Most File Sharers Would Pay For Legal Downloads

An anonymous reader writes "Two separate studies from Australia and Holland give the lie to corporate entertainment industry claims that file sharers are unprincipled thieves out to rob the honest but harshly treated movie and music studios. Over in Oz, news.com.au reports, 'Most people who illegally download movies, music and TV shows would pay for them if there was a cheap and legal service as convenient as file-sharing tools like BitTorrent.' And from the EU, 'Turnover in the recorded music industry is in decline, but only part of this decline can be attributed to file sharing,' says Legal, Economic and Cultural Aspects of File Sharing, an academic study, which also states, 'Conversely, only a small fraction of the content exchanged through file sharing networks comes at the expense of industry turnover. This renders the overall welfare effects of file sharing robustly positive.'"

Comments

Re:How Cheap?

[Reziac]

Yes, I know how much it costs, and I also know how much of that is graft and waste -- about 80% on average, per my experience in the industry. I have personally seen TV and films made for 10-20% of the typical budget -- solely because all the cost was coming out of the producer's own pocket, instead of being funded by a studio.

If this stuff was priced where it really should be, then maybe "Hollywood accounting" wouldn't be such a miracle of creative bookkeeping, because there wouldn't be so much money available to waste and embezzle in the first place.