SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Last week, Minister of the European Parliament, Julia Reda, unearthed a well-hidden 2014 study financed by the European Commission entitled Estimating displacement rates of copyrighted content in the EU [warning: PDF] that studied the effects of copyright infringement on sales. The study cost 360,000 EUR to carry out and although it was ready in 2015, it was only made public last week when Reda was able to get ahold of a copy.
The study's conclusion was that with the exception of recently released blockbusters, there is no evidence to support the idea that online copyright infringement displaces sales. This conclusion is consistent with previous studies, and raises the following question: "Why did the Commission, after having spent a significant amount of money on it, choose not to publish this study for almost two years?"
- The blog post by MEP Julia Reda, Pirate Party, Germany: What the Commission found out about copyright infringement but 'forgot' to tell us.
- TorrentFreak: EU Piracy Report Suppression Raises Questions Over Transparency
- RT: Piracy doesn't impact sales: Pirate Party MEP unearths €360k European Commission report
- Newsweek: Inside the Piracy Study the European Union Hid: Illegal Downloads Don't Harm Overall Sales
- TheNextWeb: iEU paid for a report that concluded piracy isn't harmful — and tried to hide the findings
- The Inquirer: The EC accused of burying a report that found that piracy isn't that costly
- HotHardware: EU Study Hidden For Two Years Concluded That Digital Piracy Doesn't Affect Sales
- ... and many others ...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by jcross on Monday September 25 2017, @08:34PM (2 children)
I wonder if the intention of the moneyed interests is actually to make the back-catalog of media less accessible. After all it very well might compete with current blockbusters in a significant way. I'm guessing the analysis tested whether pirated copies of, say, "The Godfather" compete with legit sales of the "The Godfather", and the answer was no. But watching "The Godfather" by any means will be three hours you're not spending watching the latest blockbuster. Check out the following decision tree one might follow when looking for something to watch:
1. I heard this classic film was good, or I saw it a long time ago and all I remember is I loved it.
2. Is it included with my NetHuluPrimeazon subscription? Nope.
3. Is it cheap/easy to stream it? Nope.
4. Is it on "The Pirate Bay" with a decent number of seeders?
5. Yep => Download and watch the film.
6. Nope => Oh well, guess I'll watch this new shit on NetHuluPrimeazon.
The media companies can control steps 2 and 3 by keeping artificially high prices on their back catalog, but they can't control steps 4 and 5 without getting government to help. If they can make the minimum cost of steps 2-5 high enough, they can force us to jump straight to step 6. The deeper the pile of excellent older content grows, the more their strategy makes sense.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Monday September 25 2017, @09:59PM (1 child)
This seems to be my take on what the study showed - (not that I'm impressed with the methodology). They never measured any of this directly, but were able to come close to your scenario.
For current content, people are often content to just wait. First run movies of today may well be free on TV with in 8 months or less. Ir it will be included free in NetHuluPrimeazon in less time. I know I would mostly just wait as pay movie fees or even bother downloading. There's a good chance I'll forget about it in the mean time. (Saving both time and money)
For GOOD classics, They come around once every year on free-ish TV. For crap classics - who cares.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Tuesday September 26 2017, @03:48PM
Yep. I haven't been to a movie theater in decades now. And I don't watch broadcast television, either. I just buy the blueray (used to be, the dvd.) That way I can be assured that I will at least have the movie for some number of years, and I won't need an Internet connection to play it, either.
I don't get to see whatever it is first, or early, but frankly, I don't care. I get to see it anyway.