Reel Piracy: The Effect of Online Film Piracy on International Box Office Sales
...from the abstract:
"[...] With the growth in movie piracy since the appearance of BitTorrent in 2003, films have become available through illegal piracy immediately after release in the US, while they are not available for legal viewing abroad until their foreign premieres in each country. We make use of this variation in international release lags to ask whether longer lags - which facilitate more local pre-release piracy - depress theatrical box office receipts, particularly after the widespread adoption of BitTorrent. We find that longer release windows are associated with decreased box office returns, even after controlling for film and country fixed effects. [...] By contrast, we do not see evidence of elevated sales displacement in US box office revenue following the adoption of BitTorrent, and we suggest that delayed legal availability of the content abroad may drive the losses to piracy."
(oder bei heise.de:
"Laut einer Studie zweier US-Forscher hat die Einführung von BitTorrent keinen statistisch nachweisbaren Rückgang der US-Kinoeinnahmen verursacht. Anders die Lage in anderen Ländern: Je länger das Publikum auf einen Film warten muss, desto weniger Tickets werden verkauft. [...]")
...who would have thought? *strikes dramatic pose*
Really, really interesting. Sadly the data their using/comparing is a bit dated (2003 - 2006) - with the way internet access has gotten better (and content sharing over the internet has increased - I assume), it would be interesting to see how the current situation is. But still.
"[...] With the growth in movie piracy since the appearance of BitTorrent in 2003, films have become available through illegal piracy immediately after release in the US, while they are not available for legal viewing abroad until their foreign premieres in each country. We make use of this variation in international release lags to ask whether longer lags - which facilitate more local pre-release piracy - depress theatrical box office receipts, particularly after the widespread adoption of BitTorrent. We find that longer release windows are associated with decreased box office returns, even after controlling for film and country fixed effects. [...] By contrast, we do not see evidence of elevated sales displacement in US box office revenue following the adoption of BitTorrent, and we suggest that delayed legal availability of the content abroad may drive the losses to piracy."
(oder bei heise.de:
"Laut einer Studie zweier US-Forscher hat die Einführung von BitTorrent keinen statistisch nachweisbaren Rückgang der US-Kinoeinnahmen verursacht. Anders die Lage in anderen Ländern: Je länger das Publikum auf einen Film warten muss, desto weniger Tickets werden verkauft. [...]")
...who would have thought? *strikes dramatic pose*
Really, really interesting. Sadly the data their using/comparing is a bit dated (2003 - 2006) - with the way internet access has gotten better (and content sharing over the internet has increased - I assume), it would be interesting to see how the current situation is. But still.