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EU Paid For Report That Said Piracy Isn't Harmful -- And Tried To Hide Findings (thenextweb.com)
According to Julia Reda's blog, the only Pirate in the EU Parliament, the European Commission in 2014 paid the Dutch consulting firm Ecorys 360,000 euros (about $428,000) to research the effect piracy had on sales of copyrighted content. The final report was finished in May 2015, but was never published because the report concluded that piracy isn't harmful. The Next Web reports: The 300-page report seems to suggest that there's no evidence that supports the idea that piracy has a negative effect on sales of copyrighted content (with some exceptions for recently released blockbusters). The report states: "In general, the results do not show robust statistical evidence of displacement of sales by online copyright infringements. That does not necessarily mean that piracy has no effect but only that the statistical analysis does not prove with sufficient reliability that there is an effect. An exception is the displacement of recent top films. The results show a displacement rate of 40 per cent which means that for every ten recent top films watched illegally, four fewer films are consumed legally."
On her blog, Julia Reda says that a report like this is fundamental to discussions about copyright policies -- where the general assumption is usually that piracy has a negative effect on rightsholders' revenues. She also criticizes the Commissions reluctance to publish the report and says it probably wouldn't have released it for several more years if it wasn't for the access to documents request she filed in July. As for why the Commission hadn't published the report earlier, Reda says: "all available evidence suggests that the Commission actively chose to ignore the study except for the part that suited their agenda: In an academic article published in 2016, two European Commission officials reported a link between lost sales for blockbusters and illegal downloads of those films. They failed to disclose, however, that the study this was based on also looked at music, ebooks and games, where it found no such connection. On the contrary, in the case of video games, the study found the opposite link, indicating a positive influence of illegal game downloads on legal sales. That demonstrates that the study wasn't forgotten by the Commission altogether..."
On her blog, Julia Reda says that a report like this is fundamental to discussions about copyright policies -- where the general assumption is usually that piracy has a negative effect on rightsholders' revenues. She also criticizes the Commissions reluctance to publish the report and says it probably wouldn't have released it for several more years if it wasn't for the access to documents request she filed in July. As for why the Commission hadn't published the report earlier, Reda says: "all available evidence suggests that the Commission actively chose to ignore the study except for the part that suited their agenda: In an academic article published in 2016, two European Commission officials reported a link between lost sales for blockbusters and illegal downloads of those films. They failed to disclose, however, that the study this was based on also looked at music, ebooks and games, where it found no such connection. On the contrary, in the case of video games, the study found the opposite link, indicating a positive influence of illegal game downloads on legal sales. That demonstrates that the study wasn't forgotten by the Commission altogether..."
When the study doesn't fit the narrative, just bury it! If that isn't bias, what is?
Piracy does and can hurt legal revenue, but nowhere near as much as many seem to think. A more interesting study might be: "What hurts legal revenue more- piracy, or DRM + region locking + overly high prices + time-locking + scarcity + poor legal choices to obtain content?" Care to wager which it is?
vs.
As we all know, absence of proof is not a proof of the opposite. Indeed, the quoted report explicitly says:
I would not blame anyone for not publishing a study that's so inconclusive...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
This is not even relevant. If the creator does not want you to use his creation for whatever reason — or even without reason — you should not use it. Same goes for whatever strings he chooses to attach to it. If you find his position wrong/ridiculous/racist/profiteering/whatever, your only morally-acceptable recourse is to not use it.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
When I was young I pirated Civilization and Wing Commander I from a friend. Then I bought every new release afterward of both series because I loved them. I even bought Crusader: No Remorse and Crusader: No Regret because of how much I loved Wing Commander. Origin System was just kicking ass in 1990s. I'm still waiting for Crusader 3: No Escape :(
How many people learned Photoshop because it was easy to pirate?
But I don't think the same applies to movies. I doubt there are a lot of people that pirated a movie and then bought the Blu-ray of that movie.
While what you said is correct that does not mean that the report has no value. They searched for evidence of harm and did not find any. This means that if there is any harm it is not visible in the places where they looked and so the report is useful in that the next search for harm clearly needs to look somewhere else. In addition, if piracy really does not cause any harm, then all such studies will show no evidence of harm and we need to see that in order to be able to conclude that in fact there might not be any harm being caused.
We use the same approach in physics when searching for evidence of new models. If we find nothing then we publish this result along with the areas where we looked and saw nothing. The next experiment then knows not to look there and to try a different approach that looks in a different area of the parameter space. If, after lots of searches, massive areas of parameter space are ruled out then at some point people start to think that the new model is probably not the way the universe works and theorists start to develop other ideas which is what is happening with something called Supersymmetry now which was once regarded as the most promising model to explain Dark Matter. None of this would happen if nobody published their unsuccessful searches.
I bought 3 Lord Of The Rings extended versions disks sets at a pawn show for $5 each. Pissed me off as another pawn shop had them for $3. The movie studios lots huge on my sale today.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
And where are you living?
In many countries $10 is a lot of money, a significant portion of their monthly income.
People don't have $4000 computers, they have a computer that might have been worth $4000 10 years ago.
Because of the older hardware, they will be playing older games, usually cracked ones.
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You're completely and utterly wrong. Your argument literally makes no sense.
Whether something is viewed or not makes no difference to whether it was a lost sale. I could watch or not watch a pirated film that I was never going to buy and I would still never have bought it.
The premise of your argument is that if someone was to watch something then they would ALWAYS have bought it, but that's just obviously not true.
It's only a lost sale if the act of pirating content led to someone not making the purchase where they would have otherwise, but sometimes people's value calculation is as simple as "I'd watch this for free, but it's not worth paying for" - in that case they'd consume a pirated copy, but would never have paid for it because their calculation of whether it's worth watching falls to "No" as soon as a cost is attached to doing so.
I'm sorry that you don't like the conclusion of this study, but that's just the way the world works. Sometimes reality is different to how we would like things to be.
"And that's exactly what wrong with YOUR view. If you consumed the content you should have payed for it, it's just like a shopowner who got stuff lifted, he has to write off the stolen good as the shoplifter has 'consumed the content'."
But that's a different thing "Should have paid for it" is NOT the same as "Would have paid for it". It's a simple concept, and morality is subjective.
Some might reasonably argue that not paying money to organisations that have been willing to pay millions to lobby governments to eliminate key planks of human rights legislation such as the right to fair trial, or the presumption of innocence until proven guilty, or to push internet censorship, and spying on consumers computers, is an incredibly moral decision to make, but each to their own.