Earlier today, Industry Canada, a ministry of the federal  government, released a surprising study of peer-to-peer file-sharing on the music industry.

The study is called The Impact of Music Downloads and P2P File-Sharing on the Purchase of Music: A Study for Industry Canada, and was written by Birgitte Andersen and Marion Frenz, of the Department of Management at the University of London in England.

Its conclusion: P2P file-sharing does not put downward pressure on purchasing music, as the music industry has insisted for years. In fact, it does just the opposite: It tends to increase music purchasing.

What?

This is, after all, a study released with the blessings of the federal government, not some self-serving poll commissioned by the music industry.

And this is from the same federal government that has indicated it wants to upset the balance that is so necessary to good copyright law to fall in line with what music and Tellywood industry lobbyists want.

The study said that in Canada, for every 12 P2P downloaded songs, music purchases increased by 0.44 CDs.

That means, the study’s authors say, “downloading the equivalent of approximately one CD increases purchasing by about half of a CD.”

Moreover, the authors said they were “unable to find evidence of any relationship between P2P file sharing and purchases of electronically delivered music tracks [such as iTunes].”

The study concluded that about half of all P2P tracks were downloaded because individuals wanted to hear songs before buying them or because they wanted to avoid purchasing the whole bundle of songs on the associated CDs. Another quarter were downloaded because they were just not available in music stores.

The study said that the effect of a 1 per cent increase of downloading songs that were not available in stores was associated with nearly a 4 per cent increase in CD purchases, which suggests that people are really interested in buying CDs that the recording industry is not interested in promoting.

Needless to say, industry lobbyists will dismiss the study immediately; they have invested far too much time, money and effort mounting an intense campaign against the effect of the Internet on their businesses.

But this would not be the way to fight Industry Canada's study. To answer Industry Canada, the Canadian Recording Industry Association would have to do two things: It would have to come clean about the formula it uses to calculate the damage allegedly being done to its business by file-sharing, and it would have to come up with a manifestly independent study of its own, and release the entire thing to the public.

And I don’t mean its study to be some quickie job done by the research arm of CRIA's public-relations company, which has produced several “studies” that have supported everything the industry claims.

There is another interesting issue here. Since the study was created with heavy input from Industry Canada (though there is a disclaimer in it that says the study’s conclusions are not necessarily shared by the federal government), the government will be put in an interesting position should it cave into industry demands and craft a new copyright law that throws the entire copyright system out of balance, in favour of big business.

Or perhaps the government can use the study as a reason to balance proposed legislation.

This will be interesting.