EU Piracy Report Suppression Raises Questions Over Transparency

[jagdtigger]

https://torrentfreak.com/eu-piracy-report-suppression-raises-questions-transparency-170922/

 

It seems the EU commissioned a study back in January 2014 regarding online piracy, but they put it away into the deepest drawer and its only surfaced because of a Member of the European Parliament, Julia Reda's persistence.

 

Quote

Quite clearly, the EU Commission wanted to find out the answer to this potential multi-billion dollar question when it made the decision to invest a staggering 360,000 euros in a dedicated study back in January 2014.

With a final title of ‘Estimating displacement rates of copyrighted content in the EU’, the completed study is an intimidating 307 pages deep. Shockingly, until this week, few people even knew it existed because, for reasons unknown, the EU Commission decided not to release it.

 

Quote

The study uses data from 2014 and covers four broad types of content: music,
audio-visual material, books and videogames. Unlike other reports, the study also considered live attendances of music and cinema visits in the key regions of Germany, UK, Spain, France, Poland and Sweden.

On average, 51% of adults and 72% of minors in the EU were found to have illegally downloaded or streamed any form of creative content, with Poland and Spain coming out as the worst offenders. However, here’s the kicker.

 

“In general, the results do not show robust statistical evidence of displacement of sales by online copyright infringements,” the study notes.

 

“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.”

 

For a study commissioned by the EU with huge sums of public money, this is a potentially damaging conclusion, not least for the countless industry bodies that lobby day in, day out, for tougher copyright law based on the “fact” that piracy is damaging to sales.

(The link for the whooping 307 page long study is at the end of the article.)

 

Well-well, no wonder the EU(/media industry) was keeping quiet about this... Hopefully this disclosure will put a halt on the media industry's rampage. It is truly disgusting how they screwing over customers under the pretense of combating piracy.

 

(If there is an issue i wont be able to fix it until tonight, im working until 22:00.)

[Lurick]

But their record breaking sales year over year could have been even more record breaking year over year without piracy!

[Notional]

Awesome report. Awesome parliament member. Extremely worrisome how this report has been buried. Begs the question how many reports have been buried.

[Alariel]

I think there were leaks about this back then, but I might be mistaken, but great that the entire thing finally sees some daylight, it's obviously long overdue.

[VicBar]

This is quite interesting.. The fact that statistical analysis can't prove that piracy has a negetive effect on sales is pretty damn compelling. Especially through such an expensive, official and complete study..

[PlayStation 2]

They had to push their agenda, and when their retarded agenda failed, they swept it under the rug.

Welcome to the European Union, guys.

[Sauron]

We've been saying this for decades, it's nice to finally have solid proof, even if lobby slaves may not like it. I wonder how all those people relentlessly defending DRM will react.

[Sauron]

2 hours ago, Alariel said:

I think there were leaks about this back then, but I might be mistaken, but great that the entire thing finally sees some daylight, it's obviously long overdue.

Leaks or not this conclusion was obvious to anyone willing to look.

[Alariel]

1 minute ago, Sauron said:

Leaks or not this conclusion was obvious to anyone willing to look.

True. I even know some musicians who swear they sold better after people started "pirating" them.

[Sauron]

4 minutes ago, Alariel said:

True. I even know some musicians who swear they sold better after people started "pirating" them.

Microsoft has been known to actually help the spread of pirated windows copies in the 90s to boost its marketshare.

[Alariel]

Just now, Sauron said:

Microsoft has been known to actually help the spread of pirated windows copies in the 90s to boost its marketshare.

That I didn't know. That's interesting.

[Unhelpful]

1 minute ago, Sauron said:

Microsoft has been known to actually help the spread of pirated windows copies in the 90s to boost its marketshare.

In the 90s? Didn't they allow pirated versions to upgrade free to legitimate Windows 10 during the free upgrade timeframe? The way I see it that was a very intelligent market grab, if I'm remembering how it went correctly.

[Sauron]

4 minutes ago, JoeyDM said:

In the 90s? Didn't they allow pirated versions to upgrade free to legitimate Windows 10 during the free upgrade timeframe? The way I see it that was a very intelligent market grab, if I'm remembering how it went correctly.

That too, but technically they didn't spread the pirated copies (AS FAR AS I KNOW). And to be fair, if they could easily distinguish a pirated copy from a legitimate one it wouldn't be much of a crack, would it? It would get deactivated in the first 5 seconds it is online. But yes, they have been particularly lenient towards piracy when it suited their marketshare grabbing schemes.

[ChineseChef]

4 hours ago, Sauron said:

That too, but technically they didn't spread the pirated copies (AS FAR AS I KNOW). And to be fair, if they could easily distinguish a pirated copy from a legitimate one it wouldn't be much of a crack, would it? It would get deactivated in the first 5 seconds it is online. But yes, they have been particularly lenient towards piracy when it suited their marketshare grabbing schemes.

MS has been very much in the Willy Wonka method of stopping pirating.  Lots of "no, don't, stop", but no action.  They know it is better for them to let people pirate the software, since that will make the software more common place, making people more used to it, thus more likely to buy it, thus businesses will buy it so they don't have to train their people as much.  MS just has to put in enough effort so they can protect their product rights in the legal world.

[Zodiark1593]

7 minutes ago, ChineseChef said:

MS has been very much in the Willy Wonka method of stopping pirating.  Lots of "no, don't, stop", but no action.  They know it is better for them to let people pirate the software, since that will make the software more common place, making people more used to it, thus more likely to buy it, thus businesses will buy it so they don't have to train their people as much.  MS just has to put in enough effort so they can protect their product rights in the legal world.

The transparent activate windows watermark isn't exactly attention grabbing either, with easy workarounds for the theme restrictions.

[NowThatsDamp]

8 hours ago, Notional said:

Awesome report. Awesome parliament member. Extremely worrisome how this report has been buried. Begs the question how many reports have been buried.

If the report was buried, why are we looking at it right now?

The report itself seems more or less legitimate, however the phrase "Buried by the EU" sounds more like sensationalist click bait to me than accurate reporting, especially since nobody seems to be producing any evidence of this supposed "Burying"...

In addition to that, the EU has no real motive to hide something like this. They don't gain money by fighting piracy, they lose money.

A response to that might be "Well the media industry used it's influence to get the EU to hide the report".

And that's fine... Except the media industry doesn't want to hide the report either, because those companies have to spend millions of dollars a year on fighting such things. Any reason they can come up with to not spend that money is good enough for them. It's not like media companies track down and arrest pirates for sport.

 

Also, the reporting on the study uses a tone that suggests "Oh well the media companies are big assholes who just like to "Screw over" pirates (Even though what they are doing is vastly illegal, therefore to say they are getting "Screwed over" is.. well... kind of inaccurate) for fun and they want to keep doing it because they're evil so they buried this report. Corruption! Lies!" blah blah blah.

Except again, that's quite inaccurate. This is certainly not the first report of it's kind, just the first governmental report. Individual media companies have all already done this research internally, and come to the same conclusions; Blockbusters get hurt by ~5%. Which is HUGE. The average blockbuster movie only nets 15 million dollars after roughly 400m in production costs, meaning 5% loss of sales equates to ~ 21m off your net profit (415m * 0.05).

 

This means that piracy cuts the net profit of the average blockbuster film in half.

 

You would be fighting piracy to the bitter end for a doubling of your profit also.

 

Here, what we really have, is another vast failure of the media to accurately portray events. Instead, they resorted to cherry picking and white lies to produce a click bait article that would stir up the common people too ignorant to see through the bullshit. And everyone is falling for it.

 

[vanished]

Goes to show that they're well aware of this and therefore that the continued push for more and more DRM on everything is not for the reasons they claim (combating piracy).

[Notional]

Just now, NowThatsDamp said:

If the report was buried, why are we looking at it right now?

The report itself seems more or less legitimate, however the phrase "Buried by the EU" sounds more like sensationalist click bait to me than accurate reporting, especially since nobody seems to be producing any evidence of this supposed "Burying"...

1. It was not published publicly like all other reports by the EU like it's supposed to.

2. When she asked for it she was stonewalled.

[PocketNerd]

There's really two categories of people who pirate.

1) They pirate while never intending to have bought the product anyway

and

2) They want to at least try it before they buy it

Both categories can (or do) result in there never having been a real sale to begin with. And in the case of category #2, even if they did buy it first, they may eventually return it. Thus creating no net sale.

[Cyracus]

8 hours ago, Lurick said:

But their record breaking sales year over year could have been even more record breaking year over year without piracy!

Nope, people who couldn't, or wouldn't, pay for games would've found something else

[ChineseChef]

1 minute ago, PocketNerd said:

-snip-

There is also a 3rd.  The "I would buy it, but there is no legal way to buy it in my area"

[LAwLz]

3 minutes ago, NowThatsDamp said:

If the report was buried, why are we looking at it right now?

The report itself seems more or less legitimate, however the phrase "Buried by the EU" sounds more like sensationalist click bait to me than accurate reporting, especially since nobody seems to be producing any evidence of this supposed "Burying"...

Because it was not published when it was suppose to, and then kept a secret. It was finished in 2015 and it was only now (2 and a half years later) posted because one member of Parliament happened to hear about the study being conducted and then filed a request for access to the final report.

 

7 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

Goes to show that they're well aware of this and therefore that the continued push for more and more DRM on everything is not for the reasons they claim (combating piracy).

I found an interesting post regarding DRM which actually explains why publishers push for DRM despite all evidence pointing towards piracy not having a negative effect on sales. Basically, it's not about preventing piracy. It's about controlling others.

(Fun fact, it's written by Hixie, Google employee who is the author and editor of the HTML5 specifications, among other things)

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Discussions about DRM often land on the fundamental problem with DRM: that it doesn't work, or worse, that it is in fact mathematically impossible to make it work. The argument goes as follows:

1. The purpose of DRM is to prevent people from copying content while allowing people to view that content,
2. You can't hide something from someone while showing it to them,
3. And in any case widespread copyright violations (e.g. movies on file sharing sites) often come from sources that aren't encrypted in the first place, e.g. leaks from studios.

It turns out that this argument is fundamentally flawed. Usually the arguments from pro-DRM people are that #2 and #3 are false. But no, those are true. The problem is #1 is false.

The purpose of DRM is not to prevent copyright violations.
The purpose of DRM is to give content providers leverage against creators of playback devices.

[...]

Arguing that DRM doesn't work is, it turns out, missing the point. DRM is working really well in the video and book space. Sure, the DRM systems have all been broken, but that doesn't matter to the DRM proponents. Licensed DVD players still enforce the restrictions. Mass market providers can't create unlicensed DVD players, so they remain a black or gray market curiosity. DRM failed in the music space not because DRM is doomed, but because the content providers sold their digital content without DRM, and thus enabled all kinds of players they didn't expect (such as "MP3" players). Had CDs been encrypted, iPods would not have been able to read their content, because the content providers would have been able to use their DRM contracts as leverage to prevent it.

 

DRM's purpose is to give content providers control over software and hardware providers, and it is satisfying that purpose well.

 

[Sauron]

57 minutes ago, ChineseChef said:

MS has been very much in the Willy Wonka method of stopping pirating

I must say, I love this comparison

[NowThatsDamp]

26 minutes ago, Notional said:

1. It was not published publicly like all other reports by the EU like it's supposed to.

2. When she asked for it she was stonewalled.

Okay I know this news company said that, but is there any actual evidence of this blocking?

[Notional]

1 minute ago, NowThatsDamp said:

Okay I know this news company said that, but is there any actual evidence of this blocking?

There's a link in OP's post straight to the parliamentarians eu page, where she explains the issues. However, whether or not you believe that to be true, the fact still remains that the report was not published, which is not normal for EU reports.