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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.
Your first sentence is outside the scope of the study, so yeah, what?
Your second sentence is just "I don't believe you", so yeah, who gives a fuck?
The point of doing an empirical analysis is to look at actual evidence rather than your gut, dumbass.
The low quality camrips give you an idea if the movie is any good, much better than a trailer (which cherry picks the best bits)...
If the movie is good you can go see it and/or tell your friends good things about it..
If the movie is bad, you certainly won't be wasting any money to go see it and you will probably not recommend it to your friends either.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
most movies are not out in torrents before theatres at all. and most that are around the same time in theatres are Cam's. We have had a few brief periods over the years where some were leaked or stolen but that is a rarity
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.
That was my first thought, but TFA and even TFS show it's wrong. By comparing sales not with contemporaneous releases, but with releases during a time when TPB was down, the study rules out that explanation.
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...
I use Windows AND Linux, and I usually pay the minimum because I'm cheap and most bundle games suck anyway. I buy from Windows, so I'm a windows user, right? Those stats are skewed.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.
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.
No they know most of what they produce is crap and you will only watch it if you don't know that and that is what they are aiming for. If they made the movie with their own money out of there own pocket and had to rely then to make a profit without creative accounting they would be better.
Your'e all thinking it, I just said it for you
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 .