Researchers find Megaupload shutdown hurt box office revenues, despite gains for blockbusters. We’ve heard this one before, over and over again: pirates are the biggest spenders. It therefore shouldn’t surprise too many people to learn that shutting down Megaupload earlier this year had a negative effect on box office revenues. The latest finding comes from a paper titled “Piracy and Movie Revenues: Evidence from Megaupload” (via TorrentFreak) from last month, conducted by from Munich School of Management (LMU) and the Copenhagen Business School (CBS).
Here’s the abstract: In this paper we make use of a quasi-experiment in the market for illegal downloading to study movie box office revenues. Exogenous variation comes from the unexpected shutdown of the popular file hosting platform Megaupload.com on January 19, 2012. The estimation strategy is based on a quasi difference-in-differences approach. The study analyzed weekly data from 1,344 movies in 49 countries over a five-year period. The researchers try to explain how big blockbusters gained but overall revenues dropped: Where do Music Collections Come From? | Media Piracy | The American Assembly. In our last installment, we noted that there’s a sharp generational divide (in the US and Germany) in attitudes toward copying and file sharing, with those under 30 showing more acceptance of these practices in general and much more acceptance of sharing within loosely-defined communities of ‘friends.’
Not rocket science, right? But how does that translate into actual behavior? Here are average music file collections, divided by age group: A few things to note about this chart. Around 79% of 18-29 year olds have music files, compared to only 14% of those over 64. Accordingly, the overall average US collection falls pretty close to the young end of the distribution, at 1444 songs. For both reasons, the most important (and reliable) data here involves the first two age groups, 18-29 and 30-49. This means, first of all, that even among digital music owners, most people in the 30-49 age group do not have large digital music collections. What about the the sources of these collections? Ps. Industry Suppressed Report Showing Users Of Shuttered 'Pirate' Site Probably Helped Movie Industry... We've seen study after study after study after study after study showing, contrary to the claim of the industry and certain politicians that users of file sharing sites are pure "freeloaders" who are "leeching," that the users tend to be larger spenders on media and ancillary products.
So it's really not a huge surprise that a new study would come out saying the same thing... But, in this case, the history of the report, which has not actually been released, is a lot more interesting. As you may recall, in June, law enforcement across Europe arrested a bunch of people for apparently running Kino.to -- a site that had been listed by US entertainment lobbyists as one of the worst of the worst "pirate sites," out there. So, it sure would be interesting to find out that, before all of this happened, some entertainment industry lobbyists had commissioned research into the type of folks who used Kino.to and their media consumption habits.
Of course, this report never saw the light of day. Another Day, Another Study That Says 'Pirates' Are The Best Customers... This Time From HADOPI. We've pointed out that a whole series of studies have all suggested that the biggest infringers of content online also tend to be the best customers of content, rather than just "freeloaders" who refuse to pay for content.
Critics of these studies brush them off (without any evidence) by simply saying if that were true, then sales of content wouldn't have dropped so much in the music industry (other industries, it should be noted, have not seen such a drop-off). But that's misunderstanding (or misapplying) basic statistics. No one is saying that this means that file sharing automatically leads to more sales.
But it does suggest that treating those people as just "freeloaders who just want stuff for free" is absolutely the wrong response. It shows that these people are willing to pay money if they're given a good reason to buy. The problem is that they're not. From a strategic standpoint, this impacts how one responds to increased "piracy. " Alternative to SOPA and PIPA - Make Piracy your Friend - Computer Tyme Support Wiki.
From Computer Tyme Support Wiki The United States Congress in order to address the concerns of copyright holders like the RIAA and the MPA have made several attempts to pass laws to protect intellectual property. Many of these ideas have led to terrible laws and proposals the totally break the Internet. There are numerous web sites that explain why people oppose these law. This page isn't focused as much on why what SOPA and PIPA is wrong, but rather to offer a solution to what is the right thing to do. BTW - Copyright by Marc Perkel - public domain. The solution - Make Piracy your Friend Here's an idea for a solution to the piracy problem that is a win/win solution. Don't try to stop piracy. What we now call piracy - people copying movies and songs over the internet - can be look at as a free advertising and distribution system.
As it turns out the very thing that the RIAA and MPA are fighting is the best way to make money in the Internet era. Copyright ID Tags Will it Work? Example: