Jan
25
Horse and buggy sales down 11%
Posted by Dirk Avery at 3:19 pm under Copyright, Internet.
1902 - Horse breeders and buggy manufacturers reported that sales fell 11% over the last year. Over the same period horseless-carriage (automobile) sales rose 40 percent to $2.9 billion. The rise in auto sales failed to cover losses from collapse of the international buggy sales.
The International Federation of Buggy Makers said that governments need to clamp down on automobiles by setting speed limits below 1 MPH. The President of France has called for anyone driving over 1 MPH in an automobile to be immediately shot or have his or her hands cut off.
Okay. So it’s not 1902. It’s 2008 but the story sounds the same except we’re talking MP3s not automobiles and CDs not buggies. The cum hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy (i.e., correlation doesn’t imply causation) is excruciating. Couldn’t it be that CD sales are falling because no one listens to CDs not that evil college students are ruining civilization by sharing MP3s? Mercury News provides the fallacy, er, story:
French President Nicholas Sarkozy…called in November for Internet service providers in France to automatically disconnect customers involved in piracy.
…
CD sales fell 11 percent between 2005 and 2006…. [Despite d]igital music revenue [increasing 300% from 2004 to 2005, nearly 200% from 2005 to 2006, and 40% from 2006 to 2007, it] has so far failed to make up for the decline.