MPAA is currently taking issue with the recent research which claimed that the closure of MegaUpload has negative effect on some movies’ box-office revenues.
The researchers at the Munich School of Management and the Copenhagen Business School have published a summary saying that the shutdown of the cyberlocker this January had hurt box-office revenues of some movies, especially independent projects which might benefit from the exposure to file-sharing websites.
The survey says that the information-spreading effect of unauthorized downloads is especially important for films with smaller audiences. The abstract of the summary was published on
the Social Science Research Network. The results were seized on by several bloggers and opponents of attempts to close down portals that offered unauthorized downloads of films and TV shows.
However, Julia Jenks, head of research at the MPAA, claimed that the findings were “flimsy” and were based on a questionable methodology, which included comparing the performance of films before and after the shutdown of the cyberlocker. For example, Jenks said that the findings failed to account for different factors which affected box-office performance, including audience taste. The MPAA claimed that it’s impossible to evaluate the reliability of the conclusions that were made from the abstract, which didn’t fully present the methodology or results of the study. Actually, in its present form, the abstract in question raises more questions than answers.
The Department of Justice of the United States closed New Zealand-based cyberlocker almost a year ago. Its owner, German online businessman Kim Dotcom, is charged with copyright infringement. Since then, Dotcom (born Kim Schmitz) has been denying wrongdoing and fighting US efforts to extradite him.
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