digital copies of books become ubiquitous we will see the same destruction of the industry as we know it.  Authors and publishers will be unable to accumulate the wealth they have in the past, and they will assume that the money they didn’t make was stolen from them by a generally small group of tech savvy people who trade copies of a persons work.

By Ronaldo on February 7, 2012