New Research Shows Movie And Game Piracy On The Rise, But Won't Tell Us How It Knows
from the is-it-really? dept
According to a recent report citing piracy statistics, game, film, tv, and software piracy are on the rise in the UK. The report cites an increase of roughly 20% over the last 5 years. Interestingly enough, it also shows a reduction in music piracy over the same period. This could certainly be bad news to those companies whose movies and games are part of the study, but sadly, there is no way to verify the information.
What this report doesn’t reveal is just how the researchers came to these conclusions. Unlike some recent objective research, this report is not transparent in any way. This lack of transparency is exactly what those Danish researchers want to change. However, not all research firms feel the same way. When a research firm such as Envisional, the author of this latest report, makes a living by providing statistics and other tools and information to content industries, it is their job to create research that adheres to what their employers want to hear. This is usually done by hiding their methodology in order to prevent the results from being debunked. After all, we have already seen what happens when honest researchers look at Envisional’s data. Perhaps a closer look at the data is advised.
Filed Under: piracy, studies
Companies: envisional
Comments on “New Research Shows Movie And Game Piracy On The Rise, But Won't Tell Us How It Knows”
>> Interestingly enough, it also shows a reduction in music piracy over the same period. This could certainly be bad news to those companies whose movies and games are part of the study…
Honestly, that might be worse news for the music industry than the gaming and music. Lack of increased piracy might mean lack of interest, at least in the music from the big name brands that care about piracy. Of course we don’t have any way to confirm or refute my assertion because we don’t know anything about the study other than the conclusions.
The cynic in me wants to say that the study doesn’t show a growth in music piracy because the big labels didn’t contribute enough to funding the study. But again, we don’t know because of lack of transparency.
Re: 'it also shows a reduction in music piracy over the same period'
proof that big label music is failing to provide music people like?
Re: Re: 'it also shows a reduction in music piracy over the same period'
Proof that there are several all-you-can-eat music services that make piracy unneeded.
Re: Re: Re: 'it also shows a reduction in music piracy over the same period'
Actually, it is more likely that there are now lots of legal and reasonably priced alternatives to pirated music. ITunes is killing piracy.
Re: Re: Re:2 'it also shows a reduction in music piracy over the same period'
Whether its Grooveshark, Spotify or iTunes the point could be made that the arrival of free/cheap music in the UK may have reduced “piracy”.
My own private research shows that the big media companies are run by soul-devouring space zombies and that piracy in fact helps to weaken them and prevent them from enslaving the entire human race.
Don’t ask me how I came to such conclusions – my methodology is proprietary information.
Re: Re:
my study shows much worse….. U MUST HAVE BEEN PAID to down play the fact of the riaa starting in soviet russia by zombie hitler and slave owning red coat, illegal imergent, soul-devouring, rock-n-roll teenagers from space
$$$
Follow the money!
Who paid the results, er, I mean research?
Well my research shows those who give me over 10 million dollars live up to 10 years longer on average then people who don’t give me 10 million dollars.
How do I know? That’s a trade secret, trade secrets aren’t open to scientific scrutiny.
Boiling it down...
So, in other words, somebody said something that nobody can verify? Great. When did piracy statistics turn into sports talk radio?
Re: Boiling it down...
When weren’t they like sports talk radio?
Re: Boiling it down...
Here Here.
I read all the time on Techdirt, “…link or it didn’t happen…”
Well… Research, Data, and Methodology OR IT DIDN’T HAPPEN!
CBMHB
exactly why the actual data is being withheld, exactly what the UK government wants to hear and exactly what the UK government will use to implement similar measures to those proposed in the USA. any debunking, if it becomes possible because the data used is made available, will be ignored just as the ‘Hargreaves Report’ is being ignored, even though that was sponsored by the government itself! facts are irrelevant; money is the key!
Envisional
Note:
A quick look at Envisional’s website shows that the company offers it’s services to the entertainment industry ‘tracking’ online piracy.
It may be wild speculation but, could it be that Envisional’s ‘research’ is designed to drum up business from content providers?
Envisional
Note:
A quick look at Envisional’s website shows that the company offers it’s services to the entertainment industry ‘tracking’ online piracy.
It may be wild speculation but, could it be that Envisional’s ‘research’ is designed to drum up business from content providers?
I got my own research
My own research report shows that Copyright harms creativity, wastes billions of dollars every year, and leads to censorship and the violation of our legal rights. Thus, based on my report, Copyright should be ended.
HARD DATA counter-example from "piracy" tag in your link.
Bohemia Interactive: 97% of our games are pirated
http://www.develop-online.net/news/39163/Bohemia-Interactive-97-of-our-games-are-pirated
Arma developer: We’ll never stop piracy but we want people to know it’s not right
Indie PC studio Bohemia Interactive claims that 97 per cent of its games are not purchased legitimately.
?Our statistics from multiplayer show that for every three legitimate buyers playing their game in multiplayer, there are 100 attempts to play with a pirated version,? the Czech studio’s CEO Marek Spanel said.
?This indicates that piracy is an extremely widespread problem on PC, and it?s also really worrying for us as a mid-sized, independent, PC-oriented developer.?
In an interview with PC Gamer, Spanel (pictured) said there was no way of detecting pirated copies if they are not connected online ? suggesting that the 97 per cent piracy rate is in fact even worse.
Bohemia Interactive uses a unique anti-piracy technology called Degrade ? a code hidden within pirated copies that gradually renders them unplayable.
——————
Note especially the last paragraph: the victims of piracy can innovate too, and that’s a rather clever way.
Re: HARD DATA counter-example from "piracy" tag in your link.
My question for Spanel is this: How much more could you have done for the legal game had you taken the money and man power that was used creating that anti-piracy measure and put it into the legal game?
I think the anti-priacy measure is novel and has roots back to the NES. But the fact remains is that was time and money away from developing a better experience for paying customers.
Re: HARD DATA counter-example from "piracy" tag in your link.
?Our statistics from multiplayer show that for every three legitimate buyers playing their game in multiplayer, there are 100 attempts to play with a pirated version,? the Czech studio’s CEO Marek Spanel said.
“Attempts”?
How many are successful?
THAT would be a better criteria of “pirating”?
Re: HARD DATA counter-example from "piracy" tag in your link.
Are these unique attempts or 97 attempts by the same persistant gamer? I could claim I have 200,000 hit on a particular website I design, but since 199,000 are me checking my code… that does kinda skew the numbers.
Re: HARD DATA counter-example from "piracy" tag in your link.
Is it by number of login attempts to the server or IP addresses with an infringing copy?
Both methodologies would lead to inflated numbers, but if it’s just login attempts that number may be increased by a factor of 20 or more.
Either way, it is kind of a funny.
Re: Re: HARD DATA counter-example from "piracy" tag in your link.
Didn’t an game developer recently turn this same sort of issue into a money maker?
Yeah, here it is:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110930/09182316149/gaming-company-sees-massive-user-revenue-growth-because-piracy.shtml
Re: Re: Re: HARD DATA counter-example from "piracy" tag in your link.
er, thats in response to OOTB
Re: HARD DATA counter-example from "piracy" tag in your link.
“Spanel, whose company makes the Arma military warfare games, said the Degrade system is designed to deliberately annoy those who play pirated copies.
?Some of the symptoms are funny, usually annoying. In the Arma series, players with pirated copies have lower accuracy with automatic weapons in both single player and multiplayer, and occasionally turn into a bird with the words ?good birds do not fly away from this game, you have only yourself to blame?,? he said.”
—
Ok, at least it’s clear where he gets the 97% number from. He’s counting the amount of people that can’t hit the broad side of a barn. Unfortunately, that probably includes 97% of all people who play the Arma games, pirates or not.
Waste of time
If they don’t describe their methods, it isn’t research.
sounds to me like someone was pirating.