
Megaupload shutdown hurt box office revenues for non-blockbuster movies - cyphersanctus
http://torrentfreak.com/megaupload-shutdown-hurt-box-office-revenues-121124/
======
vacri
A wonderful example of confirmation bias. "Oh, look, box office revenues are
down... except for the blockbusters where the big studios earn their money,
those got a shot in the arm. But we'll still go with 'hurts revenue'.

~~~
anonymous
That is the effect I'd expect to see (yay more cb). People don't want to take
a chance with a small indie film unless they know it's good and with MU down,
there's no word-of-mouth information to tell them it is. But they still want
to go see a movie. The effect being that they bank on something sure - a well-
promoted and known movie. In effect blockbusters with huge marketing get a
boost, because smaller films' marketing gets nipped.

------
cyphersanctus
Link to the academic paper. "Piracy and Movie Revenues: Evidence from
Megaupload" <http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2176246>

~~~
GHFigs
From the paper: "Box office revenues of movies shown on the average number of
screens and below were affected negatively, but the total effect is not
statistically significant. For blockbusters (shown on more than 500 screens)
the sign is positive (and significant, depending on the specification)."

~~~
antiterra
How can you claim an effect is present when it is not statistically
significant? The paper seems to undermine its own "findings." I'm not sure
anyone expects torrentfreak to be concerned with accuracy, but it's pretty
blatant to have a misleading article title while still quoting the paper as
finding the negative effects "insignificant."

~~~
mkuhn
I actually understand the passage as such that the effect is significant for
the negative impact on the subset of movies shown on less than 500 screens but
the overall effect on all movies is not significant.

Without access to the whole paper it is hard to tell though.

