NPD, in your press release you claim to have tracked nearly 1.4 million households and their digital music habits. You also claim this to be a direct effect of the RIAA's recent legal abuses, which is somewhat more believable than the first claim. Please, NPD, answer me these questions three.

First, NPD, how did you arrive at such a figure? I am quite confident in saying you did not contact 1.4 million people directly for a survey, so where did this number come from? A proprietary tracking system? A decrease in the number of files shared on the various P2P networks? In the methodology section of your press release you mention that the MusicWatch Digital information is collected from roughly '40,000 volunteer online panelists'. I am going to assume you feel this group is very representative of PC users in general and are therefore extrapolating from there. I can forgive your thinking that a group of 40,000 people is a good representation of the market, hell I would think that as well, but your extrapolation leaves far too much room for error to be considered anything other than a guess.

Secondly, how do you directly attribute this to RIAA lawsuits? ’NPD credits the ongoing RIAA anti-piracy campaign and related media attention as having had a measurable effect on the actions of many consumers in regard to the illegal sharing of digital music.’ Notice that many of these deletions occurred as kids returned to school, taking with them their computers to go behind a school firewall, many of which now block file-sharing network access lest they anger the RIAA dragon. I will agree, however, that a respectable portion of these deletions can be linked to threats but I wouldn’t consider it measurable until one can actually measure it. I also question your statistics regarding the number of files downloaded on the above grounds.

Lastly, what IS your margin for error? I don’t see it printed in your release so I am going to assume it is high. If it were a respectable figure, I would assume you would print it as a testament to how good NPD’s methods are.

NPD, I wholeheartedly agree with some parts of your press release. Parts such as ’ When asked if "stopping people from freely sharing copyrighted music files through a file-sharing network is the honest and fair thing to do," just 23 percent of recent file sharers agreed, versus 42 percent of those who had not downloaded music in the previous four weeks’ or ‘Two-thirds of consumers who had recently shared files on P2P networks reported that the lawsuits caused them to have a "much more" or "somewhat more" negative opinion of record companies in general. Just over 40 percent of consumers who had not downloaded music in the previous four weeks felt similarly’. These are not blanket statements and you actually spelled out your sampling method. I ask that you justify your other blanket statements.

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