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Pirate Bay 'Promotion' Increases Post-Release Box Office Revenue, Study Shows (torrentfreak.com)
New research suggests that post-release movie piracy through The Pirate Bay is linked to increased box revenue. The counter-intuitive finding is driven by word-of-mouth promotion. The effect, which does not apply to pre-release piracy, results in rather interesting policy implications. From a report: Hollywood's general logic is that piracy hurts box office revenues. However, there is also some evidence of positive effects through word-of-mouth promotion. Using the Pirate Bay downtime as a natural experiment, the researchers tried to find out if thatâ(TM)s indeed the case. "It is natural to focus on the downsides of piracy for movie makers -- and these can be significant -- but many will be interested to note that piracy can have an upside," Professor Shijie Lu informs TF. Through their research, Lu and his co-authors Xin Wang and Neil Bendle, investigated the effect of this "buzz" in detail. They published their findings in a paper titled "Does Piracy Create Online Word-of-Mouth? An Empirical Analysis in Movie Industry."
Movies shared on The Pirate Bay are the main focus. The researchers use the Pirate Bay downtime following the 2014 raid to measure its impact on word-of-mouth promotion and box office revenues. Based on a sample of hundreds of movie torrents and data from most popular movie review sites, Lu and his colleagues estimated this effect. Their results are rather intriguing. First off, the findings clearly show a negative effect of pre-release piracy on box office sales. This result is consistent with previous studies and an increase in "buzz" doesn't do enough to offset the negative effect. [...] This changes when the researchers look at post-release piracy. That is, piracy which occurs after a film has premiered at the box office. In this case, there's a positive effect on box office revenue through an increase in word-of-mouth promotion (WOM).
Movies shared on The Pirate Bay are the main focus. The researchers use the Pirate Bay downtime following the 2014 raid to measure its impact on word-of-mouth promotion and box office revenues. Based on a sample of hundreds of movie torrents and data from most popular movie review sites, Lu and his colleagues estimated this effect. Their results are rather intriguing. First off, the findings clearly show a negative effect of pre-release piracy on box office sales. This result is consistent with previous studies and an increase in "buzz" doesn't do enough to offset the negative effect. [...] This changes when the researchers look at post-release piracy. That is, piracy which occurs after a film has premiered at the box office. In this case, there's a positive effect on box office revenue through an increase in word-of-mouth promotion (WOM).
We (and they, too) have known this for years, if not for decades.
I'll swab your poop deck, matey. Yarrrrr!
The majority of piracy doesn't happen while in the boxoffice timeframe, it happens at the web/DVD/Bluray release. I find it hard to believe the very low quality crap that is published as screeners and Cam's has any bearing on boxoffice sales one way or the other.
Well, you have no idea what you're talking about and are blathering out of your opine hole, so who asked you? Multi-million dollar movies are out in torrents before they're even out in theaters, many times. Clue in or don't but STFU meanwhile.
This is true. If it was not for piracy induced word of mouth, I would have never seen the brilliant piece of cinematic work known as Serenity (2019).
( Director: Steven Knight | Writer: Steven Knight | Stars: Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Diane Lane )
Buddy pirated it, and watched this slow motion train wreck. It was so good she recommended the movie to a few people. Guess what, most of us will be buying the DVD because this movie is so bad its awesome.
You should get drunk|high and watch it, its awesome. Then buy the DVD.
https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/a26091448/matthew-mcconaughey-serenity-movie-review/
[...] The result is Serenity, and Serenity is fucking crazy. I would say “spoiler alert” here, but the movie pretty much comes at you pre-spoiled [...]
Iron Maiden capitalizes heavily on word of mouth advertising through reasonable copying. It's not keen on abuse of that, word is they send Eddie to sort out miscreants, but it's absolutely fine with fans doing all the promotional work for them.
That's a decent balance and seems entirely justified by this report, even though it's a different market. Same effect applies.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Not sure why this is even news. /. even reported about this back in 2011
-- Gabe Newell, CEO of Valve:
If people can't legally buy a copy due to bullshit artificial region locking they will resort to piracy.
If move studios want to make a dent in piracy then maybe try releasing the BluRay, DVD, digital copies the SAME DAY as the when it is released in theaters instead of making people wait. Some have the patience; those that don't will pirate.
This is a dubious conclusion intended to pretend that piracy isn't harmful. It's much more likely that increased piracy is due to the greater popularity and hype for the film, rather than the other way around as this study argues. Causation isn't established, and the opposite direction makes far more sense in this instance. Why would someone pay to see a film after pirating it online? That makes little sense. But it makes perfect sense that more anticipated and more popular films are going to be pirated at a greater rate.
Rights-holders cannot overcome the sense of being cheated when people duplicate copyrighted data, even if it does result in an overall net increase in sales.
And, there is a concept of the value of the intellectual property, which is important for putting a number on a right-holder's portfolio. Even if sharing increases sales, it also has the effect of reducing the perceived value, and hence making that net worth drop. This matters a lot to people who may consider selling those rights. By being draconian about copyright law, they (attempt to) prop up those numbers.
More than create buzz as this paper shows, the great benefit of piracy is the countervailing pricing power it imposes. Piracy helps in a better price discovery for "legal" content. https://news.iu.edu/stories/20...
Charge for intellectual property just like we do for real property. When the property costs more in taxes because it is priced by the owner higher, suddenly the owner doesn't think the property so des res any more.
At least until it comes to giving it up therefore writing it off as a tax loss.
The facts of evolution and the round earth are questionable and are questioned by thousands every day. Yet somehow reality still shows evolution happening and the earth is round. Likewise reality doesn't have to comport with your questions.
Since there's no price controls and no haggling and the product is by definition a monopoly, the only two ways people can negotiate a price is to either pirate or buy it when the price drops to what they think acceptable.
How many people wait for a steam sale to buy a game? Everyone and for the vast majority of their games.
They may also not know if the movie is for them or not and, having pirated the product and found out they do like it, they buy it.
Why do you think the steam refunds policy is so liked?
Your conclusions are dubious and show only that you did not, nor want to even, try to think of why, you WANT it to be piracy==bad, no matter what and so not look for anything about why it might not be.
No, no you are not. You're an ignorant twat proclaiming you are all pirates because you need piracy to be bad, always and forever.
For all the claims that linux users are too cheap to but their software, a case with multiplatform purchasing on "pay what you feel like" showed that linux users spent more on average than either Mac or Windows users, and Windows users spent the least on average.
The rate of paying anything was around 20% for both. YOU are the cheapass windows user who didn't pay proclaiming that therefore nobody with windows pays.
You're just an ignorant asshat without a name. The article shows data from named people. So why should anyone give a shit about what you find hard to believe, including reality?
I generally start with the assertion that most films are shit (and we Brits have the transatlantic bullshit filter, so we don't even seen the utter drivvel you yanks have to deal with). You see the trailers on TV which look great, you wait until someone you know and trust sees it and then ask them. If they like it, you maybe wait for another recommendation before you bother to make any sort of time to go see it yourself.
Or else, you wait until it drops out of the cinema and on to DVD/Amazon or whatever. You go around the recommendation loop again. If nothing comes up, then you wait for it to appear on Netflix, or terrestrial TV. If it makes it to TV then it's probably got some good qualities, although by now will be several years old.
So yeah - a few more eyeballs on a (good) film could absolutely cause me to go see it sooner (ie. pay more for it than they'd get from me as it ages). The same shit with a crap film means less people go see it, which means it can drop out of the cinema sooner to make way for something better.
You'd think the 'big media' companies would have someone with half a brain that can understand this stuff, wouldn't you? They probably do, but the ones without half a brain are spending all their restricted brain power telling them to be quiet.
The reason why I resort to piracy is that I don't want to own a physical copy of the movie (as I almost never watch a movie more than once) and most of times I can't find it in a streaming service that:
1) makes the title available in my country;
2) is not subscription based (and some subscription services don't even give access to its library to non-subscribers to see what they have available);
3) has a reasonable price, preferably in SD (HD is only available on "selected devices", a lingo that exclude my GNU/Linux box -- I have an unrooted Android, but what's the point of watching something in HD on a 5.5" screen?) -- I won't pay as much to watch a movie online as I'd pay to watch it in the theater -- that is not reasonable;
4) does not release the title only with a "buying" option, which I don't want because not only I don't intend to watch the movie more than once, but after "buying" it, it will not belong to me, but will be available to me in the cloud for as long as the service continues to exist, which is not ownership.
When faced with situations 3) or 4), I'll usually wait to conditions to change or prices to drop, for a while. I never look for a pirated movie while it is on the cinemas -- if it is not worth going to the cinema to watch it, I wait until it's available on streaming.
Linux is for people who don't mind RTFM.
In what way is this counter intuitive or mysterious?
Anyone that has seen the rise of Photoshop k is exactly why it became popular.
Metallica used to encourage their fans to record and bootleg their concerts right up until napster, but if not for that attitude early on in their carrier they may not have been as popular.
thats probably why still the hostility, also, the leaks .
Once again msmash insults everyone with the assertion that this is counterintuitive. It is only counter to the sick twisted thinking that comes out of the exec meetings of well established industries. That buzz matters has been known well before digital sharing. The old adage is that there is no bad publicity.
Makes sense to me, why would anyone want to stump up with real cash to watch a movie, when all you know about it is the marketing hype. And the actual movie never lives up to the hype. Another alternative may be setting realistic expectations in the marketing.