P2P research right here at Carolina…

From BoingBoing, a story about an economics professor here at UNC that’s come to the conclusion that (*gasp, shock*) illegal downloading of music doesn’t actually affect album sales.

A quote from the paper: “Even in the most pessimistic specification, five thousand downloads are needed to displace a single album sale…high selling albums actually benefit from file sharing. ”

Allow me to translate the gist of the paper to non-academic speak for those not at a University:

“Screw you, RIAA, you bunch of money grubbing litigious jerkwads.”