Slashdot Mirror
Suppressed Report Shows Pirates Are Good Customers
An anonymous reader writes "The movie and music industry think pirates are criminals and parasites who cost both industries billions of dollars in lost sales. In order to prove this fact a number of studies have been commissioned to help demonstrate the effect a pirate has on sales of entertainment. GfK Group is one of the largest market research companies in the world and is often used by the movie industry to carry out research and studies into piracy. Talking to a source within GfK who wished to remain anonymous, Telepolis found that a recent study looking at pirates and their purchasing activities found them to be almost the complete opposite of the criminal parasites the entertainment industry want them to be. The study states that it is much more typical for a pirate to download an illegal copy of a movie to try it before purchasing. They are also found to purchase more DVDs than the average consumer, and they visit the movie theater more, especially for opening weekend releases which typically cost more to attend."
Spending lots of money doesn't justify a criminal act.
Its like saying 'its OK for me to steal a car because I spend lots of money on petrol'.
I appreciate that the analogy is not perfect as the petrol companies don't sell cars, but there are a lot of different companies in the media industry too.
Shhh... just this once, /. would prefer to believe that correlation equals causation, and one point makes a line.