Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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.
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.