The European Commission paid €360,000 (about $428,000) for a study on how piracy impacts the sales of copyrighted music, books, video games, and movies. But the EU never shared the report—possibly because it determined that there is no evidence that piracy is a major problem.
The European Digital Rights organization suggested in a blog post that the full contents of this report was intentionally suppressed, pointing to a 2016 academic paper by two Commission officials. The paper, “Movie Piracy and Displaced Sales in Europe,” only mentioned the part of the Ecory report that highlights the relationship between piracy and blockbuster film lost sales, and excluded the other findings of the report. Additionally, the paper didn’t even disclose that the cited information came from Ecory’s study.
This is really damning. They didn’t publish the study, then misrepresented it and only cited the small comment that agreed with their bias.
This is really damning. They didn’t publish the study, then misrepresented it and only cited the small comment that agreed with their bias.