From the very first movie that was downloaded from the Internet the entertainment industry has been yelling and ranting about how the nasty evil Internet was killing the movie business and taking food out of the mouths of hard working people. Then as file lockers and BitTorrent files became a drop dead easy way for just about anyone to use to get the movies and other stuff that they wanted that ranting has gotten only louder.
It doesn’t matter that over the years just about anyone with any sense in their heads and who understood technology was telling exactly the opposite story that the movie industry wasn’t in fact being hurt by these types of downloads. It didn’t matter that while the popularity of things like BitTorrent grew so did the box office profits of the movie industry setting new records almost every year.
Well there is a new study out titled, Reel Piracy: The Effects of Online Piracy on International Box Office Sales , and guess what they found out?
Yup, BitTorrents have had no effect on box office profits. In fact if there is any blame for loss of money to be placed it is right at the feet of the movie industry itself.
According to the study, the factor with the largest impact on piracy is the delay between U.S. and international releases of films. Because of the delay in international releases, often the only way to get a film may be to pirate or wait. Given that choice, anyone who doesn’t want to wait has to turn to piracy whereas if a legitimate venue of purchase was available, at least some of that revenue could be retained. The study estimates that if this pre-release piracy binge were eliminated — by releasing earlier, or simultaneously with the U.S. — overall losses could be reduced by 7%.
via Geekosystem
Of course we aren’t saying the outright piracy is right or a good thing but the declaration that it is killing the movie business is patently ridiculous and is being proven so each and every day, and with every new non-partisan study that is done.
