Closing pirate sites reduces box office Bashny.Net

The persecution of the file sharing that hosts pirated content really hurt the film industry revenues - the conclusion made by researchers at the business schools of Munich and Copenhagen. Economists have suggested that if the piracy actually hinders sales of films, after the closure of the world's largest file-sharing site Megaupload.com profits soar film distributors. But it was not so.
Early last year, the US government closed down Megaupload.com (the brainchild of Kim Dotcom), the share of which previously had 40% of global Internet traffic among similar resources and 4% of the daily traffic at all (if you believe the creators of the site). Taking abroad at the close of a site, the authors compared the theater box office (10 000 films in 50 countries) before and after the event. It turned out that after the disappearance of Megaupload.com charges have fallen by as much as 12%.





The effect, as it turned out, is not the same for films of all sizes. Profit from the most "large" paintings like "Harry Potter" or "Ice Age" and a somewhat improved, but it happened in countries where Megaupload.com and so was unpopular. But all the films "medium" and "low" value of lost at the box office.

Confident explanation that the researchers do not give, but the assumption is. Perhaps the point here is that the user A, a lover go to the cinema, decides whether to spend the money on the basis of information from the user B, a connoisseur of "malicious" resources. When the user B deprive favorite way to watch movies, the user A is automatically deprived of the recommendations and does not go to the cinema once again. As a result, the total profit falling film distributors.

The only pity is that local fighters against piracy is unlikely to take into account the findings of economists. Just think, study ...

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