File Sharing Can Actually Increase Sales, Says New Study. Again

April 23, 2010 by Yonah
Filed under: Announcements & Events

A recent report on the effects of piracy (covering all sectors, even toys, clothing, automobile parts, and medicine) published by the GAO (The U.S. Government . Accountability Office) casts some fresh light on the issue where, usually, the entertainment industry dictates the general beliefs using its own abundance of reports to try convince us of the immense losses the national economy owes to piracy.

The new report is mentioned by the guys at TechDirt signaling that the U.S. government and industry will not find it as easy from now on to fool the public with their claims (reason for which they even tried to prevent such reports from being published) that “cannot be substantiated due to the absence of underlying studies.”

Despite the number of studies showing fact in fact file sharing users buy more media, the industry complaint that it is being ruined by illegal downloaders seem to have caught stronger roots at least among politicians.

“Some experts we interviewed and literature we reviewed identified potential positive economic effects of counterfeiting and piracy,” reads the GAO report. “Some consumers may knowingly purchase a counterfeit or pirated product because it is less expensive than the genuine good or because the genuine good is unavailable, and they may experience positive effects from such purchases. Consumers may use pirated goods to ‘sample’ music, movies, software, or electronic games before purchasing legitimate copies,” the GAO added. “(This) may lead to increased sales of legitimate goods.”

Although the GAO’s report doesn’t neglect to point out some damaging aspects linked to pirated content it doesn’t even come close to concluding that piracy is really killing the entertainment business.

Tags: economic effects, effects of piracy, file-sharing, gao report, government accountability office, legal, music industry, national economy, p2p, report doesn, US