Andre Yoskowitz
15 Jul 2014 22:00
Does movie piracy hurt sales and cost jobs? The MPAA and other trade groups would certainly have you believe that it does but at least on economist believes that notion is bunk.
Economist Koleman Strumpf, professor at the University of Kansas School of Business, released data and his conclusion based on data from 150 of the largest movies released between the years of 2003 and 2009. The data came via a "popular BitTorrent tracker" and revenue projections from the Hollywood Stock Exchange (HSX) to see what impact piracy really had on movies.
"There is no evidence in my empirical results of file-sharing having a significant impact on theatrical revenue," Strumpf says. "My best guess estimate is that file sharing reduced the first month box office by $200 million over 2003-2009, which is only three tenths of a percent of what movies actually earned. I am unable to reject the hypothesis that there is no impact at all of file-sharing on revenues."
Even more interestingly, releases that were leaked before their theatrical release actually saw boosts in box office revenue, with the leaks serving as promotion. Strumpf concludes: "One consistent result is that file-sharing arrivals shortly before the theatrical opening have a modest positive effect on box office revenue. One explanation is that such releases create greater awareness of the film. This is also the period of heaviest advertising."
While some may argue the figures could be skewed by other factors, the research is very precise and includes literally thousands of daily trends and observations.
The full paper is here and worth at least glancing at:
Using Markets to Measure the Impact of File Sharing on Movie Revenues Koleman Strumpf by torrentfreak