Broadband technologies transforming business models and challenging regulatory frameworks

A report from the Royal Technical University in Stockholm into P2P file sharing as a business model has just been made available on the net. Broadband technologies transforming business models and challenging regulatory frameworks - lessons from the music industry looks like a balanced and thorough assessment of the situation. From my reading of it it seems to confirm the idea that what the global music industry is battling against is not "piracy" but rather new models for technological inovation and the subsequent markets created by such:

"Most of the rhetoric has come from the recording industry, where financial results have been sliding. Other sectors of the music industry, for instance the live /concert sector, appear to be in much better health. Evidence suggests that activities within digital networks have a marketing and promotion effect which has supported the concert industry. The global value of the sound carrier market reached a peak in 1999 (38 billion dollars), falling to 31 billion in 2002, but rising to 33 in 2004. This can be compared to the global value of music and event merchandising, concerts and touring, which Kusek & Leonard estimate at 25 billion dollars/annum, and music publishing (12 billion U.S. dollars). Certainly the live sector has seen spectacular rises over the part 3 years. According to the monitoring agency Pollstar, ticket sales in the U.S. rose from 1.7 billion dollars in 2000, to 2.8 billion in 2004. Music and Copyright (April 2005) estimate that global box office receipts, excluding classical music, opera and musicals) exceeded 10 billion dollars for the first time in 2004. Kusek and Leonard (2005) conclude that “the record business is suffering, but the music industry as a whole is alive and well”."

It will be a painful transition for many in regards to these new technologies, least of all the young technologues who are being arrested for using tools (PC, Internet, Mp3, MPEG, Broadband) that are being sold to them by the same companies that are lobbying governments to stop what the tools allow people to do.