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: 2) by frojack on Monday September 25 2017, @08:54PM (2 children)
Maybe you missed the part that said:
This pretty much indicates that this is not an American fault as much as a human fault.
Further, people are pretty good about admitting previous views were flawed, given proper evidence, unless there is a financial (or other) penalty involved.
There's often an argument about what constitutes proper evidence, especially with low budget** government studies (and this one was clearly low-budget).
It was clear from the get-go that the powers that be ran away from this study the minute they saw the first draft, forcing the inclusion of a disclaimer right up front:
With that ringing endorsement, its no wonder nobody wanted to be seen pushing this study out the door, especially in 2015. [theguardian.com] Who wants to piss off big donation sources with weak evidence in the run up to a major election cycle?
So low quality evidence AND financial penalties!! This thing had the kiss of death on it from the start.
**How low budget was it?
7 writers wrote (and translated) a summary of results of an online questionnaire in September and October 2014
among the internet using population with close to 30,000 self-selected respondents (5,000 for each of the six countries).
Email interviews were apparently done with some industry sources as well as a automated literature scan.
All this for 360,000 EUR, which comes out to about 50,000 EUR per analyst, which is less than half what your typical data analyst in the EU earns per year. [paysa.com]
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 25 2017, @09:31PM (1 child)
> Further, people are pretty good about admitting previous views were flawed, given proper evidence, unless there is a financial (or other) penalty involved.
Flat-Earthers still exist.
(Score: 3, Funny) by frojack on Monday September 25 2017, @10:02PM
And hold meetings, and drink beer and go out to dinner.
Other clubs wear silly hats and drink beer and go out to dinner and hold meetings.
Still others watch football (any variety) and eat pizza and drink bear and hold flags.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.