Movie Piracy and Displaced Sales in Europe

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A new study published by the European Commission shows that online movie piracy hurts sales....except where it doesn't. This is also assuming the 30,000 respondents in six countries answered a survey about piracy honestly. Seriously, who takes surveys?

This paper presents estimates of lost movie sales due to unpaid movie consumption. We are the first to provide estimates that are recent, representative of the internet-using population, and cover multiple countries. implications for copyright policy.
 
"Individuals with a relatively high preference for movies probably engage in both more paid and unpaid consumption. Unless these differences in the taste for music can be controlled for, this will result in an underestimation of the rate of displacement due to omitted variable bias."

Just a little preview to let you know the quality of the paper.
 
Yeah, didn't even read and figured that was the case. Who did the study and who funded it, that will tell what the agenda is.
 
Glad to see Terrorism out of the front page news for a change. After all, this is WAY more important, right? Terrorists don't line politicians pockets like the entertainment industry does.
 
Unless you are stealing your internet connection, does it really matter how the ones and zeros are arranged? Does it really?

"I don't like the way you arrange your zeros and ones"

So really this is oppression of artistic style.
 
I haven't bought a movie since shortly after Netflix became a thing. Had nothing to do with piracy. Heck, before then I didn't purchase films, I rented.

A lot of the people who buy films fall into the category of collectors (known a few), people who want large libraries, parents whose kids want to watch the same movie on repeat, and people who lack impulse control to the store end caps.
 
I still have the originals!!!! On RAID. And a cloud. Plus the NAS. You will never find them all!!!!!!

:( You were supposed to reply that they aren't "your" ones and zeros! But now that you have claimed ownership, you are standing on the same slope as the MPAA. Bummer.
 
:( You were supposed to reply that they aren't "your" ones and zeros! But now that you have claimed ownership, you are standing on the same slope as the MPAA. Bummer.
I don't stand on slopes. I have bad knees and back. You may be laying at an angle.
 
Europe is the source of the majority of blackmail because you downloaded x-art porn illegally... and in some cases legally purchased, yet they still pursue you through legal means because of lol porn. The body smuggling and schizen that comes from these countries is appalling as the vast majority of the models used in these extortion outfits are underage and filmed in the U.S. Just google X-Art or Malibu Media if you want a healthy dose of crap.

Many of the torrents you see "leaked" online are in fact leaked and seeded by so called "anti-piracy" companies. They log the IP address of your router, modem, and then use super secret "Geo-location" (IE Google) technology to "accurately" pinpoint your location enough so that a U.S. federal judge will allow them to subpoena your ISP for your name and address, which they then use to send you threatening letters. Once they get this info, they search IRS records which are publicly published to see if you can pay up or not. The majority of "defendants" pay up out of fear. Every case I have read up on where the defendant has lawyer-ed up and fought back has ended up in either a dismissal by the judge, or the prosecutor has mysteriously dropped all charges. This includes cases where the pirated material was in fact discovered on the defendants hard drive! BS in the highest degree. I have no respect for anti-piracy firms or lawyers.
 
There's some hefty assumptions in the study, I particularly like this drug-induced lala-land one:

"Since a movie can be watched more than once,one unpaid movie viewing can theoretically even displace more than one movie sale"

It is far more likely that multiple unpaid viewings displace a single paid one or, since the movie is good enough to view multiple times, generate paid ones, quite possibly through recommendations to friends. (this recommendation effect seems not to be mentioned at all in the study)

Interestingly, even with the dubious assumptions, they conclude that the displaced sales are less than 5% throughout Europe. Which certainly does not justify currently proposed draconian copyright policies.
 
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Bah, movie studios claim losses in excess of the total income of every consumer on Earth, so all discussion is pretty moot anyway. We all know they're greedy.
 
To answer your question Steve, I take surveys when they mutually benefit me.

You see, I understand marketing. I understand that statistically knowing what your customers wants is knowledge that translates into money. So when companies want the equivalent of money from me (knowledge from a survey) I expect them to compensate me with money.

So to put it simply, no reward = no survey from me. And no, the whole "take a survey for a chance to win X" is BS and I don't fall for that either.
 
I wasn't going to the movies when I wasn't pirating. I'm not going to the movies when I am pirating. I went to Blockbuster or Hollywood Video. Those don't exist anymore. So I buy the movies I like and pirate the crap that I don't like enough to buy. Really, they probably make more money off me now, than before with their blu-ray/dvd/electronic combo movie.
 
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