Civil liberties are not undermined by enforcing the laws as they exist. If they were, then you could challenge that in court (or more to the point, the ACLU would).
Your papers do not support your conclusion. Nor does your own link. To quote:
"An explosion in research (mainly dependent on access to proprietary data) as a result of public interest in these issues means that we are now in a position to provide answers with some degree of certainty. The basic result is that online illegal file-sharing does have a negative impact on traditional sales. The size of this effect is debated, and ranges from 0 to 100% of the sales decline in recent years, but a figure of between 20 and 40% would be a reasonable consensus value (i.e. that file-sharing accounted for 20-40% of the decline in sales not a 20-40% decline in sales)."
Of course, there is, as usual, no good reason given by the file-sharing apologists as to what exactly that other 60-80% of decline in sales comes from; it just magically happens to coincide chronologically with file-sharing affecting the industry (any industry, since that drop of sales that of course completely coincidentally chronologically matched the rise of easy and popular file-sharing in the target audience happened to music, movies, anime, et al). I notice you quoted the paragraph directly below that, but declined to mention where even your own source admits that file-sharing has an overall negative impact. Also, let us quote your own source again on the "consensus" you say exists: "While, as they emphasize, this result is preliminary and based on limited data it indicates the urgent need for more research on this issue..." That's a hypothesis, not a consensus.
And, of course, it's bullshit. Once again, there is already many real-world case studies of the market effects of copyright law being unenforced and unenforceable. One of them, for instance, is called "The Republic of Taiwan". The results are, as is intuitively obvious, that when people can get copyrighted material for free or for a pittance without any inconvenience, sales of legitimate product collapse completely. This is also the case for software sales in China and Africa, newspaper websites, and so forth.
While filesharing has legitimate uses for sampling or for artists who cannot use traditional marketing, using free convenient access to the exact same product you are trying to sell for money will lead into a collapse of sales for that product. People will not often pay for what they can easily get for free. This isn't even Economics 101, it's more like Baby's First Economics Book. While some income can certainly be recouped by live performances, merchandise, distributing free product with advertisements et al, which is often trumpeted by file-sharing supporters, all of those options are available if the product isn't being illegally taken to begin with. They do not replace the lost income; they are alternate revenue streams that were available anyway.
File-sharing has never been good for any industry. Ever. That is not my opinion, but simple statistical fact. Despite what you think, that is not going to change, either. It goes completely counter to human nature to expect it to, and that is why the people who are actually involved in the business end of the industries affected by it treat it as an enemy. It is not because every single person involved in running the industries is so stupid that they cannot see the conclusions that are so obvious to a bunch of people on the Internet - it is because those conclusions are self-serving, selectively blind nonsense.
Your papers do not support your conclusion. Nor does your own link. To quote:
"An explosion in research (mainly dependent on access to proprietary data) as a result of public interest in these issues means that we are now in a position to provide answers with some degree of certainty. The basic result is that online illegal file-sharing does have a negative impact on traditional sales. The size of this effect is debated, and ranges from 0 to 100% of the sales decline in recent years, but a figure of between 20 and 40% would be a reasonable consensus value (i.e. that file-sharing accounted for 20-40% of the decline in sales not a 20-40% decline in sales)."
Of course, there is, as usual, no good reason given by the file-sharing apologists as to what exactly that other 60-80% of decline in sales comes from; it just magically happens to coincide chronologically with file-sharing affecting the industry (any industry, since that drop of sales that of course completely coincidentally chronologically matched the rise of easy and popular file-sharing in the target audience happened to music, movies, anime, et al). I notice you quoted the paragraph directly below that, but declined to mention where even your own source admits that file-sharing has an overall negative impact. Also, let us quote your own source again on the "consensus" you say exists: "While, as they emphasize, this result is preliminary and based on limited data it indicates the urgent need for more research on this issue..." That's a hypothesis, not a consensus.
And, of course, it's bullshit. Once again, there is already many real-world case studies of the market effects of copyright law being unenforced and unenforceable. One of them, for instance, is called "The Republic of Taiwan". The results are, as is intuitively obvious, that when people can get copyrighted material for free or for a pittance without any inconvenience, sales of legitimate product collapse completely. This is also the case for software sales in China and Africa, newspaper websites, and so forth.
While filesharing has legitimate uses for sampling or for artists who cannot use traditional marketing, using free convenient access to the exact same product you are trying to sell for money will lead into a collapse of sales for that product. People will not often pay for what they can easily get for free. This isn't even Economics 101, it's more like Baby's First Economics Book. While some income can certainly be recouped by live performances, merchandise, distributing free product with advertisements et al, which is often trumpeted by file-sharing supporters, all of those options are available if the product isn't being illegally taken to begin with. They do not replace the lost income; they are alternate revenue streams that were available anyway.
File-sharing has never been good for any industry. Ever. That is not my opinion, but simple statistical fact. Despite what you think, that is not going to change, either. It goes completely counter to human nature to expect it to, and that is why the people who are actually involved in the business end of the industries affected by it treat it as an enemy. It is not because every single person involved in running the industries is so stupid that they cannot see the conclusions that are so obvious to a bunch of people on the Internet - it is because those conclusions are self-serving, selectively blind nonsense.