File Sharing, Digital Piracy Actually Helps Entertainment Industry, Says London School


File sharing and digital piracy are actually helping the entertainment industry, according to students at a London school. It seems controversial, but if you really do the math, the consumer who engages in these things is actually deciding not to pay the entertainment industry for what we don’t want to see.

The way the entertainment industry is legally set up, we are supposed to pay full price for movies, music, and video games that we aren’t even sure we’ll like. Of course the naysayers would point out how that’s what rentals are for, but if you end up buying it anyway, the rental is actually paying them even more in the end. The end result? The entertainment industry gets their money either way and doesn’t learn to stop making what we don’t want.

In the end, internet piracy is actually helping, as previously reported by The Inquisitr.

The entertainment industry would like you to believe that you’re robbing them when you engage in digital piracy by the use of file sharing, but a London school says that’s actually far from the truth.

The London School of Economics says that after looking into it, the bottom line isn’t really that affected by digital piracy, and file sharing may be a form of copyright infringement, but it’s actually helping to boost profits.

Bart Cammaerts, senior lecturer in the LSE Department of Media and Communications, said in a release:

“Contrary to the industry claims, the music industry is not in terminal decline but still holding ground and showing healthy profits. Revenues from digital sales, subscription services, streaming and live performances compensate for the decline in revenues from the sale of CDs or records. … Despite the Motion Picture Association of America’s claim that online piracy is devastating the movie industry, Hollywood achieved record-breaking global box office revenues of $35 billion US in 2012, a six per cent increase over 2011.”

Even video games and eBook publishing are profiting from the illegal downloading of their media, according to their findings.

So there you have it. The London School of Economics has proven that file sharing and digital piracy are actually helping the entertainment industry.

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