From above:

'The Dutch firm Ecory was commissioned to research the impact of piracy for several months, eventually submitting a 304-page report to the EU in May 2015. The report concluded that: “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.”

The report found that illegal downloads and streams can actually boost legal sales of games, according to the report. The only negative link the report found was with major blockbuster 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.”'

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computerdork 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

Very interesting report, and am not discounting it, but another factor is that maybe the pricing affect is already baked in from years of piracy. For example, back in the early 2000's, when P2P file sharing was being used to download music, then to compete, the music industry had to resort to iTunes store, which allowed users to buy just one song for a dollar, instead of the entire album (and then later on, to music streaming services). The damage was done decades ago, and eventhough P2P file sharing isn't big today, it's effects are still with us today (no music executive is going to go back to forcing people to buy an entire album to get just one or two songs).

But, maybe this report is taking this into account too??

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Wowfunhappy 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Unfortunately, absence of evidence ≠ evidence of absence.

I obviously don't have time to read a 300 page report—I wish I did—but the conclusion says:

> With regard to total effects of online copyright infringements on legal transactions, there are no robustly significant findings. The strongest finding applies to films/TV-series, where a displacement rate of 27 with an error margin of roughly 36 per cent (two times the standard error) only indicates that online copyright infringements are much more likely to have negative than positive effects.

The conclusion goes on to discuss each type of media. Here's the section on games:

> For games, the estimated effect of illegal online transactions on sales is positive because only free games are more likely displaced by online copyright infringements than not. The overall estimate is 24 extra legal transactions (including free games) for every 100 online copyright infringements, with an error margin of 45 per cent (two times the standard error). The positive effect of illegal downloads and streams on the sales of games may be explained by players getting hooked and then paying to play the game with extra bonuses or at extra levels.

If this is what was meant by "illegal downloads and streams can actually boost legal sales of games" (and it's possible they're talking about something else which isn't in the conclusion), I don't find that convincing. It's within the margin of error and includes free transactions.

Moreover, I firmly believe that we are never going to have good data on this! You're trying to measure two things that are virtually impossible to measure with any accuracy: (1) how much piracy is taking place, and (2) what would sales have been without the piracy.

(I've edited my comment to actually quote the paper)

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jdietrich 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

>Unfortunately, absence of evidence ≠ evidence of absence.

A study showing no statistically significant effect is not an absence of evidence, it is evidence of the absence of a large effect.

	▲	Wowfunhappy 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		Or it's evidence that the effect can't be measured, which is what I'm trying to say. I honestly don't understand how you would even attempt to measure something like this. There's no counterfactual. How can you possibly know what sales would have been without piracy? This study appears to be relying on survey results. That seems questionable to me, because no one wants to admit "I totally would buy more books if piracy wasn't an option, but I choose piracy because I like having money and I think authors deserve to starve." I'm exaggerating for the sake of effect, but really, how can anyone ever know what they would have purchased under different circumstances? It's human nature to self-rationalize your actions. And yet, despite this, the study still didn't find statistically significant results! Maybe if one country ever manages to truly cut off access to piracy websites, and there's another economically and sociologically similar country where piracy remains readily available, it will be possible to get some valid data on this question. I mostly hope this doesn't ever happen, because while I'm not a fan of piracy, I am a fan of the free internet!

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jibal 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Absence of proof is not proof of absence, and Sagan should have said that.

Absence of evidence is evidence of absence if evidence was sought and not found, and much of science is based on this. Or if evidence of presence should be expected ... consider for example the absence of evidence of an elephant in your living room.

This saying should die along with "you can't prove a negative"--Euclid proved that there is no greatest prime over 2000 years ago. What can't be proven is a universal empirical--positive or negative--such as "no raven is white" or "all ravens are black".

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griffzhowl 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> The report found a lack of evidence that piracy displaces sales.

This isn't true though, as they conclude a 40% displacement in blockbuster movie sales. You would need a better analysis of their methodology to dismiss their other conclusions

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Wowfunhappy 5 days ago | parent [-]

As far as I can tell from the conclusion, everything was within the margin of error, so my assumption is that it's random noise. If there's a place in the paper that says otherwise, please let me know what page its on. If I'm misreading the results, please let me know that as well.

	▲	griffzhowl 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		The 40% figure seems to come from section 8.2, p.152, which the authors describe as "robust". However, having seen the report now, this section on top films seems to use a different methodology to that used for books, so it's not really comparable, and in general I wouldn't put much confidence in these results anyway.