14 DAY TRIAL // A study commissioned by the European Commission found that piracy has no real impact on sales, but the study never saw the light of day.
It’s usually considered that piracy hurts the sale of copyrighted materials, but that’s not really the case. Over the years, quite a few studies have reached the same conclusion, and that was piracy doesn’t have an effect on sales. It sounds strange, but that’s the truth.
Companies chose to ignore this information, and it’s easy to understand why. It sounds like the logical thing to imagine, but it’s not backed by science. Nevertheless, the European Commission wanted to know what is the effect of piracy on copyrighted material and ordered a study. The results were never made public.
No effect whatsoever
Just like all of the studies before it, the investigation made by the Dutch company Ecorys revealed the same thing, with a single exception. Recently released blockbusters might be affected somewhat. The study was delivered in 2015, and it remained buried until now. It’s not clear why that happened.
The information was revealed by Julia Reda, a member of the European Parliament. She wrote on her blog that the only reason she was seeing this study now was that she requested it. Otherwise, it would have remained buried for who knows how long.
“In general, the results do not show robust statistical evidence of displacement of sales by online copyright infringements. That does not necessarily mean that piracy has no effect but only that the statistical analysis does not prove with sufficient reliability that there is an effect. An exception is the displacement of recent top films. The results show a displacement rate of 40 percent which means that for every ten recent top films watched illegally, four fewer films are consumed legally,” is the conclusion of the study.
It’s a dry read, but you can check it out of yourself. Also, it has the most annoying name possible, which is “Estimated displacement rates of copyrighted content in the EU.” If you saw this document on a table somewhere, you wouldn’t have the urge to turn even one page.