Thanks to a new academic paper from researchers at the University of Minnesota and Wellesley College, the world has more evidence that piracy via torrents has no real effect on the U.S. movie box office.
Internationally, however, downloads and revenue were more correlated, and the researchers blamed delayed release windows for that phenomenon.
In their paper, called ‘Reel Piracy: The Effect of Online Film Piracy on International Box Office Sales,” the researchers concluded that “the longer it takes before a movie is released internationally, the more box office revenues are impacted through piracy,” says TF.
Continues the report: “We find that longer release windows are associated with decreased box office returns, even after controlling for film and country fixed effects. This relationship is much stronger in contexts where piracy is more prevalent: after BitTorrent?s adoption and in heavily pirated genres.”
“Our findings indicate that, as a lower bound, international box office returns in our sample were at least 7 percent lower than they would have been in the absence of pre-release piracy.”
Unlike the MPAA’s claims, however, the report says piracy has no profound effect on the U.S. box office
Result for: pirate
Google has pulled the popular Grooveshark music app from the Android Market, following accusations from the record labels that the service facilitates piracy.
When asked for comment, Google only said that it “removes apps from Android Market that violate [its] terms of service.”
Apple removed the app from the iOS store last August after it received a complaint from the Universal Music Group.
Google is currently in the midst of speaking before the House Judiciary Committee, which is investigating whether the search giant aids piracy by offering AdSense to all sites, including those that offer pirated movies, music and more.
Grooveshark hosts over 6 million tracks.
Result for: pirate
Spanish researchers at the Carlos III University of Madrid have posted interesting results today in regards to filesharing.
The researchers say a tiny fraction of users are responsible for over two-thirds of all content published, and over three-fourths of all downloads.
Using the names, ISPs and IP addresses of uploaders and downloaders to 55,000 torrents published to Mininova and the Pirate Bay, the group concluded that just 100 users were behind 67 percent of the uploads and 75 percent of the downloads.
