The Washington Post’s Frank Ahrens has this article about a study on film piracy that claims that 38% of all movie piracy occurs on the Internet, with the rest coming from illegally copied DVDs. Financed by the movie industry and prepared by Repubican group Institute for Policy Innovation, the study will be released today by NBC Universal’s Bob Wright at a U.S. Chamber of Commerce lunch.
The study also seeks to produce a more comprehensive estimate of the dollars lost due to both physical and digital piracy. It applies new techniques to measure the potential ripple effect of not only lost sales but also lost jobs, worker earnings and tax revenue when films are pirated. Earlier estimates pegged the price tag of piracy at $6 billion per year, but the new study says that the true cost is $20.5 billion per year. Added to that is the thwarted creation of about 140,000 jobs and more than $800 million in lost tax revenue.
A counterpoint to these scary numbers if the fact that money saved on movies ends up going toward other items, so the bottom-line impact on the economy is not as severe as the motion picture industry suggests.
“In other words, let’s say people are forgoing paying for $6 billion in movies by downloading or consuming illegal goods but end up spending that $6 billion on iPods, computers and HDTV sets on which to watch the movies, which leads to $25 billion in job creation in the computer/software/consumer electronics field,” Jason Shultz, staff lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, wrote in an e-mail.
Cynthia Brumfield at 9:53 AM|Comments(0)
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