Megaupload May Have Helped Copyright Holders, Study Finds
The shutdown of Megaupload adversely affected movie box office earnings, according to a paper by European researchers European researchers Christian Peukert and Jörg Claussen.
The shutdown of Megaupload adversely affected movie box office earnings, according to a paper by European researchers Christian Peukert and Jörg Claussen.
The findings support the theory that pirating acts as free advertising for products, ultimately resulting in more paid use.
“Our counterintuitive finding may suggest support for the theoretical perspective of (social) network effects where file-sharing acts as a mechanism to spread information about a good from consumers with zero or low willingness to pay to users with high willingness to pay,” the authors conclude.
The negative impact on earnings was small enough, in some cases, to fall short of statistical significance.
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